A/N: Hello readers! As many of you may know I've had a poll up for a while to see which story my readers would prefer when "Eyes Wide Shut" is finished but so far there have been very little votes and surprisingly an even number for the Jasam and Phick fics so I've decided to put the beginning of each story up so hopefully you readers will decide which one you want to read next. For those of you reading "Right To Be Wrong" that story will not be affected by these, my muse for that one is going strong. Anyways, hope this helps you to vote.

Disclaimer: I so never remember to put this up but you guys know, I do not own The Young and The Restless or it's characters,or belive me that show would be WAy different with the crap they're spewing these days.

Also some dialogue is taken directly from the show in this to set up the story... enjoy!

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Prologue

Phyllis stood in her living room looking out the window as the rain fell in large droplets from the sky, watching the small rivers that formed on her window run down. The sky was a grayish-blue, overcast; the way it had been for the last three days. It was the first time in her life she had ever felt so connected to nature. The storms had begun the same night Nick walked out of the life they shared together to recapture the nostalgia of being with his first wife. It was almost laughable, sardonic even that her and Sharon's roles had been reversed. She was now the discarded wife while Sharon was the other woman. She shook her head, the irony of the situation not lost on her. There were moments when she thought she deserved this fate but then she'd tuck her daughter in at night or have breakfast with her while her innocent child asked once again about her father's whereabouts and Phyllis realized she didn't deserve this. Her daughter didn't deserve this.

She could still smell his cologne in the house, feel the lingering touch on her skin, taste his lips; she wondered if it was possible to be haunted by someone who was still very much alive. Alive; she was suddenly unsure if that was what she was. All this time she'd turned herself inside out, almost becoming a Stepford Wife to Nick during the past few months. She had lost a part of herself; maybe that is why Nick left her, she thought. Maybe she was no longer the woman he'd married. She often looked in the mirror after she filed Paris away as a fluke and wondered who was staring back at her. How in this living room three short nights ago, her husband; her soulmate was telling her that he was leaving her for the model he'd upgraded from years before.

Nick sighed heavily, "I've been doing a lot of thinking, trying to come up with the right way to say this. I want to make sure I do it the right way…"

"A simple yes or no will do," the red head interrupted.

He shook his head wearily. "Nothing about this is simple."

"You want to be with Sharon," she spat out before he could. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be agonizing over the… the way to tell me." She could already see the answer in his eyes. "Oh, my God."

Nick sighed. "This isn't working anymore." He paused briefly. "We can't keep pretending our relationship is going somewhere it isn't."

"Okay. I see." Phyllis nodded as she exhaled deeply. Only she didn't see; how could she?

"You see? That," he countered, almost as if he were irritated she didn't say more, "That's it? That's all you're going to say to me?"

"Does it matter anymore?" her voice was weary. "Does it?"

Nick stepped closer to her, his voice full of what she could only describe as mock concern. "Don't close up like this, all right? I, more than anyone, know that that's not good for you, so just do something. Let it out. Throw something. Break stuff. Yell. Scream. Cry. Whatever." He rattled on his list of what makes for a good break up.

"I don't have any more tears left and if I did," she paused briefly, her voice firm. "I wouldn't waste them on you."

"We need to talk about this," he stated firmly.

"Why?" She looked at him curiously, trying to hold back the pain. "Will it stop you from leaving?"

"There's some things we need to work out," he spoke to her turned back.

Phyllis opened her mouth to say something, explain the new reality away but she couldn't, stopped by his continuing assault of words.

"Living and monetary arrangements," he says it so distantly as if they are talking about what brand of toilet paper they should buy this week.

"Oh. Oh, okay. Um, well, uh, that's," she immediately heads towards the phone and picks it up, "that's a conversation for my attorney. I'll call my attorney." She finds herself walking in a circle to stand where he was moments earlier. She doesn't realize how he's gotten across the room. "We can…"

"Let's," he interrupts her, "Let's… please, let's not do this. Let's not make things ugly."

"Wait, ugly?" she blinks in surprise. "Well, I-I think you should have thought about that before you decided to throw our marriage away."

"I'm not throwing it away," he counters.

"Oh," she nods in the understanding Stepford way she'd been practicing the last few months. "You're just turning it in for the one you had before?"

"Let's make sure we're clear about something, okay?" his voice is suddenly raised like he's angry and a part of her wants to let out a bitter laugh. "I am not doing this so I can run off to be with Sharon."

"Uh, Nick then, I-I-I, then I m-misunderstand." She finds herself stuttering. "You're…you're ending our marriage because we have such a bad thing going on here?" She motions with her hands.

"Phyllis, come on." Nick steps closer. "Wh-no."

"No?" she repeats. "I don't-I don't get it then. So all those times you told me that you loved me; so that was, that was a lie? All those times, all those thousands of times, you were lying?" She found herself squeezing the phone, her knuckles whitening as her voice strained.

Nick sighed. "Of course I wasn't."

"You weren't?" her voice sounds vulnerable even to her. "So…so, um, what is it? The sex is bad?" Although if there's anything she knows, she knows that's not it but if you had asked her a month ago if Nick loved her she would have been sure of that too.

"Phyllis, you are amazing," Nick answers quickly. "You know that."

"I-okay. Then I don't understand." She closes her fists tightly and shakes them, realizing somewhere along the way she's put down the phone. "I don't understand. Please help me understand this. So you're dumping me so you can go back to Sharon. That's what it is, right?"

"Sharon doesn't even want to be with me," he says this as if he's practiced it. "She wants to be with Jack."

"Oh, God. I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it." Phyllis runs her hands over her face. "Oh, I get it. Oh, wait a second. You're leaving now because it makes you available. Oh, I understand. So you're available, and Sharon doesn't have to feel guilty for breaking us up, and the two of you could just be happy together." She shakes her head, watches him as his eyes keep flickering to the floor. "You-you created a great scenar… that, that's great. That's a…that's great. You created a great scenario."

"Okay, please, just," Nick paused briefly before he begins to deny it once again. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no."

"And, and so now you guys can just live happily ever after. Please, don't deny it." She speaks through clenched teeth now. "You know it's the truth."

"You're right," he finally admits and it makes her feel justified as well as broken at the same time. "This is about Sharon, whether I want to admit it or not." She notices how hard his face looks and wonders why; she also wonders when she stopped being able to read him. "I thought that what I felt for Sharon would fade in time, so that you and I could build this life together. I was wrong."

It is as if the atmosphere is on her side as she sees a flash of light from her peripheral and hears the buzzing of the lightening. "I guess you were," she says solemnly.

Nick starts, "Phyllis, I…"

"It's okay," she lets out a small sob. "I guess I bought into the fantasy, too. I guess I did, too. How funny. We both did, right?" She gives a slight laugh though nothing in the world seems like it'll ever be funny again. "I just, I wanted to believe that I had the perfect husband, the perfect life, the perfect child, the perfect everything," Phyllis raises her hands to the side of her face, her fingers pressing the pressure points near her temples as her head begins to ache. "And I wanted it to last forever, and I held on. I just held onto it." She couldn't stop the sob that escaped as her eyes began to get watery once again. "Uh, so I dealt with your constant pandering to Sharon and your trip up to the cabin because I believed; because I believed. Even after your second trip, I still believed." She exhaled deeply as she struggled to fight the tears threatening to fall. "But I, it's… it's not a big deal. Hey, you're off the hook." She reaches up to hit his arm and she's reminded of when they became comrades. "You're off the hook, okay? We both lied to me."

"Look, I'm…" he paused to let out a small breath. "I'm not asking for a free pass here. I know that what I was doing was wrong. I just wish that I…"

"That- that you hadn't come to me in the first place?" she interrupts, her voice controlled. "And that, you know, you hadn't been with me at all?"

"No. No. I would do anything to spare you this, this pain you're going through, anything. But on the other hand I," he exhaled as his green orbs meet her blue ones. "I'm so grateful for you for what we had. After Cassie died, I was just going through the motions. It took everything I had just to make it through the day. But then there you were... beautiful you." He sounded like he was chocking back his own tears and that only made her more confused. "You. It was free and easy and…and we laughed all the time. We had fun. I'd forgotten what that was like. And being with you, it's like I felt alive again."

"Well, good." You could hear the tears in her voice. "I'm glad I could… do that for you."

His face was softened. "It was more than that, and you know it."

Phyllis bit at her lip before shaking her head. "Well, I don't. I don't know it. No, I don't, because it's…what you're describing sounds like a shrink with benefits."

"I love you," the words almost sound out of place for this conversation, "and that is real. Your passion and your drive and the way you jump headfirst into everything without thinking; I love that. Life with you was like this crazy adventure. I never, ever imagined it could be like that."

"And it's time for you to go home now?" She looks at him incredulously. "I mean, what is this?"

"Sharon has been a part of my life longer than she hasn't been. We grew up together," Nick began to explain. "We have this… we have this family together. We share history. I…"

Phyllis raises her eyebrows in astonishment. "That's it?" she sighed. "What? That is so much more compelling than what you just described and our family and our history?"

"You wanted me to be honest," he replied. "That's all I can do. You asked for it."

"I didn't ask for this!" Phyllis' voice grows louder as the lightening strikes behind her from the window. "I didn't ask for any of this. Your daughter..." she stifles a sob as she starts to actually yell this time. "Your daughter didn't ask for this. She didn't ask for this!" Phyllis flails her arms in the air as he steps back. "You! Oh…" she breathes heavily as she calms herself, griping her head in her hands. "Oh, okay. All right, all right, all right. I'm not doing this anymore. No, no, no, no. Okay." She sniffs as her words began to be more to herself than the husband walking out on her. "Oh, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna tell? What am I gonna tell- what am I gonna tell Summer when she asks why her daddy doesn't want to live with us anymore?"

"We can talk to her together," Nick offers even though it's clear at the end of her ramblings she was no longer talking to him but rather thinking out loud.

She sighs once again. "Oh, no we're not gonna do that. Please, get out of here. Nick, please get out. Go! Go to your lovely history, Sharon, sweet Sharon. Please go to her; because that's where you're gonna end up anyway."

Within a few minutes he's packed his bag and she's watching him walk down the stairs. He's done it so often lately; the shock value has worn off.

"So," Nick pauses as he speaks in his emotionless tone. "I'll get a room at the club."

"Okay," Phyllis answers, trying to mimic his nonchalance. What the hell does she care where he'll wind up sleeping with Sharon again; at the club or that tainted cabin, it's all the same.

"We still have a lot to talk about," he starts in again. "Summer..."

"You'll see your daughter," she interrupts before he can go further. She doesn't have the energy to drag this on any longer. "That's no problem. I just won't be around."

"I'm not abandoning you, Phyllis." He states firmly.

"I don't want your pity," Phyllis replied. "I don't want your sympathy. I don't want your money. I don't want anything from you."

"I understand," he nods.

"You think you understand, but you really have," Phyllis paused to let out a labored breath, "no idea." She knows him well enough still to know he won't respond so she watches him walk out the door while the thunder crashes loudly and the lightning strikes once again.

Phyllis is pulled out of her reverie at the sound of the phone ringing. She quickly picks it up, knowing it will be him.

"Hey," she says. "That didn't take very long at all. I didn't think you were going to take care of it that fast."

"One thing I've never been Phyllis is a procrastinator," his deep voice wafted through her receiver. "Did you have a chance to tell Daniel what's going on? Is he cool with it; I know how your boy can be." She can hear the jovialness in his voice and hopes somehow some of it will rub off on her.

She gave a small laugh, trying though she's sure it sounds somewhat forced. "Yes I talked to him and he's fine with it. He knows I need this. He definitely understands."

"Good," he replied. "Well everything is all set. I emailed you all the information you'll need."

"Thanks for doing this for me," she replied. "You are always there when I need you."

"And I always will be," he replied. "I told you before, it never ends."

"No it doesn't, does it?" she smiled before giving a bitter laugh. "Well apparently it can when you're dealing with…"

"Hey," he stopped her before she could start. "I'll see you soon; Safe flight."

"Thanks, bye." Phyllis replied before they hung up the phone. Her eyes glanced towards the falling rain once again before settling on the manila envelope on the table, knowing she had to see one last person before she left.