Nothing else there 18

Aria’s POV

The morning after the wedding I come into the kitchen and Nick is at the counter with coffee already made and I don’t even think about it anymore.

The mug is there, the milk is in it, and I sit down the way you sit down in a place that’s becoming yours without anyone signing a document about it.

“So,” I say. “Last night.”

He looks up from his phone and something in his face is lighter than usual, looser, like last night cracked open a window in him that hasn’t closed yet. “Last night.”

“Did you see Camille’s face when you picked up the microphone?” I wrap my hands around the mug. “She was holding a canapé and it just stayed in the air. Mid-bite. Frozen. Like someone pressed pause on her entire body.”

He starts laughing — not the careful laugh, the real one, the one that creases the corners of his eyes and makes him lean back in his chair. “I saw the uncle with the bow tie. He looked at me like I’d pulled a fire alarm.”

“The woman in the blue dress near the bar,” I say, and I’m grinning now, I can feel it. “She grabbed her husband’s arm like she needed physical support to process the information.”

He’s laughing harder, his hand over his mouth, and I’m laughing too and the sound fills the apartment and I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this at a kitchen table.

He stops laughing before I do. And then he looks at me.

Not the way he usually looks — the careful way, the respectful distance he keeps between his eyes and anything that might make me uncomfortable. This is different.

His face is still half-smiling and his eyes are warm and he’s looking at me like I’m someone he’s glad to be sitting across from on a Tuesday morning — not someone he’s helping, not someone he’s managing, just someone who made him laugh and he can’t stop looking at.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.” He picks up his coffee and takes a sip but his eyes stay on mine over the rim for a second longer than they need toю

The heat rises to my face and I press my fingers around the ceramic and focus on that warmth instead of the other one. There’s something happening and I know exactly what it is — I’m not confused, I’m scared. Because the last time I felt something like this I called it love and handed a man my entire life and he spent thirteen years returning it in pieces. Feeling things for Nick is easy. Trusting what I feel is the part I don’t know how to do anymore.

To finally focus my attention on something that is not Nick, I pull my phone out to check Janet’s email. The screen is still open to the job board I was scrolling through at two in the morning — administrative positions, and entry-level marketing.

Things I used to know how to do before Dominic decided my only job was being his wife.

“What’s that?” Nick says suddenly behind me, and I turn the phone face-down.

“Nothing.”

He reaches across and turns it back before I can grab for it.

He holds it out of reach, reading the screen while I lean into him, practically jumping, trying to get it back. For three seconds we look just like two people fighting over a phone like children.

“Give me my phone!”

“You’re job hunting?” he says grinning, and hands it over.

“I’m just browsing, Nick.” I set the phone down. “I’ve been thinking about how I used to be someone before all of this. I was sharp starting a career, I had something that was mine. Now I’m thirty-four and I haven’t worked in twelve years and I’m…”

I stop. The rest of the sentence is too heavy to say out loud: pregnant, living on someone else’s goodwill, again. Starting from nothing at an age when most people are mid-stride.

“I want to do something,” I say. “I want to be part of something again.”

He nods and doesn’t rush to fill the space, just lets the sentence sit there between us the way he lets everything sit — patiently, without trying to fix it.

Then he leans forward with his elbows on the table. “Work for me then. My personal assistant position is still open — part-time, flexible. Whatever works for you.”

“Nick, it’s been twelve years since I…”

“I know how long it’s been.” His voice is steady, unhurried. “And I remember what you were like before that. I was there, Aria.”

He says it simply, like a fact, and something opens in my chest. A door I’ve kept shut for so long I forgot there was a room behind it.

Because I remember too.

I remember him before Dominic — the afternoon he found me crying in the stairwell over a report I’d gotten wrong, and sat down on the cold concrete beside me without asking, and stayed until I laughed at something he said that wasn’t even that funny.

I remember the specific feeling of not wanting to stop laughing because laughing meant it was over and he’d stand up and I’d have to watch him go back to his floor and pretend the stairwell was just a stairwell and he was just a colleague and what I felt sitting next to him was just gratitude.

I liked him. Before Dominic walked into my life and rearranged everything with a certainty that felt like gravity. Before I confused being chosen with being seen.

I liked Nick first. And I’d buried that underneath thirteen years of a man who made sure I didn’t have room to remember.

“You were more than a good assistant,” Nick says, pushing his sleeves up and I can see the tendons in his forearms. I notice this and then I notice that I’m noticing it. “You were the person everyone in the building wanted on their project because you actually gave a shit.”

“That’s not on my resume,” I say, and my voice comes out lighter than I expected.

“It should be.”

I look at him across the table. “I’m pregnant, Nick. I don’t even know if the doctor would clear me.”

“Then we ask the doctor first.” He leans back and his ankle settles against mine under the table and neither of us moves. “Whenever you’re ready, the job is yours. No conditions.”

“You keep saying that. No conditions.”

“Because there aren’t any.”

“Everyone has conditions.”

“I’m not everyone.” He holds my eyes across the table. “And you already know that.”

I do. That’s the problem.

I know it in a way that’s starting to settle somewhere below the careful structure I’ve built around every interaction with every man since Dominic.

Somewhere below the measuring and the checking and the waiting for the trap.

Somewhere that responds to the way he says my name and the way he remembers the milk. Or the way he just told me he still remembers the old me and didn’t make it a confession.

Just set it down on the table between us without asking me to pick it up, giving me time to decide.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll talk to the doctor.”

“Good.” He picks up his coffee. “Tomorrow, ten AM — we should make sure the twins are okay before you start your corporate takeover.”

“I’m applying for an assistant job, Nick.”

“Today assistant, tomorrow CEO.” He tips his mug at me. “I’ve seen your work ethic.”