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Before: Aren't I Enough?


Ashley

After the trip to Kansas, I didn't see Nick again for awhile because it seemed like I always had plans with Chris. Which was amazing. Chris had been so busy over the summer working that I'd hardly seen him at all, and he'd been so tired from work he'd been uninterested in wedding plans, but after the trip to Kansas he became... I don't know... extremely enthusiastic. He wanted to know everything I was planning for the wedding, wanted to be involved in making choices and going places to look at churches and reception halls.

"You don't have to go," I told him, laughing when I told him I wanted to go look at a reception hall upstate on the same day as the World Series. "Nick said he doesn't care about the game, so he can go with me."

"No, I want to go," Chris said, jumping up and switching off the TV set. "I want to see the hall."

We were constantly going places together, or he'd come home with food and a new movie and we'd cuddle and spend the night in. And he was being so impossibly sweet, helping me do the dishes and clean the apartment, and even rubbing my feet when I came home from a long day at work. He always wanted to talk and tell me about his day and brought me home flowers for no apparent reason.

At lunch time, I got sweet little messages on my phone.

Just saying hi and I love you.

It wasn't like I wasn't trying to make plans with Nick. I mean I was. They just never seemed to work out. Like once I was planning to go to Nick's to watch the season opener for the Buccs - he has a party every year - and I was making jalopeno puffs to bring and Chris came home with dinner reservations and a boquet of roses. Another time, Nick was supposed to meet me for lunch and Chris called me five minutes into the date saying he was sick and needed a ride home from the FedEx warehouse because he'd taken NyQuil and was sure he'd get in a car wreck if he did.

It was like fate was against me seeing him.

Which honestly was secretly okay with me. For some reason, I felt guilty making plans with Nick because I felt like I was betraying Chris again. And also I knew if I was with Nick too long that he'd ask about how I was doing, that he'd bring up my father, and I didn't want to talk about him.

I couldn't get the haunting image of my father out of my mind.

It was during the last week of November, when I got a text from Nick's sister Angel, inviting me to her and Aaron's birthday party downtown, that I realized it'd been almost three months since I'd seen Nick for longer than fifteen minutes.

"Wow," I murmured as the thought washed over me.

"What?" Chris looked up from the video game he was playing.

"I just got a text from Nick's sister," I said.

Chris's face corkscrewed, "The dead one?"

I rolled my eyes, "Yes, she texted me from Beyond."

"I dunno maybe it was delayed. Verizon's crap."

"By two years?"

Chris made a face, "Really? It's been two years?"

"Since Leslie died? Almost. No, this is from Angel."

"She's kind of a bitch," he muttered. This opinion was one that had been formed a long time ago. See, Chris had tried to get with Angel the night she and Aaron turned eighteen. This was something that Nick did not know. I only knew because I'd been in the room when it happened. Chris had been high, and walked up to her like he was royalty, and started trying to slobber all over her. Angel had slapped him so hard his face had literally been branded by her hand and the mark took a couple days to fade off. I don't think Chris knew I was there when it happened.

"Well she wants us to go to her birthday party. Can you believe her and Aaron are going to be 26? Jesus... I remember them being like two. Anyway's, it's the seventh, so you need to request that night off."

Chris raised an eyebrow. "You don't seriously want to go do you?"

"Well... yeah, I do actually," I said. "I haven't seen Nick since like September, and I'm sure he'll be there. It'd be nice to see him."

Chris sighed, "I guess."

"Nick's like your best friend," I said, "You should miss him, too. I don't know why we don't hang out with him more, I mean he's both our friend, it makes sense."

"I just like being with you is all," Chris answered.

It occurred to me that we hadn't really been out with anyone besides each other in a really long time. I tried to think of the last person that was over our place, and the only one I could think of was Chris's mother, Karen, who had come to help us get Chris's suit fitted for the wedding the week before. She'd stayed overnight and Chris had made a huge production of being babied by mommy the whole time she was there.

"We should have him over more often," I said.

Chris put the controller for the game down on the coffee table and came over to the chair I was sitting in. He put the book I'd been reading before Angel texted onto the table beside me. "Aren't I enough for you?" he asked.

"You're a goofball," I laughed. I reached for my book and Chris caught my hand and stared into my eyes, waiting for a response. I smiled, "Of course you're enough for me."

Chris kissed me so hard I felt like he was trying to flatten me with his mouth. I kissed him back awkwardly. He scooped me up and carried me off to our bedroom.




Nick

On December 7th, I made my annual obligatory call to Angel for her birthday. I hadn't really talked to anyone in my family all year. They were mad that I'd missed the ceremony at Niagra Falls for Leslie. It's not like I didn't have an excellent excuse, but... that's just how things are in my family. Short of being dead myself - which actually I was, but that's okay - they didn't think it was excuse enough. So we'd had a huge falling out, which was about typical for us, and I hadn't talked to anyone since. So this year the call to Angel was extra awkward.

And to think afterwards I had to have a second one just like it with Aaron.

When Angel picked up, there was a ton of noise in the background. It sounded like she was at one of the crazy ass slumber parties BJ used to throw when she was thirteen. The ones I used to spy through the heating vent in my bedroom floor, peeking down into her bedroom, hoping for one of the girls to take off their bras.

"Hello?" she practically shouted into the phone over the noise level.

"Hey! Happy Birthday!" I called into the phone.

"Nick?" Angel sounded surprised. "Aren't you coming tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"To the club?"

"What club?"

"To our party! Didn't Aaron call you?"

"No."

"Fuck! What a bastard." It was still weird hearing Angel curse. She was my little sister. She should be saying things like mama, dada, pony and gimme, not bastard or fuck.

"Was he supposed to call me?" I asked.

"Yes!" she sighed, "He was supposed to invite you to the party. We're having a party downtown tonight. I'll text you the deets. You have to come."

I looked around the house. It was kind of a mess, cluttered with half signed contracts and album artwork proofs and everything. The Backstreet Boys album was going to be released the beginning of February. I'd managed to put off this paperwork as far as I could, managed to obliterate our entire anniversary year, managed to piss Kevin off to the high heavens, and I'd spent the day trying to catch up on everything to make February a reality. "I'm kind of... busy," I answered.

Besides, I couldn't picture being in a club with a ton of Aaron and Angel's friends for the whole night. I actually couldn't picture being in a club, period. There was a time, before the crash, that I spent every night out, sure, but now a club just sounded like more work than it was worth. Particularly since there was only one woman I was interested in these days and there was no way in hell she'd be there.

"I invited Dogface," Angel said.

"Ashley?" I asked.

Angel laughed, "Since when do you call her Ashley?"

"I stopped calling her Dogface when I --" I paused, "After the crash."

"Oh," Angel said. "Anyways, she said she's coming."

"Ashley's gonna be there?"

"Yes," Angel replied.

"When does it start again?"

"Like I said, I'll text you the details. I'll see you tonight!"

"Bye."

I looked at all the paperwork I was buried under. Well, hell. One more night wasn't gonna hurt anything right?