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Chapter Nineteen / 2013... and the last seven years


Abbey

During the entire drive across town to my apartment, where I promised to make Nick lunch, I rolled words around my mind to try to figure out how to tell Nick about Lauren and Travis...

It was hard to even find words that I could say because I kept trying to tell myself that I wasn't entirely positive I'd seen anything out of the ordinary or out of place. For all I knew, I kept insisting, it was perfectly normal for Lauren to give long, lingering kisses to all of Nick's friends. Maybe they had a very progressive, very open, very modern kind of relationship. I knew better, though, really, and the hesitation to tell him didn't come out of the lack of knowing what I saw so much as knowing it would break his heart.

Nick rambled so much about the PlayStation 4 and it's specs that he didn't even notice how quiet I was.

The apartments I live in are outside the city but not super far, just in a quiet area near the airport. There's a playground just a few steps outside our sliding deck door and an assortment of crazy stray cats that Matty grew up thinking were his. It's not a lot, even for apartment standards, but it's home and it felt really weird pulling up here with Nick Carter in the car.

He leaned forward to look at the building as he unbuckled his seat belt and I wondered if he was judging me for our modest housing. I knew he probably wasn't. The feeling I had was me judging myself, but still, I wanted to defend it, wanted to point out that I only just barely got the rent paid on my meager earnings. If it wasn't for charities and government assistance, I would've been belly up a long time ago thanks to Matty's medical bills and my need to be there for him. It was impossible to make the ends meet when you can barely work and have a sick kid and you're a single parent. If I could, I wanted to say, I'd have a big fancy mansion on a hill where Matty could play in the backyard. But this little apartment was all I could afford.

He followed me across the walkway and down a couple steps to our door. I unlocked it and pushed it open and he followed me inside, looking around without saying a word. We stood there in the center of my very beige living room. "It's not much," I said.

Nick shook his head, "This is great," he replied. He walked over to a shelf in the dining rom that ran the length of one of the walls. I'd covered it with pictures in frames. Mostly of Matty. There was one of Melly and a couple of my parents and my high school graduation, too, kind of peppered in. He walked along staring at the pictures while I put the DS bag down on the table and stepped into the tiny kitchen.

Upon opening the fridge I discovered I didn't have a whole lot of options. "Do you like mac and cheese?" I asked.

"Yeah, whatever's fine," he replied.

I pulled a box from the cupboard and filled a pan with water. As I was setting it onto the stove burner, Nick picked up one of the pictures of Matty when he was first born. "He was small," he said.

"He was."

Nick stared at the photo and took a deep breath, then put it back on the mantle. "I can't believe I missed all this," he said. He turned around. "You know in the movies when people are in a coma for years and years and they wake up and they're all freaked out to discover the world went on without them? That's how this feels in a way. Like there was this whole... this whole life that just... went on and I..." he shook his head.

I held out the box of mac and cheese. "Here, you watch the water a second. I'll be right back."

"Okay..."

I walked down the hallway, past Matty's room, to the closet and I pulled it open. Under the Christmas tree, behind old ornaments, in the far back of the closet, I found the box I was looking for. I pulled it out and carried it out to the dining room. Nick was just pouring the dry pasta into the water as I put the box down on the table. He stirred the pasta with a wooden spoon from the drawer and laid the spoon over the pan. "What's that?" he asked, turning to look at the box.

I pulled open the flaps. "It's Matty's baby stuff," I replied. And I pulled out a teeny tiny Titans jersey. "This is from when he was in the hospital the first time," I said, "The Titans whole team came to visit the hospital and the quarterback gave us this." I handed it to him. "It was too big for him at the time."

Nick took the jersey and looked at how small it was. "Wow."

"And these... these are the first shoes I ever bought him." I held up a pair of little Converse sneakers. "I bought them right after I found out I was pregnant. They were my Christmas gift to myself." I placed them in Nick's palm, and they practically disappeared in his wide hands. He stepped closer to see inside the box.

"This is Frederick," I said, pulling out a really old stuffed dog whose eyes were missing, long chewed off. "He was teething when Frederick was his favorite toy. I had a voice and everything for Frederick. He used to put on lullaby concerts every night to get Matty to go to sleep." Nick put down the shoes and jersey on the table to take hold of Frederick. "Careful, he's just barely held together. He was loved on so much he's been stitched back together a hundred times but that leg's still a little loose." Nick was very careful, Frederick laying across both his palms. I think I saw the beginning of tears in his eyes as he stared down at the floppy little dog.

Next to come out was a tin box I'd filled with old pacifiers, an old bottle with Elmo printed on it, a snugly bag like outfit that he'd worn during winter that looked like a teddy bear... Then was the photo albums.

We mixed together the mac and cheese and put it in bowls and sat down at the table and opened up the first photo album. Nick tilted his head, scooted closer to me to see. The first thing was a part of the box to the second pregnancy test I'd taken. When I'd told Melly about the first one, she'd insisted on a second and when the second one also came out positive, she'd turned the whole thing into an adventure instead of something to be upset about. Melly had been the reason I'd enjoyed my pregnancy. So we'd documented and scrapbooked everything. Even the box.

Then there was a series of pictures Melly had taken, side-shot measurements of my belly month to month, and silly pictures of me balancing things like cereal bowls and books on there. There was a picture in front of Graceland, where we'd gone to expose the unborn to the legend that is Elvis Presley (this was during a brief moment when I was insisting I would name the baby Elvis). There was a post-it note from me to her apologizing for my mood swings on the drive to and from Memphis -- the note's wording itself sounded like a mood swing, though, and wasn't exactly the best apology in the world, but an excellent demonstration of how unreasonable I was when I was pregnant.

There was, of course, all the ultrasound prints, collaged all together on one page. We drew stars and hearts around the first one that we could tell looked like a baby. (All the ones before that were labelled with our comments like - "Is that a peanut or a baby?" "All I can see is a blob!")

Then was a series of pictures she'd taken with her phone camera - so they were grainy printed out - of the ride to the hospital to have Matty, including Melly's boyfriend-of-the-month, who drove the car while Melly and I sat in the backseat and Melly made me make fish faces because neither one of us had a very strong grasp on Lamaze breathing.

Nick laughed at one she'd taken when we were in the delivery room and I was having contractions but not quite ready to deliver the baby yet. Melly had selfied us, leaning onto the bed with me. I was not amused by that point and so she was grinning in the photo while I had an expression on my face like the wrath of Satan unleashed.

Then was the grainy picture of the first time I ever held Matty. He was all red and making an ugly cry face, but there he was in my arms, before we knew there was any trouble, when he was just a healthy baby with big blue eyes and the softest dusting of blonde hair I'd ever seen... so perfect and tiny... I could still imagine how he felt in my arms.

His hospital bracelet, a deflated balloon, his birth certificate... Nick grinned as a series of pictures of him coming home for the first time and laying in his crib for the first time followed. "This is where it starts getting patchy," I said. "I didn't take a lot of pictures in the hospitals."

"I understand," he said, "I wouldn't have either."

"I love this one though..." It was an 8x10 of a photo that someone took - I don't even remember who - of me holding Matty in a rocking chair in the corner of his hospital room, a quilt given to us by a nurse spread across us, both of us asleep, his little hands curled and clutching into my hair, the wires from the heart monitors on his chest snaking away out of the frame, back lit by the setting sun from outside the window behind us. "I still have that blanket," I said, "It's in my room."

"That's a good one," Nick agreed.

"Here's his first steps," I said, pointing to the next picture, when Matty was older. He was toddling away. "He fell down like right after this was taken, I felt bad because I thought the flash might've scared him or something."

Nick chuckled, "Aw."

We waded on through the pictures. Birthdays and Christmases and Halloweens and first tooth and the first tooth lost - which was accompanied by a letter to the tooth fairy. The first letter to Santa (with a post script hello to Rudolph). There were hospital bracelets galore, each one carefully preserved.

Then... then came the page I knew Nick would be most surprised to see.

A couple tickets to the NKOTBSB tour and a picture of me and little 4-almost-5-year old Matty out front of the Bridgestone Arena, each wearing a Backstreet Boys t-shirt, a big grin on his little face. The picture was taken by a stranger I'd stopped on Broadway, and I'd crouched down so Matty and I were on the same level together, holding hands in the middle, our tickets held aloft on the sides.

"You came to see us," Nick mumbled, surprised. There was a selfie shot of me and Matty sitting in our seats, which were actually pretty good, and one that I'd taken of Nick as he'd danced down the center of the catwalk wearing his fedora, singing Raspberry Beret. "You were so close."

"I wanted him to see his father, even if he didn't know it," I replied quietly. He wasn't supposed to live through the year. This was the year we found Monica. Just a couple months after this." I took a deep breath, "He was so infatuated with you after we went to this show. He thought you were the coolest thing..." I laughed. "He danced around the living room for days, strutting and putting on this old hat of mine so he could flip it off his head the way you kept doing with that fedora in the show..."

I reached for the page and turned it, "And guess what he went for Halloween as that year?" He'd worn black denim jeans, a black tank top, a leather jacket that we'd searched everywhere for, and several gold chains around his neck. I'd made him a head set microphone with paper mache and an old coat hanger and we'd spent an hour doing his hair to spike in the front like Nick's, only to be flattened by the fedora he'd put yellow duct-tape around to make just like Nick's in the show. We'd taken pictures of him dancing his way down the stairs to the parking lot carrying his pumpkin bucket, and even flipping the shoulder of his jacket down in a sexy-man pose at the bottom step.

Tears were definitely coming down his cheeks now and he bit his lower lip and swiped them with the hand furthest from me as discreetly as he could, like he didn't want me to know he was crying as he looked on... then he put a hand over his mouth and his shoulder hunched a little. I reached an arm around Nick's shoulders and squeezed. Nick's breath shook. "I wish I'd known," he said, "I wish I'd been a better person and I'd have been there this whole time."

"You're here now," I said.

He nodded. "I don't cry like this usually," he choked. "I'm not a crier." He sounded like he was trying to retain dignity or pride or something. Like he was embarrassed by the tears.

"It's okay," I said.

"I just feel like I failed without even trying," he said, "Because I know I would've failed if I'd been there. You made the right choice, not telling me, I know it in my heart. But it still hurts. It hurts to know that as much as I want to have been there now, I wouldn't have wanted to be there then." Nick shook his head, "I had my priorities so wrong... so wrong. I just... I wish I'd been different from the start, you know?"

I nodded.

"I just wish it was different," he said thickly.




Nick

Abbey dropped me off at Vanderbilt before going home to take a nap. I promised to tell Matty she said she'd be back before he went to sleep that night, and she drove off. It was a little after three in the afternoon when I walked into his hospital room, my palms all sweaty because of how father-y I felt now that I'd seen him grow up in a series of photographs. He was sitting up in bed coloring when I walked in the door.

"Hey buddy," I said, and we high-fived.

"Hey!" he said excitedly as I sat in the chair next to his bed.

"What'cha coloring?" I asked.

He held up the picture. "Its the Ninja Turtles," he explained, "And they're fighting the bad guy who's a crazy old doctor guy that made a experimentation in his lab and now there's a big scary ogre guy I'm gonna draw next, and the Ninja Turtles have to beat him."

"Okay that is awesome," I said, "Are they gonna beat him?"

"Duh, they're the Ninja Turtles."

"I can't believe I had to ask," I laughed.

"I can't believe you did either," Matty replied. He put the drawing back on the table. "My green broke, though."

"I'll swing by the gift shop and get you new crayons before I leave. You can't draw the Ninja Turtles without green."

Matty grinned, "Thanks," he said.

"No problem," I answered. "So... how you feelin', kid?" I asked.

He shrugged, "Bored mostly."

"I don't blame you. I'd be bored, too."

"Phil stopped by before," Matty said, "He smells funny. Like corn and soap. But he watched MythBusters with me."

"I'm glad someone was here to watch it with you," I said.

Matty nodded. "My mom had to go home because she needed to sleep. Dr. Monica said my mom was zosted. Whatever zosted is."

"Exhausted," I answered, "It means really, really, really tired. You know, I saw your mom. She said she's gonna be back to see you tonight before bedtime."

"Good. I miss her."

"I bet you do. And I know she misses you, too."

Matty smiled a kind of small, sad little smile. He stared down at his Ninja Turtle drawing again for a moment.

"Hey," I said, "You know... you're a really, really great kid. I'm really proud of you."

He looked over at me, a bit of a confused expression on his face, "Proud of me? For what?"

"Just for being who you are," I answered. "It ain't easy to be someone in this world."

He laughed, "Everyone is someone."

"Nawh, some people are everyone."

He blinked at me. "What?"

"Well some people are like everyone else, they just do stuff cos everyone's doing it and they aren't themselves, so they're everyone. Then there's people that are just who they are and they don't care that they aren't like everyone else. Those are the someones. And I'm proud of you because you're a someone. You're a really great someone."

Matty's mouth curved into a smile. "You say stuff really funny sometimes," he commented.

"I do?"

"Yeah," he laughed, "Like how you say them is funny. Not a bad funny, just funny."

I laughed. "Yeah, I guess sometimes I do."

"I think you're a great someone, too," Matty informed me. "I thought so before, but now that we're buds I think you're even better." He grinned. "You're a really, really great grown up." He laughed.

I smiled. "That means a lot," I told him. I ruffled his hair a little, "You have no idea how much."