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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.

***