Trouble In Here
'Cause I couldn't make up a thing that you say
They made it through the whole meal without incident. Brooke let him have the last of the lo mein, even though she'd been eyeing the container hungrily, and she didn't complain when he left the television blaring so he could hear the sportscasters' commentary.
"Here." She tossed him a fortune cookie, keeping one for herself. "Open it."
He cracked it and removed the slip of paper. "The one you love is closer than you think," he read, and scoffed, tossing it carelessly over his shoulder. "What's yours say?"
She frowned at his, still fluttering to the floor like a surrendering flag, then read her own, "Love is the only medicine for a broken heart."
Nathan snorted derisively. "I'm sensing a theme. You'd think the people who make these things up would at least try to be creative."
"You'd think," she echoed, and tried to shrug off the strange feeling washing over her. "Well. That was delicious. You owe me big time, pal. I'm gonna go see what's on TV."
"Uh, no, no, no." Using his athletic prowess to his advantage, Nathan blocked her way at the door. "I call dibs on the TV. It's game night."
Brooke stared him down, her hands going straight to her hips. "You can't call dibs on the TV. We're not five."
"Yeah, but I actually live here," he countered. "And I've got the rent bills to prove it. So I'm pretty sure I get all TV rights. And actually, all rights. To anything and everything."
"Well, that's just great," Brooke said, throwing her arms up in exasperation. "What am I supposed to do? Stare at the walls all night?"
"Don't you have something girly to do?" he asked logically. Haley had always used their nightly downtime to do silly, frivolous things like curling her hair 'just for fun' or taking bubble baths.
She was about to argue when a thought struck her. Brooke smiled widely. "Yeah, I guess I can find something."
It was an easy enough victory that he should've been suspicious, but the game was starting and he didn't want to miss any of the action. Which was how Nathan found himself dying of asphyxiation ten minutes later. "Seriously, Brooke, that stuff is toxic," he warned, inching as close as he could get to the open window and taking a deep breath of fresh air. "It's giving me a huge headache."
"Really?" Feigning surprise, Brooke bent close to the open bottle of nail polish remover and shrugged. "I guess I'm just used to it. Don't worry. This only takes like, thirty minutes."
"Great, I'll be dead in twenty," he muttered, trying to focus on the game. It was a lost cause, though, and a few minutes later he turned off the TV with a scowl. "Okay. You win. Put that stuff away and we can watch whatever you want."
Brooke's grin softened the blow of defeat, but only slightly. Capping the bottle, she sprang onto the cushion next to him and captured the remote. "I think you'll enjoy this show, Nate, I really do," she giggled, flipping through the channels quickly. "It's called America's Next Top Model."
He sat up straighter at that. Any show with the word 'model' in the title couldn't be that bad. "Why has this show not won an Emmy?" he remarked three episodes later, and received no response. Startled, he looked down to see Brooke curled up beside him and fast asleep. "Great. If the team could see me now."
With a rueful shake of his head, he lifted Brooke and carried her into the bedroom, laying her on the bed he hadn't slept on since Haley had gone. Brooke sighed peacefully and curled into his pillow. Smiling, Nathan returned to the couch, stretched out, and switched back to sports until he fell asleep.
XXX
A week passed and they grew more used to each other.
Nathan figured out that Brooke was not a morning person. He discovered that she was on a first name basis with most of the food delivery services in the area. And he learned that while she rarely brought a book home and never studied, she was actually in the top ten percent of their class.
For her part, Brooke took careful note of Nathan's routine, not wanting to disrupt his life any more than she already had. She threw his laundry in with hers when the smell became overwhelming. She let him enjoy an hour of sports before beginning to whine for her turn with the TV. She even bit her tongue about the fact that he never, ever entered his own bedroom.
Of course, that didn't mean there weren't problems. He thought she took way too long in the shower and she often sniffed that he was an insensitive pig. But for the most part, they got along and managed to ignore the bigger tensions that simmered just beneath the surface.
It was a doctor's appointment that ended up causing all the trouble. Brooke's car had been in the shop all week, so she asked Nathan for a ride to her two-month checkup for the baby.
They'd established such a level of normalcy that he'd almost forgotten she was pregnant - with his brother's child, no less. He was silent and short-tempered the whole drive there and on the way back, his control broke.
"Are you ever going to tell him?" he demanded. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched as he focused on the road ahead of them.
Brooke stared out the window and pretended confusion. "Tell who what?"
"Lucas," Nathan ground out. "About the baby – his baby."
"My baby," she shot back, her defenses going up. "And no. I'm not."
Nathan resisted the urge to slam on the brakes and shake some sense into her. "Don't you think he's gonna notice when you start showing up to school dressed in the latest maternity fashions?"
"I haven't thought that far ahead," she snapped, closing her eyes against the force of his anger, the reality check he seemed intent on delivering. "Maybe I'll move to Boston before I start to show. Maybe I won't have the baby. I don't know."
"You can't just decide all by yourself, Brooke," Nathan insisted, his voice growing steadily louder. "It's not fair to him. This involves both of you and you need to let him have a say! He should be able to help you choose."
"This isn't the same thing that happened to you and Haley!" Brooke exploded, all of her fears and frustrations erupting at once. Immediately, she could sense that she'd gone too far, cut too deep, and tried to make things right. "Look, Nathan, I know you're mad at her for making her decision without you. But this is an entirely different situation. I mean, you guys are married, you had already pledged to share your lives when she took off."
He didn't respond, keeping his stony gaze on what lay beyond the windshield. Brooke swallowed nervously and continued, "Lucas and I … we're just kids. And we obviously weren't meant to be together, not if he could leave me so easily for someone else. You did have the right to be involved in Haley's choice, and I'm really sorry she didn't give that to you. But Lucas lost any and all rights he had to me and my life when he chose Peyton."
There was a long silence. Brooke fidgeted in the passenger seat, preparing herself for whatever would come next. She wasn't sure if her words had gotten through to him or just fanned the fire.
Nathan waited until he'd gotten them home, pulled into the driveway and put the car in park. Then he turned to face Brooke, fixing her with a glare so deadly that she wondered why she didn't just evaporate on the spot. "You don't know anything about my relationship with Haley," he told her evenly. "And you obviously don't know anything about really loving someone, either, because if you did care as much about Lucas as you always claimed to, you'd give him a chance."
That said, he let himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him so hard that Brooke's seat shook. He didn't wait for her to follow before storming into the house and slamming that door shut, too, leaving her alone in the car. And for the first time since everything in her life had gone so horribly off track, Brooke bent her head and cried.
