Walking Heartbreak (26 page)

NADIA

Between Bo’s phone call and Zoe’s interception,
they broke me out of my hibernation. I tidy up at home. Peer at Jude’s sock on the bathroom floor. It’s been there for a while. I’ve been cleaning around it for a while. I let it sink in how he’s not going to pick it up himself.

He
can’t
pick it up himself.

It’s time I stare reality in the eye. I pick the sock up—I do. Then I cry.

I sheathe myself in old dreams within the safety of our blankets. When Zoe calls, she surprises by saying that my “bawling” is a step in the right direction.

“Gotta face the music, girl. About time,” she pep-talks, but the expression makes no sense and disparages the devastation in my mind. “Face the music, Nadia.”

I spend the last days mulling over where Bo and I could meet. I wish we could agree on a different place than here, but if I start a discussion about it, Bo will probably dig deep and I don’t want to fight. Above all, I don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have.

I can come straight to the restaurant tomorrow,
I type out.

No, don’t. Your house is on the way.

I bite my lip, worried.
Seven, you said?

Yeah. Can’t wait.

A flutter in my chest.

Illicit joy.

BO

I’m off tour. I’m tired.
It’s been a long month on the road, and if it weren’t for the adrenaline kicking in at the thought of seeing Nadia, I’d be dead on my couch right now, probably not even getting my ass to bed.

The tour bus pulls up later than expected, and I barely have time for a shower. I rush my hands through my wet hair and shake it in the mirror. I notice a little stubble on my chin—I’m not graced with a thick beard—and shave it off thinking of how it will feel to run my face along hers.

I grab a bottle of cologne even, feeling fancy. Some musky sort of thang we got from a sponsor in Miami. I don’t want to overpower her with it, but girls tend to enjoy a little fragrance. Nadia, I’m guessing, is no different.

It’s easy to find her apartment complex, a small, square building shaped into a U around a desert garden. The sign reading
The Alhambra Apartments
is more imposing than the construction itself. I park and start on the flat stones leading up to an open arc. Beyond, the building proffers numbered front doors in a line, the way I’m used to from motels.

It’s small and intimate. Cute. Appropriate because Nadia is all of those things. As I walk on, I wonder how she’s solving the problem with her husband.

The brief guilt over pursuing her dissipates quickly; after all, Jude drags her down, just like I did with Ingela. I always knew Ingela deserved better than me. Does he get it too? If not, he’s an idiot. He really shouldn’t be surprised that someone else comes knocking, even if the dick isn’t man enough to let her off the hook.

“Hey!” Nadia says, breathless, tiptoeing toward me on high heels. She’s gorgeous, with long, sleek hair brushed into a shiny mass that falls over her breasts. She wears a simple dress, a green one, and my eyes go straight to her cleavage.

“Hey. I was about to knock,” I explain as if it’s my invention and not something everyone does at people’s door.

She blushes, eyes wild. He must be inside then, and she doesn’t want us in the same room. Can’t fault her. Can’t help the sting of disappointment.

She passes me quickly. She almost traipses in front of me down to the stone tiles, and I have this urge to stop her and embrace her hard.

I know it’s a possessive thing, to want to do this in front of their apartment. I’m wretched and more obsessed by the day.

See, it didn’t get better after she left. I kept thinking of her. And I still think I love her a little. That mush in my chest hasn’t disappeared yet. I hold back until we’re right outside the garden gate, but once we are in full view of whichever windows are hers, I tug her to me by the belt circling that little dress, and she stumbles into me.

“I’ve missed you,” I try to say in a calm voice, but it comes out gritty as a growl.

I expect her to push me away. One thing is high school with her father glaring from the window. A whole other level is to have that person be her spouse.

She doesn’t. Her body trembles a little, like she’s as affected as I am, but her hands move around my neck and let me pull her in.

“Me too,” she whispers.

“You’ve missed me too?” I ask, and then I fucking hug her so hard. A light hum escapes her mouth, and I suck it in, tasting the bubblegum flavor on her lips.

“Yes,” she says, not moving us away from the windows of the Alhambra Apartments. It makes me daring, happy, and I risk it all for more closeness, lifting her knee so I’m cradled deep between her legs in the most intimate clutch.

“You are… so… special,” I say. “I—am taking you out of here.”

NADIA

The way Bo looks at me
when he picks me up. There’s no detached rockstardom to him. Nothing playful or smugly charismatic. There’s just
him
looking at
me
from beneath silky, dyed-black hair. His mouth, sensual and slack with missing me, with his need to hold me tight. I see it. I recognize it. Because it’s how I feel when I look at him.

He half lifts me on our tangled way to his car. It makes me smile, and he kisses my cheek so sweetly, apologizing for not being a, “strong-ass body builder.”

“Come on, fling me over your shoulder, He-Man,” I say, because suddenly I feel like joking, and he listens and play-tumbles under my weight so we both end up on the hood of his car.

I sober quickly, public displays of affection are something I have little experience with—everyone could be watching. Bo’s smile is high, beautiful, and while he drives, his eyes are on me as much as on the road.

“I wonder what Emil and Zoe are up to,” I say to disturb the blissful tension between us. I’m not wondering. They’re in his apartment, and one of them is telling the other what they’re doing wrong love-or-kissing-wise.

“Fighting,” Bo says, grinning.

“What? Why?” We park in front of a small Italian restaurant, and Bo helps me out of the car.

“He picked up the phone during the meet-n-greet the other night, just when some girl was moaning into his ear. Apparently, she sounded like the real thing.”

“Oh no. How silly of him.”

“I know. He has been on the phone with Zoe nonstop since then, trying to convince her it was nothing. The only girl he wants to play doctor with—at least at the moment—is her.”

“What about you?” I blurt out and bite my own tongue.

“Does it matter?” he asks, serious. Seated in the booth across from me with candles dancing between us, a distance creeps in that’s bigger than the table.

“No,” I hurry out, avoiding his eyes. “Of course not.” But there’s so much sinking in for me these days. These
nights.
It does matter.

Jude won’t hold me in his arms again. He won’t sleep with me. Won’t tell me he loves me. What is left of my relationship with Jude is…

Even in my head, I can’t say it. The important thing is—

“I think I’m sort of moving on,” I begin. Let my hair cover my face as I stare at the table. “Never mind.”

“Moving on from what?” Bo is suddenly the hyper-present star that makes people turn heads and get sucked into his space. His charisma reaches me through the curtain of my hair. He draws it with steady hands and leaves it over my shoulder before he cups my cheek with a palm. I breathe in courage, knowing it’s time to tell him about Jude.

“Zoe hasn’t told you?” It’s hard to believe. She’s a loyal friend, but she wants my relationship with Bo to develop and I could see her break rules for it.

“About what, Nadia?” he asks, and when my eyes for a fleeting second graze his, those winter-grey irises penetrate me. “Zoe reveals nothing about you. The last time I tried, she said flat out, and I quote, ‘Take a fucking hike.’”

As a bottle of beer and a glass of red wine land on the table, Bo leans closer and nudges my chin up with the crook of his index finger. I have no choice but to meet his gaze. “Why? What should she have told me?”

The question is too direct. What would he do if I dodged it? I’m a coward, and I don’t want to cry in public.

“Jude is heartless for leaving me,” I burst out.

Bo’s eyebrows shoot up. “He left you?”

“Yes. No! Ah crap. I don’t know, Bo. I don’t know how to explain this.”

“It shouldn’t be difficult. He either left you or he didn’t. Is he divorcing you?”

“No, he’s not divorcing me. What’s with all the questions?” I say, not myself and with that damn lump bobbing in my throat again. I hate lumps. I need to talk about something else. Steer his attention away, but I’m blank, blank—because all that’s left in my mind is the truth, and to let those three words hang in the air, expressed once and for all, I cannot do.

A calzone arrives, sliding in between us and staining the tablecloth with rust-colored grease. The steam wafting from it is cheese and ham and tomato sauce, an aroma that should comfort me, but I’m in a showdown, a face-off, that’s too much to handle. “Careful, it’s so hot it’s dangerous!” the waitress chirps.

“Thanks,” we both mumble. I’m the first to start cutting off pieces and eating absentmindedly. I need to find a harmless way to ease into my explanation to Bo.

“He... I only learned about Jude’s problem after we fled Payne Point.”

“What problem?” Bo’s gaze can be so powerful. I feel it on me even when I’m not looking.

“Diabetes.”

“Is that debilitating? Hampering?”

I shrug, wanting to cry again with the realization that’s been setting in full force over the last few days. “Depends on the person. Jude and I had been secretly dating since we were thirteen. After the first few months, we met almost every day. We were only apart when his filthy rich Silicon Valley guru father took his family on lavish vacations. And even with all the time we spent together, Jude didn’t tell me about his problem.”

“Problem.” Bo chews on my wording with his first bite of calzone. “It’s considered a disease, right?”

“Yeah, but a manageable one. It becomes a problem when… the person isn’t on the ball.”

I risk a glance at him and find his eyes narrowed. I can tell his brain is going a hundred miles per hour trying to read past my words. So many half-told stories. Bo is used to me not explaining myself. To me dodging questions. Avoiding. Deflecting. I feel bad.

I crush my eyes closed for courage to continue. “Basically, his mom had been administering everything for him—the insulin and his meals. When he needed glucose tablets, she’d make sure he took them. If he needed injections instead of pills. Mrs. Bancroft literally kept him free of symptoms for years straight.

“I got my first scary glimpse into an insulin shock when he almost crashed the car on the way to Vegas.”

“Jesus. When you eloped?”

“Yeah. He didn’t admit to anything. Said he was just tired. It took him way too long to confess that he had diabetes and tell me where to find the shots he needed. He could have lost consciousness.”

“I’m sorry. That sucks, Nadia.” Bo strokes my hair with one hand, smoothens a lock and lets go. “Did he get better after the shot?”

“Yeah. That’s the crazy part. The time it took for him to return to himself again, even joke about what happened, was just—nothing. I still think about that. So fast.”

And then I can’t stop the tears from dripping along my nose. I suck in a noisy breath and lift my napkin to wipe them off.

“I don’t understand why anyone would want to neglect something like that.”

“Yeah. I begged him to be mindful from then on, and he did well. Even so, over the next months, he still had a tendency of taking his insulin shot without eating right after. It’s why he’d get sick.”

A strange chuckle escapes me, because Jude. Impossible Jude. “I found him in different states of shaky, sleepy, bleary-eyed three or four times afterward. I don’t get mad easily, but once I even yelled at him while we waited for the glucagon injection to work.

“His mother would drive up from Payne Point often too. She’d stay nearby in a hotel a few days at a time.”

“Why? To nurse him?” Bo lifts the beer to his mouth and takes a sip.

“Yeah. One night, he got tired of it and told her off. I wish she hadn’t used the opportunity to nag at him about college every time she came up too. If she hadn’t—”

I can’t finish that sentence. “He wasn’t supposed to work at a gas station, see? In his mother’s mind, he was destined for bigger things than some blue-collar job.”

“And he wanted to stay there?”

“Only until I’d finished my education. I was supposed to support him afterward.”

Bo twists his mouth, pondering, and I recall telling him that I started working at Scott’s Diner a few months after we moved to the Alhambra Apartments. “Jude’s salary was low, which is why I took the waitressing job at Scott’s. Jude hated it but got my point. He was on the lookout for a better-paying job when…”

“When what?”

“Um. When… his mother stopped ‘bugging’ him.” I jerk my head up, meeting Bo’s gaze for the first time since we sat down. “Are you full? I’m done. I think I’m ready to leave.”

Bo moves into his seat, spine hitting the backrest while he studies me. I can’t fool him. Heck, there’s nothing to fool anyone with. It’s just too much to keep talking. Thing is, I can only recall this an ice-cream scoop at a time. I hope he understands.