Sometimes all it takes is a small push, and events begin to run together, closer and closer and faster and faster. It would be easier if the exciting and troubling moments were more spread out, but that is not the way things are. So here we are!
Just as she promised, Gabrielle went back to the apartment to meet Nick yesterday. He was waiting for her, and though he spent much of Saturday switching back and forth from anger to despondence, when she came in he was calm. He asked Gabrielle to reconsider, asking her to give them more time to work out their differences. His words were thoughtful and heartfelt, and it was clear that he still loves her.
If only that were enough.
“What do you think marriage is, Nick?” Gabrielle asked him.
He was not prepared for this question. “Well—it’s a partnership. And I know, I haven’t done my part—”
“No, you haven’t. But seriously, I want to know your honest answer. What is marriage to you?”
He frowned at her, but I nudged him into putting some real thought into the idea rather than try to find the answer he thought she wanted. “Marriage is the agreement between two people to stay true to one another,” he said finally. “It’s the proof to the world that they belong to one another, and that they are a unit.”
Gabrielle considered this, and a sad smile came to her face. “Ugh, I wish we’d had this conversation before we got married,” she said. She covered her face with her hands and pushed up from the sofa.
“What do you mean? What is it to you?”
Gabrielle folded her arms and looked back at him. They were only on opposite sides of the room, but it was as if she was looking at him across a vast expanse. “To me, it’s a decision made by two different people, who stay two different people throughout,” she said. “It’s the mutual decision to build a life together. We choose to be one another’s first defense against the world—but not the only one. We choose, not to put the needs of the other person first, but to understand when the other person is weak and to know when it’s all right to be weak ourselves. And we keep making those choices, over and over again, new every morning and fresh every evening, because life is always changing and we are always changing.”
Nick stared at her. He didn’t know what to say.
She leaned back against the wall, already tired. “When we got married, I thought about how wonderful it was that two people’s different lives could enrich one another so much. And here you were trying to make me a part of you…” She shook her head. “We never had a chance from the start, did we?”
Not anything that Nick said could persuade her away from this conviction. He grew angry, then he wept, but she was unswayed. She gathered a few more of her things and went back to Victoria’s apartment only a few hours after she had arrived.
Nick is not yet convinced, which will make things difficult, but I become more and more convinced that this is for the best. That does not mean that this will be easy.
As if I needed something to distract me from this, Freya has also had an encounter that needs my attention. She’s been having trouble with her computer lately, and so she’d arranged to meet with the brother of a friend who offered to take a look for her. All she knew of this man was that he was younger than herself, a computer programmer, and a significant pain to his older sister. So when they met this morning, she was surprised by how attractive she found him.
Elliott is in his mid-twenties, stocky and redbearded with a sardonic smile. He listened to Freya’s description of her problems while he turned on the computer, and she watched the way his hands moved over the keyboard with sure strokes. He “hmmed” a few times, which reminded Freya of a doctor and almost made her laugh aloud.
“Could be a couple of things,” Elliott told her, shutting down the computer again and closing it. “I’ll take a look and get it back to you tomorrow afternoon, if that’s okay.”
Freya raised her eyebrows. “What, you’re not going to try to impress me with a stream of technical jargon?”
Her tone made his smile more sincere, and his sleepy eyes met hers with a look that was wide awake. “I generally find that my jargon puts women outside of my field to sleep.”
“Thank you for saying ‘women’ and not ‘girls.’”
“Oh, trust me,” Elliott said, giving her an up-and-down glance that was eloquent with appreciation, “no one in his right mind would think of calling you anything less than a woman, Freya.”
Delighted, Freya leaned forward. “Why don’t you have another cup of coffee and tell me more about myself?”
He also leaned forward, putting their faces very close together. “I thought you had to get to work.”
“This is work,” she said, tapping the laptop. “I need that back to be able to do my job efficiently. My boss will understand.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “And how does flirting with me get you your laptop back?”
“I’m hoping to convince you to put it at the top of your list,” she teased.
“I’m considering it,” he admitted. “Unless that’s your real reason for staying and not just an excuse.”
“Definitely just an excuse,” she assured him. “But what my boss—and your sister—don’t know won’t hurt them.”
He pretended to think about it for a moment, though he had already made up his mind. “Then I’m going to go get that refill,” he said, “and you think about the things that I should know about you, Freya Cobb.”
So there is that for me to think about, too! I’m happy about it, of course—it is a promising beginning, and the attraction is strong on both sides. But I will have to take a closer look at Elliott before I decide whether or not he deserves Freya.
In moments like these, I am reminded of what Eburnean said—there may be rest, but no reprieve. I am beginning to feel it myself!