Right now he’s sweet and empathetic, but what about a week from now? What if I’m having a bad day and when I tell him about it, I’m not met with this sweet, empathetic variation of Nicholas but the other one? The one who turned distant when issues arose that he didn’t want to face? That Nicholas is going to come back, sooner or later, and he’s going to make me sorry for being this vulnerable with him.
I can’t forget what he’s said in the past. Naomi doesn’t need a job. Don’t punish me for being successful enough to buy a nice vehicle. His bitterness that I held him back from that job offer in Madison. He can apologize a thousand times, but I’ll always wonder if he meant what he said. If he believes in me.
“Whatever you want to do,” he tells me, “I’ll support you.”
My mind flashes to the diner in Tenmouth. The haunted house. I say nothing.
“I’m sorry about my mom.”
“Me, too.”
“And my dad.”
“I’m sorry for your dad and Beatrice.”
This gets a chuckle out of him. “Beatrice. Her favorite daughter, Mom used to call her. It’s a mystery why Heather never comes around.”
“Poor Heather.” Maybe she deserves the maid of honor role after all. I feed the errant thought into a wood chipper, because there won’t be a maid of honor. There won’t be a wedding. Nicholas and I can’t even walk down an aisle of wedding decorations, must less the aisle for our real wedding.
It’s all going to fall apart, and this truth doesn’t bring me any satisfaction at all. Right now, I don’t hate Nicholas. I can pinpoint all the qualities about him I’ll miss. But it can’t go on. It would be so much easier if he hadn’t started warming up to me again, if we hadn’t started being honest with each other, exposing what we really think and feel. I want to be able to walk away at the end of this with strong resolve and the knowledge that I’m doing what’s best for myself. For both of us.
I think Nicholas sees my confusion and inner turbulence but misconstrues it as disappointment over the craft store job, because the smile he gives me is not a smile he could put on his face if he knew I’m thinking about how I’ll have to leave him.
“There’s something I want to show you, too,” he tells me, and leads me by the hand into the drawing room. My eyes pass over the nutcracker on the mantel and my heart pangs.
He perches on the edge of his desk and motions for me to sit in his computer chair. “I want you to see what I spend most of my time on the computer doing. It’s not work-related.”
Oh god. If he’s about to click on Pornhub, I’d really rather just not. There’s sharing and then there’s oversharing.
“Relax, it’s not bad.” What he shows me wipes away all my melancholy, because I’m so astonished there isn’t room for any.
“Are you serious?” I stare up at him.
He nods solemnly.
“This.”
“That.”
I blink at the screen. He’s level 91 in a computer game called Nightjar. From what I can see of his home page, it’s a fantasy quest featuring all sorts of mythical creatures. His account name is … “It’s Al Lover?”
“Not Al lover. My name’s itsallover, smartass.” He pinches my arm. “As in it’s all over. Those are Cardale’s last words, and it launches the whole quest to find the … don’t laugh!”
I’m fighting a smile. “Sorry.” This is prime material. “Who’s Cardale?”
He frowns at me.
“I’m not teasing you.” I close my hand over his. “I’m just surprised, is all. But I want to know everything about this game. Level ninety-one? You must really love Al.”
He rolls his eyes, but says, “Okay, Cardale is this ancient wizard who was in the middle of extracting a prophecy from the Dream Realm when he was attacked. That’s how your journey as a player starts. Everyone’s on the hunt for this prophecy, because his dying words were ‘It’s all over,’ so people think something terrible is going to happen but they don’t know for sure because the prophecy’s gone. If you were familiar with the game, you’d have recognized right away what my name means—”
“Okay, okay.” He’s so sensitive about this, and it’s kind of cute. “You’re level ninety-one. That’s pretty high. Are you close to finding the prophecy?”
“I’ve found the prophecy fourteen times. Every time I win, I restart the game and the prophecy automatically jumps to a different location with a different set of clues, so I get to find it all over again.”
“When you find it, what does it say?” I’m actually getting into this.
“It changes every time. But on the forums—there are forums where we talk about the game—we think they all connect. We get a simple sentence when we win, and it’s kind of vague and fortune-cookie-ish and doesn’t always make contextual sense, but when we compiled them in a database we found patterns. There are tons of theories, but personally I think there are hundreds of possible prophecies and if you arrange them in a specific order, it tells a story about who really killed Cardale.”
He talks in an eager rush as he explains this to me. I cannot believe I’ve been so in the dark about this side of his life. It always annoyed me that he disappeared so frequently to his computer, but never once did I contemplate what he was doing on it. He’s got a whole world of his own I didn’t even know about! In hindsight, I’m a little miffed at myself for not being more curious. The man’s a dentist. What did I think he was doing on the computer night after night? Staring at X-rays of people’s teeth for hours? God, Naomi. You are oblivious.
“Who’s this guy?” I move the mouse over an animated figure who’s revolving in place on a platform, shifting his pose every so often so that he’s flexing his biceps, then planting his meaty fists on his hips. He’s wearing a black hood over his face and the whole effect reminds me of Man Ray from SpongeBob. I do not vocalize this.
“That’s my character, Grayson.”
“Grayson? Does that name have special meaning?”
“I named him after a comic book superhero, Dick Grayson.” I snort and he pokes me. “Very mature. Back in the forties, they went around calling people Dick because they didn’t know someday you would laugh at it. Anyway, I have other characters, too, but Grayson has the most experience points so I use him for the more dangerous quests.”
I goggle at him. “Who are you?”
He gives me a lopsided smile, which I return. “A giant nerd.” I think maybe I have a thing for giant nerds. “Show me how to play.”
His eyes light up. “Really?”
“If you wouldn’t mind sharing this with me. I understand if you don’t.” I’m impressed by my own maturity when I add, “If you want to keep it for yourself, as an activity you do alone, I get that.”
“No, I’d love for you to play with me!”
I can tell he means it. It hasn’t been a secret that he uses his computer to escape, but here he is inviting me along on that escape with him. “In that case, I want an avatar with purple hair, three boobs, and a Viking helmet.”