Chapter 182
AN: This chapter is dedicated to my BNCS, who never fails to be my
muse and help me turn my vague ideas into whole chapters. Thanks, Laureen!!!
Hold on, little girl
Show me what he's done to you
Stand up, little girl
A broken heart can't be that bad
When it's through, it's through
Fate will twist the both of you
So come on, baby, come on over
Let me be the one to show you
I'm the one who wants to be with you
Deep inside I hope you feel it too
Waited on a line of greens and blues
Just to be the next to be with you
Build up your confidence
So you can be on top for once
Wake up, who cares about
Little boys that talk too much?
I've seen it all go down
Your game of love was all rained out
So come on, baby, come on over
Let me be the one to hold you
I'm the one who wants to be with you
Deep inside I hope you feel it too
Waited on a line of greens and blues
Just to be the next to be with you
Why be alone when we can be together, baby
You can make my life worthwhile
And I can make you start to smile
- “To Be With You” by Mr. Big
“Strawberries…
bananas… pineapple...” Mumbling to
himself in the middle of the grocery store aisle, Nick read the items off the
list Claire had written for him in her small, curvy print. He circled the produce section once, making
sure he got everything – a bunch of bananas with just the slightest tinge of
green left, a big carton of strawberries, and, after eyeing the whole
pineapples, a package of pre-sliced, fresh pineapple. (He decided he didn’t feel like trying to cut
a pineapple himself, knowing he’d just end up making a fool out of himself
trying to get all that spiky stuff off.)
It was the
day after Claire had called him out of the blue to ask for his help in seeking
a divorce lawyer, and Nick, hoping to celebrate (even though he wasn’t sure it
was very tactful to call it a “celebration” around Claire), had shown up
at her condo that afternoon with a carton of chocolate ice cream and a couple
of DVDs. “I thought maybe Claire could
use a distraction,” he’d told her mother when she answered the door.
Claire had
seemed glad to see him; she had smiled even after he blurted, “So are you
really serious about this whole divorce thing?” to which her answer had been
yes.
“I’m
totally serious. My parents aren’t
thrilled,” she’d confessed, once he had shut the door to her bedroom behind
him; “they think I shouldn’t be making such a big decision right now, when I’ve
just had two babies and major surgery and am under the influence of hormones
and painkillers. But… in all honesty, I
think I should have made it a long time ago.”
“I think
you’re right,” Nick had instantly agreed, nodding in encouragement. “I mean, not trying to interfere, but… the
guy’s been treating you like crap for months.
This isn’t anything new, right?”
“No,
exactly! That’s just it! This has been building and building for
months, and if it weren’t for me being pregnant, I might have decided this
right after Christmas. But… I guess I
just thought things would get better between us once the twins arrived. And so far they’ve just gotten worse. My dad says it’s just because we’re going
through so much right now, with Cait and Lainey being in the hospital, but I
think stuff like this is the true test of a relationship, you know? If you can’t get through the hard times
together, then what’s the point? It’s
part of the vows – for better, for worse, in sickness and in
health… Jamie’s never held up that end
of the bargain! And I’m sick of it! This is the last straw; I can’t give him
another chance because I can’t take anymore!
I think I’m just better off without him, and I might as well start
now. At least I won’t be disappointed
when he’s not there for me and our children.”
Nick had
tried not to seem too happy about her decision, but it was all he could do not
to high-five her or something after that rant.
Finally, finally, she had seen the light. He just hoped she would stick with it and not
change her mind. It wasn’t that he
thought her wishy-washy, but… well… he knew Claire could be impulsive
sometimes, which was probably the same reason her parents had concerns. Still, he had faith in her when she said
she’d had enough. She was strong and
independent-minded; she would see this through.
And he was more than willing to help.
He’d already given her the contact information for an attorney from
Orlando whom he knew to be well worth his steep fees.
But Claire
hadn’t done anything about that yet. “I
already promised myself I would wait a few days before talking to a lawyer,”
she had told him. “I wanna make sure my
head is on straight before I do.”
Nick could
understand that; he knew she had plenty to think about. On top of her decision to end her marriage,
she was trying to recover from surgery and deal with being separated from the
twins, which he knew couldn’t be easy.
That was the real reason he had turned up on her doorstep today, intent
on taking her mind off her troubles.
“I know
you’re not up for Leonardi’s, so I thought we could make our own milkshakes,”
he’d announced, pleased with himself for this brainwave. “Gotta be better than hospital food, right?”
And Claire
had sighed, “Ohh, that sounds like heaven!
I could use a milkshake right about now!”
Of course,
he was now back at the grocery store because she had decided seconds later that
a shake full of milk and ice cream would not be good for her… ‘system.’ “I’ll probably get gassy from the dairy, and
do you know how much it hurts to fart when you’ve just had a pair of
hands rooting around in your belly?” she had vented. Claire had never been one to hold back on
details.
“Uh, TMI,
Claire,” he’d told her with a revolted face, and they had quickly agreed that
non-dairy smoothies would be a much better option.
He headed
to the refrigerator cases for the last item on the list, orange juice, and then
made his way up to the check-out counters.
While he stood in line, he let his eyes roam over the tabloids, smiling
to himself at the headlines about Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s impending
divorce. The wrongs of the world seemed
to be righting themselves: Katie had
regained control of her mind and was escaping crazy Tom Cruise and his
Scientology cronies, and Claire finally seemed like her old self, sick of
taking crap and ready to ditch Jamie.
As he drove
back to her condo, one of his Journey albums playing loudly in the car, he
rocked out to “Separate Ways” and had a flash of singing along to this song
with Claire in the car during a road trip to Atlanta, when they’d gone to visit
Brian and Leighanne once. He had been
treated to a rant about her boyfriend then too – though it had been Tim, and,
as it turned out, she had only been dating him to spite Nick. With a wry smile, Nick wondered if there was
any chance she had pulled the same thing and married Jamie just to spite him
somehow, for… well, for whatever reason she’d left him in the first place. Maybe she would want him back now that she’d
realized what a mistake she had made in marrying Jamie.
But he knew
that was just wishful thinking, and he shouldn’t be doing it, not while he was
dating Laureen. He would always have
feelings for Claire, but he didn’t have any realistic expectations for the two
of them getting back together. Not
anymore. Why would she want to go back
to him when marrying her one-time ex had turned out to be a huge failure? A failure which, nonetheless, had managed to last
a year, not even counting the years she’d dated Jamie before marrying him. She and Nick hadn’t made it a full year as a
couple.
One more month, and we would have…
Nick
swallowed a mouthful of stale regret and found that when “Open Arms” came on
next, he could not listen to it. He
switched quickly to the next track and tried to focus on the road as he turned
back onto Claire’s street.
***
“I just got
off the phone with Fernanda – you know, the girls’ NICU nurse at the hospital,”
Claire announced when Nick got back.
“Oh
yeah?” He raised an eyebrow, his stomach
immediately clenching up with concern.
But Claire didn’t look upset, so the news couldn’t be too bad. His stomach relaxed a little.
“Yeah, I
called to check in, and she said Delaine’s sats are much better and her white
count is down, which means her pneumonia is starting to clear up. So that’s one bullet dodged,” sighed Claire
with obvious relief, “and Cait’s already gained an ounce!”
“Wow…
that’s great!” exclaimed Nick. An ounce
sure didn’t sound like much to him, but he supposed the baby couldn’t have
weighed much to begin with, and Claire seemed really happy about it, so it must
have been something to celebrate. And
the news about Delaine was definitely a relief.
Soon after
that, Claire’s parents left to go up to the hospital and see the babies –
“since you’re here to babysit me,” Claire explained with a wink. “Hope you don’t mind staying awhile…”
“Not at
all. We’ve got smoothies to make, and I
brought some movies,” Nick replied.
“Oh cool…
what did ya bring?”
Nick showed
her the two DVD boxes. “Um, the newer King
Kong and The Mummy 3.” Then,
feeling the need to justify his choices, he added, “I thought you could use
something entertaining… and, you know, not like real life.”
Claire
laughed. “Good idea. Uh, how was The Mummy 3? I didn’t see it…”
“It was…
okay,” shrugged Nick. “You know, second
sequel okay.”
“Let’s go
with King Kong then,” giggled Claire.
“I’ve seen it before, but hey, we never watched it together, did we?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, that
sounds good then. But first… smoothies.”
Nick helped
her out of bed, hating to see her wince as she was forced to move, and they
made their way slowly to the kitchen, where he’d left the ingredients.
“I hope you
know how to use a blender, cause I don’t think I can’t stand up for very long,”
said Claire apologetically.
“Nah, it’s
cool; I think I can handle it. Um,
where’s your blender?”
Claire
showed him the cupboard it was in, then sank down painfully into a kitchen
chair to watch, smoothing her long dorm shirt over her knees. Fleetingly, Nick wondered if she had anything
on underneath it, then mentally smacked himself for thinking such a thing. Did he really want to know?? She’d just had a C-section to deliver twins;
it was probably a mess under there anyway.
The thought
made him grimace, and he was glad he had his back to her, as he set up the
blender.
“If you
bring me the cutting board and a knife, I can slice some fruit here at the
table,” offered Claire.
“Okay…” Nick let her cut the fruit, which he took
from her by the bowlful and added to a mixture of crushed ice and orange
juice. It didn’t take long, and soon he
was pouring a frothy, orange-ish liquid into two tall glasses. “Strawberry pineapple banana orange smoothie,”
he said as he presented Claire with hers.
“Hope it’s good.”
She took a
sip at the table, closing her eyes in bliss.
“Mmm, it’s awesome!” she said, giving him the thumbs up. “You know me; I still would rather have a
chocolate shake, but it’s really good.
And much healthier… though if I wasn’t pumping my breast milk for the
babies, I would have made you add some rum to it,” she giggled.
Nick
laughed. “Yeah, I bet you’re missing
your alcohol. I’ll have to get you nice
and plastered once you’re done breastfeeding.”
He paused to take a drink of his own smoothie. “Mm, this is pretty good!”
“Oh yeah,
make me sound like an alchy! Give me a
break; I’m just saying, I haven’t had a drink in months, and right about now it
would be nice to take the edge off,” she defended herself, making a playful
face at him.
“Oh sure…
gotta take the edge off… you want a Vicodin to go with it? How about some weed?”
“Nick!”
laughed Claire. “For your information,
Vicodin makes me puke – found that out when I had my wisdom teeth out. And I have never smoked pot… except for the
one time I tried it in college,” she finished quickly with a cough. “Ow…”
Apparently the cough had been a bad idea, as she was now holding her
lower belly.
Nick
chuckled. “Well, I’ve ‘tried’ it more
than once, so no worries. I won’t rat
you out to your folks.” He grinned. “So what kind of painkillers are you on if
you can’t take Vicodin?”
“Tylenol
with codeine. It does a decent job,” she
shrugged. She still winced with pain
again as she got up from her chair, though, and shuffled slowly alongside Nick
back to her bedroom.
He set down
his smoothie on her dresser and helped her get back into bed. It was very much a reversal of roles from
when he’d been recovering from his lung lobectomy, and she had had to help him
this way.
“You
comfy?” he asked her, handing her smoothie back.
“Comfy as
I’ll ever be,” she replied. “Go ahead
and stick the movie in, then you can sit on the bed with me. Just try not to jostle it too much, okay?”
Nick
grinned mischievously, but, of course, promised not to. It was easier said than done, trying to get
himself and his metal leg into a comfortable position on the bed without moving
the mattress much, but he tried his hardest, and Claire didn’t complain. Reaching for her remote, she turned on the
movie, and they both settled back to watch.
With his
rather short attention span, Nick normally found it difficult to sit through
any movie longer than two hours, but this one, once it got going (after the
first hour of set-up), was action-packed and entertaining enough to keep
his interest. The T-rex fight in the
middle never got old, nor did the giant bug scene, though Claire didn’t care as
much for the latter.
“Ugh, I can
hardly watch this part, and I’m not even afraid of bugs!” she cried,
shuddering, and turned her head into his shoulder as one of the characters was
sucked down the throat of the giant slug thing with a horrible squelching
sound. Nick just laughed and patted the top
of her head.
Remembering
how she had cried watching the original version of King Kong at The
Empress theater with him almost five years ago, Nick fully expected that Claire
would cry at the end of this one too. He
just hadn’t counted on how early the tears would start. Maybe it was the extra influence of hormones,
or maybe the movie was just that much more emotional, but he heard the first
sniffle out of her before they’d even gotten Kong to New York, and it was
followed by sporadic sniffles for the entire next half hour, until an outright
sob escaped her throat at the Central Park scene.
Trying not
to smile, Nick chanced a look at her and found that her eyes were welling with
tears, her lower lip quivering. She
looked almost like a little girl, trying not to cry. Pretending not to notice, he turned away and
didn’t look back until the giant gorilla was plummeting from the Empire State
Building, at which point the tears, too, were falling from her eyes in thick
streams.
He missed
the last minute or so of the movie, for in his mind’s eye, he had traveled back
nearly five years, to that night in The Empress, and a moment almost like this…
As the movie
ended, he glanced over at her again. He
was startled to see tears glistening on her cheeks, illuminated by the light of
the flickering screen.
“Are you crying?”
he whispered through the darkness.
Sniffling, she
turned to face him, a sheepish smile on her face. “It’s sad,” she said simply.
“Why, cause he
died?”
“Yeah… and because
he loved her. He wasn’t trying to hurt
her… he was in love with her,” she whimpered, smiling tearfully.
Nick choked back a
laugh. “He’s a gorilla!” he whispered
loudly. “It’s a movie!” Dissolving into hushed snickers, he marveled
at how strange the opposite sex could be.
How she could turn King Kong
into some kind of tragic love story was beyond him.
“You’re laughing
at me,” she said, playfully pushing his shoulder. “Quit it.”
“So stop being
such a girl, sheesh!”
“I am a girl,” she said with a
smirk. “Or maybe you didn’t realize.”
Nick’s attention
turned from the man in front row, who was now walking out of the theater, back
to Claire. The credits of the movie were
still showing, and the screen provided just enough light in the dark, empty theater
for him to see her face. She was
smiling, her eyes still sparkling with moisture, and all of a sudden, he felt
his heart begin to pound with yearning.
Taking his hand out of hers, he gently reached out and touched her
cheek, lightly brushing her tears away.
Her hand rose to take hold of his, and slowly, she guided it down her
face, to her lips. She pressed her lips
to his fingers, kissing them tenderly and then slowly lowered them. But his heart was racing now, and his
tingling fingers longed to touch her again. They went to her shoulder and crept around,
his arm encircling her, gradually pulling her closer to him as he leaned
forward, his head tipping to the side, his lips drifting toward hers as if
there was a magnetic field between them, steadily drawing them nearer.
“I am a girl. Or maybe you
didn’t realize.”
Oh, I’ve realized, Nick thought as their lips connected. You’re
definitely a girl. And then… Shit, he cursed mentally as the kiss
intensified, I hope I don’t have pizza
breath. But if he did, she didn’t
seem to mind, her hands drifting up and around his neck as she kissed
back. Entranced by what he had not
experienced in a long time, he opened his mouth slightly and captured her
bottom lip between his. He lightly ran
his tongue across it, until her tongue found his and lured it into the sweet
trove of her mouth.
It was not a
lustful, passionate kiss, like the many he had shared with Leah. No, this kiss was different, unlike any other
he had experienced. Just like Claire was
unlike any girl he had been with.
Finally, they
pulled apart, both breathless, staring at each other with wide eyes. The movie screen was blank now, and the
lights were slowly coming up. Nick
exhaled a shuddering breath…
Watching her now, Nick was hit with a strong rush of déjà vu. The Claire crying next to him now was older,
her face pale and weary from the stress she’d been under lately, dark circles
hanging beneath her red-rimmed eyes, the first lines of age starting to form at
their corners. Yet in many ways, she
looked exactly the same as she had then… a beautiful mess of tears.
“Hm,” he couldn’t help but comment, “this feels familiar. The two of us watching King Kong… you crying…”
Claire smiled over at him and laughed sheepishly. “I can’t help it; I’m such a sap for this
stuff,” she sniffled.
“Gee, I can tell,” Nick teased.
“Aw, shut up. This one’s
even sadder than the old one!”
Nick grinned. “Need me to
kiss your tears away?”
Only teasing, he’d expected a sassy comeback from her in
return. But instead, Claire blushed and
looked away. Mystified, he watched the
back of her head for a second, then leaned in close to her ear. In his best, most exaggerated Enrique
Iglesias impression, he sang, “I can be
your hero, bayba… I can keess away the
pain…”
Bursting into giggles, Claire turned back around, her lips nearly
brushing his on accident. “You dork,”
she laughed, playfully pushing him away.
Nick just leaned closer again, crooning, “You… can’t… take… my breath away…”
“Go away, your breath stinks like bananas.”
Nick stopped singing.
“Really? Can you smell a hint of
pineapple in there too?” he asked, blowing in her face.
“Eww! I detect a hint of ass!” she retorted, making a face. It was a cute face, especially considering
the fact that her mouth was fighting hard not to smile while her eyes were
still wet with tears. Nick remembered,
again, why he’d fallen in love with her.
He remembered why he’d looked over at her, while sitting in a bed
together like this, taken her hand and whispered “Marry me.”
And he remembered why he’d felt such a sense of loss when he’d
seen her marry someone else.
He’d lost his soulmate.
But there she was, peering out at him through Claire’s glistening
blue eyes, her pretty smile; revealing herself in her infectious laugh and her
brisk voice, as she told him she was divorcing Jamie.
Suddenly overcome with feelings he could not control, Nick took
hold of her damp, tearstained face and held it gently as he brought his own
down to meet it. His lips found hers and
enveloped them the way a man’s arms envelope his long lost love. And they kissed.
Above every other flavor, she tasted most of strawberries.
***