Flopping down on the couch, my head falls into my hands. I don’t want to cry anymore. I swore once I found him things would be better and my life would feel complete. And while it does feel different, there’s so much to deal with that I never took into account. Selfishly I believed love would conquer all.
“Comfort and happiness can be found anywhere,” Alice says, her voice stern and authoritative. She’s angry with me because she knows me better than I know myself. I bailed, because things became sketchy, things became unknown and I was about to have what I had always wanted, but it scared the shit out of me.
What if it doesn’t work? What if I’m making a huge mistake?
“What are you running from, Nora?” Alice questions now, her words replay in my head. I don’t even know the answer. Am I running from the fear of the unknown, of falling in love, of commitment or is it bigger than that?
“I don’t know what I’m running from. What was I running to when I spent all that time searching?” It’s all just questions with no answers and my head swirls with all the bullshit everyone will dish out at me if this doesn’t work, or worse yet if it does.
“When was the last time you lost someone and the pain was so unbearable?” Alice asks, her face is still and her expression quiet. She knows the answer to this question because she knows the same unbearable pain.
“When Mom died, but you know that already.”
“I still feel it. It never goes away. It’s this dull ache in my chest and every once in a while it comes back and knocks me on my ass.”
“Me too,” I say, pulling in a hard breath.
“The pain was worse when I thought about losing James. When we left Astoria and he was all I could think about. It was compounded and layered and it made me sick to my stomach. My heart knew I needed him to dull the pain of Mom’s death and living without him wasn’t an option. Ask yourself if the pain is worse without Elliot?” She looks over at me, her lips pursed and I can’t even believe I’m sitting here taking advice from Alice, but fuck me if she isn’t so close to right.
I take in her words, listening and learning. The crushing weight of my broken heart feels suffocating and I swallow hard, but it does nothing to stifle the pain.
“When you lose your mother you walk around looking for something you know you’ll never find. Let Elliot be that missing piece, Nora.”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Elliot
I’d like to say with the distance everything somehow miraculously becomes clearer, but it doesn’t. It’s been twenty-four hours since I left New York and while Nora and I have spoken several times, we’ve always danced around the issue of what happens next or where we go from here.
It shouldn’t be this hard, not when we both know we want to be with each other. But there are bigger forces at play here and they are testing us before we’ve even had a chance to really begin. Exhaling, I shove a rough hand through my hair as I step into the elevator in my apartment building, wishing I could find a way to make all of this work.
It’s obvious now that Nora doesn’t want to leave New York and that’s fine, that’s something I can work with. My company has offices there and a transfer is something I can arrange, something I’d be willing to do. Hell, I’d even change jobs entirely because it’s not like I actually love what I do. Not anymore.
It’s the other stuff I can’t find a way to deal with. The second book, the publicity and attention, the idea of turning our lives into a TV show. How we’d be putting everything we’ve spent the last twelve years searching for out there for public consumption, for people to comment on and judge us for.
That’s what I can’t stomach.
The night is cool as I step out onto the street and shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans. Matt is in town for work and even though I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about all of this, he did suggest we catch up for dinner. Maybe it’s his way of apologizing for ever questioning what I was doing. Who knows.
I do know he finds this whole thing with Nora impossible to understand. To him, everything I had with Bridgitte was perfect and right and then I went and threw it all away for a girl I’d spent one night with over a decade ago.
I knew on the surface that it did look and sound ridiculous. But I also knew how I felt, what I was risking letting go of if I gave up on Nora and me.
And the second we’d reconnected in New York six days ago, I knew everything had been worth it. In six short days, I’d felt and had more with her than I’d ever had with Bridgitte and regardless of what happened moving forward, it showed me that I should never settle for anything less than perfect.
I pull my phone from my pocket and hit redial on Nora’s number, needing to hear her voice.
“Hi, I was just thinking about you,” she says, as she answers.
I smile. “Dirty thoughts or…?” I tease.
She laughs, instantly calming me. “Maybe,” she teases back.
“I miss you,” I say, my smile fading as I wish she was here with me and I was taking her to meet my best friend so he could see why giving up everything I had with Bridgitte wasn’t a hard decision for me.
I want to show him who Nora is, give him a chance to get to know her so he can see what I see, which is an amazing woman who makes me want to give her everything.
“I miss you too,” she says, her words quiet. “What are you up to tonight?”
I sigh. “I’m going to have dinner with Matt, he’s in town for work.” I’d told her all about Matt and his wife during our six days together. Everything, minus the fact that Matt thought I was an idiot for chasing a dream I didn’t know existed anymore.
“That sounds like fun.”
“It would be more fun if you were here with me,” I admit, immediately wishing I could take the words back when I hear her sigh down the phone.
“How are we ever going to make this work?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, even though I know exactly what she’s referring to.
“You have a life and a home in Chicago,” she says, her tone flat. “Friends, a job. All the things I have in New York.”
I take in a deep breath, my hand gripping the phone as I continue my walk. “I told you I can transfer my job,” I start. “It might take some—”
“And what happens if you end up resenting me for it,” she says, cutting me off. “What if we break up and you hate being stuck in New York or you never even like it in the first place?”
She stops, neither of us speaking now. I can hear her breathing down the phone and as much as I wish we weren’t having this conversation like this, there’s no turning back now.
“Why would you think we’d break up?” I eventually ask.
Nora exhales and I can almost feel the exhaustion through the phone. It feels like we’ve gone round and round in circles with this. “I don’t know,” she admits, her words quiet. “I guess I’m just scared that one day you’ll hate me for making you move.”
“You aren’t making me do anything,” I tell her. “I want to be with you, Nora and I don’t care where that is as long as we’re together.”