Perfect Time of Day

The end is the beginning

Everyone between is so lost, so lost

Brooke was beginning to notice a pattern in her life. It went something like; 1) Brooke thought everything was fine, 2) Something came along and hit her over the head with a sledgehammer, shattering her world into a thousand little pieces.

It had started out close to home. Her parents had begun to sell little things here and there – the three extra cars, the house in Miami, the loft in the Alps. All things they didn't need and hardly used but, still, it had been nice to know they were there.

Brooke had hardly had time to properly mourn those losses when the whole drama with Lucas and Peyton went down. But she'd been handling everything okay, all things considered. She'd whined to her parents about her sudden lack of an allowance and she'd bitched to the rest of the cheerleading squad about what a whore Peyton had turned out to be, and she'd still been standing, thank you very much.

But this was just too much. She was currently hiding in the girl's bathroom, crouching over the toilet in the farthest stall and waiting for the nausea to pass. It was her second consecutive week of having an upset stomach and she couldn't believe she was coming down with something just as the weather was starting to get nice again after the longest, rainiest spring on record.

"Somebody somewhere is getting a kick out of this," she grumbled out loud, finally able to pull herself to her feet without having the room spin.

Washing up, she checked the clock and decided it was pointless to return to Algebra for the last few minutes. She had a doctor's appointment soon, where he would hopefully provide her with something to kick this bug's ass out of her system, and then she planned to do some major shopping. In her mind, there was no disease a trip to the mall couldn't cure.

XXX

Nathan hated shopping. Actually, 'hate' wasn't a strong enough word to describe how he felt about stores and salespeople. But he hated sitting at home in his all-too-empty apartment just a little bit more, and he was in need of some new workout gear, so he'd decided to brave the crowd for the afternoon and hit the sports equipment store.

Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge in this area had led him to park at the completely wrong end of the sprawling, three-football-fields-long shopping center. He'd realized his mistake far too late and was now stuck squeezing his way carefully around women with way too many children and elderly people with walkers and slow, mincing steps.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered darkly to himself as he got stuck behind yet another brood of rugrats. It was like they multiplied or something, appearing out of thin air to block whatever escape route he was trying to forge.

He decided to give up when it took him twenty minutes to reach the food court, which was only the halfway point of his journey. Instead, he treated himself to a huge slice of pizza and a supersized Coke and was just sitting down at one of the wobbly tables when he spotted a familiar figure.

"Brooke Davis." He wasn't surprised to see her at the mall – he figured it was like her headquarters or something. But he was more than a little startled at her appearance: slumped shoulders, rumpled clothes, tired eyes that seemed to stare right past him. "What are you doing here?"

She scowled at the interruption, narrowing her eyes at him as he took the seat across from her without asking permission and took a huge bite of his pizza. "That's disgusting," she told him matter-of-factly, trying not to inhale. In retrospect, the food court hadn't been the best place for her to sit down. All the combined smells were making her sick. "Do you know how many calories are in that?"

"I'm not worried about getting fat," he returned, patting the six-pack he spent two hours a day in the gym to keep. "Here, have a bite."

He waved the slice under her nose, making her gag. "Oh, God," Brooke whimpered, one hand on her stomach and the other flying to her mouth. "I'm gonna be sick."

She jumped up from the table and moved with surprising speed to disappear inside the restrooms. Nathan frowned at the violent reaction, then shrugged it off as a girl thing. Maybe she was on a diet.

By the time she came back to the table, looking less pale but more unsteady, he'd polished off his meal. "Still here?" she asked pointedly, reclaiming her chair.

"I was watching your bag." He pointed to the purse she'd left lying open on the table. "You're welcome."

Thoroughly annoyed, Brooke snatched it off the Formica surface and watched in dismay as its contents spilled out, scattering across the tile floor. Nathan bent to lend a hand and she saw, from her frozen position, his eyes widen in shock at the first thing he grabbed. "What's this?"

She avoided his gaze. It was just her luck that Nathan Scott, of all people, would happen upon her when she was having the worst day of her life, piled on top of the worst week, month, and year of her life. It was just her luck that she would make one wrong move and ruin everything.

"Brooke." He kept his voice low, as if whispering would make it less real. "What's going on?"

Bite the bullet, Brookie, she told herself. There was no getting out of it now. Nathan wasn't an idiot and he held in his hands the proof that her life was over. "What's going on, Nathan, is that I'm pregnant."

"And the father?" Knowing the answer, he held his breath, hoping he would somehow be wrong.

"Your brother." She smiled sardonically. "Who is probably sucking face with my best friend right now. Guess the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree, huh?"

He'd known about the breakup, of course. Lucas had told him at practice that Brooke had ended things, but he'd neglected to mention the 'why' part. And Nathan had been so caught up in his own anger with Haley that he hadn't even paid attention to how weird it was that Brooke, who'd been head over heels in love for the first time since he'd known her, would be the one to call it quits.

"I'm … I'm really sorry, Brooke," he said honestly. "Are you sure, though? I mean, this test, it's not even opened."

"I saw a doctor this afternoon," Brooke answered. She still wouldn't meet his eyes, choosing instead to concentrate on chipping away at her manicure. "So I don't need a stick to tell me what a licensed professional already did."

"I'm really, really sorry," he said again. It was strange that he couldn't think of anything else to say. A baby wasn't the end of the world. Brooke was eighteen, rich, beautiful, and had an ex-boyfriend who would at least do the right thing by her and the kid. It could have been worse. "Have you told Luke?"

She looked up at that, her eyes hardening at the mere mention of the name. "No," she spat out, "And I'm not planning to."

"What does that mean, that you're not gonna keep it?" The thought angered him more than it had a right to. "'Cause you can't just do that, Brooke, you can't just not tell him and end it and have him not even know. He deserves to have a say."

"Oh, really? And how, exactly, did he earn that right?" Brooke had been itching for a fight since she'd learned the news and she was almost grateful that Nathan was ready to give her one. "By cheating on me with the one person in the world I trusted? By breaking my heart in ways I didn't know it could break? No way, Nathan. I'm not telling him a damn thing, no matter what I decide to do, and you can't either."

"He's my brother," Nathan argued, well aware that it was a weak argument. He and Brooke had known each other far longer then either of them had known Lucas.

"You can't say anything," she repeated, and then added, "Please."

It was the 'please' that did it. Brooke had never asked anyone for anything a day in her life, and she'd certainly never begged. He couldn't refuse something that was obviously so important to her. Plus, he could always keep an eye on the situation and step in if it became necessary.

"Okay," Nathan finally relented. "I won't tell him, but only because it's not my place. He should hear it from you."

"We'll see," was all Brooke would say on the matter. She got up to leave, collecting the rest of her belongings with as much dignity as she could muster. "By the way, Nate … I was sorry to hear about Haley. I hope things work out."

The sincerity in her eyes floored him, so that it wasn't until she was almost out of earshot that he managed to reply, "Yeah, I hope so, too." But he wasn't sure if he was returning the wish for her and Lucas, or just echoing her sentiments about Haley.