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Before: I'll See You Again In Awhile


Nick


I tripped running across the parking lot. I caught myself on the cement, and leaped to my feet, refusing to let even this stop me. I got to the door and tried to wrench it open, but the building is secured, so I started hitting buttons associated to random names on the panel. Zachary Coleman, Stacey Austin, Alana Johnson, Kyla Wilson. These were all names of people I didn't know, all people who weren't answering their fucking buzzers. "PLEASE!" I yelled, "PLEASE!"

Then someone was coming up the walkway. "Do you live in this building?" I yelled, running toward them, my bloody palms raised in a panic.

The guy was good-sized, he looked alarmed, "Yeah..."

"Please I'm trying to get in to Ashley Jackson, it's an emergency," I begged.

He eyed me. "She the pregnant girl on the third floor?"

"Yes!"

"Are you the fucker that's always yelling at her up there?" he asked roughly.

"No that's her exhusband, I'm her friend," I said, "Please, she called me and I can't get in and she's upstairs and --"

The guy studied me a moment. "Wait a second, you're that guy from -- shit, what's it called -- Nsync, right?"

God fucking damn it, at that moment I'd be from whatever band he wanted me to be from. "YES, PLEASE JUST LET ME IN!"

"Okay, okay, no need to get your knickers in a bunch," he muttered, "And hey, by the way, I liked that movie your brother was in. With the teddy bear."

Awesome now he thought I was Donnie Wahlburg. "Yeah thanks," I shouted as I ran up the stairs the moment he got the door open, my heart racing.

I fell up the stairs twice in the six flights that I took to get up to the third floor. I got rug burn on my arm. I thundered down the hallway to the door and I could hear thumping, banging. I could hear Chris yelling.

I backed up, took a deep breath, and I plowed my way through the god damn door.

I have broken down exactly three doors in my lifetime....




Ashley


I don't know if it was a dream or if I was dead or what happened, to be honest. I just know that as I crashed through that coffee table, I lost all sense of what was happening to me. I couldn't feel it as Chris pulled me out of the broken pieces of the table and started punching me... I couldn't hear his yells... instead I felt like I was falling in and out of sleep and when I blinked I alternated between the dining room of the apartment and some place else... some place that sounded like music... some place with bright sunlight and that smelled like water and some sort of floral scent.

And finally Chris threw me into the wall and I slid down it to the floor and I had no strength in my body. I couldn't have gotten back up if I tried. I just slumped to my side and I felt my dining room carpet under my cheek, rough and cool from the air conditioner. And I closed my eyes and let myself fall completely into the dream.

In the dream, I was laying on cool stone and I blinked and sat up and looked around.

"Leslie," I said thickly.

She was standing a few feet away. I felt a shiver run through my body.

"Am I dead?" I asked. And the words, even as they came out of my mouth, reminded me of when Nick told me the story about what he'd seen when he'd been in the crash, about Leslie and the viewfinder and seeing me and he'd asked those same words.

Leslie shrugged, "Do you want to be?"

I didn't know how to answer. I touched my stomach. But... it was normal... it wasn't... I wasn't... "Where's my baby?" I looked up, panicked.

"She hasn't been born yet," Leslie said.

"She?" I gasped.

"She's really beautiful... or she will be," Leslie said, "If you decide to go back."

"I can decide?"

"Yes."

"I mean nobody's going to blame you if you go now. You have every reason in the world to want it all to end. You've been hurt by so many people so many times. You deserve a rest if you want it..." her voice trailed off like she hadn't finished the thought.

"A rest would be nice," I admitted.

"Yeah," Leslie said quietly. "I understand. Rest it is."

I closed my eyes, feeling... free. I felt the sunshine on my face. "Nick said it was nice here, but I didn't expect it to be this nice."

"Yeah, it's perfect. Except for one thing."

"What's that?" I asked, opening my eyes.

Leslie shrugged, "Well, Mike's not here." Mike was Leslie's husband. I felt my throat tighten. "I miss him, you know? I know we were separated but... I guess deep down I had hoped that we'd work it out and that... I don't know, that things would get better." She paused, sighed, and said, "Now he's with someone else, and... I don't know. I mean, I can't hurt here. But I do miss him."

I pictured missing Nick like that.

"I think the hardest part was knowing that I'd left him without telling him that I loved him one last time."

"Wait -" I said, changing my mind.

"But I do need you to go back for just a little while because your little girl needs to be born first. So Nick has something. You don't want to leave him alone, do you?"

"No, I - I can't, I - wait - I --"

Then I heard Nick's voice, calling me.

"I'll see you again in a while," Leslie said.

I opened my eyes and I was back in the apartment and I realized it'd all been a dream. I started sobbing, overcome with... was it relief? Was it fear? What had Leslie meant by she'd see me again in awhile? Was I really going to die? Had it really been my choice? Was I going crazy? I needed Nick.

And just like that, like I'd wished him into existence, Nick was leaning over me, his face panicked. My heart was slamming in my chest. What had I just done? "I made a mistake," I sobbed.

Nick looked down at me, his eyes were so soft, so gentle. I knew he didn't know what I was talking about, that the mistake I'd made was choosing to die.