by Paige North
He flips a switch as we make our way down the stairs, the action a complete reflex pulled up from his youth spent in this nightmare house and how many trips down these stairs he made over the years. The fluorescent lights buzz to life, casting a sickly yellow glow over the room.
Which is completely empty.
The floor is concrete, and though it was probably once polished, it’s now dull and dusty. The walls are cinder block, and completely bare. There’s a bathroom in one corner, though it has no walls. Just a sink set into the wall, a toilet waiting beside it. There’s a threadbare mattress on the floor in the middle of the room, no sheets, and there are aged water spots staining the top.
It looks like a prison.
It’s so much worse than what I imagined when he described it to me. And that’s when thinking of an adult, powerful, strong Nixon in there. Thinking about Nixon as a defenseless child has my eyes welling up. Before I know it, the tears are spilling over and rolling down my cheeks.
Nixon, still clutching my hand, surveying the room, says nothing. His mother is hobbling down the stairs, her oxygen tank clutched in one hand, still screeching about how he has no right. And before I know what I’m doing, I spin around and point a finger at her.
“How could you have done this to him? He was just a little boy!”
“You don’t get to judge my parenting, you … whoever you are,” she snaps.
I point at the dirty, bare mattress. “This isn’t parenting. This is abuse.”
“We never laid a hand on him!” She cries, as if it makes a difference.
I’m seething, my shoulders rising and falling visibly with each breath, the tears rolling freely down my cheeks.
Nixon pulls me to him, his arms wrapped tightly around me, like he’s shielding me from having to see any more. He rests his chin on the top of my head. “It’s ok, Delaney. It’s ok,” he says, over and over.
“It’s not ok,” I sob into his chest. “This should never have happened to you.”
We stand there like that for a long time, until I feel wrung out. There are no more tears. And when he finally releases me, neither of us looks around the room again. We look only at each other.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Ok?”
I nod.
We push past his mother, still standing there glaring at us, as if we’re the ones who did something wrong. And as we make our way back through the house, I’m careful not to take in any of it. As soon as I leave this house, I want it gone.
Forever.
We’re halfway back to Boston before he finally speaks. First, he reaches across the center console of the car to take my hand in his. I’m surprised to find that there’s no tension there. And when I study him, I don’t see a clenched jaw, or a furrowed brow. There are none of the telltale signs of his usual panic. He’s utterly at ease.
“Thank you,” he says, his eyes firmly on the road in front of us. “And I’m sorry. That you had to see that.”
I rub my thumb in small circles on his palm. “It’s ok, Nixon. You don’t have to apologize to me for any of that. None of it was your fault. It was all them. They are so broken.”
He nods. “I know. Seeing them like that, how sick they are, hearing her scream like that, made me realize that they truly have no idea what they did.”
“Don’t excuse them,” I say.
“I’m not. And I’ll never be able to forgive them. I’ll probably never even see them again. But having you there by my side to witness it, and watching you stand up for me…” he sighs, but it’s a sigh of release. “I feel like I can start to let go of the anger I had. And the resentment. I feel like I can start to move forward.”
I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding, that I’d been holding perhaps since Nixon first proposed. Even though we’d overcome the hurdles, it still felt somehow fragile. But hearing him say this, hearing him release what he’d been keeping inside for so many years, makes me feel like we’re going to be ok.
And then his blinker is on, the car exiting the Mass Pike. We cruise through the shady, lush streets of Wellesley, until he pulls into a parking spot near the quaint downtown. He undoes his seatbelt and turns so that he’s practically facing me, taking both my hands in his.
“I love you, baby,” he says, a genuine smile lighting him up from the inside. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting for you the way you fought for me back there. You’re mine.”
He leans inland our lips meet, his fingers tangling in my hair at the nape of my neck. We pull back, our foreheads resting against each other.
“And you’re mine,” I tell him.
***
GizmoGossip: Blake and Masterson Tie the Knot
Nina March, editor at large
It was America’s version of a royal wedding this weekend, when billionaire CEO married his little commoner (intern) plucked from nowhere (his own company). Nixon Blake and Delaney Masterson, well, make that Delaney Blake, were married outside Kennebunkport, on a private compound Blake purchased for the occasion. And because suddenly the reclusive CEO is the effusive CEO, we know all about the affair.
The new Mrs. Blake wore custom Vera Wang, the groom custom Tom Ford. They danced to a swing band, they toasted with Dom Perignon, and they feasted on lobster cooked ten ways from Sunday by three-time Michelin star chef Wylie McKay. Oh, and the cake was made with three hundred cannoli flown in specially from Mike’s Pastry in the North End.
Don’t you wish you were invited?
The couple will honeymoon all over the fucking planet, as they crisscross the world in Blake’s private jet.
Honestly, who’d want to be a princess when you could be Mrs. Nixon Blake?
Epilogue
“Ok, keep your eyes closed,” Nixon says as I shuffle through the door, my hands out to keep from knocking into a wall. “Are they closed?”
“They’re closed,” I assure him.
“Ok, open,” he says.
The walls are a soft butter yellow. Against one wall is a gorgeous, handmade white wood crib, with wide, modern slats. The polished concrete floor has mostly disappeared beneath an expansive gray and white striped rug. Soft gray drapes hang from either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows, ready to be pulled across to plunge the room into darkness. There’s a wire basket in one corner overflowing with stuffed animals. A white bookcase is nearly exploding with picture books and board books and a first edition hardcover set of the Harry Potter books. There are framed black and white photos covering the wall, of our wedding up at the Cabin in Maine, and of Nixon’s hands resting on my pregnant belly.
I turn and see Nixon standing in the doorway, holding Noah, who is fast asleep in his arms.
“I can’t believe you did all this,” I tell him as I wander the room, running my fingers over an enormous stuffed giraffe that takes up residence in one corner.
“Well, you decorated the rest of the house, so I had to do something for you,” he says, his voice low so as not to disturb our three-day-old son. When I’d left the apartment just the other day, my contractions picking up in speed and intensity, I still hadn’t seen the nursery Nixon promised me. He’d kept the door shut, adamant it be a surprise. I never imagined it would be quite this perfect.
I stop and glance and a black and white photo taken during our rehearsal dinner. Nixon and I are standing up on a small stage. The photo was taken from the back. You can see his arm around my waist, his hand resting on my hip. I’ve got my head tilted onto his shoulder. We’re both raising champagne glasses to the crowd laid out before us, of family and friends (and a few business associates who had to be invited, of course). The photo is clear, and you can see how relaxed Nixon is. There’s not a tense muscle in his body as he gazes out on the crowd there to celebrate our love.
Shortly after that first disastrous visit to his parents’ house, Nixon agreed to get help. We found him an amazing psychologist, who worked with a psychiatrist to prescribe him medication to manage his anxiety
. He’ll still get nervous in big crowds, mostly for things related to Scour (the bigger the financial outcome of the event, the bigger the burden), but for the most part he’s managed to keep his PTSD in check.
And with that, came his ability to let go of his need for solitude and silence. His apartment no longer needed to be a prison to protect him from the world.
I started ordering furniture. I bought groceries and started cooking in his kitchen. I hung art on the walls, and laid rugs over the floors. I had bookcases delivered and filled them with our favorite books. It turned out Nixon was a great reader, he’d always just kept his library confined to his tablet. I took great pleasure in surprising him with a physical library of all his favorite books.
And as a final testament to all the ways he’d opened up in the last year, now we were welcoming a new little life into this home we’d created. Noah was born on a perfectly sunny, warm July day, with Nixon holding my hand and coaching me through the entire delivery.
And now we were three.
The door buzzes.
“Who are we expecting?” I ask, my eyes on Noah. But he doesn’t stir.
“Oh, Elise and Colin asked if they could stop by and bring dinner for our first night home,” Nixon says. He passes the baby to me, then heads for the door.
Colin and Elise met at our engagement party, and they’ve been together ever since. Elise doesn’t know, but I went ring shopping with Colin just last week to help him pick out the perfect thing. Elise is starting law school at Harvard this fall, and Colin is at Scour full-time, developing apps with the code team. I can’t wait to help her plan her wedding.
As for me, I’m on maternity leave from my job with the Governor’s office. Turns out my passion for research and baller organizational skills are a perfect match for legislative affairs. I love my job, and as much as I’m looking forward to my six months home with Noah, I know I’ll be itching to get back.
“We brought lasagna from that little hole in the wall Italian bistro in Beacon Hill,” Elise says, coming in with shopping bags over both arms. “Plus cannoli from Mike’s pastry, and wine for the mama who can finally imbibe.”
“We also brought another baby gift, because that shop on Charles Street is like kryptonite this one,” Colin says, nodding at Elise as he holds out a pale blue gift bag.
“I can’t help it!” She cries, depositing the food onto the white marble island. “All that teeny tiny little clothing. It’s too much!”
I smile as I watch my friends bustle around our house, now bursting with color and life, as I hold my warm, snoozy baby in my arms. I glance up at Nixon, who’s standing just behind me, and then lean back into his firm chest.
He kisses me, murmuring his love for me in my ear as I hold our child and murmur it back to the man of my dreams.
As I watch my friends chattering away, I feel a surge of hope and love and happiness that I never even thought was possible. All those difficult days of fighting against Jenna and Amber, feeling like those girls meant something to me—could somehow hurt me—those days feel positively ancient now.
I actually don’t know or care what happened to those two girls. They mean less than nothing to me, because I found my life and my place in this world.
And that’s when it hits me.
I’m home. Truly home in a way I never could have envisioned.
What’s even more amazing, is that Nixon is home too. A man who never truly had comfort in this world found it with me.
Tears are in my eyes, but never has a woman cried tears more joyful than these.
For a brief moment, the love overwhelms me, and then I’m laughing, wiping my eyes and settling down for a simple meal with friends and loved ones.
The End
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