Cold Feet in Hot Sand Read Free

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 — ”
     
    “Jason was also cheating , Nick,” she said. “That was why our marriage ended. Not because of the stupid fights.”
     
    “Can’t imagine it made you want to stick around, though.” Before she could reply, he said, “Let’s look at this from a different angle. For a second, let’s forget all the relationship issues.” He watched himself work his thumbnail under the label of his beer bottle. “Let’s focus on just the wedding.”
     
    “Okay…”
     
    “It’s my wedding too, you know?”
     
    She cocked her head. “I never realized you thought weddings were a big