“Sometime in the next two months, we get the papers in the mail, and we’re divorced. The way we did it, there’s no drama.”
“That’s something at least.”
Greg called to check on her too, and invited her to dinner, but she said she was too busy. She had a new client and had to get started with the preliminaries, but she promised to see him soon. On the heels of going to the notaire to end her marriage, she didn’t feel ready to throw her arms open to Greg, and something about him always stopped her. She didn’t know what it was. He was too unemotional, or too businesslike. She kept shying away from starting anything with him, although she knew she was interested in him, but not enough. And in an odd way, she still felt married to Nicolas, and as though she’d be cheating on him. She wondered how long it would take for that to go away, and to feel like a fully free woman. Maybe when she got the papers. But just as paperwork didn’t make the essence of a marriage—as Athena and Joe had amply demonstrated—papers alone didn’t end a marriage either, as Nadia was discovering.
* * *
—
She was working late on her first big proposal for her new client, who had bought a beautiful house in the seventh arrondissement and was a friend of another client, when her cellphone rang. She picked it up without looking. She was staring at a drawing on her desk of the kitchen she envisioned for them with a glass sun roof that could be opened on warm days over the garden. It made it feel like a country home, not just a city house. She was startled to hear Nicolas’s voice.
“Are you awake?” He sounded serious.
“I’m working. Is something wrong?”
“Yes…no…I don’t know. I guess the answer to that has been yes for the past year. I’m downstairs. Can I come up?”
“I’ve got a presentation tomorrow, so you can’t stay long. We can’t talk on the phone?” She would have preferred it. They were almost divorced now.
“No,” he said firmly.
“The girls are asleep. Don’t ring the bell, I’ll buzz you in.” She sighed and put her pen down. The drawing still didn’t look right to her. There was something cumbersome about it.
She buzzed him in a minute later, and he came upstairs fresh from a cold rainy night. He left his coat in the hall, came to sit across from her desk in her office, and glanced at her work, as he had a million times before.
“It’s top-heavy,” he said. “The roof of the glass house needs to be lighter. In a peak maybe?” She looked at it and realized he was right.
“Thank you. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.”
“I thought our meeting with the notaire was really depressing.”
“It would be more so if we fought about it for ten years. I was surprised at how easy it was,” she said.
“Too easy. Is that what you want, Nadia? You open an envelope one day in the next few months, and that’s it. It’s over. We’re divorced. Why can’t you give us another chance? Why can’t you put me on probation? Punish me. Have me followed. Give me a lie detector test once a week.”
“I’m not a policeman, and I don’t want to be. I went through hell. Now it’s peaceful. I don’t want to go through that again.” She was definite about it. It was a decision of the head, not the heart, which would have said something different. She didn’t trust her heart either, any more than she did his actions.
“I’ve learned so much from it. Doesn’t that count for something?”
She hesitated, not sure what to say to him. She had made up her mind and wanted to stick to it.
“It might,” she finally said softly. “But I couldn’t go through that horror again. I don’t want to take the chance. I’d rather have no life, with just my work and the girls, than have you break my heart again. What did you do in Brittany, by the way?” She was curious.
“I’m having the baby come to Paris twice a month, so we get to know each other.” It touched her that he cared, even though his relationship with Pascale was over and the baby had been an accident. He had always had a soft side that she loved. He liked children and was so good to them. She had loved that about him.
“That’s sweet.”
“I am sweet.” He smiled sheepishly at her. “When I’m not being an asshole.” She laughed. “Nadia, please, don’t give up on us. I don’t want those papers to come and just erase everything we had.”
“They won’t. We have all those memories of the good times,” she said with tenderness in her voice and a lump in her throat. “Nothing can erase those.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said with a sigh, and then he walked around her desk, gently pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He didn’t know what else to do or say. He loved her, and she didn’t believe him or didn’t care or didn’t want him anymore. But the pull between them was so powerful and the force so magnetic, that without even thinking about it, she kissed him back, and they kissed for a long time. She made a soft moaning sound when they stopped.
“Oh, Nicolas, please don’t…don’t do this to me, to us. I’ve tried so hard to put ‘us’ behind me, to stop loving you. Don’t torture me.” She was almost in tears.
“I love you, Nadia. I don’t want to put it behind us.” He kissed her again with even more passion, and she held on to him in just the way she had missed for months now.
“You have to go.” Her voice was hoarse and sexy. “You’re a menace,” she said, smiling at him. He had always been the most handsome, sexiest man she’d ever known. He was almost irresistible, but she was resisting, or trying to.
“Will you think about it?” he begged her, as she walked him back to the front door and he didn’t resist her.
“No!…Yes, dammit. You’re impossible.”
“You can’t divorce me while you still love me. That’s insane.”
“No, it’s not. It’s probably the sanest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You don’t divorce someone you love,” he argued. “I’ll tell them we have a dispute, and I don’t agree with your proposals. I’ll recall the papers.”
“You can’t. They’ve already been approved by the notaire and they’re being processed by the judge.”
“I hate you. Goddammit, don’t be so sensible. Nadia, this is our life, our marriage. It’s not a business deal. Yes, maybe we’ll make a mess of it, or I will, but can’t we at least try?” As he said it, she thought of her sister, confessing her sins fifteen years later, and Harley walking out on her. Somehow he had forgiven her. Maybe she could forgive Nicolas too. It was the first time she had really thought about it and wondered if they should try. “I know I don’t deserve you, Nadia. But I love you, I really do.”