Cold Feet in Hot Sand (2 page)

No answer.

She knocked harder, clenching her jaw and pounding the door with her fist. “Nick? We need to talk.”

Don’t make me break this door down, or I’ll break you down next, damn it.

Still no answer. Deanna scowled. Either he wasn’t answering or he wasn’t here, but if he’d left, he hadn’t gone far. Not unless he took a taxi. Wherever he was, it was probably within walking distance.

And she’d have bet money it was a bar. Though Nick had never been a heavy drinker, he’d been known to take a dip in a bottle when he was stressed, and whether he’d brought it on his own damn self or not, chances were he was stressed now.

It was still early in the evening, but this was a vacation spot. No such thing as too early to get the booze flowing, and some of the tacky touristy Tiki bars already had a few people hunched over beer bottles and stemmed fishbowls with giant umbrellas sticking out.

No sign of Nick in the first bar. Or the second. Third time wasn’t the charm. She tried two more, then walked back the other direction and tried the ones down that way.

Four bars down from the motel, Deanna found another bar that looked just like the others: a dry grass roof over a string of plastic light-up
Corona
bottles, recorded steel drum music coming from hidden speakers, and supports and braces built using weathered driftwood. She stepped inside and pulled off her sunglasses. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from being outside, but as soon as they did, she homed in on him.

He was
at
the end of the bar, a brown bottle in front of him and his forehead resting in his hand. His sandy blond hair looked damp, so he must have taken a swim in the ocean or grabbed a shower before he came out. His shoulders slumped beneath his faded Hawaiian shirt, and he would have looked drunk and sluggish if not for the way his knee bounced rapidly with the tempo of his tapping foot.

Grinding her teeth and resisting the urge to cuss him out from the opposite end of the room, she stormed across the sand-dusted wood floor.

She was about five steps away when he turned his head, and as soon as he saw her, he mouthed “Oh, fuck” just before he looked away.

The fury in her chest threatened to boil over. “Nick Wallace, you had better have a goddamned bulletproof explanation for why you’re here right now.”

He looked at her again, his eyes narrow. “That depends on how willing you are to hear it.”

“Oh, I am all fucking ears,” she snarled. “Do enlighten me as to why I’ve been consoling my sister all day when
—
”

“Deanna…”

“
—
she’s supposed to be saying ‘I do’ with the man she’s in love
—
”

“Deanna.”

“
—
with out on a fucking beach after hauling all of us all this way for
—
”

“
Deanna.
”

She snapped her mouth shut.

“Do you want to know why I’m here and not there?” he asked coolly. “Or do you want to tell me why I’m an asshole and then leave me to finish my beer?”

Grinding her teeth, she said, “I’m not sure I want to know. I came down here to talk some sense into you, but I
—
”

“Save your breath, then.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s over.” He focused his attention on his beer bottle, hunching over it like he needed to protect it. Or needed it to protect him. “Kristina and I, we’re…” Trailing off, he shook his head, and the recorded steel drum nearly masked the whispered, “We’re done.”

She pressed her fingers into the bridge of her nose. “And why are you done today of all days? Why did you have to end it
now?
”

“Do you really want to know?” he asked. “Or do you just want to chew me out?”

Deanna exhaled.

Nick held her gaze. “I know I’m not in a position to ask any favors, but you’ve been my friend long enough to know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need to.”

She glared at him, but didn’t speak.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said. “Anything you want. All I ask is that, for the time it takes you to drink that drink, you’ll listen to me.”

She pursed her lips. “I’m guessing something in a shot glass isn’t an option.”

“Deanna, please,” he whispered, and the hint of desperation in his voice took her aback. “I’m just asking you to hear me out.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she looked toward the bottles behind the bar just because she couldn’t hold his gaze anymore. “Fine. Make it a Long Island Iced Tea.”

“You’re drinking a
—
”

“Just order it before I ask for a tequila shot instead,” she growled, throwing him a pointed look.

Nick’s eyebrows jumped. “All right, all right.” He flagged down the bartender, and neither of them spoke while they waited for her drink.

She should have known the drink would be huge, and when the bartender set the fishbowl in front of her, she almost groaned. Even in her heavy drinking days, this thing would have taken her forever to finish. Apparently she was staying a while tonight.

She pulled out the barstool next to his and took a seat. “All right. Talk.”

Nick focused on the bar. “What has Kristina said? About… me leaving?”

“I thought you were doing the talking here,” she said.

“Right.” He exhaled hard and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay, look. I’m sorry I hurt your sister, Deanna. I know everyone is probably as pissed as you are right now, and I don’t blame you.”

“Then why did you do it?”

He was silent for a moment. After a while, he said, “Your mother and your sister have been planning this thing for a year. I don’t even want to know how much money has gone into this.”
He rested his hand on his other forearm and looked at her. “All I
know is

it’s Kristina’s dream day down to the last detail.”

“Almost the last detail.” She shot him another look. “Except you can’t have a wedding without a groom.”

His eyes narrowed. “And this begs the question: is Kristina upset because her groom left? Or because her future husband left?”

Deanna ran her finger along the rim of her giant glass. “What are you getting at?”

“That maybe Kristina’s more in love with getting married than she is with getting married to me.”

“So that’s it?” she asked. “You didn’t like her
—
the bride
—
being the center of attention on your wedding day, so you called the whole thing off?”

“It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “Look, you were there after I left. I’m curious, did anyone stop to wonder how I felt or why I did what I did? Did anyone stop to ask why I left her? Or were they just pissed that I left Kristina at the altar?”

Deanna replayed the furious and tearful conversations from this morning on. With a sick feeling in her gut, she realized he was right. They’d all
—
herself included
—
ranted about what a jerk he was. Poor, poor Kristina. And all the money and effort that had gone into the wedding!

But no one, not even Darlene, had been concerned about Nick. Finding him and choking him, maybe, but not how he felt or why he wasn’t there.

She took a long drink from her glass, then folded her hands beside the giant Long Island Iced Tea. “All right. I’m listening. Why did you leave?”

Nick took a deep breath. “I love her, Deanna. Don’t doubt that for a second. But over the last few months, I’ve started to realize a lot of things about our relationship that just…” He shook his head. “I can’t be with her.”

“Why not?”

“The short answer? Because we’re miserable together.” He tapped his fingers on the side of his beer bottle. “Half the time, we’re each off in our own, separate little worlds. The other half, we’re fighting. She wants different things out of life than I do, I want different things than she does.”

“Such as?”

“Everything,” he grumbled, and took a drink. “How many kids. When to have kids. How to raise them. Where to live. Smaller stuff like the kinds of places we wanted to travel, or the things we wanted to do in our off time. It sounds like something stupid, but it’s kind of hard to be married to someone who doesn’t share your interests, you know?”

Deanna sipped her drink, grimacing as the alcohol burned the back of her throat. “You guys had common interests when you started dating, though.”

“We’d barely dated four months before we got engaged.” His cheeks colored. “
Every
couple has common interests that early in the game.”

“Oh.” She waved a hand. “Okay, no details. I know what you’re getting at.”

“Sorry,” he said with a subtle shrug. “You know, the really sad thing is, it took getting engaged to her to see how incompatible we are. The writing was on the wall, but once she had a ring, the neon signs started going up.”

“Why didn’t you call it off sooner, then?”

Nick released a breath. “I tried. I just couldn’t get up the nerve to do it. God, I even tried to get her to call it off.”

“How did you manage that?”

His cheeks reddened and he lowered his gaze. “I’m not proud of it, okay? I feel like a complete asshole, but I was just kind of… freaking out, I guess. So I started keeping my distance a bit. Didn’t talk to her much. Barely touched her. Worked longer and longer hours. Just kind of started being an asshole.” He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “And you know what the fucked up thing is? I don’t think she even noticed.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Half the time, I’d come home late, and she’d be out with your mom or her friends doing wedding stuff anyway.” He turned toward Deanna. “I’m not justifying what I did. It was a dickish thing to do, and I regret it.”

She shifted on her barstool. “What made you do it, though? I mean, what started it? I always thought you two were pretty happy together.”

“I think we thought we were too,” he said. “But the cracks started showing after a while. We’ve had some really bad fights the last few months.”

“Every couple has fights, though.”

“These were bad. And over stupid shit, too.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “You know those idiotic fights where you’re screaming at each other, no one’s listening, and you know deep down you’re not yelling about what the real problem is?”

“Ooh, yeah.” Deanna took a long drink from the fishbowl. “Jason and I had those as part of our ‘hi honey how was your day?’ routine.”

Nick grimaced. “So you
—
”