Chapter Forty Three

He was sitting in a back booth when I arrived. His arm was slung over the back rest and there was a black coffee sat in front of him.

I trudged over, feeling sick, and not knowing if that was from the alcohol or the conversation we were about to have.

"Hey. How you feeling?" He sat up straighter as I slumped into the booth.

I gave him a filthy look.

"How do you think I'm feeling?"

For somebody who didn't drink, he was handling his hangover pretty well. His face was more tanned than I remembered, that must have been down to the Californian sun. And his eyes were bright as he gave me a sympathetic smile.

"Can I get you a coffee?" His eyes roamed the room looking for service and for some reason, this annoyed me. I worked here. This was my place. He didn't have any right to roll up from law school and start ordering for me.

"I can get my own damn coffee, okay?"

Chris let his head roll back in frustration.

I caught Fran's eye as she came out of the kitchen and she signalled pouring coffee to me to which I nodded. As Fran approached with the coffee pot, she gave us a funny little smile.

"What is it?" I was hungover and snappy but it didn't stop her from smiling.

"Well, ain't you a ray of sunshine this morning? Good thing that boy of yours is more of a morning person."

"Sorry," I mumbled, feeling guilty. Fran had handed Mikey over to Gordie before she left for work. Gordie had taken Mikey fishing for the day down at the back Harlow road.

"I was just remembering the two of you sitting in this very booth. Years ago. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife." Fran was laughing as she walked away, not knowing that now was pretty much the same situation.

Neither of us could forget the night I'd turned up here after a slap and kick from Stan. When Chris had been sitting here with a bruise across his cheek and the two of us had eaten free apple pie together, both of us waiting for Fran to drive us home.

"That was the first time you ever smiled at me…" the words were out of my mouth before I knew it.

"That was the first time I ever wanted to touch you." He reached out and put his large warm hand over mine. For a few seconds I allowed the heat to ebb into my skin. I let the butterflies surge into my stomach but then I ripped my hand away.

Chris looked wounded as I tucked both of my hands under the table.

"Don't," was all I could manage.

"Look, I'm sorry I got mad last night. It's shitty timing, I get that. But I need you to tell me everything. Please."

I sighed and shrugged.

"It won't change anything. Mikey needs stability right now and stability is knowing that his father was Ace, who he knew and loved."

Chris shook his head.

"I'm not gonna insist you blurt it all out now to the poor kid. I mean, we don't even know-" He stopped talking and put a hand over his face briefly. "Just tell me everything, Nina. Please. Then we can talk about how we deal with it."

His blue eyes bore into my green ones. He looked pained, almost desperate.

So I told him. I told him about fainting here in this diner. Of Ace taking me to the hospital where I found out that I was pregnant. I explained that I couldn't be sure who the father was from the dates. I told him Ace had taken me home and returned later that night to tell me he would be a father to the baby. I told him that I knew his dream was to leave Castle Rock and I couldn't stand in the way of that.

Chris gripped his coffee cup tightly as I continued to talk. I told him about the deal I'd made with Ace not to tell anybody the baby might be a Chambers, I told him how Ace had pushed me to tell him that day in Irby's that I didn't want to be with him. I tried to explain that when it had happened, I had thought I was doing the right thing by him.

"And look at you, Chris. You're doing so well for yourself. So it was the right thing."

He drank his coffee slowly, staring out across the diner, watching a kid being spoon fed by his mother a couple of tables away.

"The right thing was to tell me the truth."

He couldn't put that on me. If I had been selfish, I would have told him Mikey was his, or even asked him to stay despite the doubt. He had offered to do that for me anyway. And I had let him go because I loved him more than myself.

"If I 'd told you, you wouldn't have gone away to college."

"And that would have been my decision to make!" He slammed his cup down on the table, making me jump. "You tried to tell me, didn't you? I went over everything a thousand times when you broke it off and then again last night. That day at Fran's, when Becky was with us, you asked me about having kids. You knew then, right?"

"Yeah, I knew. And what did you say? You didn't want to be tied down and resent your kids. You wanted to see the world first?"

"But I didn't know-" He started to protest and I cut him off.

"Exactly. Those were your real thoughts without any emotional bias. I couldn't ask you to stay after that. I didn't want you to stay after that. I didn't want to feel like you were stuck with me."

"Like Ace must have felt you were stuck with him?"

His words delivered like a slap in the face.

"You fucking asshole."

He closed his eyes for a few seconds.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. But you being stuck with Ace and me being stuck with you are completely different things…"

Tears were falling down my face by now and I couldn't speak but he spoke the words for me.

"You wanna know why? Because what me and you had was real. I wouldn't have been staying just because it was the right thing to do. I would have been staying because I loved you and you loved me."

"College was your dream long before I was." I said, swiping at my face to dry my tears.

"Who says we couldn't have had both in time? When I was with you, I felt like I could do anything, go anywhere, make anything work."

"Look, we can''t rewind the clock. Whats done is done. We have different lives now, different priorities."

"If Mikey's mine, he's both our priority."

He said this firmly, his eyes fixed on mine and it made me feel relieved and ashamed at the same time.

"He doesn't need anymore changes in his life, Chris. You being around would just confuse him."

"Let's get a test done, Nina. We can find out in a matter of days if he's mine. Who knows? Maybe he is Ace's and you''ll never have to see me again. But I have to know."

"I don't want that."

"Well, what about what I want, damn it?" He was raising his voice and we were getting some stares.

I fixed my eyes on his and then I shook my head slowly.

"I mean..I don't want to never see you again."

The fight left his body and in one fluid movement, he was over to my side of the booth, his arm about me as I sobbed into his shoulder. I was reminded of the day I found out my Mom had died. When Chris had found me in the diner and let me cry into his sweater until I was spent. He had been the only person I had wanted to see.

And now, I knew why I felt so lousy. He was still the only person I wanted to see, the only person who could make me feel better, and that was so wrong. I was mourning Ace. Ace had been my husband.

"We can't do this," I sobbed, trying to pull away from him.

Chris continued to hold me close.

"Sure, we can, let 'em stare. I'm your friend. I will always be your friend."

I relaxed against him again.

"C'mon, let's get out of here," he said to me.

I didn't argue. I could feel the prying eyes as he could and allowed him to lead me towards the exit.

"This town doesn't change, does it?" He lit up a cigarette outside but I plucked it out of his mouth and tossed it away.

"I wish you wouldn't do that."

"Hey," Chris frowned at the thrown cigarette.. "You never complained about Ace smoking."

"Well…you're not Ace."

He lit another cigarette, his hands shaking slightly.

"I wished to hell I was Ace." It was the closest I'd ever heard him to bitter. "You know how hard it is to want to be the very same person you've hated all your life?"

I froze, slowly coming to my sense and shaking my head.

"I thought we were past it. You said you forgave me."

"I forgave you. But I never forgave him and I never stopped wanting to be Mikey's father even when I thought he was Ace's. Ace had the life I wanted."

Ace's life? His mundane existence was working a 9-5 job and coming home on a Friday night to drink a beer and watch the football beside me on the couch before falling asleep open mouthed. Chris was at law school, in California, was invited to frat parties, went to the beach for spring vacation, and he wanted Ace's life, the hoodlum he'd always despised.

"You didn't want Ace's life…"

I started walking away and he caught my arm by the elbow and tugged me back towards him.

"Of course, I did. Because his life was with you. Being a family with you. Raising a kid with you. There is nothing that I wanted more than that."

It would have been so easy to melt back into his arms, the way I had when we were teenagers, the way I had when I had been Ace's girl because that hadn't mattered once Chris Chambers was pulling me close. But all I could smell was his cigarette. And it made me think of Ace which made my stomach ache.

"We can't do this…"

"I just want you to be okay," Chris brushed a stray strand of hair from my face. "For you and Mikey to be okay. I can come home. Get some work locally. Be here for you just as friends."

I extracted myself from his arm by stepping backwards and shook my head.

"No. I won't let you drop out of law school. We don't even know if Mikey is yours. And even if he is, I wont disrespect Ace's memory. I don't want Mikey to know."

Chris held out his hand placatingly.

"I'm not talking about disrespecting anything. I just wanna make sure you're okay. I mean, without Ace, you don't have his income, a car, an extra pair of hands. Have you thought about what you'll do?"

I hadn't. It had been the furthest thing from my mind.

"I guess I'll get a full time job. And find a sitter…"

"No." Chris put his hand on my arm. "You said it yourself. Mikey doesn't need any more change. I'll make sure you're okay. Both of you."

"I can't take your money."

"Look, until you prove otherwise to me, I'm taking responsibility for Mikey. And if he's mine, I owe you a hell of a lot."

"You don't owe me anything. I chose this. I let you go."

"Yeah, well this time I refuse to be let go. You are not getting rid of me."

I started to get angry.

"If you do this, everything I went through was for nothing. The only thing that kept me going was the fact you got to live out your dream. That you were going to be a lawyer. And now that doesn't matter? Chris, if you don't finish law school, you are not the guy I thought you were and i never want to see you again."

He looked like I'd slapped him, and after recoiling, he stepped back towards me, challenging me head on.

"Why do you always do this? Box me into a corner where I can't do right for doing wrong?"

"Why do you always do this? Play the martyr, surrender everything around you just because it's the honourable thing to do. We are not your problem and if you leave law school, we're done here."

He stood, chewing his lip as he stared at me, the cogs in his mind turning as he weighed it all up logically. I knew how he worked. I knew he would calm down eventually.

"Okay." He straightened up, tossed his cigarette and nodded at a sweet looking pontiac parked up behind us. "At least let me give you a ride home?"

I let him.

"This is a nice car," I said as we drove silently along the street.

"Won it in a poker game."

Our eyes met briefly and we both knew the other was remembering the card game at Vern Tessio's house all those years ago. Where he had stolen my tip money back for me from the stake pile.

I remembered kissing him heatedly in the living room, leaning drunkenly against him as we danced and feeling like I was never safer.

The moment passed quickly.

"So when do you go home?" I asked him, looking down into my lap.

"Day after tomorrow," he said quietly. "Any chance I can see Mikey before then?"

I looked sideways at him and he kept his hands on the wheel, not looking back.

"You can't make it obvious, Chris. And you can't say anything."

"Of course not. Ill be happy just hanging out with him, you and Gordie. If Uncle Chris is all I'm allowed to be, that's better than nothing."

He pulled up outside my house and my hand was on the door handle fast. I didn't want there to be any opportunities for goodbye kisses.

"I usually take him to the park on Sunday. He likes to watch the Little Leaguers."

He nodded slowly.

"Shall I pick you up?"

"He likes to walk."

Which was probably a good thing now we were without Ace's truck, I realised.

"Okay, what time?"

"Be here for nine thirty," I said. Then I got out quickly and closed the door behind me.

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