Chapter 133
When Claire went back to work a few days after returning from her
honeymoon, she was immediately accosted by her coworkers.
“Mrs. Turner!” cried Carey, one of their receptionists, jumping up from
her desk to hug Claire. “How was the
trip?”
“Amazing,” Claire sighed, smiling.
“Greece is gorgeous; I’d love to go back sometime, maybe in spring or
fall.”
“Ahh, glad to hear it! We got
your postcard here; it looks absolutely beautiful,” said Carey.
“Oh, good, I’m glad the postcards made it here before we got back. We weren’t sure,” Claire laughed, remembering
her scramble to mail out postcards to those she had promised – the office
staff, Dianna, her parents, and her grandparents. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal, but with
only two weeks and so much to see, she’d gotten the cards out with little time
to spare.
She found her postcard of the Acropolis thumb-tacked to the bulletin
board in the break room, along with a couple of pictures someone had taken at
the wedding reception – one of Jamie and her cutting the cake, and one of
Laureen and her together, their arms slung around each other. The day had been such a whirlwind that Claire
barely remembered posing for that picture, but she thought Tim might have taken
it.
“Claire!” a familiar voice squealed, and Claire turned away from the pictures
to see none other than Laureen herself bounding into the room. She grabbed Claire up in a hug, asked how the
honeymoon had been, and then burst, “I have something huge to tell
you! I’ve been waiting, like, two
weeks!” She danced from foot to foot,
her eyes large and animated.
More than curious, Claire asked, “What??” but Laureen shook her head,
casting a mysterious look.
“Not here. Can we do lunch?”
“Yeah, definitely! I can’t wait
to hear it!”
Normally, the curiosity would have killed her, but thankfully, her
first day back was going to be a busy one.
Her schedule was practically booked solid with patients, and the first
one was due to arrive in just ten minutes.
Hoping to escape to her exam station before she ran into anyone else,
she hastily reached for a fresh timecard for the month and started to scrawl
her name across the top. Claire R-
she wrote out of habit, but stopped herself before she could add the “-y-a-n”
of her maiden name. In bold lines, she
scratched a letter “T” over the “R,” turning its tail into an awkward “U,” and
finished writing her new last name. Claire
Turner, the card read, when she jammed it into the clock to punch in and
then dropped it into its slot on the wall.
She smiled to herself as she walked across the hall to her cubicle, wondering
how long it would take her to adjust to using Jamie’s last name.
***
It took Claire all morning to get back into the swing of things, for,
between the last days of harried preparation before the wedding and the long
honeymoon, she hadn’t worked in several weeks.
By noon, she felt less rusty, but was already tired. She liked her job, but she couldn’t wait to
get off.
It was Jamie’s first day back at the office as well, and since he
didn’t get off until five, she planned to go right home to the apartment that
afternoon and attempt to make a nice dinner for the two of them. It seemed the wifely thing to do, and for
now, she sort of liked the quaint idea of having a hot meal on the table, á la
June Cleaver, when her husband came home from work. That would get old fast, she was sure; she
wasn’t a very good cook and certainly didn’t uphold the view that a working
woman should also be expected to do everything around the house while her husband
just sat around… but tonight, at least, she would humor Jamie and play the
part.
She was already thinking about what she might cook for dinner when she
walked into the break room to punch out for lunch, making a mental list of
things to get at the grocery store on her way home from work. Then she saw Laureen and instantly remembered
their brief conversation that morning.
“Hey, are we still on for lunch?” she asked her friend, raising her
eyebrows inquisitively. She couldn’t
wait to hear this “huge” thing Laureen had to tell her.
“Yeah, of course! Just lemme
punch out!” Laureen quickly slid her
timecard in and out of the clock, jammed it back into its slot, and grinned at
Claire. “Let’s go!”
It was a beautiful day outside, so they walked down the street to a
small, shabby café that didn’t get a lot of business, except for a few loyal
regulars. Choosing a booth away from the
few others who were there eating lunch, Claire and Laureen studied the menus
that were already on the table and waited for a waitress to come. Claire’s eyes scanned over the menu, but she
realized she was not really reading it and wouldn’t be able to until she knew
what was up with Laureen.
“So what’s your big news??” she asked finally, looking across the table
in anticipation.
Laureen glanced up from her menu and beamed, her cheeks blushing pink,
but instead of spilling, she said, “Can we wait until after someone takes our
orders? I just… I don’t want it
overheard,” she added, lowering her voice.
“Oh… okay, that’s fine.” Claire
was thoroughly mystified now, and it was hard to concentrate on the menu long
enough to figure out what she wanted.
She was pretty sure that whatever Laureen wanted to tell her was good
news, from the way she kept smiling about it, but it had to be news of a
certain kind for Laureen to want to keep it so private. What exactly that kind was, Claire didn’t
know. She was dying to find out.
Then the waitress came, Claire ordered the first thing she saw on the
menu, the cheeseburger basket. As the
waitress scribbled down their orders on a pad of paper and took the laminated
menus, she had the fleeting thought that it would be nice to have a big, greasy
American burger, after being out in another country for two weeks, but then her
thoughts returned to Laureen and her “huge” news, and she rounded on her
friend.
“Okay, we’re in the clear – now tell me!!” she begged.
“Okay…” Laureen said, leaning across the table, her eyes shining with
the look of a teenage girl who was about to divulge a big secret, “… so. You’ll never guess what happened after I left
your reception.”
Wow, she
really has been waiting to tell me this a long time, thought Claire, flashing back to her
wedding night. “What happened??”
“Well…” Laureen grinned. “I guess I should say, you’ll never guess who
I left with.”
“Who??” Claire asked with interest, trying to remember what guys had
been there, since she knew it had to be a guy.
“Please don’t tell me it was Tim.”
“NO!” Laureen gasped, exploding with giggles. “No way.
Tim and I danced one dance, and that’s it.”
Claire remembered seeing the two of them dance, sometime after Laureen
had gotten away from her groomsmen, Greg.
She’d apologized profusely for pairing Laureen with him, since he was
the friend of Jamie’s she despised the most, ever since the incident in the bar
a few years before, when she’d socked him in the face. But she hadn’t really heard what Laureen
actually thought of him. “It wasn’t
Greg, was it?” she asked cautiously, hoping for another emphatic “no.” Maybe she just didn’t know the guy well enough,
but every time she was in the same room with him, she just wanted to hit him
again; he always seemed like such an arrogant asshole.
“Oh, God, no!” Laureen exclaimed, wrinkling her nose. “I think you were right about him being a
jerk; I would never go anywhere with a guy like that.”
“Okay, so…?” There was really
only one more guy Claire could think of that would excite Laureen so… and he
happened to be the one who would probably excite her the most. “Nick??”
Laureen’s face broke into a huge grin, and Claire felt her eyes
widen. “You left with Nick? What happened??” she wanted to know.
“Well, he was pretty wasted by the time you and Jamie left, so I drove
him home. I walked him inside, cause he
was almost falling over, and I got him to the downstairs bedroom, and we were
just talking, and then… he kissed
me!”
Claire’s heart performed a strange flip-flop, but she was too surprised
to think much of it. “He did??”
Laureen grinned, blushing.
“Uh-huh,” she said with a little giggle.
She reminded Claire of Dianna, gushing about her first kiss the day
after it had happened back in eighth grade.
She knew Laureen had been kissed before, probably many times, but still,
she could understand why this time would be particularly exciting – he was Nick
Carter, and Laureen had adored him long before she’d actually known him. It had to have been almost magical for her,
no matter how wasted Nick had been when he did it.
“So what happened??” she probed, curious to hear more. In a way, it was easy to imagine it happening
– Nick drunk, Laureen trying to take care of him, and whoops, somehow their
lips had ended up together. And yet, it
also surprised her. Despite knowing
about Laureen’s fan crush on Nick, she’d never really considered the idea of
the two of them being together. To her,
it had always seemed like the classic “freshman nobody crushing on the star
senior quarterback” scenario. It wasn’t
that Nick was “out of Laureen’s league,” exactly, because he wasn’t – he’d
proven that he could date regular girls.
But he’d never shown any romantic interest in Laureen, at least not to
her, and so she’d never really given that hook-up much thought.
“Well, I kissed back… obviously,” she giggled again, “and… well, we
sorta ended up making out… on the bed.”
Claire’s eyes widened further, until Laureen added quickly, “But he
kinda passed out before we could get any farther than that. I mean, not that we would have… well, I don’t
know… I have no idea what he was thinking, but I’m kinda glad we didn’t get any
farther – I would have felt really weird, you know?”
Claire nodded, not knowing quite what to say. “So… have you talked to him since all this?”
she wondered.
“Well, I did the morning after…
I didn’t really want to leave him alone, cause he’d had a lot to drink,
so I ended up just staying, and so we talked a little the next morning. He felt really bad, like he’d taken advantage
of me or something, but really, it wasn’t like that at all! I wanted it as much as he did! I mean, I wasn’t expecting him to kiss me,
but when he did… wow. Even drunk, he’s
incredible,” she gushed, her expression radiant.
Claire couldn’t help but smile, though there was a sense of wistfulness
tugging at her heart. “He is a very good
kisser,” she agreed, remembering the sparks that had flown the first time he’d
kissed her, in the movie theater after King Kong. The memory was bittersweet now.
“Yeah, so… I haven’t really talked to him since,” said Laureen, and her
smile faded. “It was sort of awkward in
the morning; I was kind of self-conscious around him when he was sober, like I
usually am, so I left in a hurry, and that was it. I guess part of me was hoping he would call
or something, but he hasn’t. Probably
stupid of me, right? I mean, he’s Nick
Carter… he’s got better things to do and prettier girls than me to see.”
Claire’s heart squeezed with empathy.
“Aww, Laureen, no, don’t say that.
Nick’s really not as shallow as he might seem. He’s a guy, so he can be shallow, but
he’s really not. Hell, he saw something
in me, and I’m certainly no supermodel,” she said with a dry laugh. “And for the record, I know he’s in LA right
now, and I think he spent his birthday in the Keys, so maybe that’s why he
hasn’t called – he just hasn’t been around.”
“Ohh, really? I didn’t know he
was leaving.”
“Yeah… he mentioned it to me sometime before the wedding, and I just
got an email from him last night.
Kristin had her baby!” She’d
just remembered the email, a short blurb saying he was glad she’d enjoyed
Greece and giving the basic details of Kevin and Kristin’s new baby, Brayden.
Laureen’s eyes lit up.
“Really??” she squealed. “Didn’t
know that either! Boy or girl??”
“I don’t think it’s out in the media yet, but – boy,” she said, and
told Laureen the specifics she could remember from Nick’s message.
“Aww, that’s so exciting!”
Claire smiled. “I’ll forward you
pictures, if he sends some; I don’t think he’d mind. And if you want me to put in a good word for
you, maybe suggest that he call you, I can,” she offered. Surprised though she was about the news that
Laureen and Nick had spent a night together, she thought they might make a cute
couple. Laureen certainly cared about
Nick, and now that she’d gotten to know him more, Claire knew it was more than
just a “fan” kind of adoration. And if
Nick took the time to really get to know her, she could see him liking Laureen
too. She would be good for him. And now that Claire was married, she wanted
to see Nick find happiness with someone else, a woman who would love him and
treat him right, not hurt him… the way she had.
Her heart turned over again at the thought.
Laureen smiled nervously.
“Thanks… I’ll let you know,” she said, after some hesitation. “I don’t want to come on too strong and
assume things… I mean, I know he was drunk, so maybe it meant nothing to him,
and I’d just look silly if he knew how much it meant to me.”
Classic
fear of rejection,
thought Claire; who couldn’t relate to that?
She understood how Laureen felt and nodded. “Okay.
Well, I won’t say anything for now then, but if you ever do want a
little help, just say the word. He’s a
guy; sometimes they just need a little bit of pushing from us chicks,” she said
with a wink.
Laureen laughed and nodded in agreement. “Thanks, Claire. I’m glad you understand. I wanted to tell you so bad, but I was
wondering how you would take it… I mean,
even though you’re married, he’s still your ex, you know? I don’t want to go breaking one of those
classic rules of friendship – don’t go after your friend’s exes…”
Claire chuckled. “Nah, that’s
okay. Nick’s still a great friend of
mine, and of course I’ll always have a special place in my heart for him, but
you’re right – I just got married, and it’s over between us. If there’s chance for you and Nick, go for it
– I’d be all for it. I just want him to
be happy.”
She could say the words, even believe they were true, but when she
thought back to this lunch in the distant future, she would remember the way
her heart had flip-flopped when Laureen revealed that Nick had kissed her.
***