"You want to meet up later?"
Sonia nodded, brushing her hair over one shoulder. "That's fine. You don't want to head back right now?"
"I have a few more things to pick up," Nancy explained. She lifted the plastic bag hanging from her right arm. "Not that I'm not excited."
Sonia smiled. "So, where?"
"Bus stop? Half an hour?"
Nancy's heart was pounding as Sonia headed toward a coffee shop down the block and Nancy headed for a neon green cross hanging from an awning. A bald man in spectacles and a button-down coat looked up from behind a counter as the dusty bell jingled to announce Nancy's arrival.
Nancy looked around. Something to settle her stomach, something, long fragile slender boxes. She found a pair of pregnancy tests which guaranteed nearly errorproof results and a box of seltzer tabs with a smiling frog on the carton.
The short heavyset woman behind the cash register peered at Nancy from beneath darkened eyelashes as she rang up her purchases. Nancy blushed faintly, managing a smile as she took the crinkling paper bag and stuffed it into the larger bag from the cell phone store.
She walked to the next store up the street and pushed through the racks of castoff clothes until she found a smooth peach shirt. She passed over a few euros and pushed the shirt into her bag, making sure it covered the paper bag from the pharmacy.
Sonia was eating an apple, sitting on the bench, as Nancy approached the bus stop. "Find everything you were looking for?" Sonia asked.
"Yeah," Nancy said.
When Nancy unlocked her door she found a white piece of paper notifying her that she had a package waiting. She plugged in her phone to start the twelve-hour charging cycle and then walked over to the student union.
"Drew," the guy behind the counter read, pushing up his steel wire rims. He lifted a box wrapped in brown paper and passed it over to her. "Sign here."
Her address had been written in Ned's handwriting.
She managed somehow to wait until she was safely back in her own room before she ripped the paper off and opened the box. A rich dark brown leather coat was inside. Nancy ran her fingers over it, then slipped into the coat and put her hands in the pockets. She found a sheet of paper folded in one pocket.
I love you, she read. I bought you this just so I could smell your perfume again.
Still in Ned's jacket, Nancy reached into the bag and took out the pregnancy tests.
--
Ned was looking at his cell phone, but it was still dark. He stared at it, willing it to ring, wondering what he would say when it did.
The dark bar was a block up the street. He was sitting in a pool of amber light in one of the booths. His phone was on one of the faint dark rings, the slightly tacky dark wood yielding under a careless fingernail.
Sheri was across the room. Her boyfriend and Cole were playing pool at the table. She pouted when he brushed her clinging hand off his shoulder, and Ned could practically feel her glance in his direction.
He tossed down the rest of his drink, left a bill on the table and headed for the door, managing not to break into a run.
He had just walked into the lobby of his hotel when his phone rang. His heart in his throat, Ned checked the backlit display. Mike's name showed there.
"Hey," Ned greeted his friend, his pulse slowing by degrees. "What's up?"
"Tell me what you're doing this weekend," Mike said, a grin in his voice.
"Whatever you say, my man."
--
Just after midnight. Nancy knew she needed to sleep. They were taking their first bus into town to meet with their mentors the next day. Nancy had bought a new shirt and some suitably demure earrings just for the trip. Carlos would be coming with them, he'd done this all before.
Her stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, then subsided.
She'd been fine the past few days. If she did take the test in the morning, it would come back negative. A waste of money. She wasn't pregnant.
She looked over at Ned's coat. The weather was still too warm for her to wear it, but in a month or two she would be grateful for its warmth. It still smelled faintly of their perfume. Theirs. She rose out of bed in one graceful movement and swept it up in her arms, burying her face in the lining.
Her phone was still charging. Not that it mattered. Seven hours' difference, he was probably in a loud restaurant full of smoked glass and muted lighting and black polished tables and girls whose tangled blonde curls brushed their bare shoulders, and wouldn't even be able to hear her call.
She placed the flat of her palm over her stomach.
In a few hours she'd think about calling again, if she was still awake. But this wasn't awake, not really. She felt like she couldn't stop staring into the graded shadows edging her room. She felt like the white unopened box resting on the bathroom countertop was shining with an ethereal brilliance. She wanted to wrap it in a shirt again and jam it into the back of a cabinet. It wouldn't tell her anything she didn't already know. She wasn't pregnant. Wasn't pregnant.
She took his coat to bed with her and hugged it to her, her legs tucked up in the fetal position.
She woke again and her phone was finished charging. Her hands were shaking as she picked it up. After a few false tries she finally heard her father's voice.
"Hey," he said. "You sound clear as a bell."
"I'd better, as much as this cost," she told him, stifling a yawn. "Now you can call and actually talk to me instead of one of my roommates. Well, maybe."
"Nice. How are things going over there?"
Nancy walked into her bathroom and stared at the white box on the countertop. "Not bad," she replied. "Got a big day tomorrow."
"Isn't it late over there?"
"It is. It's even already tomorrow," she said. "Want me to let you go?"
"I want you to get some sleep, Nan," her father replied. "You can call me when you get home, okay? Tell me how your day went. Call me at the office, I should be around."
"Okay," she said. "If you insist."
"I do," her father said. "Love you, Nan."
"Love you," Nancy replied.
--
Ned was sitting at the kitchen table with his best friend. Mike was staring intently at his cards. Ned, in turn, was dividing his attention between his quiet cell phone and the hand he'd been dealt.
Howie walked into the kitchen and grabbed a soda out of the refrigerator before he noticed Ned sitting at the table. "Hey man," Howie said in surprise, a grin lighting his face. "How's training?"
"Rough," Ned replied, extending his fist to knock it against Howie's. "How's practice going back here?"
Howie shrugged, leaning on one hip against the kitchen table. "Can't complain, if it gets me a pro deal too."
Ned laughed. "I'm sure it will," he replied. "You've got more running yards than the rest of us combined."
"Sure," Howie said, his deep voice low and tinged with his smile. "How's the little lady doing?"
"Good," Ned replied.
Once Howie had left the room, Mike tilted an eyebrow at Ned. "Something's bugging you."
Ned shrugged, and Mike shrugged back, then played a card. Ned put his cards down and scrubbed his palms against his jeans, suddenly craving a cigarette.
"Nancy's going to call me."
"And that's a problem." Mike gathered the cards and shuffled them with deceptive ease.
"Something happened."
Mike shuffled the cards again, then brushed a hand through his black hair, waiting.
"Something happened a little while ago. I had a few too many drinks one night and there were a lot of people hanging out in my hotel room. They do that. It's like they don't have lives, they're always around. There was this one chick who was hitting on me, and I passed out in bed and I wake up and the girl is actually lying there naked next to me."
Mike raised an eyebrow.
"It's not like I slept with her. She just, she was there. I got up and left her there and I didn't sleep with her, I swear I didn't."
"But you wanted to." Mike cut the cards into two even piles and then shuffled them again.
"If not for the fact that I have a fiancée and she had a boyfriend downstairs."
"She hot?"
"So is Nancy."
"She's hot," Mike confirmed to himself. "But you're sure nothing happened even though you were passed out."
Ned's fingers strayed too close to his cell phone. He shied away from it, as though afraid it would burn his skin. "How am I supposed to know?" he mumbled.
"But you want to tell her."
"I'd want to know if that happened to Nancy," Ned replied, meeting his eyes.
"And if she told you that, you'd believe her."
Ned ran his hands through his hair. "It's not like anything happened."
Mike dealt the cards out into two stacks and tidied them with the tips of his fingers. "Then why do you keep saying that."
Ned closed his eyes and rested his fingertips on his eyelids. "I've dreamt about her twice."
"You think that means anything? I can't even count the number of girls I've dreamt about, and I've never cheated on Jan."
Ned shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I hate this feeling. I hate that probably everybody on the team thinks I slept with her."
"Like it would matter if they did."
"It'll matter if they 'mention' it to Nancy."
Ned was looking down at the scarred kitchen table when his cell phone lit and began to ring. He started back from the table, his face a solid mask.
Mike raised his eyebrows, but Ned grabbed his phone and backed away from the table, his eyes low. "Hey," he said, heading for the door.
"Hey," he heard Nancy's voice on the other end.
"How are you doing?" he asked, taking a deep breath of the dead leaf wind.
"Good," she replied. "I'm good."
He looked at his watch. "I wasn't expecting to hear from you, isn't it really late there?"
He heard her chuckle. "I just had this conversation with my father."
"Can't sleep?"
"Something like that," she replied. "I wanted to hear your voice."
"Where are you?"
"Heading outside," she said. "I don't know why. Something in the way you sound right now."
He laughed, looking down. "I'm outside too."
"I'll take your coat with me just in case." He heard the rasp of a door. "It's lovely."
"Glad you like it."
"You knew I would," she said, laughter tingeing her voice. "Reminds me of the last time I saw you."
"I meant for it to," he replied, one hand snaking under his collar to draw the chain out into the frost-edged air. He looked down at her ring. "I need to tell you something."
"That you love me?"
"I do," he said, his steps drawing close and tight. "I love you so much."
"I love you too," she replied. Smile still in her voice. His heart tightened in his chest.
"Sometimes I drink too much," he began. "And I've been missing you a lot and it's stupid but when I miss you, I drink, just so I'll stop thinking for a while."
"Have you been doing that a lot?" Her voice was level and soft.
"Not that much," he said. "A few times. Because we talk a lot and that helps with it."
"It helps me too," she replied. "To talk, not to drink."
"You mean you don't drown your sorrows at not seeing me in a pint of whiskey?"
"No," she replied softly. "I listen to your music. And I try not to be alone, because when I'm alone that's when it's worst."
"For me too," he said. "I try to keep people around. To stop me from thinking. And one night I was with a bunch of people with the team, we were all drinking at our hotel, and there was a girl flirting with me."
Her end of the conversation was entirely quiet. He couldn't even hear her breath.
"I wasn't flirting with her back."
He stopped, waiting, daring and dreading for her to speak, and after a long moment she unsealed her lips and murmured, "But you were drinking."
"There were a lot of people in my room watching TV, it's not like we were alone or anything, but I passed out."
Nancy blew a long breath between her lips, audibly to him. "Mmm."
"I didn't do anything with her."
"What did happen," she said. He could hear a soft distance in her voice, as though she was physically backing away from him. A weariness, an anger creeping in.
"I woke up and she was in bed with me."
He was sitting on a low wooden bench, the cool seeping in through his jeans, huddled over, hunched in on himself as he spoke the words. He could hear the beginning of a sob in the catch in her voice. "What," she breathed.
"We didn't, we didn't, I swear, I walked out and got another room and left her there. We didn't. I didn't."
"Are you with her?"
"No! She has a boyfriend! And she's not the one I want, Nan."
She made a low disgusted noise.
"I swear, I promise." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the prickling heat behind his eyelids back. "Nancy."
The soft static of wind against her phone met his ear. Then his phone made the muted diminutive chime of the end of a call.
"Nancy," he whispered again.
--
Nancy sank to her knees, the edges of her vision blurring with the curve of tears rising in her eyes. Her hand was hard and cramped around the plastic shell of her phone, and with a cry she tossed it away from her. It bounced once on the grass and rested face-down.
"Oh God," she breathed, the beginning of a scream rising faint in her voice. "Oh God." She pushed her hair out of her face and gasped in breath, the familiar clamminess across her skin. She retched, her forehead pressed to her trembling cold hand.
He was with her, he was with her.
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "No."
She rested on her knees for a long time, thinking of nothing. The wind shifted and she smelled the perfume again and she ripped his coat off savagely, throwing it to the ground.
She felt very hard, after, once the momentary fit of rage had passed. Not thinking about it. Not thinking. Solid, numb, only the pulse of breath constant in her. She picked up the coat and her phone and walked inside on legs she could barely control, on ground she could barely feel.
No. No, no.
She saw her music player and the white tangle of earphones and resisted the urge to throw it across the room. She tossed the coat across the back of a chair, tossed the phone onto her desk, went into the bathroom to wash out her mouth and saw the slim white box there.
With an incoherent cry she snatched it up in trembling fingers and threw it against the wall. It bounced off and into a dark corner, one edge crushed inward.
No.
Panic rose on spindle-tight fingers in her throat, creeping up her neck.
She slept fitfully, in intervals lasting less than an hour at a time, closing her eyes wearily before the reflexive tears could rise. A few times in her half-sleep she reached for the music player, once so far as to actually feel it under her fingertips, but she pulled back with a cry.
In the morning she stared at her reflection in the mirror and her eyes dropped. She pulled her hair back into a sloppy ponytail and almost walked away, but forced herself to smooth makeup over the bags under her eyes, the stark pale of her face. She still couldn't force herself to smile.
Sonia stood at the bus stop waiting, shifting her weight between her feet, a stiff black messenger bag slung over her shoulder. She smiled when Nancy approached. "Excited?"
Nancy took a long sip from her insulated cup of coffee. "Yeah," she replied.
Despite the terrible heaviness in her belly, she felt an old familiar spark of excitement begin to rise when they crested a hill and she saw the outskirts of the city again, mild and gleaming. Carlos glanced back over his shoulder at the sight and Nancy caught his eye without meaning to do it. Her stomach flipped slowly.
The newspaper building was a mausoleum of pale brick and heavy paned glass. "It was an old factory," Carlos called over his shoulder, and Nancy saw the light in his eyes. They took the stairs, the group bubbling with hushed conversation, Nancy's hand trailing up the chipped rail.
Their advisor huddled them all into a corner and read off her printed list in rapid Spanish. Nancy and the other redhead of the group, a pale freckled fireball named Kath, were assigned to the same reporter. Nancy took a final sip of her coffee, tossed the empty cup into a trashcan, gave Kath a tight smile and headed toward her new mentor.
"Susanne Munoz?"
A young woman in her own small glassed office, wide-cuffed sleeves already rolled up to her elbows, a sweeping curtain of blonde-streaked black hair hanging over her shoulder, looked up, burgundy lips stretching up in a suddenly relaxed smile. "Nancy and Kath?" she asked. She pushed her chair back and stood on black flats, coming around the desk to shake their hands. "English?"
"American," Nancy replied, while Kath nodded "Irish."
"Nice to meet you," Susanne said. She impatiently dusted her ink-streaked fingers on her charcoal slacks. Her eyes were small but bright.
The fatigue and exhaustion of the night before still hummed under her skin, but the insistence of it receded as Nancy took in the view from Susanne's office. "So let's get started," Nancy said, beginning to smile.
--
Ned put his head down and charged through the line, his legs stretching into a sprint before an errant shoulder took him down. He rested his palms on the turf, straining for breath.
Cole pulled his helmet off and let it fall down into the crook of his arm, offering Ned a hand up. "Good one," he said.
Once Ned had his breath back, he smiled his thanks. "Yeah, well," he said, shrugging it off.
Ned's heart started pounding as they walked off the field and headed to the locker room. He checked his phone with trembling fingers.
No missed calls.
Nancy still hadn't called him back.
--
Nancy managed to choke down a single baby carrot before she called Bess. "Hey," she said when her friend answered. "I need you to do me a favor."
"Sure," Bess replied.
At that Nancy managed a genuine smile. "Do you still have Jan's number?"
Once Bess had agreed, Nancy hung up the phone and noticed the nearly imperceptible movement of the potted plant on the low wall on her left. "Eating alone?" called a voice, just in her hearing.
"More like not eating," she replied, her voice pitched low and clear.
After a few moments Carlos poked his head around the low wall, smiled at her, and raised his eyebrows. Nancy nodded, gesturing for him to join her.
"So how was your first day?"
"Not bad," Nancy replied.
"You got Munoz, right?"
"Yeah," Nancy nodded, managing to spear a slice of cucumber. "She seems like she'll be pretty cool."
"I have worked for her a couple of times. She is really nice."
"So, be honest with me," Nancy said, finally admitting defeat and abandoning her salad. She put down her fork and folded her arms, leaning forward. "I'm going to be looking up files and doing background work all semester, aren't I."
Carlos smiled and took a sip of his soda. "Maybe," he said. "Something tells me you are not used to that."
"Something tells you right," Nancy replied. "I was a reporter on my college newspaper staff. I'm used to going out there and getting the story, not sneezing in a basement morgue."
Carlos's brow furrowed for a moment, then cleared. "Well, this program does take the best," he said. "I am sure they did not make a mistake. And I am sure it will not take Susanne long to give you some stories to work on."
"Good," Nancy replied.
--
Ned sent her an email. She left it in her inbox without reading it.
Once she was back in her room, standing in a pair of light cotton shorts and her bra, she looked down at the music player he'd given her.
She felt unaccountably heavy, slow, blurred from exhaustion and the dread that rose in her when she remembered their last conversation. A sick anticipation floated in her belly when she thought of what Bess might tell her, when she called back. She felt a sudden strong desire to turn her phone off and sleep through it. Forget all of it, forget everything, if only for a night. She didn't want to dream about him in the arms of someone else, not again. What she had imagined while conscious was bad enough.
She dug a tank top out and tugged it over her head.
The slender white box was still in a dusty corner of the bathroom. Nancy's gaze shied from it when she walked in to brush her teeth.
She heard the phone begin to ring and stilled the immediate start, the impulse to run for it. Instead she washed her mouth out, replaced her toothbrush, and padded across the floor.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," Bess replied. "Only took me two tries, I'm getting good at this."
"Nice," Nancy said. She lowered herself to the mattress, then stretched out, holding the phone lightly to her ear. She sighed, her eyelashes falling to her cheeks, waiting.
"You okay?"
She hadn't been able to feel this despair while Carlos had been talking to her. She couldn't hold back an incredulous snicker. "Should I be okay?"
Bess took a long breath. "Well, it's not like... I mean, do you think Ned would tell you about that girl and then lie to you about what happened? What would be the point?"
Nancy closed her eyes. "Plausible deniability."
"Has he ever done anything like that before? Told you about a girl and then you find out later that he hadn't told you everything?"
"Not really," Nancy admitted. "He tries to get it over with. I just need someone else to tell me. I'm still mad at him, but I'm not there, and it's so frustrating. I need to know for sure."
"You don't trust him."
"Why should I trust him now?" Nancy burst out. "He admitted to me that he did something that stupid."
"Yeah, but we've all had a little too much to drink before," Bess reminded her. "I seem to remember you up on the bar at Ned's frat house."
"That's not the same."
"It isn't," Bess sighed. "I gave Jan a heads-up, but she doesn't know anything about it yet."
"As long as she's not too obvious about it. They'll figure out what's going on."
"Yeah, well, Ned hasn't been your boyfriend this long without figuring out you have spies everywhere. And Jan's good enough to pump Mike for info without tipping him off."
"God," Nancy breathed. "I can't believe this."
"Do you want me to call you back tonight if she does call me?"
"No," Nancy groaned. "No, I don't want to hear it tonight. I don't want to find out he has a girl on the side tonight. Give me one more night to fool myself."
"For your sake, I hope he did tell you the truth."
"I almost wish he hadn't," Nancy whispered. "I keep wishing that it's all a bad dream."
--
Nancy dreamed that she took the pregnancy test and it came back positive. When she called Ned to tell him, he told her that he'd married the girl he'd been with, and that she had just given birth to their first child.
Nancy woke and took deep gasping breaths, her face wet with perspiration and tears. She flung the blankets off her legs and lay panting in the dark, her eyes adjusting to the faint light from the streetlamp. After a moment the familiar nausea rose again, and she rolled off the bed, creeping on sleep-numbed legs toward her bathroom.
The tile was cold against her bare knees, warming all too soon at the heat of her skin. She choked a sob back and propped on her elbows, her head in her hands, eyes blurred and puffy.
No, no. He loved her. He'd told her so many times. He had to. They had made love, he had been closer to her than he had been to anyone else, he wouldn't do this. He wouldn't.
The white box was still in the corner. The sight of it made her sick again.
--
"Heard from her yet?"
"No," Ned growled. "And don't say I told you so."
"I'd never dream of it," Mike replied. "Didn't she blow you off for an entire week this summer?"
"Yeah," Ned sighed. "We had a fight because she thought something exactly like this would happen."
"And you had to go and tell her. Boy scout."
"Yeah, I did," Ned replied. "She would have found out."
Mike sighed. "Well, good luck," he said. "If you need somewhere to crash this weekend..."
"I think I do," Ned said. "Thanks."
--
Nancy was wearing a soft green silk camisole under a matching angora sweater, a black knee-length skirt and black leather boots the next morning when she came to breakfast. She served herself a plate full of fresh fruit, muffins and yogurt, and set to it energetically when she sat down.
Sonia watched her with interest. "Here I was thinking you never ate breakfast. Or anything else, for that matter."
Nancy swallowed a bite of apple. "Long night," she said.
Kath walked over and Nancy, her mouth still full, gestured wordlessly for Kath to join their table. After a brief glance around, Kath pulled out a chair and put down her tray.
"We don't get to go again until tomorrow?"
Mariah, still poking at her plate with her fork, shot Nancy a grin. "What, did you get some beautiful young reporter?"
"Not the way you're thinking," Nancy replied. "It just felt good to get off campus."
"I know what you mean," Mariah replied, stretching her arms. "We're getting together with a few of the reporters tomorrow, after. Come with us."
Nancy took a long sip of orange juice. "Okay," she agreed. Then she grinned.
Carlos walked over, peeling an orange. Kath smiled up at him, and Nancy felt a brief uncomfortable sensation in her belly. When he returned her smile, it was to the entire table. "How was it?"
"Yesterday?" Sonia asked, pale eyes gazing up to meet his. "I think it's going to be fun."
"Maybe because you got Feliz," Cessette said, bumping her shoulder against Sonia's.
"Oh shut up," Sonia replied, then colored faintly when she glanced in Carlos's direction.
Nancy had finished all her fruit cocktail, but she felt her stomach dissolve into butterflies which wanted nothing to do with her blueberry muffin. After another long sip of orange juice she peeled the paper off her muffin and broke off a chunk.
"You gonna go out with us, Carlos?" Mariah asked, fluttering her eyelashes outrageously. She let out a peal of low, throaty laughter. Nancy's heart tightened in her chest. "All work and no play..."
"When?" He put the long strip of peel on the table between Nancy and Kath's trays and tore off a section of orange.
"Tomorrow night." Mariah gave him a wide, genuine grin. She really was quite beautiful, Nancy realized. Disconsolate, Nancy put a bite of muffin into her mouth.
"Probably," Carlos said, casual. He ate another section of orange.
After class Nancy headed to the library to do some research. She darted between the stacks, a slight headache developing as she mentally translated book titles into English. The library's section on dentistry was extensive, but the rest of their medical section she found sorely lacking; the college had a section devoted to dentist training but no other health branch. After a few wrong turns she found what she was looking for and pulled three volumes on the city of Madrid.
Nancy heard a door slam. She looked up to see Kath walking out of a dark room, the red pinch of reading glasses still showing on the bridge of her nose, rubbing her forehead with her gaze down. When Kath looked around, blinking, she caught sight of Nancy and smiled.
"Microfiche?"
Kath nodded, an amazed look on her face. "How...?"
"I've had that expression on my face before," Nancy laughed. "Doing some research?"
"Yeah," Kath admitted. She sank into a chair near Nancy's. "Susanne Munoz does a little bit of everything. That's about all I've figured out."
"How long has she been with the paper?"
"At least two years. If she was here before then, she was keeping a low profile."
Nancy flipped the cover of her book closed. "I've had enough of this for today."
--
"Tell me what he told you again."
Nancy closed her eyes, her brow furrowing. Midway through the chanted recitation, she stretched out on her bed and pulled the sheet and a light blanket over her knees. "So I guess Jan found out something," Nancy said wearily.
"Pretty much the same," Bess said. "She was naked, Ned booked another room in the hotel, he's been avoiding her ever since--"
"She was naked?" Nancy repeated. But she didn't feel angry. Only bone-tired and sad, so sad.
"Yeah," Bess said, subdued. "He wasn't," she added.
Nancy closed her eyes and held the phone away from her as she choked in a breath. She heard Bess's sympathy, but it was barely reaching her, as though from a long distance. She hung up the phone with Bess, who still sounded worried, and managed to get through a phone conversation with her father without his sensing anything wrong with her. Not that she expected him to be able to do so, with the Atlantic between them.
The last thing she did before falling into an uneasy sleep was take the engagement ring off her finger and place it carefully, diamond toward her, beside her alarm clock.
--
Carlos noticed.
Nancy collapsed into a seat at the corner booth, the faintest smile on her blush-pink lips, and allowed Carlos to order a drink for her, in rapid Spanish she didn't even try to translate. Eyes closed, hair pulled partly back and held in place with a clip, pink lace tank top, chocolate-brown fine wale cords and wedges on her perfectly pedicured feet. She had dusted her shoulders and the shadow of her décolletage with a softly shimmering powder. Carlos liked it.
At least, behind her tired eyes, she thought his was the appreciative gaze on her.
He was wearing a smooth white button-down with a wide open collar, sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms, and a pair of soft camel khakis. She knew they were soft because he had been sitting rather close to her during the meeting at the newsroom, and she'd accidentally brushed her fingertips over them when she'd accidentally dropped her pencil and accidentally leaned over to give him a very obvious excuse to glance down her shirt.
Accidentally.
All of it accidental.
She was carrying a small handbag covered in iridescent beads, just large enough for a few varied forms of identification and her cell phone. Mariah was pounding on the table for attention, in a red silk shirred blouse and matching bright lipstick, stiletto heels and eyes for Carlos. Eye makeup so heavy she looked like she'd been punched in both. Nancy maintained the faint smile and the just-raised lashes, her fingertips resting on the table.
"Now!" Mariah demanded. "I love this song!"
Carlos darted a glance that might have been in Nancy's direction, but he followed anyway, led by her hand wrapped around the hem of his shirt. Nancy took the drink Carlos had ordered her from the sad-eyed waitress and sipped it, tasting vodka. Javier, who had exchanged fewer than a dozen words with her, left the table with Cessette, and Nancy was left with a distinctly ill at ease Kath.
"Lusting for a Guinness?" Nancy asked, raising her eyelashes the least little bit as her smile broadened.
"Can't stand the stuff," Kath admitted, grinning. "I'd love some Bushmills."
"Whiskey?" Nancy asked, raising an eyebrow. "Good for you." She lifted her glass a few inches off the table.
Kath looked at her for a long minute. "You okay?"
"I will be, once I finish this," Nancy said, and took a demonstrative long sip of her drink. "You?"
Kath didn't answer until she had gestured for one of the same and received it. She bit the cherry resting on the ice and then toyed with the stem. "Why did you come here?"
Nancy was watching her with frank interest now. "Why did you?"
"I felt like I was spinning my wheels at home." With the sweet taste of the drink on her tongue, Kath's brogue grew broader. "I have three sisters, all settled down with husbands already. But that's not what I want."
"Must be nice," Nancy said, smiling softly. "I don't have any sisters or brothers."
"Sometimes it is nice." Kath took a long sip of her drink.
"I never thought I'd be here," Nancy began. "I thought I'd be planning my wedding right now." She snorted, staring down at her glass.
Just after Nancy's condensed autobiography and Kath's sympathetic noises, Carlos came back to the table with Mariah in tow. She could see the fine light sheen of sweat on his upper lip, the slight dishevel of his hair. He raised his eyebrow at Kath, and Kath and Nancy exchanged glances. Nancy managed to finish off her drink and push herself to her feet. "Go," she said, shooing Kath off. "I'll go get a refill on this."
She was halfway to the smoky, blue-lit bar when her purse started vibrating. Sighing, she put her drink on a convenient table, wiped her wet palm on her thigh, and dug her phone out of her purse.
"Hello?"
"Nancy?"
Nancy heaved another sigh. "Hang on," she mumbled, weaving her way through the crowd until she was out of the club. Once she was in the cooler air, she looked around, headed away from a cluster of mumbling drunks and around a corner. "Ned," she breathed.
"Hey," he replied.
She stood, resting her weight on her left foot while she slipped her right out of her shoe and rubbed it against her ankle wearily. "What do you want," she asked flatly.
"To say I'm sorry, again," he said.
She closed her eyes. She could see him in half-shadow, sitting at the desk back in his room at the frat house, one hand kneading his forehead, the curve of his cheek defined by the silver lamp. Fear and worry and need in his eyes.
She drank in a breath so deep that the chill ached in her throat. "I don't think we should get married," she said.
He made a faint noise. "What," he said, in that soft voice. Like he'd just been sucker punched and all his breath was gone. Like she had felt.
She cleared her throat. "I think we should break up," she said. "I think if this past few weeks has taught us anything, it's that we're not ready for this."
"Not ready for what?"
"To be together the rest of our lives. To commit to each other. You can't even wait a month," she said, and the anger began to creep into her voice as it grew louder, "to pick up the first piece of ass who flirts with you--"
"I can't believe you would even fucking say that to me after all the fucking times--"
"That what?" she demanded. "Tell me the last time I woke up next to a naked guy who wasn't you."
"Oh, so you've never done a damn thing wrong. You've been a saint during our entire relationship."
She sucked in a breath, closing her eyes. "Don't you see," she said, forcing her voice to a trembling approximation of normal. "God, this is just the beginning of it. We jumped into this too fast."
"So you don't love me anymore?"
Nancy reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose, tilted her head back. She felt the tears seep at the corner of her eyes. "You're always going to be special to me," she said. "You were my first."
"Nancy, you can't do this."
"Yes I can," she said. "I can and I just did. Don't call me again."
"I don't accept this."
She bit back a reply, forcing herself to take a long breath instead. "If you respect me you will."
"Look, I know I fucked up. I know that. But, Nancy, I swear to God, I drank too much. That was all. The rest of it was all her."
"Whatever," she breathed. "I'm done with this."
"So you can just throw us away like this."
She swallowed, then waited until she could almost breathe normally, against the harsh rasp of his anger into her ear. "Goodbye," she said, then hung up the phone.
At the table Sonia and Kath were waiting. Nancy looked out on the floor. Mariah was dancing very close to a tall guy in a ballcap.
"You're white as a sheet," Kath said. "Is it that cold outside? Get another drink."
"I'll get you one," Carlos offered, and she turned her head to gaze into his ice-blue eyes. "Want a dance?"
"Love one," she replied. Nancy turned off her phone and left her purse with Kath, then let Carlos take her hand and lead her up to the bar again.
--
Ned felt physically ill when he heard her hang up on him again.
He launched himself to his feet, anger coiled tight and hot in his gut. He slammed the door open and headed out, pacing in the elevator, his eyes locked on the indicator until he reached the ground floor. In the lobby he managed not to break into a run until he was three steps out onto the pavement, in the wind, in the strained fall sunlight.
"God, no, no," he said aloud. He'd drawn the ring out from under his shirt before he called her, and now it thumped rhythmically against his chest with every pounding step he made. "No."
Bess had sounded funny when he'd called to get Nancy's phone number. He'd chalked it up to her shock that he hadn't had it before she did, but then, she and Nancy were best friends, Nancy had probably told her all about his indiscretion.
But he hadn't.
Hanged for a sheep as a lamb, came a wicked little voice in his head.
Sheri had been giving him looks. Again. He couldn't have more than one drink anymore, he locked his door at night and went to sleep sober and his fiancée--
Ex, butted in the voice, nastily gleeful.
And she was an ocean away, with the nerve to be mad at him. At least he'd never honestly proposed to anyone else, at least he hadn't spent an entire summer cozying up to some random Australian and then lying to her about it later.
None of it mattered.
He pushed himself, harder and harder, until the air burned hot trails in his lungs, until his legs were shaking with exertion, until his thoughts had been drowned out by the singing fury in his head.