My One and Only

We talked for hours that night. He drank without getting drunk and didn’t try to get me drunk, either. He listened when I spoke, his eyes intent. And such eyes! Too beautiful and tragic somehow, with a secret pain (cough), a gentle torment only an old soul could feel…well, it was clear I had a little too much to drink. Nick had grown up in Brooklyn, couldn’t wait to move back to the city, loved the New York Yankees, which resulted in some very fun trash talk (I won, somehow making the Sox sound noble and superior, despite the sorry season they were having). He asked me questions about what I wanted to do, what I loved learning, where I was from. He didn’t seem to grow bored, even when I waxed rhapsodic about environmental law, and he didn’t stare at my boobs. He just seemed to really…like me.

We were both a little shocked when the busboy asked us to leave, as it was now 2:30 a.m. Nick offered to walk me home, and as we crossed the lovely, still campus, he held my hand. That was a first for me—a boy who took my hand. That was a public statement of romantic intentions, and the boys I’d dated (and they were definitely all boys) tended more toward the shoulder bump. Hand-holding, I discovered, was quite the turn-on, though I pretended not to notice.

“Can I take you out sometime?” he asked in front of my dorm.

“Is that code for ‘Can I come in and have sex with you?’” I returned.

The answer came almost before I’d finished the question. “No.”

Another first.

I blinked. “Seriously? Because I probably would sleep with you.” Actually, at that moment, I wouldn’t have. At least I didn’t think so. But those eyes…that rather beautiful hand holding mine so firmly…“Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Yes.” That fast, certain yes. “Yes, I want to take you on a date. No, I don’t want to have sex with you. Not tonight, anyway.”

“Why? Are you a Mormon? Suffer from ED? Are you gay?”

He grinned, his gypsy eyes transformed. “No, no and no. Because, Harper Elizabeth James”—crap, I’d told him my entire name (and he remembered, oh sigh!)—“that would be…disrespectful.”

I blinked. “Well, now you have indeed rendered me speechless. I can state with absolute certainty that I have never before heard that particular line.” Prelaw. What can I say? We all sounded like pompous idiots. Plus, I’d had three whole beers, which made me sound even more idiotic and pompous.

But Nick seemed to think I was cute. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Now that one I’ve heard before. Full of sound and bullshit, signifying nothing.”

He called me nine hours later, having hacked into the college website to find my cell number. “It’s Nick.”

“Nick who?” I asked, blushing for perhaps the first time in my life.

“The father of your children.”

“Right, right.” I paused, unable to suppress a smile. “Do I at least get dinner before I have to start breeding?”

He took me to a real restaurant in Northampton…not just a college-kid hangout with four-dollar falafels, but one with tables and waiters and everything, and thus began my first real relationship. He called when he said he would. He sent me little jokes via email, met me for lunch, sometimes showed up outside my classroom to walk across campus with me. We often went to the movies, where we both talked incessantly, much to the annoyance of the other patrons. We dated, as in old-fashioned, 1950s dating, and I couldn’t believe how fun it was.

But for an entire month, he didn’t kiss me or touch me (aside from holding my hand, for crying out loud), and by then, I was dying of lust. Which, I want you to know, I hid very well. Never mentioned it once. I just waited, more obsessed than I wanted to be, wondering if he was playing some little game. But I found myself waiting for those phone calls, and my heart did this weird leaping thing when I saw his face.

Four weeks and two days after we first met, Nick had me over to his apartment for the first time, a typical grotty little place which was atypically clean. He made me dinner—lasagna and salad and warm bread. Poured me red wine without trying to liquor me up. He’d made a pie for dessert, which had me once again wondering out loud if he was indeed gay. He wouldn’t let me do the dishes. As we sat on his couch (holding hands but otherwise chaste), he told me why he thought the Brooklyn Bridge was the most beautiful man-made structure on earth and how he would take me there on my virgin trip to New York and we’d walk across it and get an ice cream in Brooklyn and then walk across again, taking plenty of time to worship the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge.

“I’ve always favored the architecture of Denny’s myself,” I said.

“I may have to divorce you.”

“I call the yacht and the apartment in Paris. It’s in the prenup, of course.”

Nick laughed. “I don’t believe in prenups.”

“All the better. I will take you to the cleaners, boy. Paris apartment, you’re mine, all mine.”

“Why did I marry such a heartless woman?” he grinned.

I smiled back. “You haven’t even kissed me yet, Nick. I won’t marry you and bear our five healthy sons if you fail to thrill me.”

He looked at me, a little smile playing around his mouth, two days of knee-weakening razor stubble, dark hair tousled, and those gypsy eyes. He reached out and touched my lips with one finger. He didn’t have to kiss me. I was thrilled anyway. And, quite out of the blue, suddenly terrified. My breath stuttered in my chest, and my heart seemed to contract, and even as he leaned forward, I thought Don’t let him be too good. Don’t fall in love.

But he was, and I did. It was…stunning, really, to be kissed like this, and I felt that I’d never really understood what kissing was before. It was as if our mouths had been made to kiss only each other, and the shock and thrill, the urgent, hot feeling, the little sounds of kissing, the—dang it—the rightness. I never thought I’d be desperate for someone—I’d had seven years and four weeks and two days to teach myself not to love anyone desperately. But when Nick kissed me for the first time, my whole body came alive. It was terrifying how good it was.

We kissed and groped on the couch for eons, until finally, Nick stood up, took me by the hand and led me to his bedroom, kissing me, touching me, his skin hot on mine, his cheeks flushed, eyes nearly black. It was as if we had all the time in the world for this, for this sweet, melting ache that made me shake. I pulled his shirt over his head, and my hands explored his smooth chest, his addictive skin, the lovely space above his collarbone. There was a ragged little scar over his heart, which I traced with my fingers as I kissed his beautiful neck, felt his thudding pulse under my lips, tasted the salt of his sweat. His hands were hot, his mouth was gentle, a small smile playing on his lips whenever he opened his eyes to look at me.

I didn’t object when his clever fingers unbuttoned the back of my dress, but when his hand slid up my thigh, I jumped and grabbed his wrist. Time to stop. Time to leave. But I didn’t move.

“Far enough?” he asked, his voice husky, his face against my neck.

I swallowed. “Nick?”

He raised his head. Oh, you’re in trouble, Harper, my brain said. I couldn’t manage to speak, as the words were stuck in my throat. Feelings of awkwardness, dorkiness, embarrassment roiled around with the heat and lust and wanting.

“What is it, honey?” he asked, his voice so gentle it hurt my heart.

If he hadn’t said honey, my guess is that I would’ve pulled my usual routine and fled, feeling somewhat guilty and completely safe. Get out, get out, get out, my brain yammered. I swallowed and looked away.

“I’ve never done this before,” I whispered. God! Being a virgin at twenty and change…in a blue state, nonetheless…at a liberal college…et cetera…!

Nick blinked. Because sure, I was a toughie, very blasé and ubercool. And pretty, let’s not forget that, though I didn’t spend a lot of time gazing into a mirror. I’d had quite a few guys chase after me, and I’d gone out with many. Guys loved me. My modus operandi was to insult and condescend while at the same time flirt, then allow a guy to walk me back to my dorm, where we’d engage in some groping and snogging for a horny hour or so. Then I’d stand up, adjust my clothes, kick the guy out and never speak to him again. This made me extraordinarily popular, for some mysterious reason. Was I a tease? Absolutely. I wasn’t sure there was another way to be.

Until now. I couldn’t seem to look at Nick, suddenly fascinated with the window shade, the radiator, the crack in the plaster wall. He turned my face back toward him.

“We don’t have to do anything,” he said. “It’s fine.” He smiled, and I could see that he meant it, and damn it all to hell, I fell a little deeper.

“I’d like to,” I whispered, and my eyes stung a little.

He looked at me seriously. “You sure?” he asked. I nodded.

“Very sure?” he asked, touching my lower lip.

I nodded again.

He kissed me, sweetly, gently, then smiled against my mouth. “Sure enough to marry me?”

“Nick,” I said, unable to suppress a laugh, “can you please shut up and do me?”

And so he did, and it was gentle and slow and sweet, and oh, God…it felt as if we were meant to be together, and suddenly, I could see why all those sonnets had been written, all those Hallmark cards printed, all those movies. Because it was…real. For the first time in a very long time, I trusted someone to take care of me, and he did. Cherished me. Made love to me. All those clichés…true.

When it was over, when we lay twined together, sweaty and breathing hard, my eyes open a little too wide, as the glow faded and my heart rate slowed, a chilly terror crept into bed with me. The fear of being left, or exposed, or judged…or whatever, I was only twenty, not the type who examined emotions, the same way I didn’t plunge my hand into a bag full of broken glass. I just knew that I was freaking terrified.

I cleared my throat. “Well, I should…I need to…I have to run,” I said, babbling slightly. “That was wicked pissah, as we say here in the Bay State. And, um…I’ll see you soon. Thanks, Nick. Bye.” I got up, grabbed my dress and panties and pulled them on as I fled. Made it to the living room, opened the door, only to have Nick come up right behind me and push it closed again.

“No, no. No, you don’t,” he said, sliding around to put himself between the door and me. “Harper, come on.”

“I’m absolutely positive you wouldn’t keep me here against my will, Nick,” I said lightly, not looking at him.

He stared at me a long moment, then stepped aside. “What happened?”

“I’m just going back to my dorm, okay? I have a, um, a history paper due.”

“Don’t go.”

“I just have to. It’s not a big deal.” I faked a smile and tried to tie the shoulder strap of my dress, but my hands were shaking. Still couldn’t look at him. It felt as if something big and dark was pulling in my chest, something that wanted to do me harm, and damn if I wasn’t close to tears. “Harper.”

“Nick.”

“Look at me.”

What could I say? No? I obeyed, glancing at him briefly.

“Harper, I love you.” His gypsy eyes were solemn, completely sincere, and that thing in my chest gave a fast, hard, painful twist.

“Nick, for God’s sake,” I said unevenly. “You barely know me.”

“Okay, fine, I take it back. You’re a shrew and a pain in the ass, but man, that thing you did with your tongue…”

I gave a surprised laugh, and Nick raised an eyebrow. “Can I see you again? Can I shag you again? Please, Harper?” And he grinned, and whatever had been in his eyes a second ago was replaced with an impish light.

I smiled back, and that dark thing subsided, leaving me almost limp with relief. “I’m extremely busy, but you never know.”

“Stay a little longer? Even though I can barely tolerate you?”

I hesitated. We should probably go now, said my brain. “Sure,” said the rest of me.

I know I was supposed to want what normal people wanted. That being loved was supposed to make me feel safe and cherished and happy. And Nick did make me feel those things, sort of. But I never seemed to be able to keep the dark, pulling thing completely at bay. I kept wondering when the other shoe would drop, when this would all end. How much damage would occur when it did.

I was twenty years old, raised by a father who didn’t like to talk about messy human emotions, abandoned by a mother who had once adored me. I tried not to think about it, but in the back of my heart, on the tip of my brain, the thought lurked that Nick could ditch me at any time. My own mother had…why not some guy? Best not to fall all the way in love. Best to protect myself as much as I could.

If Nick sensed something was off, he didn’t ask, and even if he had, I wouldn’t have had the words to tell him the truth. When your own mother deserts you without a backward glance, it’s hard to believe you can be truly and unconditionally loved. Love gets used up, you see.

So…Nick and I had fun together. Kept things light, and if he looked at me too…seriously or whatever, I’d tell him to wipe that look off his face, and he would. But the sex, it must be acknowledged, was flipping unbelievable. Not that I had anything to compare it with, but I knew. I pretended it didn’t mean anything, and we didn’t talk about it, but I knew just the same.

And Nick gave me enough rope to hang myself, never pushed, never again told me he loved me, stopped joking about marriage. When he moved down to the city at the end of the school year, eight months after we’d met, I honestly felt as if I might die. “Drive safely!” I called briskly as he got into his battered car, as the dark thing swelled dangerously. I kept smiling as he started the engine. Took out my phone and pretended to check for messages, which I couldn’t actually see, as my eyes were blinking furiously.

Then Nick cut the engine, jumped out of the car and hugged me, and I hugged him back so hard it hurt, and he kissed me fiercely. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered, and I couldn’t speak, it hurt so much to think about even a day without him, let alone forever, because of course I didn’t expect things to actually work out.

But they did. He called me every day, and we talked for hours. He emailed me at least once a day, sent me tacky New York City T-shirts and Yankees dolls (I’d stick safety pins through their heads and send them back) and really good coffee from a little place on Bleeker Street. I interned at a law firm in Hartford that summer, and a couple of times a month, Nick would take the train to Connecticut to see me, since I felt a little gun-shy about going down to see him.

His mom died suddenly in October—an aneurysm—and I drove down to Pelham, New York, for the wake. When I walked in, the look on his face—love, and surprise and gratitude—went straight to my heart. He introduced me to his sparse family, an aunt, a couple of cousins. Nick’s parents had divorced long ago, and his mom never remarried. When I went back to school, I sent him quirky cartoons cut from the English department’s copies of the New Yorker. Baked oatmeal raisin cookies when he came to visit.

He was snarky and smart and thoughtful and irreverent—and a little sad—and the combination was unbreachable. The amount of feeling I had at the sight of him, the rush the sound of his voice could cause, the heat, the everything…it was terrifying. We were, forgive me, soul mates, though I’d have stuck a fork in my jugular before saying that out loud.

So I tried to keep things light, dodged the more serious and intense moments, never said those three little words. Not until one night at Amherst and Nick was up for a rare weekend. I’d been applying to law schools, and applications were scattered all over my room. Not one of the schools I was aiming for was in New York. Even though Columbia and NYU both had great environmental law programs, I wasn’t about to apply there. Not when Nick lived in Manhattan, uh-uh. It would be too obvious. Mean too much. Absolutely would not build my life around a man, as my mother had, and look where that got everyone.

Nick looked through the brochures and checklists… Duke, Stanford, Tufts. He gave me a long, silent look. I ignored him and chattered on with some inane story about my roomie and her inability to load the dishwasher. We went to a movie on campus. I pretended not to notice that Nick was bothered.

That night, he jerked awake. “You okay?” I muttered sleepily.

He looked at me, his eyes a little wild in the light from the streetlamp.

I sat up. “Nick?”

“Do you love me, Harper?”

I started a little. Maybe it was the darkness, or the hour, or the slightly lost look in his beautiful eyes, but I couldn’t lie. I took his hand and looked at it, traced his fingers, the sweet underside of his wrist. “Yes,” I whispered.

He gave a half nod. Didn’t say he loved me back. He didn’t have to. I knew. We lay back down, and he put his arms around me, and I felt like crying, as if my heart might break if he said anything at all. But he didn’t, and the next day, things were normal. We didn’t mention law school or love again.

On Valentine’s Day of my senior year, I finally went down to New York for the first time, and we did indeed walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was frigid and wet and icy, perhaps not quite as fabulous as the experience Nick had envisioned, as I was dying of hypothermia, but he insisted we stand in the middle of the bridge, ostensibly to see if we could spot Mob victims in the East River.

“There’s one,” Nick said. “Sal ‘Six Fingers’ Pietro. He never should’ve boffed Carmella Soprano during the christening.”

“Oh, I think I see one, too,” I said, pointing and hoping we could go to Nick’s soon and have some fabulous sex and then get a quesadilla grande from Benny’s. “Right there. Vito ‘The Pie’ Deluca swims with the fishes, or whatever passes for life in the East River. Can we go now?”

Nick didn’t answer. I looked around for him, but he wasn’t where he should be. No. He was on one knee, looking up at me with such dopey happiness that my heart nearly stopped. He had on fingerless gloves that day, like some Dickensian orphan, his hair blew in the wind and he held up a diamond ring.

“Marry me, Harper. God knows you’re not the girl of my dreams, but you’ll have to do.”

His eyes, though…they told the truth.

If I had been able to find a way to say no without breaking his heart, I would have. If he didn’t love me so damn much, I would’ve cuffed him and laughed it off. If I said no, that would be the end of it, I knew. And so I shrugged and said, “Okay. But I want a huge dress and eleven bridesmaids.”

I knew we were too young. I knew I wasn’t ready. I wanted to wait. Years, preferably. But once we were engaged, Nick put on a full-court press to marry quickly, and I lost the battle on that one.

Eleven months after his marriage proposal, and six months after our wedding, we both lost the war.

CHAPTER FIVE

“NICK! OH, MY WORD, you are a sight for sore eyes! Give me a hug this minute!”

Seconds after Dennis and I arrived at the lodge, Nick had pulled in behind me. I was still unfolding myself from the car as my stepmother descended in a blur of blond frizz and spandex. Descended on Nick, that is. Not me.

“BeverLee, you’re still as beautiful as ever,” Nick said, hugging my stepmother.

“Listen to you, you wide-eyed liar! Let me see you! Oh! Look at you! Handsome as the devil, bless your heart!” She clutched him again, then looked at me. “Harper, did you see Nick?”

“Yes, I did,” I answered, turning away as Nick shook my father’s hand.

“We met on the road in,” Nick said.

“That’s wonderful! Oh, you bring back such happy memories, Nick!”

“Or night sweats, depending on your point of view,” I muttered. Did my family not remember the pathetic puddle I’d been? Did everyone have to love Nick quite so much? “Dad. Can you give me a hand here? Dennis’s back is bothering him.” I turned to Nick. “Dennis ruptured a disc while rescuing three children from a house fire. Isn’t that right, hon?” Your Honor, if it please the court, my boyfriend is a genuine hero.

“All true,” Dennis said amiably.

“Way to go,” Nick said. He and Dennis bumped fists.

“It was a good day, dude.” Dennis grinned as happily as a black Lab.

“How was your trip?” Dad asked, taking a suitcase from the back of the car.

“Hellish. How was—”

“Harper! Harper! Oh, my God, Harper!”

My sister’s arms were around me before I even saw her. “Hey, there,” I said, smiling my first genuine smile in a week. I kissed her cheek twice, then pulled back. This may have been the longest time I’d gone without seeing my sister, and I had to say, she looked beautiful. “How’s the bride?”

“Oh, my God, I’m so happy! Oh, Nick! Hi!” She leaped on him, then on Dennis, hopfrogging around our little circle. “And Harper, you remember Christopher, right?”

I looked up the steps. “Hey, Harper,” said the groom.

Wow. Chris Lowery had been cute twelve years ago, but now he was gorgeous—Nick, Take Two, sort of. Both men resembled their father…Chris had the same dark eyes, though lacking that tragic element that made Nick so unfairly vulnerable. Chris had his mother’s reddish-brown hair, and he was a couple of inches taller than his older brother. He may have lacked Nick’s electric appeal—well, to me he did—but he was pretty damn attractive.

“My boy, you’ve become a man,” I said, then gave a little oof as he hugged me, lifting me off my feet.

“You’re still crazy beautiful, I see.”

“Everything you say can and will be held against you,” I said. “You will, of course, be explaining to me exactly how you plan to take care of my sister, because if you hurt or disappoint her in any way, I will, of course, kill you. Slowly, and with great pleasure.”

“Of course.” Christopher grinned and set me down.

“I’m completely serious.”

“And I’m genuinely terrified.” He winked and took my sister’s hand.

“Ain’t he just gorgeous?” BeverLee asked, fluffing her hair so it was a bit puffier. “Look at all these handsome men! Honest to goodness, no wonder we’re all such happy gals! It’s enough to make me all swoony! Come on, y’all, it’s past five, which means cocktail hour’s waitin’ on us.”

“Dennis and I need a little time to freshen up,” I said. “We’ve been traveling all day.”

“Sure enough,” BeverLee said. “We’ll meet y’all inside.” I started up the steps, but BeverLee jerked my arm back. She glanced at the rest of the mob, who was heading in, and then her smile dropped like an anvil. “Harper, darlin’, your daddy and me, we still aren’t acting as, you know, man and wife. If you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Um,” I managed queasily.

“What do you think I should do? I’m gettin’ desperate! I just don’t know what all has gotten into him. We sure have never—and when I say never, I mean it!—we have never in all our days together gone through a patch like this! The other night, I wore a see-through teddy, and still, nothin’! You think he needs the little blue pill?”

“Bev,” I blurted, “I really just don’t think I’m the best person to talk about this.” Plus, I needed to go wash the image of my stepmother in a teddy out of my squealing brain.

“Why not, honey?”

“Um, because I’m the daughter? And speculating on…you know…it’s a little uncomfortable, BeverLee.”

Her face fell.

“But you know, BeverLee, people go through…these times, of course. And uh…well, maybe if you look back on past experience, you could…” Okay. Clearly I had nothing to offer. And I wanted to keep it that way.

“No, it’s fine, you’re right.” She slapped on a smile, then checked her teeth in my sunglasses. “See you inside, sugar baby.”

The lodge was beautiful. Some kind of post-and-beam construction, but the posts were all rough-hewn trees. A stone fireplace was surrounded by rocking chairs and game tables, and the entire western wall overlooked Lake McDonald and the mountains past it. It was romantic, all right. I practically expected to see John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt smoking their cigars out on the patio.