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Chapter Five / 2013...and a little 2007


Abbey - 2013

That night, I called out at work and went home for the first time in a week. Well, I went home after a quick stop at a liquor store on the way. I popped the cork and sat down on the couch, drinking the Merlot straight out of the bottle, holding it by the neck. My lap top and the folder Monica had given me balanced on the cushion beside me, but I ignored it until I'd gotten about a third of the way through the bottle. Then I turned to the laptop, opened up Google.com and typed in two words that I never dreamed I ever would.

Children's coffins.

I waited as the page loaded - we have the slowest wifi in the world, something Matty always tells me we could fix by getting a better router - and then the screen popped up. I'd kind of expected no results or something. Maybe I'd hoped there wouldn't be. Instead, I got over 600,000 results. My mouth went dry.

I moved my cursor to the first link and clicked on it, taking a swig of the wine as it loaded.

A page of coffins for children loaded up. They were just itty bitty boxes - they looked like shoe boxes for fuck's sake - with pictures of happy things like balloons and duckies painted onto their sides. I bit my lips and hugged the wine bottle to my chest, suddenly cold, despite wearing sweatpants and thick wool socks.

I slammed the computer screen down and kicked the lap top away, my throat restricted.

"Oh fuck," I choked into my fist. There was not enough wine in the god-damned world to soften this blow. I had to get out. I didn't care where - somewhere, anywhere. I got up and grabbed my jacket and, without even getting dressed or doing my hair at all, I rushed out to the car.

I drove downtown where the lights were bright and the music spilled out of the bars, enticing passers-by to stop in and get warm. The side streets were lit up with string lights and little food carts sold nuts and hot chocolate, like a story book or something. I parked in the lot by the library and walked down Broadway in my stupid sweatpants and red peacoat, a little furry around the edges from the wine. In all honesty, I probably shouldn't have even been driving, but the cold night air was sobering me up, drying tears that I'd shed all the way here. I walked along, breathing in and out, listening to the sound of laughter and music that drifted out onto the sidewalk.

I couldn't imagine ordering one of those little coffins with the balloons or the duckies for Matty. It made me sick to my stomach that such a thing even existed, not to mention was needed or was needed by my son.

I stopped and sat down on a bench and stared at the ground for a long moment. People were still flowing around me. The strains of Sweet Home Alabama was flowing out of one club on one side of me and house beats on the other. I looked up and realized I was sitting in front of the club where I'd gone with Melly seven years ago and met Nick Carter. I stared up at the glowing neon sign, my tears flowing down my cheeks, and my breath shook coming out.

I'd tried calling him, Nick I mean, once...


2007

When Matty was first diagnosed with congenital heart disease. I'd never heard such a scary set of words before - Ventricular Septal Defect, it just sounds terrible. He was just a teeny tiny baby and I'd brought him home to the apartment that Melly and I had been sharing at the time and during the night he'd cried and I'd gone in and held him... and he'd turned blue. We rushed him to the hospital and the doctor had told me he had cyanosis, which is a fancy word meaning he literally turned blue, and that cyanosis is caused by a lack of oxygen in the blood. It took months of hospital time for the doctor to discover that it was VSD, meaning he had a teeny hole in the walls separating the parts of his heart, causing his blood to cycle and re-cycle through his heart, backing up the blood, causing congestion of blood on the right side and blood without enough oxygen to travel through his body on the left.

He'd given me a video to watch about the disease and I'd brought it home and Melly and I had sat in the living room only to discover that Brian Littrell was featured on the tape. VSD, it turned out, was the same thing that Brian had been diagnosed with as a child, a defect in him that had resulted in him going through years of surgery and eventually a surgery as an adult. Melly had looked over at me, wide-eyed. "It's a sign," she'd said, standing up regally and going to fetch my cell phone from the charger. She threw it at me. "It's a sign that you're supposed to call him."

"It's not a sign," I'd argued.

"It is!" Melly cried out, "What are the odds that Brian Littrell has the exact same condition as Matthew?" she demanded. "He can help you find the good doctors to get Matthew fixed and stuff! Nick can hook you up!"

"What am I supposed to say? Hey Nick, it's Abbey, the chick you probably don't remember banging nine months ago, but can you suggest a good doctor that specializes in heart defects?"

"Why not?"

"Melly, I can't call him."

Melly waved her arms insistently at the paused frame of Brian Littrell on our TV screen. He'd been in the middle of the word ventricular when we'd paused it and he was making the face that a large rodent might make, stuck in the middle of saying the ven part. "It's. A. Sign."

"I can't," I said, "That'd be way, way too awkward and --" Melly looked down at my phone and opened my contacts list. "Melly, what the hell are you doing?" I demanded. I jumped up off the couch. "Give me that. Melly!" She swayed away, jumping up onto the couch, holding the phone over her head as she scrolled to his name. "Don't you dare!" I jumped up beside her.

She pressed the call button and put it on speaker phone.

"MELLY!" I was screaming now, frantically waving my arms at the phone.

Then a tone. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try dialing your number again. Good bye.

We both stopped jumping. Melly's arm lowered. I grabbed the phone from her hand. The goofy contact photo was on the screen. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try dialing your number again. Good bye. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up...

I grabbed the phone from her palm and clicked the end button.

We stood there in silence on the couch, the phone laying on my splayed palm between us. Melly stared at me, her jaw dropped. "Of course he's changed his number by now," I stammered, "I mean, obviously, he's famous, they don't keep their numbers like normal people do." I shrugged, "I'm not surprised or anything, I mean, obviously it's not like I expected it to work. I --"

"Abbey," she said quietly.

I got down off the couch, shrugging, "It's fine. I'm fine. It's fine."

"What an asshole," Melly said in a consoling tone, "I can't believe we ever liked him. He's nothing but an asshole. Abandoning you like this..."

"Melly, he doesn't even know. He thinks he had a one night stand with some crazy ass groupie," I laughed, "He's probably had a million of them just like this one. It's not -- it's not his fault. He's just -- It's me. It's my fault. I should've called him. Before." I shook my head. "It's not him."

Melly sat down on the couch, staring up at me. "Now what?"

Suddenly Matthew's cries came through the baby monitor on the end table. I picked up the monitor. "Now I take care of my son," I replied, and I ducked out of the living room, dizzy with emotion, but not wanting her to see me cry.




Nick

On the last stop of the European promo tour, the fellas were all acting really weird in the hotel during check in, something I chalked up to jetlag. I slid my keycard into the door and pushed it open to find Lauren laying on the bed. I blinked in surprise and looked down the hall as the guys scattered into their own rooms, knowing smirks on their faces. Even Leighanne's as she clucked at Brian. I stepped in and closed the door behind me, "Lolo," I said, "What're you doing here?"

She grinned up at me from her sexy position across the sheets and patted the mattress beside her. I kicked my shoes off and dropped my bag and hurried over, crawling on next to her. "I wanted to surprise you," she said, a grin in her voice. "AJ told Rochelle you were feeling down and Rochelle told me and -- well, here I am." She leaned over and kissed my chin.

"You mean can't-keep-a-secret McLean was in on this? How did I not find out? I just spent seven hours on a plane next to him," I laughed in surprise.

"Rochelle threatened him with no sex if he told," Lauren chuckled. Our lips met and she ran her fingers through my hair, her diamond glittering in the light as she moved. I laid back and she rolled to lean over me, staring down into my face, her eyes twinkling. "You're even more sexy than I remember you being when I dropped you off at the airport."

"It's because I've peeked uppa beet of ahnn ahhk-sent," I said in the worst Britsh-slash-French-slash-Italian-slash-possibly-some-Chinese accent in the world. "Eet eez turn you on, no?"

"Shut the hell up and just stay pretty," she laughed and kissed me deeply, our bodies pressing together. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her closer. "Mmm, well," she mumbled as our pelvises touched, "Maybe your ahhhk-sent, eet 'az turned you on, yes?" she breathed in a husky voice.

"I don't think it's the accent," I murmured.

Lauren's hands ran down the length of my body, cupping my buldging crotch in her palm, "Well something certainly has, Mister Carter," she cooed. I closed my eyes as she kissed down to my throat, unbuttoning my shirt. "I've missed this neck," she mumbled into my skin, "And this collar bone, ohhhh yeah... and this chest..." She ran her fingers down my freshly bared skin, her nails scraping me just enough to be a good kind of scratching. She ran her fingers over my nipples and kissed them and down my stomach to my belly button and started undoing my pants. "Deez ahhck-sent of yours," she murmured, mouth against my jean-covered thigh as she shimmied my pants down my legs, "Eet eez... conta-gee-o-so." She softly licked my skin as she revealed it, and I sprung free of my jeans. She stared up at me, a playful grin dancing across her face. "Oh Nickolas," she muttered. "I think it is the accent."

I gasped. "No it's definitely... not the accent," I groaned and closed my eyes.

When she'd finished with me, she crawled back up beside me. I was breathing heavy and holding onto the pillow, my lip aching from biting it. She laid down, her cheek pressed against my chest and stared up at my face as I regained composure, a playful grin on her face as she ran circles across my chest with her fingernail. "Did I cheer you up?" she asked.

I nodded, still trying to remember how to breathe steadily.

"What's upsetting you, love?" she asked.

I wrapped my arm around her, putting my hand on her finely tuned shoulder. She snuggled against me even closer, closing her eyes. I rested my cheek against her hair. "I really don't know," I replied. "It's just been really weird lately, I guess. There's so much changing, you know?"

"Life is all about changes," she answered.

"I know."

Lauren was quiet a long moment. "Maybe instead of going home when you're done with the little radio tour, we go to some island together, and we'll spend the Christmas there in the sunshine and the ocean and have sex on the beach like every single day."

I laughed, "Oh you wanna go to that kinda place."

"Only if they have whips and chains on the bed." She made a half-pur, half-growl sound in her throat and laughed. "Baby. You know what I mean."

I smiled, "It sounds great."

She kissed my chest softly.

"Hey Laur?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

I felt her cheeks move as she smiled. "Hey Nick? I love you, too."

I closed my eyes. This was good, this was how it was supposed to be to be in a committed relationship. Me and Lauren, falling asleep in each other's arms. This was how I wanted the rest of my life to feel - comfortable, balanced. I pictured waking up every single morning of every single day for the rest of my life in Lauren's arms.

My eyes sprang open and I blinked up at the ceiling as Lauren's breath fell into a regular pattern as she fell asleep in my arms.

For the rest of my life.

That was a really fucking long time.