Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Jamie might speak plain and do it as a habit, but he wasn’t going to remind Nico that he’d witnessed how he was with his father, so he knew, when Nico needed someone to turn to of maturity who’d been there, his father was not going to be that.
Instead, he said, “I can’t say I haven’t fallen into this trap in my lifetime, more than once. Too many times to feel comfortable. And that’s because I should have been smart enough to figure it out long before it became uncomfortable. That’s to say, I understand that somewhere in our evolutionary history, men decided that talking and expressing their emotions is a weakness. And they made that decision because women do it, so they segregated it into feminine and masculine, with anything they erroneously deemed as weak being feminine. Women can feel and share. But even though men feel just as much, they cannot. And frankly, that’s just, plain, fucking stupid. Like women, we feel hurt, joy, sorrow, elation, betrayal. Burying emotion and becoming an asshole no one wants to deal with doesn’t seem like a wise answer to life’s many issues. Getting shit out with someone you can trust, working your way through it, and hopefully finding some answers is a better way to go about it. Don’t you agree?”
Nico was staring at him, but he used his mouth to say, “You really don’t hold back.”
“Like I said, not when shit is important. And you’re important, Nico.”
If Castellini had been anywhere near him in that moment, Jamie might have been moved to cut him gut to gullet at the look on Nico’s face when Jamie said that. Because it was clear Castellini had not made a point of being absolutely certain his son knew he was important.
Fortunately, that moron was nowhere near.
And Jamie had to pay attention, because Nico was talking.
“Okay then, straight up, it’s like she thinks she married a different guy. The longer I’m with her, it’s like she hates everything about me.”
Jamie nodded again.
“She has a real problem about class,” Nico informed him.
“I’m sorry to say, that wasn’t lost on me.”
Nico flinched. “Did she say something to you to make you uncomfortable?”
“Not personally. But I wasn’t a fan of the digs and looks she gave Nora.”
He watched Nico’s jaw bulge, sharing he wasn’t big on that either, before he pointed out, “I mean, I can not be rich. It’s doable, obviously. I can give away my trust fund. I can ask Mom and Dad to disinherit me. But that’s fucking lunacy.”
“It is,” Jamie agreed.
“She cares about everything. At first, I thought that was incredibly cool. She reads The Times religiously. She knows how senators and congresspeople vote. But she spends a lot of time up in her phone, watching these TikToks that serve no purpose but to piss her off. I’ve told her she’s feeding into the algorithms, and seeing stuff that only sounds in her personalized echo chamber, without getting any alternate perspectives, but she doesn’t listen. I’ve asked her to stop, or at least cut back her screen time, and, I don’t know, maybe spend some time with me. She says she will, then she doesn’t, and our lives are permeated by what she consumes. One day, we can’t eat at Chick-fil-A. She reads something, the next day, we can. And that’s with everything, Jamie. Everything.”
Jamie could imagine that would be very frustrating.
Nico continued, “And, a month ago, she said she wanted to leave the city. Move to Vermont. Use my trust fund to buy some cabin or something. Plant a big garden. Slaughter our own pigs and chickens. I mean, slaughter our own meat, for chrissakes.”
Jamie grew up on a ranch. The circle of life was not lost on him.
That said, he liked his steak, but he’d never slaughtered an animal and he had no desire to do so.
“This Vermont full-time idea is out the blue,” Nico told him. “She never hinted at wanting to leave the city. She told me she loves it here. She can go to protests. She can go to poetry readings. All that shit. Now, she wants to raise pigs and figure out how to make our own Oreos organically and go off the grid. It’s freaky.”
Jamie leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “No one stays the same. We all grow. Mature. Change. And sometimes, if you’re in a couple, when you do that, you grow apart.”
Nico nodded, right before he shook his head.
“I think she’s always been like this. I think I was like…one of her causes. This poor little rich boy she can show the way. But, serious to Christ, there’s only so many times a man can listen to a woman shouting at him because he forgot to clean out a Ziploc when he’s just done.”