Nevada

Melted Ice Cream.

Estella chose this color for the baby’s nursery based on the name alone. She thought it was fun, whimsical, unpretentious.

“Colors shouldn’t take themselves so seriously,” she’d said with a wink, rubbing her swollen belly. “And it’s the perfect pink.”

She was right. It was.

Pink but not too pink. Light but not too light. We were standing in the middle of the hardware store as she held a dozen different paint swatches in her hands. After what felt like forever, she finally settled on this one, saying she didn’t know why but it made her heart happy.

That was the thing about Estella—she was always making decisions from the heart, never from the mind. She said emotions got in the way of happiness and she was always razzing me for getting lost in thought.

“You think too much, Nev,” she told me at least once a day. “Don’t think, just do.”

Standing in the middle of Essie’s new room and surrounded by pale pink walls the color of melted strawberry ice cream, I place my paint roller aside and take a minute to stretch, massaging away the tension in my lower back when I’m finished.

I could easily hire this work out and pay someone else to break their back, but I need to stay busy.

It keeps me sane.

Bending to finish rolling the last spot on the south wall, I stop when I catch three hard knocks on my front door. They echo through this empty house, and just like that, I’m no longer alone.

Much to my dismay.

Checking my phone, I make sure it’s not my mom or my brother or the Realtor. And when I glance out Essie’s future window, I realize I left the front gate to the driveway wide open.

The rain and moonless sky make it difficult to see, but I’m able to make out the silhouette of a boxy gray sedan parked in front of my door.

I’m not sure who the fuck thinks it’s appropriate to pound on someone’s door at nine o’clock on a Wednesday night, but I wipe my hands on a damp rag and trudge downstairs.

“This house has everything,” the listing agent said.

Bull fucking shit.

Where’s the peephole?

I suppose with this house being a million years old and these doors being imported from some fifteenth century church in France, they probably felt it would’ve been detrimental to the integrity of the wood to drill holes in them.

With one hand on my hip and an ache in my shoulder, I exhale. I don’t have time for this shit.

Pulling the door open, I’m taken aback by the sight of a soaking wet Yardley Devereaux standing at my doorstep.

My lips press and my jaw flexes, and I have half a mind to slam the door in her face, but before I get the opportunity, she barges into my house.

“I need to talk to you,” she says. Her body shivers in my cold foyer and her stormy blue eyes pierce through me.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Her trembling hand splays across her chest, rising and falling with each trapped breath, and little trickles of rain fall down her forehead.

“I get that you hate me,” she says, chin lowered. “But you have to stop this.”

I frown, crossing my arms and keeping my distance. “Stop what?”

Standing this close to her and being forced to interact sends a catch to my throat that doesn’t belong. I swore her off years ago. I forced myself to pretend she was fucking dead. And she is dead—at least the version of her I once loved. That girl, the one with stars in her eyes and promises on her tongue … no longer exists.

“Now that you’re back in town, we’re going to run into each other,” she says. “We don’t have to be friends. We don’t have to talk. But you can at least treat me like a goddamned human being.”

I drag my palm across my tensed jaw before exhaling. This is about earlier.

“Who just … plows into someone and knocks everything out of their arms and keeps going?” she asks, stepping closer to me. “Where’s your decency?”

I want to ask where her decency was ten years ago. Was she treating me like a “human being” when she tossed my heart into a fucking meat grinder?

“And why did you ignore me all these years, Nevada?” Her voice breaks, and the way she says my name sends a tightness to my middle. I haven’t heard my name on her lips since a lifetime ago. “If you’d have just let me explain …”

“No need.”

Her expression softens before her gaze falls to the polished wood floors. “Things could’ve been different for us.”

“Doubtful.”

She tucks a strand of dark, soaked hair behind one ear before pulling in a jagged breath. “I don’t understand how you could love me like you did and then not give me a chance to tell you what happened.”

“I have my reasons.”

Had I given her a chance to explain all those years ago, I’d have taken her back. I know it. I’d have been a fucking doormat because that’s how infallible my love was for this girl. And then I’d have to live the rest of my life knowing I was head over heels in love with a girl who felt it was okay to be careless with my heart.

It wasn’t okay.

We made promises to each other. I kept mine. She didn’t. End of story.

There’s no explanation in the world that would change those things.

“Why did you buy this house, Nevada?” she asks a moment later, her stare finding mine.

I shake my head, brows meeting. “For my daughters. But that’s really none of your business.”

Her bottom lip trembles, and she looks away.

“Did you think … did you think I bought it because of you?” I ask, with a half chuckle, recalling the promise I’d once made to her the summer before I left for school. Had she really held onto that after all these years? Is she that delusional that she thinks I moved back here and bought this house so that we could be together again?

Yardley doesn’t answer.

“You did.” I huff. My stance widens as I examine her. “This is why people shouldn’t make assumptions.”

Her pretty face hardens and her chest rises and falls as her gaze flicks onto mine. “You’re right, Nevada. People shouldn’t make assumptions.”

With that, she turns and leaves, slamming my door behind her, but it doesn’t catch and instead it bounces open. From the pale light of my foyer, I watch her run back to her car in the rain, the headlights cutting through the dark night as she pulls away.

And just like that, she’s gone.

I hope she’s pleased with herself, barging in on me like that when she knew damn well I wanted nothing to do with her. Not sure what she expected to accomplish by coming in here and confronting me, but something tells me she won’t do it again.

I didn’t budge on my stance.

I didn’t soften my heart for her.

I didn’t offer her my sympathies or so much as a towel to dry her rain-soaked clothes.

There’s nothing on God’s green earth that could possibly convince me to change my mind about her.

The damage is done. And nothing can fix it.