One Chance

by Best, Victoria J.

  Chapter 34

  Nicolette

  I spent the rest of the weekend in my apartment, trying to come to terms with the decisions I had made so far. I second-guessed, reevaluated and cried. By Sunday night, I wasn’t in any better position than I had been on Friday when Henry slept over.

  Saturday lunch with my dad ended up being in my apartment with take-out, though my dad didn’t complain. We talked about Patrick and the pregnancy. One thing my father said stuck with me all weekend, running back and forth through my head as I went through the motions of brushing my teeth, washing my face, and putting my pajamas on.

  “Don’t let this decision determine the rest of your life, Nikki. Don’t let it be the small thing that you regret in a big way.”

  Was I going to destroy the one chance I had with Henry because I let this secret come between us? Or would we be better for it, more stable, when he did finally find out?

  I couldn’t tell if I was making the right choice anymore.

  As I crawled into bed at nine thirty, dead tired and ready to binge watch New Girl on Netflix in the hopes of a good laugh, my phone rang. With a sigh, I rolled towards the nightstand where my phone was charging, lifting it to look at the caller ID.

  It was Liza.

  “What’s up? Aren’t you and Jackson on a hot date? Why are you calling me?” I laughed as I fired the questions off.

  “Oh man, Nic. I’m so sorry. I did something and I feel really awful,” Liza began, her voice serious.

  I bolted upright in bed, my stomach flipping over with unease. “What? What did you do?”

  Liza mumbled something so fast I didn’t understand what she said.

  “What?”

  She sighed heavily. “I told him, Nic. I told Jax about the baby.”

  “What?!”

  “He asked me what you and I had talked about when I was in the closet the other night. He asked me point blank what was going on with me and you. He was pissed, worried something was wrong with me. So, I told him everything. I told you I wouldn’t be able to keep it in for long. I can’t lie to him, Nicolette. I’m sorry.” I heard her sobbing through the phone.

  My chest clenched with regret and anxiety as I listened to my best friend cry because she’d betrayed a confidence. And it was my fault she felt this way. I should never have asked her to keep the secret from her boyfriend in the first place.

  Tears clogged my throat as I started to speak, and I cleared it. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. All mine. I should never have told you. It’s not your burden to bear. It’s mine.”

  “I told him not to tell Henry. That it wasn’t his place, that it was yours. He’s really pissed, at both of us, but he said he wouldn’t tell him, Nic. He swore to me he wouldn’t.” Liza sniffed

  I blew out a breath. “No. Don’t make him keep secrets from his family. If Henry asks him, tell him not to lie. I won’t let this pregnancy come between people the way Natalie did when she tried to pass that poor baby off as Jackson’s,” I said, my heart and mind heavy with guilt.

  “Are you sure?” Liza asked. I could tell from the tone of her voice she was relieved.

  I nodded, though she couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m sure. I need to fix this, Liza. Soon. But I have to figure out how first.”

  “I’m sorry, Nic. It will be all right. I promise.”

  We said goodbye and hung up. For a long time, I stared at my phone, unsure of what to do. But eventually, I set it back on the nightstand, turned the light off, and fell into a fitful sleep, Netflix forgotten. Hopefully, the next day gave me more clarity than today.

  Chapter 35

  Henry

  Sunday was a slow day. I had contemplated going to see Nicolette, and asking her to work on the benefit with me, but something held me back from calling her. Something Jax had said. Or perhaps something one of my dad’s friends had said.

  Whatever it was, I decided to give her some space while I went to the gym, caught up on some paperwork and worked on looking for a new apartment I could afford on my own.

  By Sunday night, I had squared away most of what I had planned and was pretty proud of myself. I sat down on the couch just after nine with a bottle of sparkling water and a bowl of chips to watch SportsCenter. My phone rang seconds into a story about basketball’s rising star.

  “Yeah,” I said, not bothering to check who it was.

  “It’s me. Where are you?” Jax said

  “I’m at home. What’s up?”

  He sounded strange, like he was holding back rage.

  Jax was quiet for a moment, and I sat up, setting the bowl of chips down on the table.

  “What’s going on, Jax?” I asked him because I was beginning to get agitated.

  “Nicolette is pregnant.”

  I sat back against the couch, the room fading away, the sounds of the TV gone as if I’d muted the sound.

  “What? Pregnant? By whom?” Suddenly, the thing she couldn’t tell me yet made sense. And I had a feeling I knew why she couldn’t tell me. Because it wasn’t mine.

  Because her past had come back while I was trying to heal from mine.

  “Look, Henry, I told you because I thought you should know. But I can’t answer these questions for you. I’m pissed at Liza because she kept this from me for a week. You need to talk to Nicolette and figure it out. Remember what I said about secrets?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. Thanks, bro. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hung up and hopped up from the couch, SportsCenter, chips, and relaxing forgotten.

  I had to talk to Nicolette.

  Chapter 36

  Nicolette

  I started awake sometime later, the room still dark beyond the curtains. Something had woken. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I rolled to look at my phone. There were no new notifications.

  It was only eleven p.m.

  “Ugh,” I said out loud, flopping back against the pillow.

  Maybe I’d had a bad dream that I didn’t remember, and it woke me.

  But then I heard it, a faint knock on the door. I sat back up, swung my legs over the bed, and padded down the hall to the front door, all the while wondering who it could be at eleven o’ clock at night. How did someone get in without a key or the doorman buzzing them up? I peered through the peephole, the fear that was beginning to grow in my stomach subsiding as I saw who it was.

  Henry.

  I threw the door open. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild.

  “Henry, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

  Had he been drinking?

  “I’m fine. But I hear that you’re not. Or, at the very least, you won’t be for another nine months? Maybe sooner?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Nine months?

  Oh God.

  I gasped. “He told you?”

  Henry nodded. “I want to know why I found out from my cousin and not from you.”

  Panic gripped my chest and I bent over with my hands on my knees as my breaths came in short little gasps.

  “Henry, I . . .” I started between gasps of air, trying to breathe and speak and explain myself all at the same time.

  “You what? Forgot? Thought I wouldn’t notice when you started getting bigger? When were you going to tell me, Nicolette? Were you just going to keep pretending that nothing was happening?” He ran a hand through his hair over and over again as he spoke, pacing in my foyer.

  The more he spoke, the more I gasped for air, unable to speak because I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be happening. I had to explain. I had to tell him I did it because I was worried about him.

  “Were . . . you . . . drinking?” I croaked out the words between pants.

  Henry laughed; a loud, condescending burst of sound that made me jump. “Drinking? That’s what you’re worried about? No, I wasn’t drinking. I thought about it. Almost went to a bar on my way here. But I wasn’t going to let the thoughtless mistakes of a woman who I thought I loved ruin something I worked hard to
achieve.”

  “Mistake?” I managed that one word between sobs, gripping my stomach, not caring that I was only dressed in a skimpy t-shirt and underwear. “You think it’s a mistake?”

  The weight of his words pressed against my chest in a way that was cutting off my air supply. This wasn’t the Henry I’d thought I knew. He was being cruel and deliberately hurting me.

  “Isn’t it? Isn’t that why you wouldn’t tell me? Isn’t that why you were so afraid I would find out about it? Because while I was away you had a relapse and you didn’t want me to know.”

  What?

  “No, Henry, no. It’s not—” I couldn’t stop sobbing, couldn’t get in enough air to finish a sentence.

  “Don’t bother making excuses, Nicolette. I should have known when you told me about your past that it would come back to bite us in the ass. That you and I were too much alike to do anything but destroy one another. I should have known that if I didn’t fuck it up, you would.”

  He thought the baby wasn’t his. He thought I’d slept with someone else while he was in rehab. That was why he was being so cruel. That was why he was trying to break me into a million pieces.

  “No, Henry, please . . .” I couldn’t get any more words out. I couldn’t explain myself. I couldn’t let him know that he was wrong about everything because I couldn’t stop sobbing.

  “Goodbye, Nicolette. Don’t call me or contact me. Ever again. I have to think about myself now. I have to.”

  He gave me one last sorrow-filled look as I hunched over on my knees, sobbing and gasping, before walking out the door. As it slammed behind him, I collapsed to the floor, curled around myself in the fetal position, and cried.

  Chapter 37

  Henry

  It felt like the world as I knew it was falling apart around me, crumbling to the ground as I watched it fall at my feet. I left Nicolette’s apartment in a daze, searching for a bar without really knowing that I was. My mind raced, the last hour pinging around in my head in a way that made me dizzy. I walked for blocks, or maybe it was only one or two. Everything had lost meaning. Time stood still while I felt like I was moving at the speed of light. When I finally stopped, I was outside a bar in midtown. I didn’t know the neighborhood or how I had even arrived there.

  But I was at a bar.

  I paced outside the door for a bit, hands jammed into my pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. All the reasons I shouldn’t go in raced through my head—my new job, my independence, respect for myself and from my family, my health. The reason I should go in followed soon after. Nicolette was having another man’s baby. Nicolette was no longer mine.

  Nicolette.

  Images of her face, gasping around sobs and begging for me to listen flitted in my memory. The ache in my chest that had been plaguing me since I got the call from Jackson intensified as I remembered our encounter. I had been cruel to her, on purpose, digging the knife deeper as I hurled insults and barbs. I wanted her to feel the pain I’d felt when I saw her and thought of her having someone else’s baby. I wanted her to feel betrayal the way that I did. We’d made no promises to each other when I went away, but that didn’t matter to me. From the night we were first together, she was mine.

  Why hadn’t I told her that sooner?

  Somehow this whole thing came down on my shoulders. I was the one who screwed up, again. I was the one who left when we were just getting started because I couldn’t stand up to my mother. I was the one who never told her I loved her.

  And now it was too late.

  Without any further thought, I pulled the door to the bar open and went in. It was Sunday night, so it was relatively empty. There were a few sad characters at the bar and a handful of others sat at tables, watching the game on the TV mounted to the ceiling, eating wings, and laughing. I ignored them all, sidled up to the bar, and sat down on the cracked bar stool.

  “What can I get ya?” the bartender, a scruffy-faced man with a scar over his right eye asked me. He eyed me with suspicion, looking at my designer clothes with distaste.

  “Scotch, neat,” I said, tapping my fingers on the bar top.

  I continued to drum with my fingers as I waited for him to deposit the drink in front of me, catching nasty looks from the older man to my right. The bartender worked fast, setting the somewhat cloudy glass in front of me and walking away. I stared at it, reached for it, but then pulled my hand away as if it burned me. I wanted it, could feel the burn in my throat as I imagined it going down. I thought about the numbness several glasses of this would give me, the ability to forget what Nicolette had done. The ability to forget how badly we’d both fucked this whole thing up.

  I reached for the glass again, my fingers massaging the smooth glass as I slid it closer without picking it up. The amber liquid sloshed around, and I licked my lips, willing myself to lift it up and toss it back. The way I would have done in the past.

  The way I would have done before Nicolette.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take the drink. The words my counselor had imbued into me during those six weeks in rehab reverberated loudly in my ears.

  I am strong, I am capable, I don’t need a drink.

  I may not have needed the drink, but I certainly wanted it.

  “What do you want more than a drink, Henry?”

  Her words were so loud I felt like she was sitting next to me.

  “Nicolette.”

  My counselor sighed. “We can’t rely on others to give us happiness. We can’t rely on others to fix where we are broken.”

  “She’s the reason I’m here.”

  She shook her head. “She’s not the reason, Henry. You are. You made the choice to come here, she just helped you to see what everyone knew all along.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That you are worth more than one drink, or two, or however many you will have. That you are worth fighting for.”

  If I was worth fighting for, why hadn’t she fought for me? Why had Nicolette given up on us the second I was away?

  I grabbed the glass again, ready to do it this time, ready to numb the pain and stop the litany of thoughts that diseased my brain. But I still couldn’t lift the glass to my lips.

  With a sigh, I stood up, threw several bills on the bar and walked out. I could feel the eyes of the bartender and those sitting at the bar burning a hole in my back, but I didn’t care. I had to get out of there before I gave into the urge to drink. Nicolette and I were over, but that didn’t mean I had to give up on the life I was building.

  Maybe one day I would forget about her and piece my heart back together. But I doubted it.

  * * *

  The next morning, I woke to pounding on the door. I had returned from the bar, exhausted and unable to sleep. Instead of going back to bed, I’d lain on the couch, mindlessly staring at reruns of old sitcoms on TV until my eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. I rolled over, looking up at the ceiling. Every moment from the night before came rushing back, like a punch to the gut, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe.

  “Henry! Open the fucking door!” Jax’s voice boomed in the hallway as he continued to pound on the apartment door.

  With a grunt, I rolled myself off the couch, my body aching from lack of sleep and the strange position I’d spent the night in. I rubbed a hand over my face, wiping sleep from my eyes as I walked to the door.

  “Jesus Christ, Jax. You’re going to wake the whole building,” I said as I tossed the door open and stepped back to let him in.

  “Where the fuck have you been? I came over last night around midnight and you weren’t here. Were you out drinking? What the fuck happened?” He took in my rumpled appearance, still in the same clothes I had on yesterday, my hair sticking up at all angles from sleeping on the couch, and my eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. It was easy to see the reasons he thought I was drunk.

  I shook my head. “Unfortunately, I was not. I’m clean and sober, cousin. I remember every awful thing that happened last nig
ht. Every fucking detail.” I stumbled towards the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. I was going to need the whole damn thing to function this morning. A glance at the clock over the stove showed that I was already going to be late for work. It was just after seven and I had to be in the office at seven thirty

  “Did you go over there last night? What did you say to Nicolette?” Anger rolled off him in waves and I wondered why he was pissed at me.

  “Yup. It was awful. I was awful to her, but I couldn’t get the image of her with someone else out of my head while I was stuck in that facility.”

  “Liza went over to check on her this morning. Nicolette’s in a bad way. Won’t get out of bed. What happened? What do you mean with someone else?” His tone had changed from one of rage to confusion.

  I whipped around quickly, coffee forgotten as he spoke.

  “Isn’t that what Liza told you? Didn’t Nicolette tell her that she got pregnant while I was away at rehab?” A knot began to form in my stomach as his words sank it.

  Nicolette was in pain; she wouldn’t get out of bed. I’d done that to her.

  Shit.

  Jax shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Liza told me that Nicolette called her after we got back from Italy and told her she was pregnant. She told Liza not to tell me because she knew I would tell you—”

  “Because it’s not mine. Because she didn’t want me to know that she relapsed and slept with someone while I was away. Right?” Dread settled like a boulder in my stomach with each word I’d said.

  What if I was wrong? What if I’d made a terrible mistake?

  “No. She didn’t say that. Liza said that Nicolette was worried that you would be upset about an unplanned pregnancy so soon after getting on the wagon. She was worried that a baby would upset you because you were newly sober. There was no mention that it was someone else’s baby. I didn’t know the details, so I didn’t want to go into specifics last night because I thought you and Nicolette would work it out. What happened, Harry? What did you do?” Jax moved closer to me, resting his hand on my shoulder, concern creasing his face. My eyes widened. I was unable to speak for a moment, unable to comprehend that I had been wrong, and I’d hurt the woman I loved because I wouldn’t let her speak, didn’t even give her a chance.