Page 73 of The Best Worst Thing

Winter

It wasn’t easy, forgetting Logan Milgram.

November drifted into December—the coldest California had seen in a decade—and still, he was everywhere. But Nicole put one foot in front of the other. She cleaned out the closets, touched up a few scuffs along the stairwell, tossed a couple dozen paperbacks into a box for the library.

There was a certain peace—the quiet, tired kind; the kind you earn—in her days now.

She walked Nero not for hours, but with intention: thirty minutes, twice a day, morning and night.

She cooked. She decluttered. She took every infant care class offered within five miles of her home, asked all the right questions, took copious notes.

She found a contract job. Remote, twenty-five hours a week—nothing fancy.

A script editor for a podcast network out of Buffalo.

It was lonely work, but she loved it. She’d sit in her office and look for little breaks in someone else’s experience, for opportunities to tell someone else’s story a tiny bit better.

It wasn’t a fancy publishing house, but it was hers.

She and Valerie reserved a few hours a day to work on the podcast, whose reach had grown tenfold over the past couple of months.

It was the highlight of Nicole’s week, chipping away at ugly truths with single mothers, widowed mothers, mothers who’d transitioned.

All this, of course, while she and Valerie prepared for the arrival of Nicole’s little girl, a moment that was finally beginning to feel real.

But no matter what she did, or where she was, or how busy she kept her hands or her brain or her body, he was there.

Every day, she’d check the boxes. Take care of whatever unfinished business had fallen before her.

Look for apartments. Send Gabe some annoying article on coparenting.

Figure out how to lock down health insurance for a baby born out of state to another woman in a random hospital at an indeterminate date and time, a task that—despite eight years of experience coordinating exceptionally tedious logistical minutiae—made her want to gouge her eyes out.

Still, it didn’t matter. Happy. Sad. Busy.

Bored. Packing up the house. Calling her parents.

Pummeling the absolute shit out of a punching bag while a sweat-drenched, neon-sports-bra-donning Mari cheered her on.

No matter what she did, he was there. And every night, as she crawled into bed, she’d reach for him.

For his hand. For the phone. She’d remember the way it felt to listen to his voice, listen to him breathe.

Listen to him laugh. Listen to him love her.

She’d try to get lost in a novel, lost in a narrative, lost in literally any tale but their own.

Thriller, mystery, downright erotica—it didn’t matter.

Nothing worked. They’d written a love story, and she saw him in every word.

And there wasn’t a line of prose on this planet another author could’ve ever penned that’d be dense or dreamy or dreadful enough to drown out their own.

She had loved him.

He had been the love of her life.

And there wasn’t a goddamn thing she could do to change that.