Page 75 of The Best Worst Thing

Not Without a Fight

She leaped out of the passenger seat.

She raced up his steps.

She threw her knuckles onto his front door.

But already, it was clear. His blinds were too drawn. His mailbox, too full. The take-out menu dangling from his doorknob, too old, too weathered, too wet.

“Ring the bell, Nicole!”

For a single, impossible second, she turned around and stared at her hope-filled friends where Mari’s car was idling in the driveway.

And then, without a word, she slumped against his front door, heart in a million pieces.

She had told him to go. She had given him no reason to stay.

And here she was, believing he’d have stuck around. Believing he’d have waited for her.

“Nic?” Paige’s head poked out the back window. “What’s going on? You didn’t even try!”

Nicole shook her head. “He’s not here.”

“Did you try calling him?” Valerie said. “Maybe he’s just traveling!”

Nicole shrugged, then slowly pulled out her phone.

After a minute, finally, she forced herself to trace his name, press her finger to the glass, and let it ring.

Her heart, skipping a thousand beats at the thought of his voice on the other end of the line, of how he might sound or what he might say.

When it went straight to voicemail—the very instant the quiet hum of that same old recording began—she hung up.

She wasn’t ready to hear that version of him.

That always-on, fun-and-games, sell-you-anything version of him that was for everybody and anybody.

Some standard-issue version of him that wasn’t just for her.

“Keep trying!” Paige said as Nicole lifelessly dialed one, two, three more times. But by her fifth attempt, Nicole had dropped her phone to the concrete. Mari, who’d been quiet for a while now, got out of the car and carefully walked up his steps.

“Did he take the job?” Nicole said.

“I don’t know,” Mari said, wiping away the mist on his shuttered kitchen window, attempting to peer through a nothing little crack in the blinds.

“I know he was at PS before Christmas—and I just checked online too—but that doesn’t really mean anything, especially with all the holidays.

Carson just announced their new CEO last week, so it could be a week or two before they name the rest of the big hires.

I don’t know what his next move is. I don’t know what he may have worked out with Quentin, or what he has or hasn’t told his team.

Maybe he’s just on a plane and his phone’s off.

Maybe he’s been on a work trip, and he’ll be home in an hour. I just don’t know, Nic.”

Nicole hung her head. Mari looked around.

“Which neighbor’s nicer, one or three?”

“Uh, three,” Nicole said. “Definitely three.”

“They hear you guys have weird sex all the time?”

Nicole nodded, wincing.

“Good,” Mari said, already banging on the unit’s front door. But as it swung open, as Mari’s shoulders slumped and her neck bowed and her arms stiffened, Nicole understood.

Mari sat down next to Nicole, tipped her head back against no-longer-Logan’s front door, and stared into the cold January night. Nicole, knees to chest, closed her eyes.

She had loved this place. She had loved it, all cracked screens and clacking cupboards and creaking floorboards.

She had fallen in love with him here. She had changed her life here.

She had learned to tell the truth here. It had been the only place, as her world fell apart, where she’d felt safe and good and worth something.

And now, it was gone. Erased. Eviscerated.

The backbone of their perfect summer, snatched away like it was never theirs at all.

It had been home, hadn’t it? It had—for those four months of magic—been her home.

And now, it was just sitting there, empty, waiting to belong to someone new.

She’d never get another chance to watch him float across the hardwood in a pair of crew socks, grinning as he answered his wide-open front door.

She’d never get another chance to watch him toss her a beer from his fridge, or pretend not to know how to operate a toaster, or lift her laughing body around his, set her down on his kitchen counter, kiss her for twenty minutes straight, then tell her all about his day.

He was gone.

He was gone, and only because she’d demanded he go.

“Listen to me,” Mari said. “You’re going to get him back.

You’re going to fix this. You’re going to find a way.

That man loves you. He’s going to understand.

And if it’s too late, if he’s gone, if he doesn’t want to forgive you, if he doesn’t want you to fly to Chicago every other weekend for the next eighteen years of your lives, then you’re still going to be okay.

No matter what, you’re going to be okay.

But you need to fight for him. If you give up now, it’s over.

You need to find a way to make this right.

And whatever you decide to say, however you decide to say it, it needs to be good. It needs to be really fucking good.”

Nicole frowned. “I guess I could call Dave? Or I bet his parents are listed, I bet we could find them. Or his brothers, or Benny, or …”

But that was when Valerie shoved her head out the window.

“The podcast!” she said, eyes wide. “Put it on the freaking podcast!”