Back in the Burbs by Tracy Wolff
Chapter Fifty-Seven
We follow Victoria into the two-story foyer with the double staircase and the no-lie huge chandelier in it, turn right at a butler’s closet, then into a study with dark-stained wood bookshelves that go all the way up past a mezzanine level accessible by an iron circular staircase to the ceiling.
A man reading a hardback copy of Karpov on Karpov looks up when we walk in. He has bone-white hair, blue eyes that look like they’ve been dipped in the Caribbean, and what seems like a perpetually amused smile that reminds me a lot of Nick’s.
“Are you done terrorizing the neighbors, dear?” he asks as he closes his book and stands up.
“Maybe,” Victoria says, lifting her cheek for him to kiss, which he does. “I’ll at least consider it for the moment.”
He walks over to us. “Hello, son.” Then he holds his hand out to me. “John Holloway, my dear. And how do you know Nick?”
Nick puts his hand on the small of my back. He doesn’t try to push me forward, not even with the most subtle pressure. “This is Mallory.”
I shake his dad’s hand, and we all walk over to the love seats positioned facing each other in front of a fireplace big enough to do yoga in.
We sit down. Me next to Nick on one love seat that definitely looked bigger than it feels now with us hip to hip on it. It’s impossible not to be acutely aware of being this near to him. Do I shift a little so that our thighs line up? Yes. I am weak and I gave in. I’m halfway to forcing myself to readjust when he lifts his arm and lays it across the back of the love seat, his fingertips landing on my shoulder.
“I’m sure Maude isn’t describing you in a kind way right about now,” John says to his wife. “Are you going to put the car in the garage?”
Victoria fiddles with the full-service tea set laid out on the table between the love seats.
“She,”Victoria says, “has a name.”
“Fine.” John gives his wife an indulgent smile as he toys with the flipped-up end of her bob. “Are you going to put Limoncello into the garage now?”
She pours a cup of tea from the pot. “I suppose.” She hands it to Nick. “But I’m waiting until after dark. Maude can sit and stew for a few hours.” She turns to me. “Would you like a cup of tea until it’s time for dinner?”
I gulp, suddenly aware that I am about to experience something akin to the Spanish Inquisition. “Yes, thank you.”
She pours a cup and hands it to me, then repeats the process for herself and John while I sit there trying to figure out what in the hell I’m doing. Here I am, meeting Nick’s parents as if we’re serious, when I all but shoved him two-handed out of my life—and he went—drinking tea and basking in the joy of being near him again.
Victoria adds a splash of cream to her tea and stirs it with what has to be a literal silver spoon. “So, John, I’m thinking that we could add a small track, nothing obnoxious, for Limoncello.”
Nick and his dad let out matching stifled laughs at the same time. An identical sound coming from two men is kind of adorable. And I can’t help but look between them to spot all the similarities. The easy laugh. The tolerant amusement at Victoria’s troublemaking.
“An interesting idea,” John says, calm as a cucumber slice on a socialite’s closed eyes. “I’d recommend, though, that you gift Maude a trip to Vail first.”
“And a fistful of Valium,” Nick adds.
Victoria sets her spoon down and sighs. “You’re no fun.”
“And you’re completely outrageous,” he says as if he’s uttered those words sixty-three times a day their entire marriage and gotten a kick out of it each time.
It reminds me of how Nick looked at me when I was lying in the grass in front of my house after having my ass kicked by the lawn mower. Amused. Interested. Happy. The realization makes my insides go all soft and gooey.
Fuck.
Meanwhile, Nick’s mom looks at his dad and they are having one of those married-for-a-long-time silent conversations that encompass everything and nothing in a matter of seconds. In that moment, I realize that I want that, and even more importantly, I want that with Nick. Not because I can’t live without a man, but because I need to live with him. I need to be loved by him.
The truth of that has me shifting on the velvet seat, unsure of what in the hell I’m supposed to do now.
“One of these days, John,” Victoria says, twining the fingers of her free hand through his, “I’ll get you to join in on the fun.”
“After forty years into this life with you? It’s possible, I guess.” He shrugs and shakes his head. “I know how you love a challenge.”
Victoria scoffs. “Your life would be boring without me. You’d still be driving a Mercedes instead of the GTO.”
“That’s true.” He leans over and kisses her cheek. “I’d have a boring life if it weren’t for my very non-boring wife.”
It’s adorable and awful at the same time because this is the life I always wanted—the one I still want. The teasing. The fun. The in-it-togetherness, weird quirks and all.
And the thing is, I don’t just want that life. I want it with Nick because, despite how much I fought it, I’ve fallen for Mr. Always There and I can’t imagine him not being a part of my life. All I have to do to make that want a reality is to have the guts to fight for it.
Old me would have never. But the new Mallory Martin—done with being Bach—faced down Karl and won. I’ve lived through finding a treasure chest of my beloved aunt’s dildos. I’ve started a new life for myself that teenage me wouldn’t be ashamed of. I’m no longer a woman who hides in law office bathrooms. I can do this.
Nick scoots closer on the love seat and lowers his voice to a whisper. “Sorry about my parents.”
“They’re amazing.” It’s true. I’ve never seen two people more comfortable about being themselves with each other. “Nick, we need to talk.” Adrenaline surges through my veins because now that I know what I want, how I want my life to be, I want it to start now. “Can we go somewhere?”
He nods. “Sure, let’s—”
Before we can make any excuses to his parents and find somewhere to talk, though, the thick oak door to the study opens and a woman in a soft gray dress walks in. “Dinner is ready.”
“Wonderful,” Victoria says as she stands. “Shall we?”
“Mom, you know you could have just asked me to dinner instead of staging a big fight with your neighborhood nemesis.”
“True,” she says with an impish grin. “But where is the fun in that?”
Nick turns to his dad.
John shrugs as he starts toward the study door, arm in arm with his wife. “She’s your mother, son. She’s never going to do the expected.”
Nick looks over at me, a chagrined look on his face that hits me somewhere between oh-my-God-he’s-amazing and how-could-I-have-missed-this-all-along. “Sounds like someone else I know.”