Sarah Hogle

He raises his eyes to mine. “Because I think you’re beautiful no matter what.”
Ugh. That’s really low, even for him.

We’ve always been balanced that way: when one of us loses it, the other can’t. Whoever didn’t call dibs on instant hysterics has no choice but to keep it together.

He calls it his office or his study and in my head I still call it the drawing room, because in a past life I was a duchess and I’ve never quite gotten over being reborn as a commoner in this age.

“God, I’ve missed you. Naomi.”

“I say it all the time, I just say it very, very quietly. I tell you when you’re in another room, or right after we hang up the phone. I tell you when you’ve got headphones on. I say it after you shut the door behind you. I say it in my head every time you look at me.”

Knowing I’m under his skin makes my heart sing.

“You stopped seeing me, Naomi. You stopped wanting me. You’re going to figure out one of these days that I can tell when you’re starting to disassociate, and it’s the most heartbreaking experience I’ve ever had. It’s nonstop. It keeps on happening. I try to bring you back to me every time you go to leave, off into your own head where I’m not allowed.”

“I can’t be intimate with you when you disassociate because I can’t let that become our new normal. But being distant from you as punishment for being distant from me doesn’t seem to motivate you to change. So I don’t know where that leaves us. All I know is that it’s a bad idea to fulfill your physical needs if you won’t fulfill my emotional ones.”

It hits me that he probably slept downstairs so that his coughing wouldn’t wake me up, and my heart makes a little tick, rolling over.

I stare at his miserable form on the couch, back convulsing off the cushions with each coughing jag. He’s so exhausted, the coughing doesn’t even wake him up. This man is sick, but that’s not going to stop him from going over to his parents’ house this morning and shoveling their driveway. That’s just Nicholas. He’s That Guy.