Bombora by Mal Peters

because they’re very different, same as Nell and Emilia were very different women, and Nate and I are different men.
    Upstairs, there’s some shuffling around and the sound of various objects being slammed, hopefully nothing of mine, but then everything goes quiet and I recognize my cue. Tail thumping, Callie keeps one eye on the ceiling like it could start up again any minute, but I know it won’t. Nate knows the two things he can always expect from me are tough love and someone to have his back, which might seem contradictory but really aren’t. Right now he’s railing against the fact that staying in my house means having to put up with my honest assessment of his idiocy. But he’ll get over it, and together we’ll figure out what’s next.
    Sure enough, Nate is sitting on the edge of his bed when I pause in the doorway of his bedroom—so named because he has a standing invitation here—and while his bag is indeed packed, it isn’t zippered. Having arrived with just his bike, he packed light. Nate glances up at me without saying anything, waiting, and eventually I approach and take a seat next to him on the mattress. Busybody that she is, Callie leaps onto the bed and settles herself precisely in the middle, head nestled on her paws so she can watch us both by only twitching her eyes back and forth. I guess for her this is better than reality television.
    “You know you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want,” I say grimly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” It’s not an apology, but I’m not going to say sorry for speaking the truth when Nate probably needs it most.
    “That’s totally what you intended,” Nate says with a snort. He’s right. Or at least I didn’t try not to upset him. “It’s, like, your God-given right to try and piss me off.” He falls silent for a few seconds before adding, “I know you think I took my marriage for granted, Hugh, but it wasn’t like what you had with Nell. You two chose each other, legitimately wanted to spend the rest of your lives together in a way I never got to think about with Emilia. Yeah, I love her, and God knows I love Liam more than I can say, but jumpin’ into that marriage was just the first in a long line of shit I didn’t really think through.” He huffs, and I know he’s ready to try to inject humor into the situation—Nate’s special way of trying to regroup, not so much from me as the issue at hand. It’s how he deals. “Well, that and not using a rubber. Woulda served me right if I’d gotten the syph or somethin’.”
    With a sigh, I reach out and pat his knee, registering that Nate is a bit thinner than when I saw him last, the tiredness coming through in the quiet slump of his shoulders and the way his flesh seems to cling to his bones with only purpose and no joy. Nate, when he’s content, is the kind of person to let things slide and embrace a little happy weight; it occurs to me that, by those standards at least, he probably looked happier in the last year than I’ve seen him in a long time. Not that he’ll ever be fat, because Nate works too hard for that to happen, but he certainly had the look of a man at ease in his life. I don’t know whether to thank this other woman for that, whoever she is, or blame her.
    “The fact that you asked for a divorce is a start,” I tell Nate. “At least you’re not leading Emilia on by pretending it’s what you still want. A bit late, but better than never. I guess.”
    To my surprise, rather than accepting the olive branch for what it is, Nate grimaces. “Ironically, I think that’s what pissed her off the most of anything,” he admits. “Emilia was ready to sweep the whole thing under the rug—forget about my ‘phase’, as she called it—and couldn’t believe I wasn’t willing to do the same. But by that point it couldn’t have gone any other way, man. You’re right in that much.”
    I hesitate for a second, pitying Emilia and fretting about Liam, but also