Page 64 of Terms + Conditions
When Nick first told me about their agreement to spend time apart and, quote, “get their lives together,” I called bullshit. They could have made it work, or maybe I just hoped they would. Watching them live apart over the past few years, it was glaringly obvious neither of them was searching for anyone else. They were biding their time until they could find their way back to each other. And anytime someone (ahem, Alex) would bring it up, Nick would tell him the same thing. He wanted to do thison his own; he had to work on himself so he could be who Nina needed him to be.
Every time he said it, I felt like I was listening to myself. I had never said it to Nick before, but I think he knew how I felt about the difference between me and Elizabeth, and now he was going through the same thing with Nina. Maybe it was a Davis man thing…grasping for the women outside of our league. And no matter what we did, we felt like we had to work twice as hard to belong in their world.
It was sweet, though. Watching him and Nina try to make it work despite it all gave me hope that Elizabeth and I could do the same. Nick and I were cut from the same cloth. If he and Nina could find a way to work through those differences…
Except Nick had earned the right to this life the right way, unlike me.
“So, off the topic of Ms. Villa,” Dean changes the subject. “Are you gonna come to the cabin or what? I promise not to try and set you up.”
Nick rolls his eyes but agrees.
When Dean looks at me, I say, “My wife will never leave Nina on a holiday.”
“Won’t have to if Nicky boy over here gets his act together,” Dean says.
Nick walks out of the three-story walk-up and greets me with a shake of his head. Not this one. Not the one before, or the one before that, either.
“How’d it go?” I ask, meeting him at the bottom of the steps.
He shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I don’t know if it’s the right fit.”
“You’ve said that about every single one so far.”
“And every single one just hasn’t felt likethe one.”
“Because you’re avoiding ‘the one.’”
Every firm he had interviewed with, from Boston to New York to California to Texas, had yet to feel like the right choice. He said he couldn’t figure out why. He said it wasjust a feeling.
It was bullshit. We knew why, but I never pushed the issue because I knew he’d give me the same answer he gave Raeanne yesterday.
“Oh, you may want to check your phone.” I try to hide my smirk when I hand it to him. “It was blowing up the whole time you were in there.”
“What in the world?” Nick scrolls through the multitude of notifications on the lock screen. Over five missed calls from Alex, at least fifteen texts, and one missed call from Michaela. “Didn’t they call you?”
“Who?”
Nick narrows his gaze but calls one of them back. Barely after the first ring, I can hear Alex yell, “Dude!” through the other end of the phone. “You’ll never guess—”
“Yes, my interview went fine, thanks,” Nick quips, putting the phone on speaker.
“Okay, cool. Nick, listen.”
“Spit it out.”
“You’ll never guess who is in New York!”
“I don’t know, Alex. The queen? I thought something was wrong. You called mefivetimes and sent me a million texts.”
“No.” Alex scoffs. “Why would the queen come to New York?”
“Alex, I don’t know.” Nick groans, rubbing the crease between his brows.
“Nina.”
