Page 22 of Love Around the Corner
“That place costs four million dollars?”
“Don’t worry, he didn’t miss it. He’s big in finance in London. And buying her an apartment is easier than showing a little affection. They both got what they wanted.”
Nick’s glass was empty again. Was that two or three? If she was having a hard time keeping track when she was dead sober, he was going to end up burying himself before long.
“Go easy,” she murmured, touching his arm. “You’re going to get drunk.”
“That’s exactly the point,” he said, pouring another refill before launching back in on the subject of the moment: Poppy. “She says it’s all networking. Who you know. That’s how you get gigs. I tag along with her to all these fashion industry parties in these ridiculous clubs, and end up spending the whole night on my phone in the corner while she chats up the important people. I swear, I get so bored at those things, my eyes bleed.”
“What was it like when you first met?” Livie took a sip of her ginger ale, unsure if asking him that question would make things better or worse. It wasn’t like he was going to be easily distracted if she tried to change the subject, right? Might as well let him get it all out of his system, like lancing a boil.
His eyes were on his hands, his fingers slowly tapping out an uneven rhythm on the bar. “She seemed cool. Nothing at all like the girls I usually met back in California. She knew about all this stuff, art and books and theatre... I thought she was different. Smarter. More sophisticated.”
She could hear the “but” he hadn’t spoken out loud. “Did she not turn out that way?” she asked cautiously.
His hand was decidedly less steady as he took another swig of vodka. “Oh, she’s sophisticated, for sure. The world she grew up in, the money they have, you can’t even imagine it.” He paused and shook his head. “Maybe that was the problem. I can’t imagine it. Her life, her world, it makes no sense to me. Mine doesn’t make sense to her either.”
“Computer programming? What’s confusing about that?”
“When we met, she thought I was some internet start-up hotshot. She figured since I’d already hit the jackpot with stock options—”
“What stock options?”
“All those start-ups I worked on? Most of the time, I got paid in worthless stock options in some company nobody’d ever heard of.”
Suddenly Nick’s stunning wealth made more sense. “I’m guessing all that stock didn’t stay worthless.”
“Nope. She liked that about me, that I’d had all this success in tech when I was so young.” He scoffed softly. “I think she thought she was getting herself her own personal Zuckerberg. I guess I didn’t turn out to be what she expected either.”
“But you’re still successful.”
“It’s the work she doesn’t get. She doesn’t understand why I still work so much when I don’t have to.”
“You don’t?” He hadthatmuch money?
“No, but Iwantto. I like what I do. I like the challenge. That’s what Poppy doesn’t get. She wants me to fly off to Ibiza or Aspen or Paris with her every other weekend.”
“Have you been to all those places?” Livie’s family trip to Lake George as a child was the sum total of her travels. Suddenly she felt very small and unsophisticated.
He splashed some more vodka into his glass. “A few. Poppy’s spent her whole life running from one hot place to the next. I don’t think she knows how to just...stay.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Fuck, it’s not as if I do either. Guess two people who don’t know how to commit to shit probably shouldn’t get married. It was a dumb idea anyway.”
“What was?”
“Getting married. I didn’t even really ask her.”
“Then how—”
“We were walking down the street and she stopped at this store window, oohing and aahing over the jewelry display. She went nuts for this ring they had.” He lifted one shoulder. “So I bought it for her. And then while we’re standing there in the store and they’re ringing us up, I made some joke about us being engaged now that I’d bought her a ring. She said why not? I said why not? And we laughed and decided we’d get married.”
Of all the flippant, insincere...Livie didn’t consider herself a romantic, but she had a few ideas about how declarations of love should go, and making a joke of it over a credit card receipt definitely didn’t cut it.
“Maybe you dodged a bullet, then,” she observed.
Nick gave that a moment of drunken consideration. “Maybe.”
The door of Romano’s squeaked open. Gemma’s eyes took in Livie and Nick and the vodka bottle in a flash.
“Hey, Livie,” she said cautiously as she crossed to the bar and lifted the pass-under door. “Who’s this?”
