What's the worst place you can be at when you're lovesick? Want to guess? Did you say a wedding? Wow, great! You got it right on the first try.
It was Maria's wedding. The festivities were a cheerful affair. Lots of food and relatives and dancing. Nina tried to put on a brave face. Her face remained impassive throughout the ceremony, though on the inside she was dying a thousand deaths. Occasionally, she reached for her bag in which she had hidden away her pack of cigarettes and made sure they were still there for her to smoke later, because every time the words 'love' and 'I love you' were uttered she felt a desperate craving for a smoke. She only smoked when things were bad and honestly, now things were as bad as they could get for her.
She was in week two of her self-imposed Stephen-abstinence and it was even more terrible than week one, which was already saying something because she had been barely able to stomach the first week. She was suffering like a dog. Perhaps he was too. At least to her it looked like he was. Like some freaking masochist, she had watched every single episode of Raw and Smackdown. If her mind wasn't playing any tricks on her, his smiles seemed more forced nowadays and she could tell he had to make an effort to come across as the funny somewhat crazy Irishman he was to the public.
The priest started waxing on about love, eternal love, love, love, love... She and Luke were the only two people invited to Maria's wedding from work. The rest of the church's benches were occupied by the happy couple's combined relatives. People spoke Spanish, Italian and English. It felt like she was back at high school and they were reenacting the model UN as part of a school project. Her behavior was probably less than diplomatic, because as the priest started to drone on about the gift of love, she lied to Luke telling him she needed to go to the ladies and slipped out of the door to have a smoke.
Nina quietly snuck out the side entrance and lit herself a cigarette. As to be expected, the first drag tasted foul, as did the second and the third, but she was not about to be gentle with herself. For some reason she it was in the mood to punish herself. Since she wasn't used to smoking, a cough escaped her after a couple of more drags. A soft chuckle came from her right.
Nina turned her head and saw the type of boy she would have been swooning over back in high school when she was still in her Goth phase. He was around eighteen, had long black hair, was wearing a black suit, lots of black eye-liner and no tie. Round about 15 years ago, this would have been the precise moment when she would have started drooling. He did kind of look like a cheap version of that dark-haired vampire Banderas played back in a 90s movie. She had been sort of into that look back then. Now however, she found it sort of ridiculous and over the top.
"Weddings suck, right?" vampire-kid commented.
She nodded, feeling like the old loser she was. She blew out a bluish cloud of smoke.
"Breakup?" he asked.
Breakup was as close as one could get to a fitting diagnosis, so she just nodded and the kid saw it fit to comment on her misery with a pickup line. "That sucks... How come a hot chick like you...," he started.
She threw him a forbidding look. "Don't even go there, kid! You're trying to walk in some shoes which are way, and I mean way, waaahaaaay, too big for you. Literally and figuratively speaking by the way."
"So your ex is Lurch?" vampire-Banderas-wanna-be made a successful joke, which made her alternately chuckle and cough.
"No, and he's not really my ex. It's complicated."
"Isn't it always?"
"No kidding," she scoffed and extinguished the cigarette under the sole of her expensive high heel before she turned around to leave.
"I'm Giovanni," vampire-kid told her with a flirty smile.
"Well, Giovanni, get yourself together! I'm no Mrs. Robinson, kid," she told him briskly and got back inside. She discreetly slid into her seat again, just as the priest stopped talking about undying love and they had to start singing a hymn about it.
Later, at the end of dinner, when Maria's brother held a speech about eternal love, followed by her dad's ode to partnership and trust, topped up with Rodrigo's profession of love towards his new wife, she felt about ready to vomit up the delicious three-course-meal she had just enjoyed. Luke's presence that night was like a soothing balm to her suffering soul, because he was nearly as sarcastic and ironic as she was. Alcohol and cigarettes took care of the rest of the pain. She didn't exaggerate it, because she didn't want to ruin Maria's big day by getting wasted at her wedding dinner. She only drank just enough to be able to stomach all that talk about love.
On the taxi right home her nails drummed on the display of her cellphone. Minutes earlier she had received a text from her mother asking her whether she knew if something was up with her brother. Big surprise! Once it rains it pours. Doubtless Timmy hadn't told her yet that she was soon to be a grandmother.
"Mom's onto you," she texted her brother and quite predictably soon got a panicked call from him as a thanks for her efforts. Insofar as her bad mood allowed her to, she played the responsible older sister and advised him to tell their parents soon, not that he would listen to her, of course.
By the time she arrived at home her mood was so foul she headed to the kitchen and got herself a beer straight away. She switched on the computer as well, preparing herself to do some editing on her short stories. Writing always distracted her. She found her stories too cheerful anyway, so if she did some editing now, she would surely be able to tone that pesky cheerfulness down a notch.
She got out the hardcopy of her manuscript and leafed through the first two of her stories. Wait a second! What was that? She held the sheet of paper closer to her face. Someone had scribbled annotations on the border of the page with a pencil. She inspected the other pages as well. More annotations! Okay... She read them. Some of them were words of praise, others suggestions of what she could change; others still were little joking remarks that referred to the plot in general. They all had one thing in common though. They were rather helpful.
Nina suspected it was her brother's doing, after all he had gotten his filthy little mitts on the stories a couple of weeks ago, but then she read a word that was decisively not part of her brother's vocabulary. 'Rapid!' was apparently meant to be some kind of praise because it was followed by 'Good job!'... Stephen... His name resounded in her thoughts and left her feeling even more depressed.
She put the page down and got up from her desk. It was the middle of the night. Outside it was raining. The only light inside her apartment was that lamp on her desk. She ran her hands through her hair and leaned her head back, sending a disbelieving stare towards the ceiling. It was like she wanted to say "Hello, universe?! Why do you have to mock me so?"
He had given her three weeks to contemplate whether she wanted to be with him or not. It had been all she had been thinking about those past ten days. She had tried to go about this rationally, but time and time again those attempts had been foiled, because her feelings always snuck up on her and overwhelmed her. They tried to dictate a certain course of action to her and the more time passed, the more inclined she felt to listen to them. Now she truly felt like she had reached a fork in the road.
She briefly started pacing only to sit back down on the sofa after a couple of steps. The living room suddenly seemed too empty, too cold, which was probably thanks to the cool blue light that was created by the pouring rain and the slow coming of dawn. She allowed herself a few tears; because weakness was a commodity she didn't allow herself very often. How do you go about making decisions like that? Is there a rational way? She felt so lost, so alone.
It struck her as ironic that she had complained to Maria a couple of weeks ago that she wanted a partner, someone who would see her as an equal, not someone who would feel the need to coddle her every step of the way. Now despite of what Stephen had done, she couldn't shake the feeling that he had the potential to be that guy.
Partners. Partners in crime. She smirked a little as she contemplated that expression. People who trusted each other, knew each other like the back of their own hand... Well, that latter thing was where it got scary. She wasn't like those women from the movies. She didn't have a flawless figure and she was far from being a perfect ten, at least in her mind. After having lived with herself for the last thirty years, she had a clear concept of who she was and who she wasn't. But did he? After a couple of months he could hardly have any idea what he was getting himself into. Okay, maybe an inkling, but that was about it.
And there were quite a few things he still needed to learn about her. She wasn't the epitome of patient. Waiting in a line was her idea of hell on earth. And there was also the little miniscule detail that up until now, he hadn't seen her when she got broody. Sure, most of the times she was in a good mood, but she wasn't cheery 24/7. She was a major sulker. There had even been a time during her college years when she had indulged that streak of her personality by
running around dressed like Morticia Addams and writing sad little poems. That melancholy, gloomy part of her was still there. It just didn't come out to play that often anymore.
It wasn't that she was feeling inadequate really. He was after all just like her a human being. He had his flaws, too. Some of which she had already come across, others which she doubtlessly was yet to discover. What she dreaded though, was the thought of opening up to him only to discover that ultimately they didn't quite fit as well as she thought they would.
No, that wasn't even it. By this point she knew him as well as you could know someone given the circumstances. They had a lot of things in common and other things, but only a few, they didn't quite see eye to eye on, which was fine by her because she didn't like yea-sayers... The most important parallel between her and Stephen was probably their willfulness. They were two people who didn't quit, who once they committed to something, gave it their all.
Now that was where things truly got scary. Scary like a Stephen King novel. Scary like things that went bump in the night. Scary like a rollercoaster ride. Yes, that metaphor was something she could work with. Rollercoaster rides were fun. They were intense. They made your heart pound like crazy, but even if you got scared of the next climb and inevitable decent, you couldn't suddenly decide you wanted to get off the ride. You were either in it or you weren't. No halfway in-betweens. That was what exactly what their relationship was like. She was either in it a hundred percent or she wasn't. Now that her own words came back to bite her in the ass, she had to smile at the irony of it.
Actually the universe wasn't as much of a bastard as she had thought. Or perhaps it was. It had given her precisely what she had asked for and maybe that was the problem. Most of the time when you get precisely what you've asked for, you're not so sure you want it after all.
Was she ready for that kind of commitment? Did she still have the liberty to choose? Because honestly, the fact that she was still crying told her that she had already made her choice. He stirred emotions in her that she didn't think she had. He made her say things she didn't believe she would ever confess to another human being and there she was sitting alone in her living room crying her stupid heart out. She was crying because she was alone, felt alone and also because she was a coward and shouldn't have needed two more weeks to make up her mind. All that stupid crying, bitching and moaning she was doing was a bit disgusting. No wonder, what with all the rain. That truly was depressing.
She stood up and walked to the window feeling the need to verify that the town beneath her window wasn't a ghost town. There was a car driving by. At the end of the street there was a light in the window - a fellow insomniac like her. No, not alone.
At the birth of a star or of child there is pain. The familiar literary quote by Oscar Wilde echoed in her mind and elicited another self-ironic smirk. One of her professors at university had once talked about great poets and their capability to transform pain into something beautiful. She still remembered the metaphor he had used. The pain is like a grain of sand in a clam. The sand hurts the clam, but ultimately that pain gets transformed into something beautiful: a pearl.
She wiped the tears from her face and turned around to head back to her desk. Turn the pain into something beautiful. Maybe she could.
Even if Stephen would have been stubborn enough not to acknowledge he was distracted, there was plenty of proof. During training he hadn't paid attention and as a thank-you for that he was now the proud owner of a slightly greenish shiner around his right eye. Thank you, life! You've made your point.
The thing was, he didn't need any proof. Those three weeks of absolute no contact had been the worst idea of his life. He had had to stop himself countless times from dialing her number. It got especially hard not to when he was alone at the hotel at night and he had some time to think. He used it to think about her. In fact he used a lot of time thinking about her, even the time he should have used to keep a clear head, like during training for example.
He had always been a rather practical sort of guy. There were only a few things that let him get truly emotional. When his favorite football team lost a match, the occasional bout of homesickness when he thought of his family, the loss of someone dear, the sound of a cheering crowd that was urging him on through a difficult match... Admittedly the list was short and it wasn't necessarily in that order. And now he had to count missing her among those things as well. Because the feeling of missing her wasn't just a passing thought. No, it was always there. Subconsciously he touched his fingers to the bruise around his eye and flinched back. Good luck covering that up for the next show!
Just one more show and he would finally get on that plane to see her. It hadn't been easy finding the time for that in his tight schedule. He had signings, training sessions and interviews to take care of and only after he had done all those things, he would be able to leave. So he had called his manager and arranged for everything to be scheduled in before the match. Quite predictably he had been delighted. Well, probably just as delighted as the makeup lady would be when she would have to use half of her concealer on him to cover up that shiner for the next TV transmission.
He hated having to put on make-up, but it came with the job and with having such a fair complexion. Bruises looked more dramatic on him because he was so pale. Luckily right now his shiner wasn't the center of attention. He was doing a radio interview for some morning show in Atlanta. The host was known for his somewhat unorthodox question technique. Between asking a ton of questions about wrestling, like "How did he end up with the WWE?" or "How did you invent your special moves?" he suddenly asked one question that gave Stephen pause.
"My co-host Sophie wanted to know whether you were still single..." The, from an objective view, rather good-looking woman next to the radio host waved at him. Stephen smiled, but felt somewhat uncomfortable on the inside.
"Sorry, fella, but I don't talk about those sort of things," he said quietly into the microphone.
"Not ever?" The pouting young lady wanted to know, trying to bait him with a puppy dog look.
"Not ever," he confirmed this time without a smile.
The question would hunt him for the rest of the day. He tried to determine why it had made him feel so uncomfortable. It wasn't like he had been asked this sort of question for the first time. Usually he just waved it off with a wink and a smile and a flippant remark like a casual "Wouldn't you like to know?" So why did it make him feel uncomfortable now?
He tried to pose the question to himself in the privacy of his own thoughts and learned that he didn't have the heart to say 'yes' or 'no' at this point of time, which made him frown because he wasn't a guy to be hovering between those two alternatives. He just wasn't like that. It was always either or with him. He didn't do willy-nilly, because it was crap. It didn't suit him.
Now he had forced three weeks of indecision on himself. Why the bleeding hell had he done that? Because he wanted to grant her a way out. Did he really want to give her a way out? Was there still one? The shiner on his face told a different story. He was fed up with this fecking situation and the fact that he had finally had the balls to admit that to himself was quite something, even if it was only at the end of three-weeks of self-imposed abstinence from her.
Those three weeks would finally come to an end tomorrow, just like this fecking state of in-between and he was truly glad for it. He quickly composed a text to Nina, keeping it as impersonal as he could, because he wouldn't allow himself to be slipping now, literally hours from the finishing line. "Tomorrow, LaGuardia 8:00 pm. Are you going to be able to make it?"
Her "yes" arrived seconds later and let his heart beat faster.
Nina was getting ready to leave. It was 6 pm and she had spent the last couple of hours thinking about what to wear, what to say and in general what to do, when she stood in front of him once more. It came as a surprise to her that resolving the clothing issue was the least complicated of those questions.
Now she was dressed and heading out. She checked her handbag one last time before she pulled the door closed. Car keys, apartment keys, cellphone, wallet - everything there. She quickly exited her apartment, locked the door and took the elevator down.
She breezed through the small foyer of the apartment building that housed the mailboxes of the inhabitants. Because she was wearing heels, her steps echoed through the room. She pushed the door open, stepped outside and nearly collided with her mother.
"Mom!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here?" Nina was preoccupied by the look on her mother's face. She wasn't crying, but there was definitely something very forlorn about it. Her mother was tough as nails, so when she looked forlorn things were pretty bad.
"Did you know that Tim has gotten himself into trouble again?" her mom asked and confirmed her worst suspicions. She knew. This would take a while. She couldn't possibly leave her mom standing here like this. The realization of that weighed heavy on her and her shoulders slumped a little. She was already preparing herself to head back up to her apartment and call Stephen to tell him she wouldn't be able to make it, but then a thought hit her. The drive to LaGuardia was long enough for a decent conversation. Maybe she could do both. It was a crazy idea and it would eventually create some very awkward situations, but she needed to get to that damned airport. There was no way she was giving up on Stephen and her just because Timmy was too much of a chicken to grab the phone to call their mother.
"Mom...," she sighed, "can you do me a favor? I'm going to answer all your questions and tell you everything I know, but please, please I have to get in my car now..." There was a hint of desperation in her voice, which hopefully would get her mother to agree with that crazy proposal.
"Does that mean you're going to leave me standing here like this?" Her mother looked at her over the edge of her glasses. It was a well patented look that must have had her students squirming in their seats. Nina knew it rather well too, because she had been at the receiving end of precisely that look a lot when she had gotten a scolding as a child.
"Of course not! You can come with me if you want to. I've said I would answer all your questions, haven't I?" Nina's voice was tense. If her mother said 'no' now, she wouldn't insist on her getting into the car. They would head up to her apartment and have a good and long talk. "I just need to get to the airport. It's really important, okay?"
She waited with baited breath for her mother to say something. "Alright, if it's that important to you...," she eventually agreed. Nina let out a happy little scream and hugged her perplexed mother.
They quickly made their way over to Nina's car and got in. As Nina twisted the keys in the ignition and the engine sprang to life, her mother repeated her question from before. Nina could tell she was trying to keep her composure, because her voice had a very calm, almost impersonal tone to it when she talked. "Do you know anything about it, Nina? I suppose you do because you haven't even asked what kind of trouble."
Nina took a deep breath and grabbed the steering wheel a little tighter. "Yes, I know."
Without looking she knew that her mother was glaring at her now. "So how come you haven't told me? After all you'd think that a mother would like to be told about minor things like her son getting his ex-girlfriend pregnant..."
"You've got to believe me, Mom, I'm really sorry. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. It wasn't my decision. It was Timmy's," she paused for a brief moment and risked a brief glance at her mom. She was still angry. "Maybe this will make you feel a little better. Sandra and Timmy are back together again..."
She heard a relieved sigh from her right. "That's at least something," her mother said. "I've always liked Sandra."
"I know, Mom," Nina discreetly rolled her eyes. It was no wonder her mother liked Sandra. She was from a rich family, dressed with the impeccable taste of someone like Audrey Hepburn and even carried herself with the same poise. She was a lit major, a blond-haired and beautiful little preppy goddess and if she hadn't been really nice in top of everything else, Nina would have strongly disliked her for being so vomit-inducingly perfect.
"How did you find out?" Nina asked eventually. "Has Tim finally manned up and told you?"
Her eyes briefly flitted over the road sign next to the highway. Internally she was already counting down the miles. Her fingers were ice-cold thanks to the excitement and anticipation she was feeling, but also thanks to that difficult conversation she was currently having with her mother.
"No, I had to learn from a former colleague. He saw them together on campus and noticed that Sandra was pregnant," her mother informed her in a bitter tone of voice that made it quite obvious that she was disappointed with her kids.
"Mom," Nina turned her head to fix her with her eyes for a second before she directed her attention back on the road. "It just wasn't my place, okay? I begged him over and over again to tell you, but you know what he is like..."
"Yes, I know," her mother sighed. Whenever there was a problem, Tim liked to pretend it didn't exist. Doing the same with a pregnancy was rather stupid, but it was part of Tim's character. A resigned silence halted the conversation for a while
"Where are we going anyway?" her mother asked eventually.
"LaGuardia airport," Nina said evenly. She didn't feel like explaining to her mom why, so she tried to distract her. "You and Tim should really talk to each other," she tried to get their original conversation back on track.
"Why?" her mother asked. The tone of her voice told Nina that she was suspecting there was more she wasn't telling her and indeed there was. Her mom wasn't aware Tim had dropped out of university to get himself a job.
"I can't tell you..."
"Oh, don't feed me that crap, young lady!" her mother admonished sharply.
Nina sighed. She would have to tell her now. Perhaps it was for the better. If she weighed the options, Tim would in the long run profit from this. If her mom got it all out of her system now, Tim wouldn't have to take the brunt of her anger. As an older sister that was her job. "He dropped out of university..."
That comment was enough to send her mother raving like a madwoman for the rest of the car ride. Nina tried and tried time and time again to get her to calm down, but eventually she realized that she would just have to let her talk.
They had finally arrived at the airport parking lot. With shaking hands she let go of the steering wheel. The last couple of miles her nervousness had doubled. The voice of her mother had been reduced to a background noise just like the sound of the car wheels on the road. She blew out a long breath. Her mother shot her an odd look.
"What's going on with you?" she finally asked.
"I'm okay," Nina lied.
"Are you getting someone from the airport?" her mother enquired further.
Nina's stomach felt like it would flip any second. "Yes," she decided to look at her mother instead of starring ahead through the windshield like she had done in the last hour and a half.
"Can you do me a favor and please wait in the car?"
"No, I've been sitting here for almost two hours. I need to stretch my legs." Leave it to her mom to be stubborn and impossible. Well, at least now she wouldn't have to ask herself anymore were she had gotten her own stubbornness from.
Nina rolled her eyes again, only this time not as discreetly as before. It had been difficult enough having that long conversation about Tim with her on the car ride here, while the other half of her brain had constantly been busy thinking of Steve.
"Stop right there, young lady! Have you just rolled your eyes at me?" her mother called after her and she could hear the telltale sound of her heels clacking on the ground as she followed her towards the entrance of the airport.
They quickly made their way over to arrivals. Her mother's nagging voice was a constant hum in her ears. Nina had fallen silent and simply had let it wash over her. It wasn't that important anymore. Her eyes were transfixed with that door a few feet away through which the passengers of flight AA1239 from Atlanta would walk any second now.
It opened. People started pouring through. "Wait here!" she implored her mother and she walked towards the end of that railing.
