by Max Monroe
Jesus. I really needed to get things into perspective. They were living in my house—one that I’d paid for. They didn’t necessarily deserve my sympathy, right?
Over an hour later, I stood outside of my three-story brownstone and smiled at the view.
My home. God, she was gorgeous. I pulled the deed out of my purse and slipped it into my back pocket as a reminder. I should be living here now. I should be unpacking my boxes and setting up my home. Stay strong, Charlotte!
With my knuckles to the door, I knocked three times and mentally prepared myself to woman the fuck up and finally take what was mine.
Nick was yours, too, but that didn’t turn out too well.
Fuck, my subconscious needed to chill with the bitchy attitude.
The door opened on a quick swing, and Doreen stood in her slippers and robe, smiling back at me. “Charlotte!” she greeted, and before I could stop her, she set her cane against the door and pulled me in for a tight hug. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Hi, Doreen,” I muttered into her shoulder.
Eventually, she released me from the bear hug and ushered me inside. “Come in. Come in. Harry will be happy to see you.”
She shut the door behind us with a quiet click and glanced around me as if she was searching for something. “Where’s Nick?”
“Uh…” I awkwardly shuffled my feet across the hardwood floors. “Well…we’re not together anymore.”
“Oh no,” she responded with a frown to her lips. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged. “I’ll be all right.”
“Bless your little heart.” She wrapped one arm around my shoulder, grabbed her cane with her free hand, and led me into the hall. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Once we reached the kitchen, she basically forced me to sit down at the table. “Sit here,” she instructed. “You look exhausted and like you’re in need of a good home-cooked meal.”
“Oh no. I—” I started to refuse the generous offer, but Doreen waved me off with a determined hand.
“Harry!” she shouted toward the living room. “Charlotte’s here, and dinner’s just about ready!”
“Char’s here?” he called back. “Is Nick with her?”
“Nope!” she responded. “They broke up!”
“You’re kidding me!”
“I know! It’s terrible, isn’t it?” she yelled back, and I had the urge to bury my head in my hands. “Now, go wash your hands, Har, and come eat dinner with us!”
She smiled a sad smile before turning away.
“I’ve got the perfect comfort food in the oven, honey,” she announced as she moved toward the stove and opened it. A few seconds later she pulled a pie out with an oven-mitt-covered hand. “Homemade chicken pot pie. It was my mother’s recipe.”
“That smells and looks delicious, Doreen, but I don’t really feel comfortable crashing your dinner.” Sure, I’d once crashed her house entirely, and I still owned the place, but…
She tsked. “Don’t be silly, dear. You’re not crashing anything. I insist you join us.”
Well, I guessed, not but anything. I could crash their dinner if I wanted to. Harry bounded into the room just as his wife set the chicken pot pie on the table.
“Looks delicious, Dor!” he exclaimed.
“Manners, Harry!” his wife chastised before he could plant his ass in his designated chair at the head of the table. “Greet Charlotte before you sit down and start stuffing your face.”
He flashed a soft grin in my direction. “Hi, Charlotte. It’s nice that you stopped by.”
“Hi, Harry,” I greeted back awkwardly.
“Okay. I hope you’ve got your appetites,” Doreen said after she finished pouring all three of us a glass of fresh lemonade. “Because I’ve also got a homemade apple pie in the oven for dessert.”
Harry winked. “Goodness gracious, woman. I sure do love you.”
Doreen blushed as she sat down in her seat.
“You’re in for a treat, Char,” he said as he cut himself a piece of chicken pot pie. “Doreen is an amazing cook. And this pot pie is one of the best things that will ever touch your taste buds.”
“Oh!” Doreen exclaimed and hopped up from the table. “Your heart meds, Harry! I almost forgot.” She hurried back into the kitchen and opened up the cabinet over the sink. Five orange pill bottles in hand, she made her way back to Harry’s side of the table and started setting out his medicine.
“This is what happens when you get old, Char,” he teased. “You get wrinkles and a bad heart.”
“Oh, don’t traumatize her, Har!”
Honestly, the two of them didn’t even need me to be involved in their conversation. It was a show, and I was just the audience. Given my current mental state, that probably wasn’t a bad thing.
“What?” he retorted. “You know it’s true.”
“Harry had to have a triple bypass about a year ago,” she explained with a knowing glance in my direction. “And these medications are now an everyday thing.”
“Last year was a real rough year for us,” he admitted. “I had to stop working. And one surgery and a hundred-thousand worth of medical bills later, I’m just thankful I’m still able to enjoy time with my wife.”
Jesus. No wonder their home had been put in a foreclosure auction.
Discreetly, while Doreen and Harry argued over the right order for him to take his medications, I slipped the deed for the house out of my back pocket and put it back into my purse.
I just couldn’t have that discussion with them. Not after they had invited me into this house with open arms and insisted I eat a home-cooked meal. And especially not after I’d heard about everything they’d gone through over the past year.
Maybe one day I’d find the strength to find a solution to this problem, but not right now.
Right now, I was going to enjoy chicken pot pie and the nice, adorable, and oftentimes comedic distraction that these two lovebirds provided.
Staring at the ticker as it scrolled news across the bottom of the screen and reading nothing, I lifted a spoonful of Frosted Flakes to my mouth and winced.
Soggy and completely lacking in any of their normal goodness, Tony the Tiger wouldn’t have thought these were fucking grrrreat at all.
But their lackluster quality wasn’t the fault of the manufacturer. Instead, each disgusting attribute could be solely credited to the amount of time gone by as I stared into the abyss and hated myself—time spent not eating.
It’d been almost two weeks since I’d consumed the night with Charlotte in my arms, holding on to every last moment, crying together about what could have been—but in reality, absolutely couldn’t.
And that made nearly two weeks of misery.
I’d thought initially that the mourning would be quick. Not because I wasn’t attached to Charlotte or because the decision was simple, but because giving her up meant going back to a life with which I was extremely familiar. Kind of like slipping into an old shoe, I’d still walk the same path, I’d still do the same job, I’d just do it a little less stylishly.
Fucking naïveté.
Life without Charlotte didn’t feel less colorful; it felt dead.
Routine by rote, I’d thrown myself into the hospital, working the most overtime I’d worked in two years and generally annoying the entirety of the hospital staff. Carol looked surprised to find an ogre on the other side of my office door each time she approached, and even that made me angry. How the fuck could anyone expect me to be happy right now?
Of course, she didn’t know about the breakup or the reasons behind it or how impossible it was to come back from. But despair wasn’t rational, and as a result, I was a jackass.
I jumped as the alarm I’d set on my phone to end what I knew would be a breakfast filled with reckless daydreaming went off. A full bowl of soggy cereal in the garbage and a quick rinse to the dish later, I walked down the hall to my closet, opened the top drawer, and pulled out my dirty little secret.
Swirls of pink and lavender covering the soft fabric, Charlotte’s favorite sleep top still held her essence perfectly. With it firmly to my face, I inhaled, closed my eyes, and imagined for just a moment that she was inside it, sending me off with a smile and a kiss after a night spent with her in my arms.
Unfortunately, when I opened my eyes to nothing more than an empty shirt and a pathetic sense of self, a further void unbolted inside me and threatened to swallow everyone I made contact with today whole.
Get ready, folks, I thought, mentally hooking a thumb toward myself. This jackal is going nuclear.
My movement was violent as I slammed the shirt back in the drawer and shoved it closed, growling to myself about what a stupid asshole I was.
“Idiotic. Fucking romantic-hearted, stupidly fucking naïve.”
My gums ached as I scrubbed sadistically with my toothbrush and tortured myself with thoughts of Charlotte and trivia night and how fun it would have been to take Lexi to one together. How good she would have been at it and how redeemed I would have been in Charlotte’s eyes. How fucking impossible it all was thanks to our imperfectly intertwined past and a surely rocky relationship between the mother of my child and my girlfriend.
Ex-girlfriend.
Motherfucker.
My relationship with Remy wasn’t perfect by any means, but I’d finally broken some ground with him—I’d seen it in his eyes when I’d picked up Lexi two weeks ago. But I knew him and I knew Charlotte, and I knew there was no way he’d be okay with me being with her forever after losing her himself.
And if it came down to a battle between the two of us for time with Lexi, regardless of the fact that I was her natural father, I knew Remy would win. He had time and reliability on his side, a steadiness I couldn’t claim—and a blood relation to the woman who made the decisions.
I’d done the right thing ending things with Charlotte. It was the mature decision, the adult one—the one that kept my daughter firmly in my life.
So why does it have to feel so wrong?
Swinging my jacket over my shoulders and sliding my arms through, I finished getting dressed and stalked out of my apartment, only to realize I’d forgotten my phone. Back in to procure it, and out again, and if possible, my mood had only gone downhill from where it started this morning.
A few more notches and the depths of the core of the earth were going to start burning me.
It was good I’d gone back for it, though, the cadence of my ringtone jarring me out of my reverie as I climbed into a cab.
Trust me, this was no morning for the subway. I was liable to get into an altercation and end up in prison, and that sure as fuck wouldn’t help anything.
Winnie’s name scrolled on my screen as I quickly gave the cab driver my destination and settled into my seat, so I swiped to answer and put the phone to my ear, eyebrows drawn. It was only six in the morning, an excruciatingly early time for Winnie to be calling me, and my heart sank with worry for my daughter.
“Win? Is Lexi okay?” I asked immediately.
“Yeah, she’s fine.” She paused. “God, sorry. I didn’t even think about what calling this early would seem like.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’m just glad everything’s okay.”
Her voice turned cautious. “Well…Lexi is okay. But maybe not everything.”
Worry once again clutched at my chest as visions of her finding out about Charlotte and taking away Lexi assaulted my mind. Oh God.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, the normal, steady timbre of my voice shaky to even my own ears.
She sighed and apologized again. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair either. Everything is fine, it’s just…I finally caught an episode of Will Cummings on The Doctor Is In on Tuesday.”
Those were already airing? Christ.
“And?”
“You haven’t seen it?”
Oh, me? I’d been too busy numbing myself from the world with work. “No. I haven’t seen it.”
“They painted him in an awful light. He comes off as a pervert and obscene and completely unprofessional. I obviously know Will, and I know these things to be untrue, but I’m worried, Nick. What if they do the same thing to you? What’s that going to do to Lexi? You think kids at school aren’t going to give her a hard time? Even more of a hard time?”
I rubbed at my forehead and swept the hand down my face. Jesus Christ, this was bad. I honestly couldn’t remember what I’d done on camera. How many times Charlotte had been to my office or what we’d done in plain sight.
I’d known from the beginning that this stupid show was a bad idea, but I’d allowed myself to be roped in, and now there was a chance I was going to lose everything.
I worked hard to gather my thoughts. I might be freaking the fuck out in my head, but that was the absolute last thing I wanted to convey to Winnie. My panic or guilt wouldn’t help anything here.
“Wow. I had no idea. I completely understand why you’re upset, and I wish I hadn’t done the show.” What a fucking understatement. “I don’t know what they’ll do to me in the limelight, but you have to know Lexi is the most important thing in my life. I know I fucked up for a long time, I know I missed everything she had to offer, but I won’t do that again. Please, Win,” I begged. I imagined the fallout of my episodes as they started to air and closed my eyes. “Just, please, remember that.”
“I know,” she comforted softly. “All of us can see the change in you, Lexi included. She’s so attached to you now.” She laughed. “In fact, the first thing she said this morning was that she had twelve hours and forty-five minutes until she saw you.”
I smiled. Despite the pain, despite fear of the future.
Winnie sighed again. “I’m sorry I got all defensive. Whatever they do with your episodes, I’m sure we’ll work through it, okay? I hope I didn’t ruin your day too much.”
The plexiglass divider in front of me shook as the cab driver pounded on it to get my attention. I looked up to see I was there, St. Luke’s shooting up into the sky beside us as people hustled down the sidewalks and through the street all around us.
I yanked some cash from my pocket and handed it to the cabbie, holding my phone between my shoulder and my ear as I climbed out.
“I get it, Win. You’re looking out for our daughter. I’m just trying to do that now too.”
“I know that. I really do.”
“Good.”
She paused, so long that I was about to tell her I had to go, and then she spoke again. “Though, you’ve been a real grouch the last couple of weeks. Think your mood is going to be any better when you pick Lex up tonight, or should I start preparing my force field now?”
“You should probably set up the force field now,” I admitted candidly. She laughed. “I will try, though.”
“What happened?”
I shook my head and groaned. I didn’t know what to say, considered a million different options, but eventually settled on a partial truth. “Just a breakup. It didn’t work out.”
“Wow. I don’t know the circumstances, but it honestly seemed like it was the real thing.”
“It was.” After realizing how that probably didn’t make any sense to her, I amended my answer. “I thought it was.”
“Well, all right. I’ll allow the grumpiness for a little while longer, then. And instead of the force field, I’ve got ice cream—a much stronger weapon when it comes to combatting heartbreak.”
I laughed. The flavor had better be “atomic.”
Stuff tucked away in my office and white coat on, I headed down the hall to do rounds. I was an hour earlier than my scheduled time, but after about five minutes, I’d known I couldn’t sit inside my office without going crazy. I had to be out, hands-on, getting shit done.
I’d just turned the corner from the hall with the cafeteria, forgoing coffee in an effort to avoid people, when I heard someone yell my name.
“Nick!”
I wasn’t compelled to slow, fearful
of what face-to-face interaction with another human being would be like right now, but I did look back over my shoulder to see who it was.
That just made it worse.
Will Cummings. Just the person I didn’t want to see.
I turned back forward, never breaking stride, but the slap of his feet on the tile as he jogged to catch up had me clenching my fists.
“Nick, hold up,” he called.
“No, Will,” I refused as he got close and tried to keep time with my quick strides. “I don’t feel like talking. I don’t feel like commiserating over your fallen reputation, and I don’t feel like forgiving you for talking me into this mess.” I knew there was no real way Will could have known the direction this show would go or the unintended consequences it would have on my life, but anger wasn’t reasonable. So neither was I.
Down the hall, he didn’t give up, keeping time with me at an annoying jog for at least another fifty or sixty feet. I expelled a frustrated breath and stopped as I realized I wasn’t going to get rid of him that easily.
“Winnie already called,” I told him. “She’s worried about my episodes and what they’ll mean for Lexi. She already has enough trouble fitting in as it is.”
His face turned troubled—and deeply apologetic.
“I didn’t know…I had no idea it would be like this, man. I’m so sorry.”
Honestly, Will was one of the nicest guys I knew. I was too busy to consider him a close friend, but if I were looking for one, he’d definitely be a prime candidate.
I ran a rough hand through my hair. “Me too. I know this isn’t your fault, Will. I just…”
…my life is falling apart.
I didn’t say it, but he looked as though he’d heard me. “I get it. Seriously. Don’t worry about me, dude.”
A really nice guy. Maybe I really should try to hang out with him more.
I almost smiled at the thought.
“Wow,” he muttered. “Close call. You’re almost smiling.”
At his teasing, I felt an actual smile give way. “Wouldn’t want that, would we?”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I gotta run grab some shit and then get back up to four. Catch up later?”