She has been awake for a long time. She can't say how long, or be sure whether or not she'd actually ever been to sleep. Her mind races and scenes play over and over in her head. Scenes she so badly wants to forget, yet scenes she knows will be with her until the day she dies. Scenes of her own making and her own fault. She hates herself (but what's new?). How could she? How could she fuck up the best thing she has ever had, and for what? For nothing. Not one cell in her body loved Robert at any moment of time, but he was there. He wanted her and she wanted a release. A release of her anger and frustration, but this anger was anger for Johnny, not Nick. Not her Nick, the Nick she loved, the Nick who did nothing but love her only for her to throw it all back in his face, and the Nick who was asleep right next to her, blissfully unaware of this fiancée's betrayal. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, grow old with him and love him for as long as she lives. But that can't happen. She can't let that happen, not any more. She just can't.
She stares at the ceiling of her bedroom, their bedroom, and feels tears begin to form, but she stops herself. She doesn't deserve the luxury of crying and pitying herself. She doesn't deserve anything, full stop. But she can feel him, all over her like an animal, and she can't stop him because she was just as bad, that day. Her actions resembled nothing more than the home-wrecking slut she had such a reputation for being, and she was ashamed, so ashamed. She had finally begun to convince herself that she was worth something and until one point last week she believed it. She really, truly believed that the deserved Nick. Blaming Johnny and the drink and Robert is futile; she knows that she fucked up her own life, this time. She knows that she is to blame and she knows that Nick won't forgive her and she knows that she is a one woman disaster zone. And it hurts, but she deserves it.
They say time is a constant, yet she loses track of it an awful lot. Light spills through the cracks in the blinds and into the room and Carla can't think when the light began to arrive or when the room became fully light. She doesn't know anything, not any more. Everything seems so irrelevant and that's because it is. What does it matter if the room is light or dark or whether time had passed or not if her life is a constant downwards spiral of pain and destruction?
She longs not to have to live through this day. 3rd January 2016, the 41st anniversary of the day her mother brought her into this world. Big mistake, that. Nick is waking up and she doesn't want him to be so typically lovely but the first thing he does is kiss her and tell her that he loves her and that he's got her a card and brings it in along with presents that she doesn't deserve. He bought the presents weeks ago, she can tell because he used the wrapping paper than ran out long before Christmas. She doesn't deserve him. He gives her so much and reminds her that he loves her and that he's here for her and yet she has given him so little. She didn't even remember his birthday, her fiancé's birthday, yet he remembers every little detail of her life. She laughs and nods and smiles and thanks him, and it's so hard. So hard to pretend that she is happy and that their relationship is one of untainted love and that they can get married in a few months. So hard because she knows that the truth will destroy him, yet she has to tell him, but not today. Not after he spent so long trying to make her happy only for her to hurt him in the worst way possible. But she knew she would hurt him in the end. She did warn him.