Capitulito X

Nick and I were never that couple who went to dinner parties with our friends.

When he was home my friends knew not to call.

They never even knew who he was. I was always too afraid they wouldn’t believe me, or if they did, I was afraid they’d treat me differently.

Differently than what?

I was the eccentric artist who talked incessantly about Emily Dickinson and Ansel Adams. The one who cried like a baby when Walter Matthau Died. The only one who knew who Walter Matthau was.

So many of my friends weren’t in college any more. So many of my friends were married with beautiful little babies named after saints and angels.

Gabriel and Rebecca and Mary and Catherine and Alexis, my goddaughter, and Melanie and Julian and Phoebe.

The list went on. So many baby showers and birthdays.

And I remained the eccentric artist with the mysterious boyfriend.

Nick’s friends were another story.

Nick loved when Brent and Thomas and Michael and Casey and all his “home boys,” as I called them, came over. Nick would vacuum and mop and dust, even though they were the guys everything had to be clean.

He’d invite me over and we’d stay up all night with the home boys and drink beer and eat whatever he had hanging around the house.

That’s when he wasn’t Nick or Kaos. He was Squeak and sometimes Spaz Boy, and occasionally Nick-o-laas.

When the home boys were there he smiled all the time. He would just look at me and grin.

“I’m home, Amber, it really feels like I’m finally home.”

I never told him how much those words hurt me.

Wasn’t I home enough?