Page 66 of Parallel

While he pulls food from the bag, I look over at the paddleboards on the beach, the Sunfish bobbing nearby. “Is this what we’d have done if we came here in high school?” I ask.

He gives me a sheepish grin, handing me my sandwich on a paper plate. “Well, I’m guessing, based on your memory of condom purchases, it’s not all we’d have done.”

I feel myself blushing as I remember that moment of intense déjà vu at the deli. It was our first time together. Something we’d waited years for. Different than London, where we must barely have waited, given how fast we got married. I don’t know how many lives I’ve lived with him, but it feels a little unfair that I can’t live this one with him too.

He’s watching my face in a way I can’t pretend is just friendly. “I like having you here,” he says.

I twist my ring, letting my feet swing over the dock, inches from the water. “It’s been the best Saturday I’ve had in a long time.” A disloyal thing to say, but not as disloyal as what I’m actually thinking, which is that it’s been the best Saturday I ever remember.

I catch a flash of his dimple. “Even if it’s no Paris.”

“You say that as if I routinely go to Paris. I’ve never even been out of the country.”

“Why not?” he asks.

I smile. “Spoken like a kid who grew up with everything. I was dirt poor in a town so small you’d miss it if you blinked.”

He leans back a little, a casual gesture, but there’s nothing relaxed about the way he’s watching me now. “I guess that’s how you wound up with Jeff.”

I bristle at his phrasing. He makes it sound like I’m saddled with Jeff, as if I chose him by default. “What do you mean?”

“You’re just…ill-suited. He doesn’t seem like someone you’d have chosen unless you were someplace where there weren’t a lot of options.”

He hasn’t seen the best side of Jeff since this thing started, but it’s not like I chose him out of desperation. I had plenty of options back home. “Going through a tragedy with someone shows you pieces of them you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And when my father died, I realized what a good person Jeff was.”

His mouth twists as if he’s just eaten a piece of fruit gone bad. “Right. Your dad dies, and Jeff, who’d probably been after you for years, suddenly comes to the rescue.”

I place my sandwich carefully on the plate and turn toward him. “He did, yes. Why are you trying to make that sound like a devious thing?”

“I just suspect he had an ulterior motive.”

I run my tongue over my teeth, feeling flustered and angry, though I don’t know why. While it’s true Jeff was interested in me well before I moved home, he didn’t act on it for a long time. He just remained quietly in the wings, helping us where he could. “He’s not a bad person, no matter what you think.”

His eyes are as stormy as the clouds that now gather in the distance. “He’s also not quite as good a person as you seem to want to believe. He left you alone at the hospital after you had a very serious episode,” he says, his voice low and gritty. “He should have been there. He should have been home every fucking night since it started happening.”

I want to cover my ears like a child, or simply walk away. “Well, we can’t all be doctors, Nick. He was trying to keep his job. And it’s how we were raised. Men wake up at 5 a.m. and work until dark, and they do it until they’re in the grave. That’s how Jeff shows he cares.”

His jaw shifts. “That doesn’t mean you have to accept it.”

This is a fruitless topic to explore. Nick was raised with different values. He will put whomever he ends up with first, always, the rest of the world be damned. There’s a piece of me that cries out for that kind of care, but it’s not reasonable to hope for it from Jeff. “Why are we discussing this?”

He stares hard at the water. “Because I think you should cancel the wedding.”

I glance at him quickly and away. I long to ask if he’s saying it as my doctor, or as something…more, but I doubt he’d tell me the truth.

“Jeff is suggesting moving the date up,” I reply. “He wants to do something small and private next weekend instead.”

His head jerks toward mine. “I wasn’t saying you should skip the big wedding. I was saying you should skip any wedding. You can’t seriously be thinking about marrying him next weekend.”

My spine goes straight. “I’ve been with him for years. Why wouldn’t I consider it?”

“Because you’re not in love with him,” he says, standing, fists clenched.

“Ah,” I challenge, gathering our stuff as I climb to my feet, “but you and Meg are? It must be a real love story for the ages, what with you spending all your free time with me.”

“I’m not marrying her.”

My throat tightens, and I feel the start of tears…angry tears. “But you will,” I rasp. “Or someone just like her.”