The First Husband

I did. Or, I should say, I tried to. But Griffin was moving fast around the kitchen, back in his element and comfortable, clearly trying to forget what had just occurred—moving so fast, even when he saw me standing there before him. He told me we’d talk later. It seemed kinder to honor his request—to leave him be. To give him back his night, the rest of it.

And so I came here, instead, believing that in his beat-up state, Nick needed a hand. Believing also that it could be valuable, getting answers to my questions. Getting some final answers, so I could close the door. As if they existed. Final a

nswers, closed doors.

“Can we . . . talk about something else, please?” Nick said. “For just a minute or two?”

The blood had dripped all the way down the front of his Batman T-shirt, had fallen onto his jeans. Leaving dirty, brown splotches all over the front of him. It was making him look far worse than I could ever remember seeing him look. It was making it hard to be that hard on him.

“Like what, Nick?” I said, more gently.

“Like anything.”

He was holding up his glass of scotch now, holding it right up to his swelling chin.

Suddenly, it was too much to fight him, especially when it felt—even though it was his own fault—like he’d already lost.

I took a deep breath in.

“How’s my dog doing?” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Really good.”

“Yeah? ”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I brought you some pictures, if you want to see.”

I nodded. I did. It was the one thing I did want, unequivocally, right then.

So he tossed his phone across the room, I caught it, and my heart started to speed up as I scrolled through. Looking at my sweet, old Mila, napping on the windowsill in Nick’s flat, walking through a Park—Battersea, I assumed—flirting with a cat by the Victoria railway station sign (yes, a cat). Like me, apparently, my girl didn’t know what shouldn’t be a go.

“Miss Mila . . .” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “Who knew she was such a European?”

“Surprising, isn’t it?” he said. “A little less surprising is how much she misses you.”

“It’s mutual,” I said. “Low blow though, showing me pictures of her.”

“You asked.”

And he was right. I had asked. I wanted to know everything about what was going on with Mila. If I admitted it, I wanted to know more about Nick too. Nick, meanwhile, was taking a long sip of scotch, and I could see it in his eyes. That he was trying to decide whether he knew enough about what was going on with me to feel safe saying it. Whatever he’d come all this way to say.

“I’ve actually been living in Pimlico,” he said.

I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “It felt too weird, you know?” he said. “Living in a place you picked for us. Without you there . . .”

I nodded, taking a last look at the photograph of Mila on the phone, attempting to avoid the eye contact he was trying to make. Then, still not looking, I tossed his phone back to him. Which, I like to believe, was the primary reason that the toss went short—the phone landing on the floor, beneath him, both of us staring down at it. Neither of us standing up to get it.

He took another sip of his drink.

“And the thing is, I’ve just been thinking for a while . . . all that time in my own place, the accidental place, and I just keep going over and over it: how we spend so much time trying to listen to each other, you know? We spend so much time rewarding ourselves for trying so hard to listen, that somehow, we can miss it . . .” He paused. “The thing the person we love most is too afraid to tell us.”

I pulled my knees closer to myself, wrapping my arms around knees.

“Okay . . .” I said. “What was I too afraid to tell you, Nick?”

This was when, as an answer, he reached into his pocket—nervously, slowly—pulling something out and looking at it. Before tossing it over, across the small space between us.