Page 71 of The Best Worst Thing

Thanksgiving

Nicole rolled over on her parents’ sofa and pulled a throw blanket over her aching body.

After a relatively uneventful Thanksgiving dinner, only she and Paige were home.

Nicole’s parents had gone to a neighbor’s for a drink.

Ethan had brought his girlfriend to a post–football game bonfire with his high school friends.

And Nicole and Paige, as usual, had opted to loaf around in their sweatpants, consuming as much BBC-adjacent media as humanly possible.

“You sure you don’t want a slice?” Paige said, flopping onto the other side of the couch, a giant hunk of butterless, eggless, lifeless pumpkin pie peeking out from the rim of her navy cereal bowl. Through the open kitchen door, the dishwasher hummed. “I swear it’s good.”

Nicole shook her head.

“You have to eat something eventually, Nic. It’s been days.”

“I can’t.”

Paige plunked her bowl on the coffee table. “You really love him, don’t you?”

Nicole pulled the blanket past her nose and closed her eyes. “So, so much.”

“Then why don’t you just—”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? Please. It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

Nicole had been trying her best to keep it together.

Trying to make it through her days being helpful and tidy and quiet.

Trying to simmer cranberry sauce and cap mushrooms and make sure her father didn’t die while deep-frying the turkey.

Trying to make it through another minute without thinking about Logan, or where he was, or what he was doing or drinking or rambling about, or what he might’ve told his mother when forced to explain why Nicole wasn’t coming to meet her anymore.

Whether he was in as much pain as she was.

Whether it hurt when he walked or slept or tried to speak.

Whether, when he closed his eyes, all he saw was the two of them, clinging to each other in his bedroom—the rest of the world, quiet; the rest of the world, streaks.

“Okay,” Paige said, reaching for the remote by Nicole’s ankle. “I was thinking maybe we do Persuasion first? The one with the blond Captain Wentworth? God, why do I always forget his name? Rupert something-something?”

Nicole shrunk a little farther into the couch. Paige drew her eyebrows together.

“Why are you doing this to yourself? If you love him, why not just tell him? If he knows everything, and he still loves you, then why not at least try? Why not just say you’re sorry?”

“Because I need to love my kid, okay? It’s time for me to love my kid.”

Paige nodded, then handed Nicole the remote and told her to pick whatever she wanted—depressed person’s choice. Nicole, for a minute, poked through a few thumbnails on the flat-screen, then slowly sat herself up.

“Actually,” she said, “would you maybe walk with me over to Duffy’s? There’s something I need to do.”

Duffy’s—dark and musty—was a time capsule. Nothing had changed. Not the mahogany paneling, the fake plants dangling from the drop ceilings, or the scores of Saint Louis Blues swag hastily framed onto those tobacco-stained brick walls.

Nicole shivered, then slid onto an empty barstool. It was early, but in a few hours, the place would fill. And even now, ten years to the day, she could still see herself right there, backed up against that booth in the corner, hand tucked into the pocket of her new boyfriend’s blue jeans.

It had been Gabe’s first trip to Saint Louis, and his hands were wrapped around her waist, and some dreadful cover band was playing an acoustic riff on REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Loving You,” and he was twirling her around and around, and in that moment, Nicole knew it.

That it was never, ever going to get better than this.

That she’d do anything to make this last. That she’d do anything to make him hers.

She remembered it all so perfectly.

How it sounded when he’d said it for the first time, when he whispered “I love you” in her ear.

How she’d kissed him and—heart on fire—said it right back, and he shook his head and said, “I mean it. I think I’m going to love you forever.

” How she’d raised an eyebrow and whispered back, “Forever’s a long time.

” How he’d pulled her closer and said, “You don’t think I can do it?

” How she’d looked right at him and said, “Nope.” How he’d kissed her again—this time, hard—then ran his hands up her rib cage, his beer bottle clanking against her arching hip, and said, “You want to let me try?” and Nicole bit her lip and said, “I’d like that,” and never, ever looked back.

And now, a decade later, knowing exactly how their story would end, Nicole breathed the memory in, closed her eyes, and finally let it go.

When she glanced up, a stocky bartender in a flannel overshirt and a Cardinals cap was wiping down the counter, eyeing her bandaged hand.

“You all right there?”

“Oh, um, yeah. Sorry.”

“You’re Mike Hausman’s girl, right? The one in LA?”

Nicole nodded.

“First one’s on me. What can I get you?”

“Jack and Coke, please.”

Some things never changed.

“Valerie? Sorry to bother you so late …”

“That’s okay!” Valerie was, amazingly, untangling Christmas lights at ten o’clock, Eastern Time—the rest of her family seemingly fast asleep. Second-trimester energy or something like that. “How was your Thanksgiving? Wait, where are you? It sounds loud. Have you been crying?”

A sniffle, and then a nod. “I’m in the bathroom of this dive bar by my parents’ house, thinking about divorcing my husband.”

“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry.”

Nicole leaned back against the stall. Of all the things she’d pushed aside, of all the things she’d tried to pretend weren’t happening, none had scraped at her soul quite like this.

“Hey, Val?”

“Yeah?”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Oh, okay. Wow. Are you sure you want to know? I really thought you wanted to be surprised.”

“Not anymore,” Nicole said. “I want to be prepared.”

Valerie smiled. “You’re going to have a daughter, Nicole. It’s a girl.”

Tears streamed down Nicole’s face.

A girl? A girl!

She was going to have a little girl!

“You all right?” Valerie said.

“Yeah,” Nicole said, nodding. And she was, wasn’t she? She really was. “I just don’t know what to say. I don’t even know how to begin to thank you.”