Day three…

Kel had cried herself to sleep after Nick left the house that morning, and when she woke up she knew that she needed to find him. After calling him without getting an answer even on his cell phone, she’d gotten into her car and begun driving around looking in every place he’d ever gone to hide out when he needed time to think. But this time, she wasn’t going to let him think on his own.

She’d had been driving all over looking for Nick later that afternoon and after trying three different spots she finally pulled up to a park and sighed with relief when she saw his truck. The park was along side the gulf, and many times in the past they’d spent hours there together in a secluded spot that was hidden by rocks that most people didn’t bother to go beyond. They’d discovered it one day as teenagers and often used it as a get away that no one else knew about. She’d spent a lot of time there during the time they’d spent apart that year, and although she didn’t know it for sure, so had he.

Climbing carefully over the rocks trying not to lose her footing she made her way onto the soft sand of "their beach" and saw him sitting alone staring out at the water. The wind blew her hair and she tucked it behind her ear as she approached him and sat down quietly next to him in the sand. For a long time they sat and watched the water together, neither saying anything. When he reached out and took her hand in his, she bit back her tears and whispered to him, "I told him… He called me this morning and knew something was wrong because he could hear in my voice how sad I was, so I told him…"

"What did he say?"

Kel shrugged and shook her head, "He wasn’t real thrilled that you and I fought…"

"Aside from that though…" he asked and turned his head to look at her. When she wouldn’t look at him he pushed her hair behind her ear trying to watch her eyes as best as he could.

A tear seeped out of her eye and she shook her head as she stared down at his hand holding hers, "I don’t know… he was… I don’t know how to explain it. It was like he wasn’t mad, but he was… disappointed maybe? I couldn’t read it… and then he got really quiet and said that he had to go." Nick’s sigh opened her floodgates and she began to cry softly.

He pulled her into a hug and kissed her forehead, "I’m sorry…"

"It’s not your fault… I needed to do this. He needs to understand, and…"

"It still sucks though…" he said quietly. "Loving him shouldn’t be so fucking hard all of the time."

"I know…" she said sadly as she took comfort in being in her best friend’s arms again and looked out at the water. Nick’s words were like a beacon in the fog. It was the simplest statement, but it made so much sense hearing it from him. Loving AJ shouldn’t have been so hard, and yet it was. It was one of the hardest things she did each day, and she hadn’t realized until just then exactly how hard it was.

~~~~~

"You know what I was thinking of today?" Nick asked with a smile as he looked at Kel. They’d been sitting on the beach for a few hours talking and watching the water.

"Not a clue…" she smiled back.

"Something we haven’t done in a really long time…"

Kel chuckled and shook her head, "I’m not going skinny dipping with you. It’s October and way too cold to go in that water, especially nude."

Nick rolled his eyes and laughed, "I wasn’t talking about skinny dipping… but I wouldn’t mind seeing you naked…"

"Pervert…"

"Basically…" he said with a wink. "Anyway… I was thinking about how we used to camp out in the back yard at your house."

"Oh my god…" Kel said with a huge smile. "Wow… it’s been years!"

"I know… wanna camp out tonight?"

"Seriously?"

"Yup…"

Kel smiled and nodded, "I’d love to…"

An hour later they were in Nick’s backyard fighting with tent poles. "You’re doing it wrong…" Nick sighed.

"I am not doing it wrong."

"Yes you are… It has to go like this," he held up a picture of the tent from the packaging and pointed at it. "Not like that…" he then said as he pointed to the nylon mess in his yard.

"Oh for Christ’s sake, Nick, I know how to put together a fucking pop tent…"

"Uh… no you don’t."

"You’re the one who keeps folding the pole up in the tent… you can’t fold the pole Nick you have to keep it straight as it goes in, then you bend it… Slide it through the hole gently so it doesn’t get all caught up… not ram it in there like some dry fuck." Nick began to giggle and dropped the part of the tent he’d been holding. "Oh what now?"

"Do you even know what you just said?" Nick laughed.

Kel sighed and pushed Nick out of her way, "No I don’t… but get the hell out of my way and let me do this." He continued to laugh and moved out of the way, his hands up in surrender. Literally within a minute the tent was standing and Kel turned around to face Nick with her hands on her hips and a triumphant smile on her face, "I told you…"

Nick giggled and wrapped his arm around her shoulder as they looked at the tent, "I love you…"

"I know you do…" she smiled and tickled his stomach. "Stake it down and then come inside. I’m gunna raid your closet for warmer clothes and see if there’s anything we can eat for dinner…"

In Nick’s closet Kel looked through the clothes and smiled. There was a clear-cut line drawn between his professional clothes, and his normal clothes. The professional stuff consisted of suits, expensive designer threads that he never had to pay for, and stuff that looked good on him yet he’d never choose on his own to wear. The normal stuff was exactly what Kel loved to see him in. Tee shirts, sweat shirts, shorts, jeans, basically anything comfortable. It didn’t matter to him if it was Prada or Target, as long as it fit and was comfortable.

"I think you still have a pair of flannel pajama bottoms here…" Nick said as he stepped into the huge closet with her and opened a drawer. "Yup…"

Kel gasped and took the pants, "I wondered where the hell these were! God, I must have bitched for weeks about missing these…" She laughed and Nick smiled. "AJ got so sick of me complaining that he went out and bought me six new pair…"

"He would do that…" Nick laughed as he tossed a sweatshirt at her. "Another favorite of yours…"

"Oh I’ve missed this…" she chuckled and held the sweatshirt up to her face and felt the soft material. Technically it was Nick’s sweatshirt, but whenever she was with him and cold, she always wore it because it was her favorite. "Yeah, so he buys me all of these pants, and I hated them all…" she laughed.

"No way…"

"Yeah… something about them just wasn’t right. I’ve grown into them and I washed the hell out of them to wear them down a bit… but they’re still nothing like these."

"You’re a trip…"

"You know you love it…"

"Of course I do…" he smiled as he nudged her out of the closet and turned off the light. "But you’re still a trip."

"Well this trip is hungry…" she smiled as she threw on the big sweatshirt that reached her thighs, and then pulled off her shorts tossing them to the floor before pulling the pajama bottoms on.

"We’re going to have to order pizza or go to the store… all I have is Mac and Cheese…"

Kel sighed and made a face, "Okay, lets go to the store then. I’ll cook something for us, and we need to get stuff for S’mores anyway. No way can we camp out without S’mores."

"What the hell are we going to cook them on?" Nick laughed.

"Duh… you have that little mini grill… we’ll get charcoal and ooh!" Kel laughed and Nick watched her in amusement. "We’ll cook hot dogs on the grill, and corn on the cob, and then we’ll use the coals to make the S’mores."

"You are a genius…" Nick smiled and pulled at her hand yanking her out of the room.

"But I thought I was a trip…" Kel laughed.

"You’re a trippy genius…" Nick snorted and they set off for the grocery store in their camping/pajama clothes laughing the whole way.

~~~~~

"Kel?"

"Hmm?"

"I’m cold…" Nick chuckled as they lay in the dark in the tent later that night after cooking their dinner on the grill.

"You never could camp out without complaining that you were cold…" Kel laughed. "Come on…" With a smile she lifted her blanket up and moved over so that Nick could cuddle up to her and they could share the blankets and their body heat.

"Much better…" he sighed as he slid under her blankets and threw his own over them then wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her cheek, "Thank you…"

"Anytime, Nicky…" she smiled and leaned into him. "I’m really glad I ran into you at the store the other night," she told him quietly.

"Me too…"

"I missed you…"

"I missed you too. But you’re back now, so don’t worry about it," he said with another kiss to her cheek.

"Can I…" she said and then hesitated, wondering if she should go ahead with her statement or not.

"Can you what, girlie?"

"I just keep hearing something in my head that you said earlier today when we were on the beach. And I think I may have figured out why it’s been bugging me. But it has to do with AJ and I don’t know… I don’t want to bring him up to you if it’s going to…"

"Hey…" he interrupted gently. "You’re my best friend. If you need to talk about something, anything, it’s okay. Now spill it. What did I say, and what is it making you think?"

She sighed slightly and listened to the waves gently hitting the beach outside of their tent. "You said that it shouldn’t be so hard to love him…"

"Okay…" he said and she felt his hands begin rubbing her back.

"It’s true, Nicky… it shouldn’t be so hard. I love him so much, but I almost feel like everything I do now is for him. I travel with him, I live with him, I censor things for him, and I stayed away from you so that he wouldn’t be upset… I feel like I’ve lost myself in all of this. Don’t get me wrong, I love him. I love him so much and I’m so proud of how far he’s come in the last year and a half. But… I keep wondering when it’s going to stop just being about him all of the time you know?"

"Yeah I do… and I thought about that when you were talking about him the other night."

"Am I always going to have to walk on egg shells around him? Or will things be ‘normal’ again one day? Part of me feels so damn guilty for feeling that way, but sometimes I just want him to just be… Well, I just want us to be us again. Not AJ the Alcoholic and Kel the Supportive Girlfriend. I know he loves me… Sometimes I just wish he didn’t need me so much."

"Well sure, you barely get a break. I know you’ve wanted to be there for him in all of this, but who has been there for you?"

She shook her head, "No one…"

"How often has he stopped to think about how much your life has changed with his?"

"I don’t know if he ever has… but I also don’t think that it’s because he’s so blatantly self-centered, I just don’t think he’s thought about it. Every so often he‘ll get into this mode where he feels really guilty about what he put me through before rehab. He‘ll apologize over and over again about all of that stuff, and then tell me that he doesn‘t deserve me. And I tell him why I stayed after everything that happened, but it‘s always that part that he feels guilty about, not what we‘ve been through since then. Our lives have completely changed you know?"

"Yeah, I’m sure they have. It wasn’t like your lives revolved around partying, but it was certainly a part of who you were… and now it’s gone."

"Yeah…" Kel said and rolled over to face Nick in the moonlit tent. "I don’t even miss the act of partying or the drinking. I just miss being able to relax and have fun. To be spontaneous. I mean god, AJ and I used to be so spontaneous. And some of it I suppose had to do with his carefree lifestyle he had then… but it wasn’t all about the drinking. He was spontaneous when I met him and we were kids. Now, it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do anything without completely planning it out. We don’t go anywhere, we don’t do anything… hell, we barely even make love anymore. And you know how we were before…"

"How long has it been?" Nick asked, his eyes focusing on hers in the dark.

"You want it in hours, days, weeks, months, or minutes?" Kel teased half-heartedly.

"That long?" he said with concern on his face.

"Couple months…" she shrugged.

"Jesus… why?"

With a sigh she shook her head and rolled over onto her back looking up at the dome of the tent. "Well he’s been on an anti-depressant, and it’s sort of effected his… performance. And well he gets pretty frustrated, so instead of pushing him, I just don’t."

"So because you don’t want to upset him you’ve pulled back and ignored your own needs,"

"Yeah I guess…"

"Kel…" Nick sighed.

"I know…" she sighed back.

"What’s he on?"

"Same stuff you took when you and The Bitch were breaking up…"

"What’s his dose?"

"50 milligrams a day."

Nick sighed again and ran his hand through his hair before speaking, "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course…" she said softly.

"I was on nearly double that dose. And it’s true, it’s a little harder to perform, but it’s possible. It just takes a little longer. Which frankly, what the hell is so wrong in having to make love to you for longer?"

"I know… it’s just hard to explain."

"Try me…"

"I still get scared sometimes. That he’s going to fall off the wagon and turn back into the guy he was just before he hit rock bottom. I don’t want to ever see that man again… And so I guess that when I get scared I try even harder to protect him from anything that could upset him… Because if he’s upset, then maybe he’ll crave a drink. Even though I know he’s stronger than I’ve made him out to be in my head. It’s my fear taking over, not his weakness."

"Have you ever talked to him about how you feel?"

"No…" she said shaking her head. "It’s always been about him. What he’s feeling, what he’s thinking, what he’s going through…"

"But you’re going through it all as well."

"Did you ever see the movie When A Man Loves A Woman?" she asked and turned her head to look at him.

"Yeah…"

"Even before AJ started drinking heavily I related to this one quote in the movie. And since his rehab I’ve thought about it so much. Basically it’s like, you wait to see how they’re feeling each day to know how you’re going to feel. If he’s having a good day, then I have a good day. If he’s having a down day, then so do I. If it’s a bad day for him, then it’s a bad day for me. It’s like I don’t know how to decide for myself how I’m going to feel every day. These past few days with you have been so weird because I wake up in the morning and can just feel however I want to feel."

"I think it’s time that he realizes that he’s not the only one who has suffered this year. You can’t go on feeling like this, and he can’t go on being the center of your world like that."

"You want to know what’s fucked up though?" she asked softly and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"What’s that?"

"He’s been the center of my universe for so long, I don’t know if I’d know what to do with myself anymore if he wasn’t there anymore."

"Well then we’ll just have to work on that won’t we?"

Kel smiled slightly and closed her eyes, "Yeah, I guess we will…"