Page 58 of One More Time
‘It smells like you,’ Lucy said absentmindedly, as she pulled the shirt up to sniff it.
‘What do I smell like?’
‘Soap. Salt. Man.’
Lucy snuggled in next to him, curling her feet up beneath her.
‘Just genericman?’ He laughed.
‘Never generic,’ she said, taking another whiff. ‘Not you.’
‘Not generic,’ he said, while pulling the throw blanket from the back of the sofa and tucking them both under it.‘I’ll stow that in my back pocket in case I decide to start a Tinder profile.’
She smiled weakly – tired, wrung out.
‘Hangover any better?’ he asked, flicking the TV on.
‘Just a dull throbbing behind my eyes now,’ she quipped.
Nicky got up and went straight to the kitchen where he found his stash of Tylenol and a bottle of water.
He handed two pills and the water to Lucy. She swallowed them down and said, ‘Thanks.’
He tucked himself back under the blanket with her, and said, ‘Chloe’s dads all seem nice.’
Lucy’s head fell back against the sofa. ‘You were very tolerant of their questions and gawking. It was kind of you.’
‘It sort of goes with the territory. I’ve had worse.’
‘What are your exes like?’ Lucy asked, eyes on the ceiling.
Nicky tutted. ‘Not like yours.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, my first wife is basically a normal person who only wants me to be slowly eaten by sharks once in a while. My second wife believes I am the worst human to ever walk the Earth, but only because she’s pissed at herself for signing a prenup. And my third wife doesn’t exist because we weren’t really married. Remember?’
‘Right,’ Lucy said with a grin.
‘But it’s safe to say, I can’t imagine them sitting in a room together getting along. And I certainly can’t imagine any of them apologizing to me.’
She cringed to the ceiling. ‘You heard that, huh?’
‘I don’t think it qualifies as eavesdropping since it was all because of the extraordinary acoustics in that atrium.’
‘The acoustics.’
‘Yeah.’
Lucy sighed again, even more heavily than before. She snuggled deeper into the cushions, more closely into his side. ‘Brandon’s time was always more valuable than mine. His minutes could be calculated in dollars – thousands of them at a time. We agreed that I would continue with school, finish my master’s, and go for a doctorate. But what value did my intellectual curiosity about the cultural significance of boy bands have? Monetarily? None. Less than none. Or maybe some paltry sum, years in the future. It didn’t stand a chance. My dreams were insignificant. Hard to justify with logic. So, I took time away. It made me resentful. Whereas it made him happy. Hence the conflict.’
Nicky breathed out. ‘Makes sense.’ And it did, but he truly wished that it didn’t. Mostly because he could feel an echo of that very same argument somewhere off in the distance. Wrapped up in his tour and his Pollyanna hopes for the two of them.
‘And you had Chloe full-time?’
‘Brandon had a month every summer. Every other Christmas.’
‘That must have been hard,’ Nicky said.
