Page 76 of Love and the Laws of Motion
His eyebrows furrowed into a furious frown.“No, they wouldn’t.”
“How do you know?You haven’t spoken to them in years.”
He turned away, running a hand roughly through his hair.“I know them, Livie.You don’t.Trust me, they’re happy I’m out of their lives.”
Surely he was mistaken.At least, she hoped he was.It was horrible to imagine, your own family not wanting you.But Nick had closed up tight, unwilling to discuss it, or even look at her.She wasn’t sure how long she might have with him.The last thing she wanted to do was hasten the end by fighting.
“Okay, fine.Forget I said anything.Let’s go talk to Gemma.”
“You really think she’ll help?”
“Um, a chance to spend somebody else’s money without a limit?Yeah, she’ll help.”
Chapter Thirty
“Nick, sand or taupe?”
Nick looked up at Gemma in confusion.“What?”
She shoved her phone in his face.“The couch.Sand or taupe?”
There were two identical couches on the website on her screen.“They’re the same.”
“One is sand and one is taupe.Which one do you like better?”
He cast a pleading glance at Livie, who ducked her head to hide her smile.Traitor.
“Seriously, Gemma, they look exactly the same to me.Get whichever one you like.”
Gemma sighed in exasperation.
“Sand,” Livie said suddenly.
He and Gemma both turned to look at her in surprise.
She shrugged.“The sand one looks like your couch.The taupe one doesn’t.”
Gemma considered that a moment, then tapped her phone to resume her phone call.“We’re going with sand, Kendra.Of course, that means we need to get the rug in sage, not moss.Right.”
Nick watched her running through the myriad purchases with a gnawing sense of panic.Not about the money.Gemma had yet to put a serious dent in his spending limit.It was the permanence of it all.He hadn’t thought much of it when Livie suggested letting Gemma and Kendra furnish the place for him.He needed stuff if he was going to live there, and this solved that problem quickly and efficiently, like moving in with the Romanos had solved his homeless problem without a lot of fuss.
But like that situation, simple things never really were.Living with the Romanos, especially once he and Livie had started this thing, was thorny and complicated.They were a family, tightly knit and tribal, and he constantly felt himself being drawn in by the sheer gravity of them.Which wasn’t bad...he genuinely liked them.But the deeper he fell into their world, the worse it would be for everyone when he eventually screwed it up and it ended.
Moving out had seemed like a good solution.A little distance would be good, and that empty, raw space had felt right for him the minute he saw it.A blank slate—the perfect place to hit restart.Now Gemma and Kendra were filling it up with stuff—stuff that was supposed to be his—and every choice she presented him with—sand or taupe—felt much more significant than which color he liked better.He was being asked to describe whathomewould feel like to him—and that was something he didn’t have a clue about.
He knew he was supposed to be excited to see the finished product, but secretly, it filled him with dread.He’d have a home of his own for the first time, crafted just for him.What if he didn’t recognize himself when he saw it?
“Thanks for doing all this, Gemma,” he said when she’d ended the call with Kendra—after negotiating the purchase of half a dozen other things.They’d both refused him when he offered to pay them for all this, which would have at least turned it into a straightforward business transaction.Now it felt like family pitching in to help.And families made him itchy.
“Are you kidding?I’m living in a house my grandmother decorated.I never get to do stuff like this.This is a blast.”
“See?”Livie slid off her bar stool and retrieved her coat from the coat rack in the corner.“Told you she’d have fun.I gotta go.”
“Go where?”he asked.
Livie was goingout?It was eight p.m.Usually Livie was holed up in her room with her laptop and a stack of research by this time of night.And it was a Friday night.Where was she going?And with who?
“It’s my new lab assignment, remember?”
