Love Expectations (Season 1 of Nata and Phillip's Romance) ✔️

13. 'Once in a blue moon'

Phillip

The code my assistant sends me works on the lock. I open the left door of the duplex VdH provides to long-term research contractors when they stay for extended periods of time to consult or participate in a project.

The entry way is part of a living-room kitchen combo with a staircase that leads upstairs. I've been to dozens of these, and the only distinguishing feature is the address. Gray-beige walls. Identical sleeper-sofas.

My eye runs over the blond floors, thin carpet, soulless prints on the wall and the equally bland milky blinds on the door leading to the backyard. Musty and pot-pourri sweet, the smell reminds me of the attic space at Dad's house with trunks of Mom's stuff he agreed to put away but not throw away.

To me, this apartment is a drab replica of a mid-level hotel a newbie assistant once booked me into. Nata would've been more comfortable at Dad's place with high-end everything, but this is better than sharing a space with her ex. I finish my inspection of the room and find the door on the other side of the living room that leads to the garage we parked in front of. I find the button and push the garage door open.

Nata paces by her car, as if waiting in her driver's seat was too much inaction. By the time the door is high enough for me to see her face, her nervous energy transfers to me. My off-beat heartbeats push me into action. My assistants have assistants, but helping Nata feels natural, and logical, and right.

Nata pops the trunk and takes some of the bags out. "Where to?"

I point at the door behind me. "You can drive in."

"Later." She passes me and disappears into the house, only to return for the next batch of bags and boxes.

I join her silent assembly line, emptying my trunk and back seat, setting the things in the living room, and watching the small mountain of stuff grow.

Helping Nata pack brings memories of me moving out of Linda's penthouse.

My assistant hired the movers and did the bulk of the physical work, but he couldn't help me with the emotions of ending a relationship that seemed to have so much potential only a couple of years prior. Leaving Linda's penthouse for good felt like another failure.

When I moved out, I knew it was time. I had no hopes of reconciliation or fantasies that Linda and I might work out. Things end as they begin. And my marriage to Linda Baxter was a sham from the start. Neither of us went into it because we wanted to be with each other. Ours was a marriage of our families' interests.

The timing was right. Our financial situations were on par. I brought in the business connections, Linda—the high society ones that came with the Baxter name. Arranged marriages worked before for centuries, and Linda and I had plenty of fun in bed, so on paper, we were supposed to work. In reality, we should've been friends, maybe with benefits, but never partners.

She wanted to get her father out of her life, and marriage afforded her that. I thought me having a wife would make my father happy. The sliver of the Venn diagram where we intersected included sex and visits to our families.

Two years of marriage was plenty for us to know neither of us got what we wanted out of our marriage. I've never loved Linda the way movies talk about it, but our was the longest romantic relationship I've had.