It's a Friday evening and finally she thinks she can relax. She wears her hair down, straightened but only a little and the navy dress she has chosen to wear teemed perfectly with the shoes Nick brought her for Christmas makes her feel confident as she strides into her boyfriends work where she knows there is a party and free booze and her closest friends.
Happily, Carla spends the evening drinking and eating and making eyes at Nick across the bar whilst chatting to Michelle and Steve and all those who had come to call her a friend again after the tragedies of the last year.
The night goes on almost with her once Nick as finished his shift because they sit together at the bar drinking and laughing and the world behind them seems insignificant. He barely takes his eyes off before because their relationship isn't new now, it's old and comfortable and settled and yet every bit as exciting and wonderful as he might have hoped.
"Carla we need to go. We need to go now." She's laughing as she is pulled from her seat and stumbles drunkenly with him from the Bistro and back towards her flat, their flat and although she repeatedly whines to know his sudden desperation to get her alone, he simply grins just as drunkenly back and remains silent. He leads her in by the hand and haphazardly pulls her in the direction of the sofa that is still laced with clothes from the night before. Her book half read and his morning paper, two empty breakfast plates and equally empty glasses on their coffee table. Their home is lived in, long gone are the boxes and the numbness and the fear of being alive, replaced instead with a buzz of normalness. Togetherness.
"Carla you're so beautiful." She can almost taste the alcohol in his words but she chuckles delightfully as she sits on the sofa and he is knelt in front of her, clumsily pushing back hair that tumbles across her face.
"You're drunk, Nicholas." She's whispering and grinning and she fails to notice the nervous glint in his eye that flashes quickly and then is gone.
"I am drunk, but tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be beautiful."
She just grins more and nods, "And you will have a terrible hangover."
He smirks, knowingly, accusingly, "And you'll be fresh as a daisy?"
She half heartedly nudges him away but he laughs in response and keeps his balance.
"Marry me." His words are so rushed, so sudden, she stumbles over them in a daze and laughs.
Nick shakes his head a fraction, the playfulness in his eyes from a few seconds ago is replaced with a seriousness she isn't sure she has seen before.
"I almost asked you earlier but grand gestures aren't your thing are they?"
He knows her so well.
"Marry me, Carla. Marry me."
He doesn't have to ask again and even if he wanted to she didn't give him a chance before crashing her lips against his in a way that is so desperate, it almost knocks him for six. It doesn't though, but what does is her hands on his chest, pushing him away as she gasps for breath and stands up, pacing in a way that is doing little for his nerves.
"Nick-"
She is running a hand though her hair and sighing and she can't find the words because the only words she can think of are those she said to her most recent of husbands in the not so distant past.
"I must be doing summit wrong, I mean three times I've tried this. I really thought I'd nailed it this time."
This time, with her Nick, she thinks she has gotten lucky. She has never quite fitted the mould and she thinks maybe for her it is fourth time lucky instead of third. But as he stands in front her with pleading eyes, all she sees is betrayal and fear and loss.
"Nick I couldn't bare to lose you, you know that don't ya?"
He is so confused, trying to match her behaviour to her words hurts his head because they do not fit at all and his mind is working overtime but not half as much as his heart is.
He merely shrugs and the doubt in his actions ripples through the room. Suddenly, drunk doesn't feel like a thing anymore. They're awkward and apart and distant.
"This isn't exactly the reaction I was hoping for if I'm honest." His words sound like defeat and he reaches in his jacket, placing the ring box on the kitchen side silently.
He isn't sure why.
Her eyes watch the small black box and she is drawn to it, like she is drawn to him. She doesn't know what is inside but she guesses it is understated and classy, something she would probably have picked herself but this time she doesn't have to do that and she doesn't have to pay either.
"I've been married three times, Nick."
He frowns; "And I've been married twice. To the same person. Look how that turned out."
She nods, quickly, "Exactly. We've both been burnt before Nick-" She doesn't say anything else because even she is starting to realise she has little in the way of a valid point.
"I love you, Carla. I'm not Paul, or Tony or Peter. I'm not them and you have got to let them go."
He doesn't mean that how it sounds but her eyes darken slightly, her glare sharpening, "Let them go? Really Nick? Let them go?" Her words make him feel as though he has walked right into a trap but he doesn't know she is angry because he so easily reads her mind and her feelings and he knows. She hates that he knows. She is totally, irrevocablely his. And it terrifies the hell out of her.
"I didn't mean it like that, Carla, I just meant-" She quickly interupts, storming into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of wine, "No I know exactly what you mean, Nick. You think I can't let go of the past. That's the bottom line in't it?" Her hand hurriedly opens the top and the sound of her angered breathing and the pouring of red, red wine is all that is heard for a second.
"Well can you?" They very rarely argue, but when they do, it is heated and this time is little different.
"Screw you." She drinks most of the glass in one gulp.
He is walking closer to her and he knows it's dangerous territory but the closer he gets the more he feels as though she is reeling him in and he finds he never can resist her tug.
"I am not them. I am not going to cheat on you nor am I going to physically or mentally or in any way hurt you so for god sake give me a damned chance Carla and stop comparing me to them."
Her eyes dance with his and he swears she is testing him so he tests her back.
Before he can stop himself the clutter on their kitchen side is swept to the floor and she is lifted onto the counter and they kiss and kiss and kiss. The way she bites down on his lip like she is asking him to prove his words makes his hands hold her tighter and his nails claw deeper through her dress.
She is needy and desperate and when her eyes catch sight of the small black box she is gasping for breath.
"Fuck you, Nick. You always fucking win." She is groaning her words because he is kissing and kissing still and the room is so hot she cannot think. All she knows as she grasps the box and pushes it against his chest is that he is not them and that is why she is going to be okay.
So she let's him put the ring on her finger which is expensive and classy and all she had been expecting and she let's him take her to their bed and prove all he had been trying to say.
If there is one thing Nick had learnt about Carla it's that she is more fragile than she is strong but also maybe that she is finally letting go of the past and holding onto him.