Chapter 3
Melanie takes a taxi from the airport straight to the CSI Head Quarters. She received the phone call just hours before and hearing the voice of Nick Stokes was a shock. She never thought she would hear his voice again, and when she did it felt like an electric current running through her body, and yet so natural at the same time. His news though was devastating.
She knows that he must have hated making that call, and knowing that he is a CSI, she knows that he could have chosen not to. She is thankful though that he did it after all. When she did have to receive such horrible news, she definitely preferred him to be the messenger.
It's 14 years, 2 months and 4 days since she last saw Nicky. She can still see the image of him in her mind; his body tall beside her petite form. His whole body slumped with exhaustion and he had the saddest eyes she had ever seen. He was broken and in despair.
She watched his back when he left her at the sidewalk outside the company building of McCracken, Taylor & Nelson, P.C, and she followed his car with her eyes as he drove out of her life.
14 years, 2 months and 4 days.
She had changed since then. She had been to hell and back, and hoped that he had also managed to return to life. She is watching him now walking towards her in the hallways of CSI HQ and he at least appears to have healed. He's just as handsome as before, just not as young as he used to be. His life experiences are chiseled in his face and it just adds to the magnificence this man represents for her. His hair is starting to get a few silver strands over his ears and she is feeling the need to touch it. He is more handsome than ever.
"Melanie," he says and open his arms.
She nearly drowns in his embrace and she lets herself be swept up in his hug. He holds her close and pats her hair like he always used to do when she was younger. He has always managed to make her feel safe.
"Come here, monkey," he says and holds her tight.
"Hey monkey," he yells at her. She has been climbing the old oak in their back yard. It has been there since before his father was born, and is close to 45 feet tall. She has climbed one quarter up and sits on a branch looking down at him waiting for him to come up to her.
She has long deserted the tire swing his dad put up when his brother was a boy, and that was now about to be switched with a baby swing for the firstborn grand baby. His sister had a baby almost a year ago, and he's the proud uncle to a little boy.
He felt so uncomfortable the first time he held the baby. It was so tiny, so fragile, and not really that pretty, but to his delight the baby stopped crying as soon as he was laid in his uncles arms.
Sean Jacob Stokes Bennett was the first baby to ever capture Nick Stokes heart.
"Hey monkey," he shouts up to her, "I have the brat with me, hope you don't mind."
His 15 year old best friend loves his little nephew and spends every possible moment at the Stokes ranch to watch the youngest of his clan whenever she can. It's a way for her to get away from home.
"Hey monkey," she answers back crawling out of his embrace to take a good look at him. She cups his face in her hands and looks him deep in his eyes. "My Nicky," she says and gives him a kiss.
#
Greg locks himself into his own apartment. He swings by the kitchen to catch a left over beer bottle from the fridge before opening the balcony door to sit down for a while. The old rocking chair from papa Olaf has kept him company many mornings after a rough shift, and it will once again do the job. He folds out the fleece blanket he leaves in it for chilly mornings and wraps it around himself when he finally sinks down in the old worn out chair. He rests his legs on the railing and pushes the chair into a rocky movement. He keeps the rhythm slow and steady, just the right pace to calm himself down.
He doesn't know exactly why he's upset. He feels fairly certain that Nick is his. He has said that he's in for the long haul, and he should trust that, but that was of course before this woman showed up. But if Nick was interested in her, he would have kept it hidden, wouldn't he? You don't cheat in the open, before your lovers face, do you?
But there certainly is something between this woman and Nick, something that Nick has kept hidden from him.
He takes another sip of the beer and puts it down on the glass table a little harder than intended. The bottle hits hard before it slides, falls off and crashes to the concrete floor. The impact breaks the bottle and glass and beer spreads out in all directions.
"Shit," the word is out before he can think, and in the next minute a red head is popping up over the screen separating his balcony from the neighbors.
"Everything okay, dear?" a rusty voice wheezes out and he doesn't even look at her when he nods yes.
"You sure? You don't look okay."
"And how do I look?" Greg glances up at her now, while he's brushing beer off his trousers.
"You look like you've had better days."
Well yeah, he definitely had better days.
"It's been better, it's been worse, you know…"
"You want to talk about it?"
He looks at her again. Her hair is pulled together with a hair band at the top of her head, leaving the carrot rug of hers standing out like a hay stack. Her freckled skin is looking more like a prune every time he sees her, and one of long cigarettes she enjoys smoking out on her balcony is held between her index and middle finger.
"It's a man-problem." He explains, deciding to open up. Mrs. McCormick has never let him down yet.
"Come on over and I'll make you a good breakfast," she says," you look like you could use a decent meal."
He sweeps up the mess from the beer bottle before he pads into Mrs. McCormick's apartment. Her apartment is a mirror of his, only with darker colors and crochet work all around.
He hasn't done much to his apartment since he moved in. It's painted in sterile white and he has covered the walls with colorful pictures, and mostly filled it with black furniture. He has never got around to setting up many book shelves, and most of his books are still in boxes in his bedroom and living room. It's a small apartment and he has no spare bedroom to use as an office, so he has furnished a corner in the living room as an office and set up a desk and shelf to cover his need for a work space.
He has spent hours in that corner doing research and writing on his book about Las Vegas. Catherine's mother has been a helpful source and a resource through it all. He doesn't think Catherine will be too happy to know all the little stories she has told him about her growing up either. Judging by the stories, he would say Lindsay takes after her mom when it comes to obedient behavior. It is comforting in a way as well; seeing how well Catherine has turned out makes him believe Lindsay will be just fine as well. He never realized before he started this job, that working graveyard shift in a CSI lab would involve acquiring a whole new family. He guesses it is the strange hours and the things they see in the job.
Mrs. McCormick has also become sort of a family; an extra grand mother of sort.
It started about three months after he moved into his apartment, four years ago, that she fell and broke her hip. She needed help with the groceries, and he was available. Not that she asked him, but she was climbing out of the cab just as he was getting home one afternoon. She was struggling with the bags, and he indeed tries to be a gentleman whenever he can. If not, his grandmother will slap him from the grave, so he will never pass a lady that needs help without offering it to her.
He has to admit that in those first three months of living there, he had never paid attention to the neighbor living next door. Of course, he was usually asleep when she was up and vice versa.
He started doing her grocery shopping for her. She would put the list for him in his mail box, and he would pick it up for her along with his own when he came off shift. He would knock on her door to hand it to her right about the time she would be ready to eat breakfast. It would usually be something in the bags he delivered so she started inviting him to eat with her. They would spend an hour or so talking before he went to bed.
He soon learned that she was a widow moving to a smaller apartment when she could no longer afford to keep the house she had owned with her husband in Henderson.
She had always kept the house in good shape. They had started out with very little money, but had added furniture and color to their home as they had more to spare. The first daughter had arrived six short months after their wedding, and was the reason they got married in the first place. They would probably not have ended up together if it weren't for the unexpected pregnancy, but back in those days you didn't get divorced, and after they did grow accustomed to each other, she would say it was love after all.
She cared for her family and he provided for them.
When he arrived home from work, she would serve him dinner, and when he sat down in the easy chair she had already laid out the news paper for him to read. It was a routine never broken for almost 40 years. Not until the day he felt too tired to read, he'd rather go to bed. It was the last time he was home, and 4 weeks later he was dead from cancer at the Desert Palm Hospital.
She would eat alone then.
Her daughter was married in New York and would phone home every so often, her son was lost to narcotics ten years before she had buried her husband.
She would spend the days alone now, and she was happy every time her young neighbor would stop by.
She knew he had a healthy appetite, and she loved making him breakfast. Hash browns and fried eggs seem to be his favorites, and she made sure to make a large portion. She would always give him a couple of slices of fresh bread and a cup of strong newly brewed coffee. She hadn't been a house wife for forty years without learning how to make a good meal for a man. She knew Greg was full and satisfied whenever he left her breakfast table.
Today she wasn't expecting him. She hasn't seen him much the last few weeks. He has more or less moved into his young mans apartment. He stopped by to visit with her a few weeks ago telling her that he spent more and more time with Nick, and that he just stopped by to feed the cat now.
He let her know that he would also bring the cat to Nick's so that the only stops he would do would be to collect his mail and do her shopping twice a week. It would always be Tuesdays and Fridays, which is why she didn't expect to see him on a Wednesday.
Greg took a seat in the kitchen chair that was closest to her window. This was where he usually sat in his own apartment as well, and from here he could watch the people walking up and down on the street four floors down. He could usually watch them for a long time getting caught up in some day dream about Nick.
He couldn't believe how lucky he was when he first came together with Nick. They had been watching each other for almost eight years, and he always knew that there was something between them, he just didn't know what. Nick didn't seem like the type who would settle with someone like him. Not that there was something wrong with him, and not that Nick couldn't be interested in men, he always thought he saw some interest in Nick. No, he thought the only thing Nick could be interested in with him was possibly being friends with benefits, and he never thought Nick would go for that. Nick would never sacrifice a friendship and a work relationship for sex.
So he was surprised when Nick eventually initiated something more. He had asked him out for breakfast and then back home for a video game. They flirted like they usually did but when they usually broke it off, he rather turned it up a notch. He added more touching, caressing actually, and eventually kissing. And then some more kissing. Greg didn't make it home that day and he woke up in Nick's bed just in time for work.
He has spent many days in Nick's bed since then, and after a while he brought the cat over.
They had planned a weekend of sex, DVD's and lazy mornings and he didn't want to have to go home to feed the animal. So he brought her over hoping Nick wouldn't mind the extra guest. Since the cat was already there, he had no need to go home on Monday either, and on Tuesday he let Mrs. McCormick know that he would only stop by a couple of times a week to collect his mail and do her shopping.
This is the first time he has broken that routine, and all because he caught Nick kissing a woman today.
