Page 70 of The Best Worst Thing

Kirkwood, Missouri

Nic, honey?” Nicole’s mother said, setting a few bags of groceries onto the granite countertop. “Are you all right? How was your flight?”

It was Sunday afternoon, and Nicole was sitting at her parents’ kitchen table in a giant sweatshirt, staring off into space. Her tangled waves were still full of hair spray and her swollen face was still streaked with mascara.

“It was fine. I’m fine.”

Her mother looked at her. “Why don’t you go take a shower and clean yourself up before dinner? Ethan’s on his way back from the airport with Paige, and your dad will be home soon.”

Nicole closed her eyes. She couldn’t shower. Soon enough, she’d have to do it. She’d have to wash him off her skin. But not yet. For now, he was still all over her. For a few more hours, he was still hers.

“I will before bed,” Nicole said. “I’m going to crash early, I think.”

Nicole’s mother nodded, rinsing a colander of potatoes in the sink. She stopped the water, bundled the spuds in a kitchen towel, then sat down across from Nicole and slid her a paring knife. For maybe five minutes, they sat in silence, peeling potatoes.

“Hey, Mom?”

“Yeah?”

A flash of childhood: A creaking door, her father’s footsteps.

A shouting match, a stifled sob. And then, breakfast. Everything, the same.

Waffles and strawberries and too-sweet syrup.

Her mother, pouring two cups of coffee. Her mother, mashing a banana for Ethan with a spoon.

Her father, showered, dressed for work, kissing his wife goodbye, and walking right back out the door.

“Why didn’t you ever leave him?” she said.

Nicole’s mother took a long and careful breath, then reached for another potato. “I loved your father. I still do. Marriage is complicated. You know that.”

Nicole nodded, then dug her blade into a pesky, blackened sprout. Her jaw, aching. “I thought I could change him,” she said. “When I met Gabe, I thought if he loved me enough, if I did everything right, I could change him. I think I was trying to prove you wrong.”

Her mother wiped her eyes. “They don’t change, sweetheart. You just get stronger.”

Nicole stared at her. And then—when she mindlessly slashed the palm of her hand wide open; when blood began to drip down her shaking arm and onto the cool glass of the table, smearing her tidy pile of potato skins; when she finally took a long, hard look at the mess she’d made—she locked eyes with her mother again and promptly burst into tears.

Nicole raked a plastic spoon over her already-melting shaved ice. Strawberry with whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles, and a smattering of Nerds. It was absolutely disgusting in the best possible way—and, in a matter of seconds, had sent her into another fit of hysterics.

“All right,” Paige said from the driver’s seat.

They were sitting in their mother’s car—the heat running, the radio humming.

Paige had taken one look at Nicole’s bandaged hand, bloodshot eyes, and tearstained face, then dragged her straight out the door before their mother could warn them to be home in time for dinner.

“What the hell is going on with you? Is this about Gabe? Did something happen?”

Nicole didn’t know how to put what she was feeling into words.

How could she explain that some turquoise hut nestled inside Kirkwood Park was exactly the kind of bonkers Saint Louis institution her ex-boyfriend, whom she’d never even mentioned to her sister, would’ve loved?

That he’d have wanted to come here three times a day until he’d tried every flavor on the menu, even if it meant combining banana and cherry cola and wedding cake?

She couldn’t. And so instead, she stabbed her virtually untouched double scoop again and closed her eyes.

“I fucked up so bad, Paige. With, um … with Logan.”

Paige’s mouth fell open. “Wait, like work Logan? I thought you never even texted him back? I thought that was just a Mari-induced drunken escapade?”

Nicole shook her head. And then, after begging Paige to please, please not judge her, she spilled everything—and she didn’t start in July either.

She went back to the very beginning, over four years ago, when her and Logan’s friendly, rapid-fire rapport had started becoming the highlight of her workdays.

Nicole didn’t skip a single detail: not the strange way he sometimes looked at her, or how they couldn’t help but finish each other’s sentences, or how everything felt a little flat and gray and wrong the weeks he was traveling.

How, every time the office door swung open, a tiny part of her would look up and hope it was him, chipper and ridiculous and ready to give her a hard time.

How she kind of wished he’d tell her where he was going and for how long and why, even though she knew that was completely insane—and that all the information she needed, business-wise, was right on his giant team calendar.

How those last few months before she finally quit, whenever they were alone together—when she and Gabe were fighting constantly, when he barely batted an eye as she slipped past him in the house—there was always the teeniest voice in her head, questioning everything.

And how, at the end of the day, she had chalked it up to a work crush.

A stupid, noisy, nothing little work crush—a flicker of intrusive thoughts; a few too-fast flutters of her already-decided heart.

The kind of crush that would surely disappear the second she was stupid enough to act on it. Which—of course—she never, ever was.

And that Logan had been right. That, deep down, in a way she was only now beginning to understand, she must’ve always known. And that she’d hurt him. She’d really, really hurt him.

And by the time Nicole was done talking, she and Paige were both in tears—and an hour late to a dinner neither of them intended to eat.

“Mom can deal,” Paige said. “She’s been literally the least supportive person throughout all this.”

“I think it’s hard for her, with Dad.”

“Well, fuck Dad too.”

Nicole shook her head, tightening the gauze of her bandage.

“My whole life,” she said, “ever since we were old enough to figure out what was going on, I judged Mom for staying. I thought it was just kind of pathetic, you know? That we all had to pretend we were this big, happy family. And then when I found out about Gabe, I was even more furious.”

“Because you knew how it felt?”

“Yeah. Because it hurt so bad. Because he made me feel like such an idiot. All of a sudden, I got it. That Mom had to fall asleep next to Dad every night, knowing where he’d been, pretending it didn’t matter. Pretending she could just take something like that on the chin.”

Paige turned on the defroster. Her and Nicole’s forgotten desserts idled on the dash. “I mean, who knows what Mom was thinking? She’s never exactly been an open book.”

“But that’s the thing,” Nicole said. “I think I get it now. I think I know why she kept taking him back. At least at the very beginning. She was scared. We were so little. She must have been so, so scared. And then, eventually, she just got used to it. It just became her life.”

“But you’re not Mom, Nic. That’s not your story.”

“I know that. Trust me, I know that. But I’m terrified. I don’t know if I can do this by myself. I’ve never done anything alone. My whole life, since I was fifteen, I’ve had some boyfriend, somebody.”

“Of course you can do this,” Paige said. “Look at what you went through to have a child. You’re amazing.”

“I don’t think going through hell to have a baby makes you any more likely to be a good mother.

And I’ve got nothing to give this kid, anyway.

I don’t have a job. I don’t have a life.

The house—it’s Gabe’s. I signed a prenup.

It’s California, so it’s not like I’ll get nothing, but I let this happen.

I stopped working, knowing what I’d signed. ”

“You’re wrong, okay? You’re not alone. You have me. There’s an office in Venice, I’m sure I could do six months down there. Or I can take leave, come be with you when the baby’s born. And you’ll have Mari. You’ll get a job, and you’ll figure this out.”

“Mari?” Nicole laughed through a few tears. “Mari won’t even hold a baby. She thinks they’re contagious.”

“She’ll hold your baby. I promise.”

Nicole dried her eyes, then pressed her face against the window. Saint Louis was cold and wet and twinkling.

“We would have been okay,” Paige said. “You realize that, right?”

Nicole was quiet.

“I’m not saying divorce is no big deal. Of course it is. But Mom could’ve left. She could’ve found someone who wanted to wake up next to her, or just decided she wasn’t going to do this with someone who’d hurt her over and over again, and I really believe we would have been okay.”