Since He Really Feels (He Feels) (6 page)

“I don’t even know, Luce. I’m so confused about everything.”

“Why?”

“I’m happy for him that he found someone.”

“But it hurts that it’s not you?”

Tears sprung to my eyes once again. If I had a dollar for every time I’d cried over the past month, I would be one rich lady. “It’s not even that it’s not me. I went all that way to see him, to talk to him and make sure he was okay. I put my relationship with Nick in jeopardy to make sure my friend was okay, and he completely blew me off.”

“How did Nick react to you going?”

I glanced down at the timer on her phone. It had only been one minute. “He’s barely speaking to me, and last night he issued this ultimatum. I have to choose between my friendship with Travis and my future with Nick.”

“Don’t look at the time,” she demanded.

A small smile formed on my lips, and it felt good to be able to smile in the midst of this dramatic situation. “Sorry,” I said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I love Nick. I love him so much, and I can’t imagine my life without him. I don’t want to. But I don’t know how to erase Travis from my life. I don’t think I can do that.”

She nodded sympathetically. “You’ve got other friends, Jules.”

“I know I do. Like you. And I love you. But Travis and I have been friends for our entire lives. I depend on him. He’s like family. You don’t just turn your back on family.”

“Do you resent Nick for making you choose?”

“Totally. And it scares me that he will only be happy if I cut Travis out of my life.”

She paused and glanced at the time, refusing to show it to me. “Do you think he’s insecure?”

“That has to be it. Why else would he tell me I have to end my friendship with Trav?”

“Let me put it this way: Would you feel comfortable if Nick was best friends with an ex? If he ran to comfort someone he’d slept with?
Recently?”

I sighed. I knew that question was coming, and I knew I was being a complete hypocrite. “No.”

“Then you can’t blame him. Maybe once you and Nick are married, he’ll be more comfortable with you and Travis being friends.”

“Maybe.
But if he’s insecure now, if he’s issuing ultimatums now, is that a good base for a marriage?”

“That’s something only you can answer.”

She was right, and I knew that. I glanced at myself in the mirror again, and my mind drifted back to the whole reason we were in there. What if I was pregnant? As I stared at myself in the mirror, I didn’t look any different. I didn’t look pregnant. Didn’t pregnant women have a glow about them? I wasn’t glowing. I just looked tired.

I appreciated my friend trying to get my mind off of the test, but it wasn’t working. “Lucy, what am I going to do if it’s positive?”

“You’re going to deal with it. You’ll have me to help get you through it.”

“What if it isn’t Nick’s?” I whispered, finally voicing the fear that had gripped me for the past
hour.

He’d end things with me for sure if I was pregnant with Travis’s baby, and an icy depression gripped my heart at the thought. I had known my answer all along, but the real threat of my relationship ending with Nick sent a current of terror through my spine.

I couldn’t imagine a life without him.

I remembered the all-consuming desolation I’d lived through when we had broken up for a few days. I couldn’t go through that again. Now that I had Nick back in my life, I knew that I would never survive losing him again.

“What if it is?” she countered. 

Lucy’s phone beeped, indicating that the five minutes had passed. My wide eyes met hers, and then I scrambled for the stick with a racing heart.

One pink line meant not pregnant; two pink lines meant pregnant. The directions were printed right there on the stick.

As I flipped it over, I saw only one pink line. I wanted to feel a rush of relief, but instead, I just felt a whole lot of doubt.

“It’s a false negative,” I said, waving the stick in the air.

“Or maybe it’s a real negative,” she said.

“I need to make an appointment with my doctor. I won’t believe it until a medical professional tells me that I’m not pregnant.”

She sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jules.”

“I’m not,” I said, a little offended. I just wanted a second opinion.

When I
walked into the home I shared with Nick later that night, Nick obviously wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t surprised; I figured he’d stay late at work. Whether it was an avoidance technique or if he legitimately had work to do remained to be seen, but I decided to let myself believe that he wasn’t avoiding me.

I sent him a text asking if he’d be home for dinner.

His reply came a half an hour later.
I’m leaving in thirty minutes. If you can hold off eating, I’ll bring something home.

That gave me at least an hour to kill, and it also gave me hope that we had a chance to get our relationship back on track. It was baby steps, but I’d take it. I unpacked my bag and started a load of laundry, and then I called my doctor to book an appointment, ultimately leaving a voicemail.

When Nick arrived, he had Chinese food. I was checking my email on my iPad at the kitchen table, wondering if Travis had sent another one after my text earlier. When Nick walked in, I immediately turned off my iPad. He walked right by me and unpacked the bag onto the kitchen counter. I stood from the table and headed to the cabinets while he brought the food to the table.

He’d ordered my favorite – chicken and broccoli with fried rice – and something sort of snapped inside of me as I realized how much I didn’t deserve the wonderful man in front of me. Sure, he’d made mistakes; but my mistakes had been much, much worse, and I needed to make up for those. If cutting Travis out of my life was what Nick needed from me, then that would be my only option.

“Can we talk?” I asked as I pulled some plates out of a cabinet.

He nodded, and I brought the plates, forks, and serving spoons to the table while he got us each a drink. He grabbed a bottle of beer for himself. “What do you want to drink?” he asked.

I wanted a glass of wine, but if there was even the slightest possibility I might be pregnant, I didn’t want to risk it. “Water’s fine,” I replied.

Nick raised his eyebrows. I drank wine with dinner just about every night, so he was obviously wondering why I didn’t want the usual. I pretended not to notice.

He sat across from me, and we both scooped food onto our plates. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry.

“What did you want to talk about?” he asked.

I realized that he hadn’t kissed me or hugged me or made any sort of bodily contact with me since he’d arrived, and the thought left me feeling cold and bereft. I wondered if I should tell him about what was on my mind, about my bathroom time with Lucy. I couldn’t get a good gauge on his mood, and in the grand scheme of things, we were still getting to know each other and learning how to live with one another.

“Julianne?” he prompted.

“Sorry,” I said, realizing how lost in thought I’d been. “I want to talk about us.”

“Did you make your decision?” he asked, stabbing at a piece of broccoli.

I nodded. “For the record, I think it’s complete bullshit that you’re forcing me to make this decision alone.”

“Well, for the record, I think
it’s complete bullshit that you went to San Diego.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore. Nick, I choose you.
Obviously.”

Nick set down his fork and stared at me for a moment. I stared back, and I felt the heat pass between us. He stood, and I watched him as he walked around the table until he stood behind me. He swept my hair off of my right shoulder and away from my neck, and he leaned down and placed
a gentle kiss on the curve there. I felt his stubble tickle my skin, and that one simple motion threw my desire for him into overdrive.

His breath whispered against my ear. “I’m sorry for making you choose, but thank you for choosing me.”

He straightened and returned to his side of the table while I shuddered into a quivering mess.

He picked up his fork and resumed eating, and I couldn’t figure out how the hell to focus on food when all I could focus on was the throbbing ache between my legs.

After we finished eating, Nick brought me the dishes while I rinsed them in the sink.

“Can I use your iPad to check tomorrow’s weather?” he asked.

I nodded as I set my water glass in the dishwasher.

It was less than ten seconds later when I heard Nick.

“What the fuck is this?” he growled. I glanced up from the sink and looked over at him. I am pretty sure I saw steam coming out of his ears from his anger. That sexy muscle in his jaw was working overtime as his mouth was clenched tightly shut. There may have been a vein popping out of his forehead from the vicious glare that was directed squarely at me.

“What’s what?” I asked, totally confused as I dried my hands on the towel and walked over to see what had his hackles up.

“This email from Travis.” His voice was icy. He had asked to borrow my iPad and I had consented, never once thinking he’d open my email and see the one Travis had sent me earlier that day.

“Why are you in my email?” I
asked, my own voice just as icy.

“It was on here when I turned your iPad on.”

Shit. I’d never seen him so angry.

“Nick, I—”

He cut me off. “God dammit, Julianne. I cannot keep having this same fucking fight with you.”

He tossed my iPad on the table and stood up.

Nick and I had been through a rocky road to get where we were, and we had finally had a breakthrough. I knew that as soon as we had finished cleaning up the kitchen, we were going to head upstairs to finish making up. At least that had been my plan.

“Then let’s not fight,” I suggested.

He breathed a loud, frustrated sigh. “I thought we were done with secrets.” The anger was gone, and it was replaced with something much, much scarier.

“I wasn’t keeping a secret from you.”

“You know where I stand on this, Julianne. You went to see him against my wishes. That not only pissed me off, but it also means you need to put in more time at McMillan, which means you can’t start at BKG on time.” His voice gradually got louder as he spoke. “You didn’t consider anything else when you took off to see him. It was a selfish move and it was stupid, and then I find this fucking email?”

“You think things would’ve been better if I had shown the email to you?”

“No,” he glared at me. “I don’t. But it wouldn’t have felt like such a huge betrayal.”

“It’s not a betrayal, Nick. It’s an email. I can’t control what he emails to me.”

“Did you fuck him again while you were there?”

I lifted my hand to slap him across the face. I don’t know why it was my natural instinct, but it was. I couldn’t believe that he would say that to me. It hurt that he would even think that of me. I was dedicated to our relationship, and Nick knew that my love for him was passionate and profound and instinctive and better than any other love I’d ever experienced in my life – including my love for Travis. So his question was painful to hear, and I wanted to strike back; so I tried to, with my hand. But he caught my arm before I had the chance to execute my slap.

“I can’t believe you would ask me that.” My voice sounded cold even to my own ears.

“
You’re right. I’m sorry.” His voice was eerily quiet, a complete contrast to how loud his voice had just been. As if fate stepped in to make our fight even worse, my phone started ringing at that exact moment. It was on the table next to where Nick stood, and he glanced at the screen. “It’s your fucking boyfriend. Why don’t you answer it and tell him that you choose him? Because I’m done with this bullshit.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I
said, my voice even despite the fact that I was terrified of how far he was willing to take this.

“I’m not, Julianne. I will not share your heart with another man, and if you can’t give it to only me, then we don’t have anything.” His eyes burned into mine. He was furious.

I didn’t blame him for being mad. If another woman had sent him an email declaring her love, I would have felt the same anger he was feeling. And if I knew that he’d slept with that same woman in the time we had been apart, I would have been furious. But he had told me that he knew how important Travis was in my life. And he had told me that he could live with it but that he couldn’t live without me.

“You can’t be serious. After everything we have been through, you’d just throw it away because of a stupid email?”

“No,” he shook his head, muttering. “You would be the one throwing it away.”

With that, he walked out of the room. I didn’t have the energy to chase him because, frankly, I was also tired of the same fight. So, instead, I collapsed in the kitchen chair and stared blankly into space, wondering how
the hell I was going to fix this mess.