Page 33 of The Best Worst Thing

New York Minute

Colie, wait!” Gabe said, racing through the medical building’s double doors and into the pouring rain.

Over the past hour, a rumbling summer storm had blown into Norfolk, and from churning charcoal clouds, the torrent pummeled the steaming asphalt in hot, wild drops.

The water, by now, was everywhere: surging through gutters, rushing across the pavement, and whipping back into the air with every gust of wind.

Nicole, already drenched, threw her bag over her head and darted toward Valerie’s car without looking back.

Clicking furiously at the keys as Gabe called her name again, she leaped into the driver’s seat, pulled back her dripping wet hair, and started the engine.

When she looked up, Gabe was standing right there with his hands on his head, his polo shirt soaked, and his frowning face ready to plead its case. Valerie’s low beams, his spotlight.

“Nicole!” He leaped toward her window and threw his hands on the glass. “I have to make this right! You have to let me fix this!”

“Gabe, come on,” she said, cracking the window. Rain flew sideways through the crevice. “Not today. It’s too much. Valerie’s going to be out soon. I’m supposed to be pulling the car around for her. Don’t make a scene.”

“Let’s go home!” he said. “Let’s just go back to California!

Forget Aspen. We can drive up the coast—rent a place somewhere.

Big Sur, Mendocino. It’ll be a real vacation—no Kyle, none of the wives.

It’ll be the way it should’ve been all along.

Just you and me, having a summer. We can hike and swim, get ice cream. We can bring the dog, we—”

“No,” Nicole said, as calmly as she could. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

“But we can fix this! I know we can! We can stay up all night, just talking, like we used to. We can make a plan. I’ll do anything you say.

I’ll quit drinking. I’ll never see Tommy or Wyatt or Brandon or any of the guys, ever again.

I’ll spend every minute fixing what I broke.

Just don’t give up on me. Because everything’s going to change, I swear! I just—”

“No,” she said.

“Then I’ll quit my job!” He flung his hands back onto the window as thunder roared. “I’m serious! I’ll quit right now!”

“Gabe, stop.” Lightning cracked. “Be an adult. It’s too late.”

“Let’s go back to New York! We can get on a plane right now!

We never have to go back to California. I’ll live anywhere you want!

Brooklyn? You love Brooklyn! Park Slope?

The Upper West Side? Somewhere with parks and coffee shops and places to get pancakes in the middle of the night.

Let’s start over, okay? We can raise our kid in the city, where things were perfect, before anything was hard.

No big job, no stupid parents, no dumb mistakes.

It’ll be just us again. You and me and our baby! ”

“Please don’t do this,” she said. “Please don’t ruin today for me.”

“Our baby, Nicole!” He pressed his face against the window. His eyes, wet and wide. His hand, streaking down the fogged-up glass. His wedding band, still on. “We’re finally having a baby! The hard part is over! We can do this! I know it’s not too late. We can—”

“Over!? It’s just beginning, Gabe! We have to raise a human! For the rest of our lives! Have you not realized that yet? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“I didn’t mean … I just …” Gabe smashed his forehead deeper against the glass and exhaled.

His fists, loose and desperately clinging to the window’s opening.

Nicole fought back tears, trying to get her screaming pulse to calm.

“All I meant was that we’re a family now.

That we have to start over. That we can still have everything. ”

Nicole took a long, deep breath. Every word, an exercise in self-control. “Please don’t use the family card on me. It’s not fair.”

“Just give me a weekend! Two days to show you I can do this. That’s all I’m asking for, okay?

A chance to show you how different things are going to be.

The city’s empty. We can go anywhere you want.

The library. The MoMA. That gross little hot dog cart you were obsessed with that first summer.

Just give me one more chance. I can’t lose you. I love you. Just give me—”

“I said no. Please stop making promises you don’t know how to keep.”

Gabe shuddered, grabbing his hair by the fistful. Nicole scrunched her eyes shut. It was too much—this day, these past few weeks. Gabe, standing there, putting on another show.

“I mean it, Nicole! I’ll call Kyle right now! Fuck my job! Fuck this life! I’ll work at a fucking wine shop! I don’t care anymore! From now on, you come first. You and the baby. Nothing else matters!”

Nicole opened her eyes. Gabe was back in front of the car, pacing in the rain, his phone to his ear, his left hand clenching and releasing into a fist over and over again.

He wasn’t bluffing.

Nicole leaped out of the driver’s seat and into the storm. She snatched Gabe’s phone just as Kyle’s voice had begun to send a shiver up her spine.

“Don’t quit your fucking job!”

Gabe threw his hands on his head. “Why not!?”

“Because it’s too late! Because you love it! Because it wouldn’t make a goddamn difference!”

“You don’t know that!” His sopping wet shirt clung to his chest. Rain dripped down his warping brow, his pulsing neck. “Tell me why you won’t let me fight for our family! Tell me why you won’t even let me try!”

Nicole’s arms flung open. “Because you’re a fucking liar, Gabe! Because you’re a fucking cheater, that’s why!”

Gabe clenched his fists, wailing as he struck a rain-slicked parking block with his foot. His whole body jerked back. For a moment, he just stood there, thrashing, absorbing the shock. And then, finally, he fell apart. His neck bent and his shoulders slumped and he sank to the curb, knees to chest.

“I wanted to die in there,” he said, voice breaking.

He turned toward her. His eyes were red and his face had fallen.

“I didn’t know what to say, what to do. Watching you hear the heartbeat from across the room …

It was the worst moment of my whole life.

I was dying to hold you. To just be next to you.

Fuck, Nicole. I don’t know how to make this right.

I don’t know how to fix this. You won’t answer my calls.

You won’t let me see you. I don’t know what else to do to show you how sorry I am.

How stupid I was. All I want is to be the father I never had.

The husband you deserve. All I want is one more chance. ”

Nicole, standing a few feet behind him with her body bent and her heart wrenched, was silent for a minute. She closed her eyes and breathed.

Had there been two sides to this story? Could it have been true, what he’d said in his hotel room?

That she’d changed? That she’d been a ghost—so caught up in the pursuit of some perfect baby that she’d forgotten to love him?

That she’d been distant and cold and someone else for nearly three years now?

That when he’d try to touch her, she’d recoil?

That when he’d take her out to dinner, she’d stare into space and count down to a due date that had already slipped through their fingers?

Hadn’t he, that first IVF cycle, measured and mixed her shots every night he could beat traffic home?

Hadn’t he, whenever she asked, sat down in her office and read straight off some absurd podcast script?

Hadn’t he driven to Redding the Sunday after her first miscarriage to charm his way to the very top of the waiting list for a chestnut-colored, standard-size goldendoodle?

Hadn’t he, around midnight, cracked open their bedroom door to find her lying there in tears, then climbed under the covers with a bewildered pipsqueak of a puppy and a pint of ice cream in his arms?

Did she really want to do this? Raise their baby alone?

Ask this child—this itty-bitty clump of cells that was dividing against all odds, and only because Nicole had willed it into existence—to grow up without a father in the house just because they’d hit a rough patch?

Just because they’d both fallen short? She could have been warmer.

She could have been kinder. She could have loved him harder.

She could have, at the very least, tried.

Maybe this past month had been good for them.

Maybe, because of what’d happened this summer, Gabe would become the kind of father who came home early, took his baby out to breakfast while his wife slept in, and kept a stuffed platypus in his glove compartment and a picture of his family on his desk.

Maybe, now, she’d get the old Gabe back.

Get what she’d signed up for. What he’d promised her all those years ago.

Nicole sat down on the parking curb one spot over and wiped the rain off her forehead. The storm had hushed to a quiet drizzle.

“How many were there?” she said.

Gabe’s shoulders rose for a split second. He took a long, careful breath. “It never meant a thing to me. I made a mistake. I—”

“I need a number.”

Gabe was silent for a moment. He studied the puddled, murky pavement. When he looked back at Nicole, her eyes were wet, and her arms were clutched around her elbows.

“It will never happen again,” he said. “That I can promise you. I swear on my life.”

Nicole closed her eyes. “When did it start?”

“Nicole …”

“Before or after the first miscarriage?”

“Everything’s going to change,” he said. “We’re a family now. All that matters is—”

“No,” she said. “Tell me when it started. Tell me you weren’t fucking anybody else before I lost the first baby.

Tell me that when we started trying, there was nobody else.

Tell me I didn’t throw my life away for some piece of shit, Gabe.

Swear on our baby that when you let me walk down that aisle, there was nobody else. ”

“Colie,” he said, hands wrung behind his neck. “I love you. I have always loved you. You are the only one I’ve ever loved. It will always, always only be you.”

Nicole nodded. She nodded furiously. And her heart—her foolish, naive little heart; the same one that had watched beautiful men lie to the women they loved since before she could tie her own shoes—didn’t even bother to break. Instead, she rose to her feet.

“You,” she said, “are exactly who I thought you were.”

Gabe stood up at once. “I’m not! And I’m not going to give up on us! I’m not going to give up on our family without a fight! I’m not going to …”

But it didn’t matter. What else he said, what else he promised. Because Nicole was already walking away. She turned to face him just before she arrived at the car, tears streaming down her face. Her jaw, aching.

“I’m taking Valerie to lunch,” she said. “And then I’m going home. Please don’t call me. Please don’t text me. And please don’t show up at the house. I mean it. I’m done.”

“Nic—”

“Go to Colorado,” she said. “Go get your shit together. I’ll see you at the ten-week.”

Gabe sank back onto the curb as Nicole climbed into Valerie’s car and put her head in her hands.

He reached for a random, jagged rock he’d found at his feet, closed his eyes, then hurled it across the flooded parking lot in one perfect, thoughtless pitch.

He opened his eyes and watched it fly. He watched it land a few empty rows away in a navy lake of predictably wild summer rain.

And then, as Nicole began to drive away, he watched the ripples it made stretch on and on and on.