Thanks for all of your reviews, everybody. I hope you enjoy today's chapter.
And now, a quick note to one reviewer, an anonymous once by the name of Maria. I took your request into consideration, and though I was hesitant about having to rewrite the three chapters I had already prepared, your words struck true. So, Maria, feel accomplished in the fact that you've altered two of the three chapters I had written. All in all, I feel them to be much improved.
"Abstraction"
Nick Stokes was not naïve when it came to women. After all, he had grown up in a home dominated by older sisters and his mother, given the fact that his father was always at work. He had been scarred forever as a young boy when his mother had decided to give him the 'facts of life' talk. And he believed the damage to be irreparable when he found a sister's feminine hygiene product anywhere near him as a child.
Nick Stokes was no stuttering teenage boy on his first date, hoping to score. He knew what Sara liked, knew when she wanted him and when she didn't. He, through his love for her, had become closely attuned to her moods, knowing all of the signs that his normally stoic girlfriend used to signal a shift in emotion.
As much like a presidential campaign slogan gone awry as it sounded, Nick Stokes knew women.
But for the life of him, Nick Stokes could not understand Sara's silence. It was the morning after Halloween, after they had forgotten protection. The other women Nick had been with, in the time before he had fallen for Sara, had been on birth control but the chemicals in those little pills wreaked havoc on his girlfriend's body, both physically and emotionally. So, they were screwed, figuratively of course.
Sara hadn't been cold to him, still warm and happy and smiling, but she refused to discuss the subject. Nick found it a bit frustrating, to be honest. Sara was a smart woman, and if she ended up pregnant then she simply couldn't blame her substantial weight gain on too much snack food.
But that would require Sara to have taken a pregnancy test.
Which, of course, she refused to do.
Instead he woke to find her hastily pulling on her jeans, slipping some shoes on her feet. It the few moments it took for him to stir awake and sit up she had already buttoned up her shirt, striding briskly out of the room with keys in one hand and purse in the other. Her cell phone, of course, was left on the side table next to the door, preventing him from reaching her. "Sara?" He called, to be answered with the slam of the front door.
"Women," he sighed before falling back to the mattress.
His mind refused to shut down, solely focused on the 'us' that Nick cherished, the 'us' that could possibly be three people instead of two. Nick wanted kids, yes, and he wanted kids with Sara. But did that make this any less nerve-racking? No, he thought as he tried in vain to slow his heartbeat; he was still totally freaked out.
True, he was 34, and that wasn't a bad age to start a family. He was with a woman he loved unconditionally, and that definitely set them apart from lots of other couples in Vegas who were expecting a baby. It seemed so surreal, though, the prospect of being parents. Of course, there was the fact that their coworkers still didn't know about the relationship that could have resulted in a baby. That probably added to it, he reasoned, and his worries about what they would think weren't helping.
They could get married, he thought, and buy a house. The apartment they shared didn't have room for a baby, and the thought of a home with Sara was greatly appealing. It could work, he thought, because they loved each other and would treasure any child that resulted from that love.
But god, the waiting was driving him insane!
Did he want a baby? Yes…no…the very thought was so tumultuous in nature it bordered on insane!
Today was as good a day as any other to start a family. Trying to soothe his frazzled nerves he went through the list again.
He loved Sara, a plus. He wanted kids, another plus. This might make their relationship suffer, a negative. They weren't married, another negative. But being married didn't really make a difference; it was just for the sake of appearances.
Oh, screw it, he thought. Did he want Sara to be pregnant? At the thought that she was indeed carrying his child his chest tightened and his stomach felt like it was tied into a thousand knots. But that was just excitement, just nervousness, all of which were normal feelings. And if she wasn't? His heart sank and he felt somehow alone. So, he continued, logically he wanted her to be.
But it wasn't as if they had any choice in the matter.
It was less than an hour until she returned, her key sliding into the lock with a soft click. Nick, in his customary position at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, regarded her coolly, noting the small bag she clutched to her chest. "Pharmacy, huh?"
She raised her gaze to him warily, heartsick and ashamed. Her voice was quiet, so quiet he had to strain to hear her, and yet it seemed so loud in their apartment. "Yeah."
"Pregnancy test?"
A few tears he hadn't noticed that were welling up in Sara's brown eyes crested her cheek and traced a cold path, falling from her chin and plinking sadly on the wooden floor. "No," she whispered, "emergency contraceptive."
He reeled. Of course, Sara was a strong woman who knew what she wanted, and not very high on her current list was a child. But it still felt like a slap in the face or a scalding burn, white-hot and washing over him, all at once cold and searing. The wind had been knocked from his chest and he wheezed, "Emergency…emergency what?"
She straightened her shoulders, tall and regal and totally untouchable. Closed off, isolated, the Sara that was brilliant scientist first and lover second. The Sara he disliked seeing, knowing that there was so much more underneath her surface. Sara was delicate, fragile, but within her very bones there was steel, cold, rigid, strong. But how he hated it when that steel came to the surface!
"Emergency contraceptive," she repeated, her voice laced with agonizing slowness, each syllable distinct, each word as final as a cannon shot, as a gavel at the sentencing hearing, as the rope slipping through the executioner's hands and the fall of the guillotine's blade. There was to be no compromise, no arguments, no anger, no feeling.
And not feeling was the hardest.
So he exhaled, his shoulders slumping. Sitting back down he buried his hands in his hair and stared, unblinking, at the surface of the tabletop, at the slow trail of effervescent steam that twined lazily through the air, slowly leaving its birthplace, the womb of the coffee cup. He sat and breathed, not knowing that Sara still stood at the door, feeling all at once a stranger in her own home, ashamed and guilty and not really knowing why.
Her footfalls were soft when she left him, heading towards the bathroom with slow assuredness. And he waited, unmoving, unthinking, and yet not unfeeling as the tears slowly dripped into his coffee cup.
No baby, no house, no marriage, no suburbanite bliss.
She was trembling when she emerged from the bathroom, her pale arms like sticks as she wrapped them around her rib cage. The unknown emotion draped her like a cloak, like a smothering blanket. It was all over her. It was in her salty tears, in the clatter as she dropped the empty foil packet that had once held the pill to the tile, in the sobs that racked her as she gripped him, tears quickly soaking through the fabric of his shirt.
"Oh, Sar," he murmured into her hair, feeling her heart beating wildly against his own, unable to be angry, to blame, to hate when she was so fragile, when the wrong word could break her. "Sara…"
Was she hurt, relieved? He didn't know, was scared to know. And because he would rather not know than be forced to accept that it was a possibility that she didn't want kids, ever, he continued to hold her.
When they drew apart Sara gave him a tight-lipped smile, though its miniscule warmth didn't reach her eyes. He suspected it to be false, but even so he couldn't say that her current behaviors weren't just relief mixed with anxiety. He reached out a hand, to touch her arm, to make sure she was real, but she drew away, shrugging her sweater higher up on her shoulders, closing herself off. He let his outstretched hand drop to his side, curling and uncurling as if to give evidence to the tumult that raged within.
There was sadness in them, here in their shared apartment. Sadness and an emptiness that had never seemed to be empty before.
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A/N: And now, the bad news (after an angst-ridden chapter). I'm going to be gone for three weeks, first on a houseboat in Arkansas, and then at Duke University. If I have time I'll update, but I doubt there will be the opportunity.
Anyway, the next chapter is entitled "Altercation."
