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Chapter 65

Once Nick was gone, Claire settled back into her old routine again. On weekdays she worked and went to visit Casey before coming home to an empty house to make herself dinner, watch some TV, talk to Nick on the phone, and read before going to bed. The security guards Nick had hired to watch over the house had started their job immediately, and their presence did help ease Claire’s mind when she was trying to fall asleep at night, although for the first few nights, every little sound still made her sit bolt upright, her heart rate jumping, her ears straining to hear. But of course, nothing ever happened, and eventually she was able to let up her guard again and relax enough to sleep.

Weekends were the loneliest days for Claire because they were the least busy. She hung out with Dianna or Laureen when she could, but because both of them had boyfriends (Dianna was head over heels with this guy from work she’d been seeing, and Laureen still hadn’t worked up the nerve to call things off with Tim), they were usually busy on Friday or Saturday nights. For something else to do, she had started driving over to St. Petersburg on Friday nights to watch the high school football games – her brother Kyle was the football coach. Amber never missed a game, despite being eight months pregnant, so Claire sat with her in the stands to watch the games, and afterwards, they went out for pizza while they waited for Kyle to get done with his post-game spiel and come home.

She didn’t mind hanging out with her brother and his wife – she and Kyle had always gotten along well, but had been especially close ever since his bone marrow donation had saved her life. And Amber had always been nothing but sweet to her. Yet she had to admit, it got kind of old hanging out with a married couple. At times, she felt like the third wheel, even though Kyle and Amber always assured her that she was welcome anytime. It was the same when she was around Laureen and Tim or Dianna and her new boy toy Todd, and she couldn’t help but wish Nick were home so that they could do more “couples” things together. It was almost like being single, only she wasn’t. One glance down at her engagement ring reminded that she had a man too… he just wasn’t there.

***

Nick struggled with the separation as well. Being with the other guys in Los Angeles meant he saw a lot of Brian and Leighanne, Kevin and Kristin, and AJ and Mary. He liked all of the guys’ significant others, even Leighanne (although she had taken the longest for him to get used to), but hanging out with them made him feel like the third wheel and caused him to miss Claire even more than he already did.

He and Howie had started hanging out more, just the two of them. They often hit the clubs at night, and Nick drank while Howie flirted with the ladies. To Nick, it felt almost like being single, only he wasn’t. All he had to do was picture Claire to remind himself that he had a lady of his own… she just wasn’t there.

As he sat nursing a beer and attempting to keep his eyes from wandering to the scantily clad women who frequented the clubs, his thoughts constantly turned to Claire. What was she doing right then? he always wondered. On weeknights, he knew she’d be asleep – she usually had to get up early in the morning for work. On weekends, he had no idea. Part of him hoped she missed him as much as she missed her, but he also didn’t want her to be miserable pining for him. Not that she seemed like the miserable, pining type, but everyone got lonely, and he didn’t want her to be.

He called her every night, and they usually talked for about an hour before she hung up to get ready for bed and he to get ready for another night out. He looked forward to the nightly phone conversations, but they really were not enough. He loved hearing her voice, but he missed seeing her face, touching her body, smelling the shampoo she used in her hair and the scented lotion she always put on. When he came back from a weekend with her, he could still smell that familiar aroma if he closed his eyes and imagined it. But after long enough, the conjured scent would fade, and try as he might, he couldn’t remember exactly how it smelled. And that worried him.

After a late night in the clubs, he’d stumble into Howie’s guestroom and fall into bed, hugging a pillow to his chest instead of her and smelling nothing but the stale cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes that clung to his body. As he drifted into an alcohol-induced sleep, the last images that swam in his hazy mind, before darkness drowned them out, were of her.

***

Claire’s dream that night was nothing but a series of vague images, yet when she awoke, it left her restless and unsettled. Within seconds, most of the dream had slipped her mind, but she remembered a few bits and pieces.

Nick. Nick had been in it. She dreamed of him often when he was away and usually awoke feeling wistful, yet peaceful, the way you were supposed to feel when you were in love with a man who loved you equally in return. But this dream left her with a much different feeling, for in it, Nick had not been loving her, but another woman. The mystery woman’s face was a blur, but she had radiated a sense of beauty no one could deny, lest not Claire. In the dream, they had all been in a posh, intimately-lit bar, she, Nick, and the woman. She had sat alone at a small table in the corner of the hazy room, watching as Nick and the woman drank together at the bar. They had moved quickly from drinking to flirting to touching, and before she knew it, they were on top of the bar, making love the way couples in movies did. And to Claire, who had been unable to rise from her private table and stop them, it had been like watching a movie… a horror movie she could not escape by covering her eyes.

Waking up had been her escape, but even once she had realized it was just a silly dream, she did not feel much better than she had in the nightmare. Logic told her exactly what had sparked such a dream on that particular night – it was a Saturday night, and when she’d talked to Nick earlier in the evening, he’d mentioned hitting the bars with some of the guys, as she got the impression he did often. The faceless beauty in the dream was, of course, her mind’s interpretation of the woman he’d kissed the night of her rejection scare. There was no reason to be paranoid, she told herself, but even rationalization would not dissolve the knot that had formed in her stomach.

She slid out of bed, knowing she would not be getting back to sleep right away, and crept downstairs. Wandering into the kitchen, she opened the fridge and stood in front of it, feeling the cool blast seeping into her skin as she contemplated what she wanted. She pulled out the carton of milk and poured herself a glass – wasn’t milk supposed to help you sleep? Warm milk was, but… ick.

She put the carton back on the top shelf and closed the fridge, only to open it again a few seconds later as she realized she wanted something to go with her milk. She eyed the fruit bin in the bottom of the fridge, but impulsively snatched a jar of dill pickles from one of the shelves on the door instead. For some reason, she’d always liked eating pickles late at night. Maybe it was the salt, or maybe she was just weird (probably the latter). In any case, she helped herself to one and crunched down on it, savoring its distinct taste. She downed the rest of her milk when she was finished, gagging as she realized what a horrible combination milk and pickles were, and set her empty glass down next to the sink.

Still restless and awake, she meandered through the rest of the first story, turning on lights until the entire downstairs was blazing. That certainly didn’t help her to feel any sleepier, but she didn’t like wandering around Nick’s house in the dark. It was too big… too many shadowy corners to hide in.

She sighed at that thought, wondering how long she was going to be paranoid like this. It was sort of ridiculous, and she knew it, but she couldn’t help it, no more than she could help being disturbed by the dream she’d just had. What was Nick doing right now? she wondered. It was only midnight in California; he probably was in a bar or a nightclub. Not screwing a woman on top of the bar though; that was absurd. Nick had messed up once, but he’d sworn it would never happen again, and she trusted him. Didn’t she?

She did, but at the same time, she realized how easy it would be for him to be unfaithful if he felt the urge to. Just as easy as it would have been for her to cheat on him with Jamie when he was in town. But of course she hadn’t, and he wouldn’t either. She knew that, she believed that, but it still didn’t keep the possibility from crossing her mind from time to time.


I’m so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won’t leave me alone

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase


Long distance relationships sucked.

She knew now what Jamie had been thinking when he’d dumped her the summer before they started college. His excuse had been the long distance factor, which she’d vehemently argued at the time. “I thought we loved each other!” she could still recall herself screaming at him, impassioned tears stinging her eyes. “As long as we love each other and stay true to each other, distance can’t hurt us! What are you so afraid of, Jamie?”

But now she knew. She had loved Jamie, just as she loved Nick now, and she was convinced that he really had loved her then too, but he knew that being in a new place, away from each other and surrounded by new people and new temptations, would threaten their relationship. They’d be tied down, yet itching to break free, at a time when they were supposed to test the waters, live and learn. It had taken her a long time to accept it, but now she felt Jamie had been right to insist they break up. If it was meant to be, they would have gotten back together. But they hadn’t.

And now she was engaged to Nick and feeling a lot like Jamie must have felt that summer. She wanted things between her and Nick to stay as they had always been, but she knew they couldn’t. The real world had changed everything, just as it had for her and Jamie. They’d had to leave the familiarity of high school for the great unknown of college, and inevitably, she and Nick had drifted back to the very different lives they had always known, after facing a shared hell that had brought them together.


When you cried, I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you’d scream, I’d fight away all of your fears


It was funny… when she’d first gotten to know Nick, she had constantly marveled over how alike they were. She’d never expected herself to have anything in common with Nick Carter, the Backstreet Boy, but amazingly, they had hit it off right from the start. They’d always understood each other so well, and for whatever reason, she’d always felt very comfortable around him. That was why she’d fallen for him, and she hadn’t stopped loving him since.


I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me


Now all she could think about was how different they were and how it taken her so long to realize it. Things had changed.

She hated change.

But life was full of change, and after twenty-five year of it, she knew it was inevitable. All she could do was go with the flow… or move on, in the other direction.

Move on…

It was hard to move on, but that was another part of life. Sometimes you had to let go. That had never been an easy thing for her to do; she had always clung to the past, afraid to let things change too much. It was the reason she still lived in the town she’d grown up in and hung out with her friends from high school. She cherished the past, documenting all of it in her scrapbook in hopes of preserving it forever. She loved looking back on the good old days, the people, places, and memories of her past.

The future, on the other hand, had not been known to treat her kindly. She hated the uncontrollable nature of it. She knew that was the fun of it for some people, not knowing what hand they would be dealt next, but she’d been dealt bad hands too many times. She liked to make her own decisions; she liked to be in control. She hated just waiting to see what would happen, how the future would play out.

Fittingly, she looked up to find herself in Nick’s office, where she kept all of her scrapbooking supplies. Lost in her own thoughts, she hadn’t even realized where she’d been wandering, but now she crossed the room with purpose and pulled her thick, heavy scrapbook from the bookshelves. She carried the large album to Nick’s desk and set it down with a thud. Sinking into his large, padded desk chair, she opened the dusky purple cover and started turning slowly through the pages, studying each of the pictures she’d carefully pasted in, reading each of the captions she’d written. A trip down memory lane was always a good way to take her mind off of things or cheer her up. She’d poured over this scrapbook often in the days before her bone marrow transplant two years ago, cementing the faces of her family and friends in her mind, just in case…

Now she looked at old pictures of her parents, taken during her childhood, and thought of her own impending marriage and the perfect little family she might never have. She flipped through the pages representing her high school years and couldn’t help but smile at the photos of her and her friends as teenagers. How carefree they had been. And how idealistic, she added internally as her senior prom picture with Jamie caught her eye, remembering that night. She’d dreamed about it recently, which was sort of odd.

When she got to the first pictures of her and Nick, her thoughts returned to the dream she’d had just that night, and the knot in her stomach tightened once more. She studied his face – the blueness of his eyes, the playful smirk curving his lips, the light smattering of freckles on his nose – and smiled sadly. She missed him so much, and the longing for him filled her with pangs of loneliness.


You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face, it haunts
My once pleasant dreams


Eventually, she reached the end of the album and shut it, shoving it back onto its shelf before she circled around the downstairs, turning off lights on her way back up to bed. She was just burrowing beneath the covers on her side of the bed, hoping sleep would come to her quickly, when she heard a high-pitched beep. At first she was confused; then she realized it was her cell phone, signaling she had voicemail. Perplexed, she sat back up and reached over to grab her phone from the bedside table. She pressed the button to dial her voicemail and put the phone to her ear.

She was a little surprised to hear the automated voice read off Nick’s phone number – usually he didn’t try to call her this late. Then again, who else would call at this hour? She hoped nothing was wrong and waited anxiously for his message to play.

“Hey, baby,” came his voice, and she relaxed instantly. “I just thought I’d call… cause I miss you. You should be here right now, babe; we’re havin’ an awwwesome time.” Frowning, she rolled her eyes – he was slurring horribly and was obviously plastered. She could hear muffled music in the background and figured he was calling from outside a club. “I wish you could be here… I miss you, Claire,” he repeated himself. There was a pause, and she could just barely make out a female voice saying something in the background. Then Nick’s voice came back on the line. “Yeah, so, we’re gonna go hit this other place… You should come with us. Just hop a flight; you know I can pay for it.” He giggled drunkenly. “Well, I guess I’ll just talk to you later. Love you, baby.”

The message ended, and she deleted it, feeling somewhat dismayed. Though she tried to stop herself from doing it, she couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing, where he was going, who he was with. He’d said “we” several times, so maybe he was with a big group. Maybe he was just with the guys and their girlfriends – for all she knew, the woman in the background could have been Mary. She hadn’t been able to recognize the voice at all; she only knew that it was female.

Still, the knot in her stomach felt doubly tight as she turned her phone off and set it back on the nightstand. The last time he’d called her like this, he’d been in a bar with another woman. She tried not to make assumptions about this time, but she couldn’t stop the rampant thoughts from coming, the worry from gnawing away at her insides.


Your voice, it chased away
All the sanity in me

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase


She sighed, remembering a time when she’d had more serious things to worry about… like whether or not Nick was going to be okay. Okay, in every sense of the word – physically, emotionally… her worry encompassed all. And she’d worried through it all, though she’d always tried to keep a brave face in front of him.


When you cried, I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you’d scream, I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me


She’d been so afraid of losing him then… and lately, that fear had started to return, in a different form. She felt like things had changed between them, just in the last two months. It was the separation… it had changed everything.


I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone
But though you’re still with me
I’ve been alone all along


She hated change. But she knew things would never be quite the same, and she had to figure out what to do about it. Go with it… or move on.

She lay awake for a long time that night, thinking, worrying. It was getting light out when she finally drifted back to sleep and back into her dreams. Again, she dreamed of Nick, but it was a much different dream. In her resting mind’s eye, she saw him as she had in the hospital, the day she’d found out about his amputation. On that day, she’d made a promise to herself that she would never leave him, that she would never walk out on him again.


When you cried, I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you screamed, I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me


Things changed.

***

Lyrics: “My Immortal” by Evanescence