Prologue.
"You goddamn fucking ass hole." I launched the hairdryer at him and he ducked easily.
"Christ, Nora! I just wanted to talk about this! Put that down!" he bobbed again as a magazine hurtled towards him.
"Oh you wanna talk about it, huh?" I sat down on my couch and crossed my legs, "How was she?"
"Nora..."
"Hey Nick, you wanted to talk about it, so talk! Is she good, huh? Would little miss Lands suck your dick in the back of your car just how you like it? Oh what am I thinking, of course she does! Why the fuck else would you sleep with her?" I yelled but he let me keep going, "You have some fucking nerve doing this to me, you know. Who the fuck do you think you are, Frank Sinatra?"
Nick looked down at the floor. It was the new carpet, I just had it put in. His favourite shade of blue. He said nothing for a moment, just shook his head and loosened his tie. He'd made detective last week, and that god awful pink and yellow tie was the only one he owned. Only reason he had it was because he wore it to my brother's wedding last year.
"Nora... things haven't been right with us for a while, doll. You know this." he said slowly.
"Doll?" I scoffed, "No, no, mister, I ain't you're goddamn doll anymore."
He looked hurt by my saying that. He had a nerve. He was the one fucking some tootsie roll behind my back. Three goddamn months he had been seeing her. Taking her out, buying her flowers... Fucking bastard.
What was I doing? Well, trying to scrape together a law career is hard when you're moving into your first house. But no, Nick had to put work first. He didn't have time to paint the kitchen or tile the bathroom, his job came first. And then to find out those "late nights" he was working, he was really just taking her out to dinner? Well, that was the great big hunk of straw that broke the camel's back.
"Nora, I'm sorry." he said, his voice breaking. In hindsight, the poor bastard was sorry and he was hurting. He couldn't meet my eye, he'd barely even stepped through the front door of our apartment after he shut it. He ran a hand through his deep brown hair and sighed. As he looked up there were tears shimmering in his eyes. The flashing yellow light of the motel sign outside made them twinkle.
"You're not sorry," my voice fell into a sob. It caught me off guard, I hadn't expected it through my anger. He tentatively sat beside me.
"Hey..." He said.
I turned away from him and tried to wipe away the tears streaming down my face.
"Nora, I am so sorry that it happened this way. I love you-"
"Like fuck, you do!"
"I do. I love you and I always have but... I changed. This is me, this is all on me... I should have ended it with you when I felt different but..."
"You were too much of a goddamn coward." I snapped.
He nodded and rubbed his face, it made a rough sound from the stubble that he hadn't shaved. He needed a new razor, he was complaining last week that his was going blunt.
"Just get your things and go, Nick." I whispered after the silence. He said nothing else but stood and gathered up a few boxes of necessities. He would have to pick up most of his clothes off the sidewalk. I'd tossed the majority of them out the window. He hesitated before he left, but as the door clicked shut I knew that would be the last I saw of Nick Valentine.
Two years later I met Nate. I was out celebrating after winning a case with the guys from my office. Well, half celebrating. We managed to get some kid's sentence lightened to a year in the can rather than ten. He was sixteen, barely old enough to wipe his own ass. The charges were drug related. Stupid. A waste. If I had my way he'd be doing community service. Kids like that in jail make friends with the wrong people and that's when shit hits the fan.
Anyway I'd met Nate that night, he was on leave. A soldier. Not usually my type but Nate... He was different.
"What about you hot shot? You and your buddies want a drink?" I'd said.
"Depends. Who's buying?" he replied with a wink.
The rest is history. We got married two years later, had to wait a year while he was in service. We had our honeymoon in Ireland. Nate had family there and my great great grandmother was Irish so we thought, what the hell.
It rained the whole goddamn time. Not that we didn't have plenty of indoor activities to do. Lets just say I'll never look at Monopoly the same way again. A year later I was pregnant and we had our new house and life seemed to be... perfect.
I remember reading the paper one afternoon, I must have been about 8 months along, I couldn't do much else. But I remember on the second page, behind all the talk of Nuclear War... A woman named Jennifer Lands was shot by the mob, her fiance Nick Valentine had asked for privacy during this difficult time. I remember being stunned. Surprised that the two of them were still together and stunned that she was dead. Shot in the back. And for what?
"Awful what happened to that girl." Nate said through his toast as he read the article over my shoulder. "This place is really going to hell in a hand basket if a woman can't walk down the street without being shot."
I said nothing, I just kept reading his name over and over.
"Poor bastard. Must be terrible for him." he continued.
I folded over the paper and reached back to hold Nate's hand. "I know," I said. "It's hard to imagine."
