Love and Joy

by Linda Seed

  He sat across from her, the vinyl upholstery of the seat crackling a little under his weight.

  “Hi.” He tried on a smile, but it was a fragile thing, wobbling at the edges.

  “Hi, Nix.”

  They made small talk for a few minutes about what she was doing these days, how his job was, how things were in Cambria. The waitress brought him coffee, and he added cream and sugar.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she said once the introductory niceties were over. “It’s a hassle, I know. But my publisher says I can’t use the photos without your signature.”

  “It’s not that big a hassle. It’s lunch and a few signatures.”

  “Still.”

  “Congratulations on the book deal.” He picked up his coffee mug, then put it down again without drinking. “I mean it. That’s great news. I know it’s what you wanted, so …”

  “Thanks.” She pulled the papers out of her bag and slid them across the table to him with a pen.

  He looked at them and hesitated.

  “How about we eat first? There’s time for business afterward.”

  “Nix …”

  “Please?”

  She nodded. They picked up their menus, perused them, then gave the waitress their orders.

  Okay, yes. Nix was holding the papers hostage. He didn’t want her to be able to get up and walk away without at least talking to him first, about things other than the weather and the price of Granny Smith apples at the market.

  So they picked at their meals in awkward silence, with the occasional attempt at polite small talk. Then, about a quarter of the way through his pasta, Nix put down his fork and propped his elbows on the table.

  “Look, Joy. I’ll sign your papers. I’m happy for you about the book deal. Really. But I have a lot I want to say to you, if you’ll listen.”

  She shoved her plate aside and nodded, avoiding his gaze.

  Now that he had her attention, he didn’t know what to say or where to start. When he’d told Evan what was going on, he’d used the ring as his opening gambit. If it worked once …

  “I still have the ring,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “You do? Why?”

  “Because I thought … I hope … I want to offer it to you again someday, when you’re ready. And I know that might not be soon, and it might not be ever. But if you think there’s a chance, any chance at all, I don’t mind waiting.”

  “Nix, I—”

  “And,” he went on, “I want to apologize for the way I acted. The way I stormed off that day in San Simeon, and … every time I think about when can you vacate, I want to punch myself in the face. I was hurt, and I reacted badly. I hope you can forgive me.”

  Joy didn’t say anything at first. She just stared at him, her trembling fingers touched to her lips.

  She hadn’t known what he would say when she saw him, but part of her had hoped it would be this. Now that he’d said it, she didn’t know how to respond or what to do. As much as she wanted to throw herself into his arms and stay there until stars died and worlds ended, she knew they still had so many questions that hadn’t been answered.

  “You kept the ring,” she said.

  He reached out his hand and laid it palm-up on the table. She put her own hand in his.

  “I did,” he said.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  “Nix, I wanted to say yes that day. I really did. I wanted it so much it hurt. But … I didn’t want to make a rash decision. I didn’t want to do something I wasn’t ready for, because we’d both just get hurt later. I needed time. Just … time. But the way you reacted …”

  “You wanted to say yes?”

  She nodded and squeezed his hand.

  “And I acted like an ass,” he said.

  “Well. You did kind of make it seem like it was then or never. And I just … I didn’t want to make a mistake. I didn’t want to say yes until I knew for sure. You … us … it’s all too important for me to do it wrong, Nix. I just wanted to think.”

  “Jesus.” He let go of her and scrubbed at his face with both hands. “I really fucked that up.”

  “My life’s gone through so many changes over the past year,” she went on. “And marriage … that would be the biggest change of all, so soon after everything else. It’s like when you’re a kid and you spin around and around, and even after you stop, you’re still dizzy. I’m still dizzy, Nix. I just need to be still for a while to see where I am.”

  “That makes sense,” he said.

  “It does?”

  “Yeah. It really does.” He folded his arms on the table and looked at her. “So the question is, can we start seeing each other again while you’re waiting? Or would that be too much … you know. Spinning?”

  It was a good question, one Joy didn’t know how to answer.

  “Can I think about it?”

  His lips pressed into a grim line—it clearly hadn’t been what he’d hoped to hear—but he nodded.

  The nod—it wasn’t how Nix had wanted to respond. He’d wanted to protest that they’d had months away from each other, and wasn’t that enough time to think? Didn’t she know by now that they were both miserable apart?

  But that would have been a repeat of the mistakes he’d already made, and he had to be better this time. He had to be smarter.

  He reached over to where the papers sat on the edge of the table along with the pen Joy had brought. He signed where the little arrow-shaped sticky tabs told him to sign, then he gave the papers back to Joy.

  “Here you go. I hope everything goes well with your book.”

  “Thank you.” She tucked the papers back into her purse.

  “I don’t really know where this leaves us,” he said. “I tried going out with someone else, but … she wasn’t you.”

  Her eyes got shiny and wet as tears shimmered in them, and that wasn’t what he’d wanted at all. He hadn’t meant to make her cry.

  “I love you,” he said. “That hasn’t changed. I just wanted you to know that.”

  I love you, too.

  Joy knew that was what she was supposed to say—that was what he wanted to hear. And it was true. It was so thoroughly true.

  She loved him, but she didn’t trust him to keep loving her.

  She’d gained another few pounds since she saw him last, for one thing, and what if it was more? What if it kept happening, and her mother was right, and a woman with some extra weight wasn’t worth loving?

  Even as she thought all of those things, she knew this was her problem, not his. This was the result of the messages she’d been given by other people, not by him. This wasn’t a problem he’d created, so it wasn’t one he could fix.

  “I love you, too.” There. She’d said it, finally. Because surely telling the truth about things was part of what would heal her.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I … God, yes.”

  “Then there’s hope for us.”

  “There’s hope.”

  He smiled—really smiled—for the first time since she’d arrived.

  Chapter 34

  Nix was a mess of mixed emotions as he and Joy walked out of the restaurant after their lunch.

  She hadn’t said she would see him again—she’d only said she would think about it.

  But she’d said she loved him, which was, frankly, more than he’d hoped for.

  He walked her to her car because he wanted to be a gentleman, but once they got there, his gentlemanly impulses turned to something much less honorable.

  “It was good to see you again,” Joy said, standing on the curb next to her car.

  “It was good to see you, too.” He knew he should just let her get into her car and go, but something desperate in him told him if he didn’t take this chance, he might not get another one.

  “Can I just …” He took her hands in his, entwining their fingers together, then leaned in and kissed her. He’d meant it to be a friendly kiss that might remind her of wha
t she was missing when she wasn’t with him.

  But before he knew what he was doing, he had her back pressed against the car, her hands, still in his, stretched behind her and pinned to the roof, his mouth plundering hers.

  He let out an involuntary moan, and she whimpered a little in response.

  Time stopped, at least for him. He wasn’t aware of anything but the feel and taste of her. He let go of her hands and plunged his fingers into her hair.

  When someone passing by on the sidewalk called, “Get a room!” he came back into himself, back into reality.

  He pulled away from her with some difficulty, but it took her a while to catch up. After he released her and stepped back, she still stood plastered against the car, her head back, her eyes closed.

  She blinked after a moment and stood up straight, looking flustered and lovely.

  “I … oh.” Her purse had fallen to the sidewalk, and she bent to pick it up. “I should just …” She pointed to the car, then went around to the driver’s side and got in.

  Feeling satisfied with himself, Nix gave her a little four-fingered wave as she drove away.

  Joy tried to act nonchalant as she got into her car and drove away from Nix. But as soon as she was out of his sight, she had to pull over and pull herself together so she wouldn’t run her car into a utility pole.

  That kiss.

  She’d felt like her bones had turned to some hot, flowing liquid that had surged from her toes to the top of her head before coming to rest in that thrumming, throbbing spot below her belt.

  If he’d wanted to shatter her with that kiss, well, he’d accomplished it.

  She sat in her idling car at the curb trying to bring her rebellious body into order.

  Calm down. Just calm the hell down.

  How was she supposed to make smart choices about her life when he made her body feel that way? When he made her feel like pure molten pleasure was surging through her veins?

  Thinking like that made her wonder what the harm would be in sleeping with him a few times. Or more than a few times.

  But that wasn’t the answer. She needed to clear her head. Damn it, she just needed to think.

  Once she’d gotten herself under control, she drove the 150 miles to Ventura trying to distract herself with music, a fancy coffee drink, and personal pep talks. But she arrived back at her apartment just as conflicted as before.

  I saw him. He signed the papers, she texted to Amber once she was settled in on her sofa, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt and sipping a mug of tea.

  That’s good, Amber answered. How was it seeing him again?

  How to answer that? It was good. Hard. Frustrating. Confusing. Mostly, it had filled her with an all-consuming longing, a desire so hot and commanding that more than a few times, she’d almost turned the car around and gone back to him.

  It was probably a mistake, she texted. Because now I can’t stop thinking about him.

  Amber: !!!!

  I wish my goddamned heart would just shut up about him, Joy wrote.

  Or, Amber texted, you could just try listening to it for a change.

  Joy had left. Despite what he’d said about still loving her, despite the kiss, despite the way he’d apologized and then pleaded for her to give him another chance, she’d just gotten into her car and left.

  Nix had given it his best, and it still hadn’t persuaded her to stay.

  She’d said she would think about it, but what had she been doing for the past months except thinking about it? If she hadn’t thought enough by now, it was possible he was wasting his time.

  By the time Nix got home, his optimism about Joy—the way she’d admitted she loved him and the way she’d reacted to his kiss—had fallen away, replaced by a sense of doom.

  He went to his house, got a beer out of the refrigerator, and sat on an Adirondack chair on his porch, drinking and feeling sorry for himself.

  Shit. If only he’d … what? What else could he have done?

  He was on his third beer and starting to feel a little tipsy when Louise’s car made its way up the dirt road to his house. She parked, got out, and stood at the bottom of the stairs to the porch, looking at him with pity.

  “I knew you were seeing Joy today, and then you didn’t answer your texts,” she said. “I figured that either meant you were still with her, or she shot you down and you were feeling like shit.”

  “What if it had been the first one?”

  She shrugged. “If I saw her car, I was going to turn around and go home. But I didn’t see her car. And here you are.”

  “Here I am.”

  She climbed the stairs to the porch and took the seat beside him.

  “There’s beer in the fridge. Help yourself.” He gestured vaguely toward the house.

  She went inside and came back with a cold longneck bottle. She sat down, took a deep drink, and gazed out at the grass and the trees.

  “You want to tell me how it went, or do you want to just sit here and drink?”

  “I want to just sit here and drink.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “No.”

  So they sat there together, drinking and taking in the view of Nix’s property. The day was cool, and birds tittered in the trees.

  It did make him feel better to have Louise here, even if they weren’t talking about anything. Even if she couldn’t help him.

  “Clara and I broke up one time. Did I ever tell you about that?” she said after a while.

  “No. When did that happen?”

  “A couple of years ago.” She shrugged. “She’d been seeing someone else. Then she moved out. I was a mess.”

  “Clara cheated?” Nix turned to face her, shocked. Louise and Clara were Nix’s aspirational couple, the two people, along with his parents, who most embodied enduring love to him.

  “She did. It was right after her mother died, so … I think she was just hurting so much she needed something to distract her from it, you know?”

  “So, what happened? How did you get her back?”

  “I didn’t get her back. I waited for her to come to her senses, and she came back.”

  They both sat with that.

  “If you love something, set it free …” Louise began.

  Nix scoffed. “Don’t you dare finish that. If I have to come over there …”

  “I’m just saying. She’s gotta want it, Nix.”

  He knew that. Shit, he knew it. But the waiting was excruciating.

  “I thought I said I didn’t want to talk about me and Joy,” he reminded her.

  “We weren’t. We were talking about me and Clara.”

  Nix sighed and sank deeper into his chair. “I feel like shit.”

  “Yeah. That’ll happen.” She took another swallow of her beer.

  Chapter 35

  Joy needed to visit her mother.

  It had been months since she’d seen her, and it couldn’t be put off any longer, especially now that Joy was a mere hour and a half away from Delores’s house.

  The key, Joy had found, was to manufacture some other reason for being in Los Angeles so she could drop in on her mother and then, after an hour or so of uncomfortable conversation, claim that she had to run because she was late for whatever that other thing might be.

  She bought tickets to a musical at the Ahmanson Theater for herself and Amber—a Sunday matinee, which would allow her to make a lunchtime visit to her mother and then flee in time for the two p.m. curtain.

  Her stomach was in knots as she drove to her mom’s place. She always felt that way in the run-up to a visit with Delores.

  Joy told herself she wouldn’t be affected by anything her mom had to say to her. Insults and criticism would just bounce off, as though she were made of Kevlar.

  That same internal pep talk had never worked before, but who knew? Maybe she’d have better luck with her own resilience this time.

  She arrived at her mother’s place with takeout from Delores’s favorite rest
aurant. She brought a salad for Delores and a BLT for herself.

  Delores launched in as soon as she saw Joy’s lunch.

  “Oh, honey. Should you be eating that?”

  “What else should I do with it, Mom? Apply it to my skin?” She tried to keep her tone light, as though the whole thing were merely humorous banter.

  “Don’t be smart with me.” Delores frowned, looking into the Styrofoam box in front of Joy. “It’s just that, my goodness, you’ve gained so much weight over the past year.…”

  “Just under ten pounds,” Joy said mildly. “Which still puts my BMI in the normal, healthy range, for your information.”

  “Well, health.” Delores spat out the word as though it were an obscenity. “That’s one thing, I suppose. But, Joy, you just looked so much better before.”

  All at once, Joy felt her body and her soul flood with shame. Just as it always had under her mother’s scrutiny. Just as it had every time she’d felt as though she were not good enough to deserve whatever it was she wanted.

  “Mom …”

  “After all, you were dating a nice young man, and now you’re not.” She tsked, shaking her head. “Surely if you just lost the weight …”

  “Mom.”

  “I know it’s not easy, but all it takes is a little discipline.”

  “Mother, that is enough!” Joy smacked the top of the table hard with her palm, fury clouding her vision.

  “Joy Rebecca Maxwell, don’t you take that tone with me.”

  Joy stood up from her seat. Having a showdown with her mother seemed like the sort of thing one should be upright for.

  “I’ll take whatever tone I want, Mother. And I won’t stand here and let you insult me.”

  Delores rolled her eyes. “You’ve always been so overly sensitive.”

  “I am not overly sensitive, I am not fat, and I am not going to listen to you anymore.” She abandoned her lunch, picked up her purse, and walked toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Delores demanded.