She had been quiet for the entire journey, actually the whole morning she hadn’t really uttered more then a few words to him, and her face said it all, it looked like someone had killed her dog, or ruined her favourite piece of clothing, the frown and sorrowful eyes had been present ever since she woke up and they only seemed to be getting worse.
“Thank you Mr Carter, departure lounge is just that way,” The women, with way too much make up on, pointed from behind the desk as she handed back his passport.
“Thanks,” he smiled as he took the small book back and turned. He didn’t really need to be told where to go, after all these years he could manage to find where he was going with his eyes closed. He grabbed for her hand as he slung his carry on bag over his left shoulder and they slowly made their way over to the security sensors, both knowing that this was going to be where they had to say goodbye. He led them to a set of chairs and placed his bag on that before reaching up to cup her face in his hands.
The tears started immedailty.
“Hey,” he said softly wiping her tears away, “It’s not forever, just a few weeks. I love you,” he whispered before leaning down to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him in closer to her as his toungue entered her mouth and gently massaged hers. It was over too quickly and before he knew it she had pulled away.
“Call me when you get there?” She asked.
“Of course. C’mere,” he said opening his arms to her and she obliged letting him squeeze her into a tight embrace. She breathed him in revealing in the feeling of being in his arms, knowing it was going to be a while before she would be again. He placed a kiss to her head and reluctantly pulled away. “I love you,” he said again before he picked up his bag and began to make his way over to the check point.
“Love you too. Try not to annoy my sister,” she added throwing him a lopsided smile.
“I can’t promise anything,” he said as she watched him place his bag through the scanner. He walked through the detector and buzzed once, the change in his pocket being the culprit and once he was done he blew her a kiss and then walked out of her sight.
She sighed and hung around for a few seconds, not really knowing why she was before she slowly made her way back to the main entrance. Her phone vibrated from inside her jeans pocket and she fished it out quickly as she carried on walkng towards her car.
“Love you, only a phone call away :)” he had texted her. It made her smile and she quickly text him back before she clicked a few more buttons and bought the phone to her ear.
“Has he gone?” Chelle asked straight away.
“Yeah,” she sighed.
“Not forever,” she reminded.
“I know. About tonigh-”
“No you are not cancelling, I will not let you sit in doors and dwell on how far away your boyfriend is,” she cut in.
“I wasn’t going to say that, I just really don’t feel like going out but do you want to come over and we can drink lots of wine?” She asked.
“Sure.”
***
Chelle had tunred up about an hour after Adie had gotten home herself and although it was only seven o’clock in the evening they had already managed to consume and bottle and a half of wine.
“I’m hungry,” Chelle announced.
“Kitchen’s over there,” Adie giggled, an effect that wine always had on her.
“Your such a crap host, I’m your guest,” Chelle told her as she got up and headed in the direction of the kitchen.
“Guest? When am I ever a guest in your house? I’m the one who always cooks when I come to your house,” She retaliated shouting back “WHAT?” when Chelle whined her name.
“You have NO FOOD!” She voiced when she made it back into the living room.
“Oh yeah I meant to go grocery shopping,” she remembered chuckling at herself and her forgetfulness
“Well that’s no good to me now, where’s the phone?” She asked but then spotted it anyway and started to dial.
“Who you calling?”
“Some one in China,” she cracked up for some reason.
“What?”
“Chow mein or sweet and sour?” She asked and suddenly the laughter at the poor excuse for a joke became clear.
“Get both.”
Ten minutes later and the food had been ordered and was on its way and both women had fallen into a comfortable silence. It was something that Adie loved about their relationship, neither felt the need to constantly be in conversation and it hadn’t happened over time either from the get go they seemed to have understood each other. They had only been friends for the past four years, meeting when Chelle had been a student and Adie her mentor in the same ER where they both worked now. She had been new to the department herself and they both seemed to bond over the fact that neither knew where anything was, didn’t really know that staff that well, and were both equally terrified of what was going to burst through the door at any moment.
Chelle had only been in the department for eight weeks but they had both kept in touch and when the jobs became available Adie had been sure to call her so she could apply, she had also sang her praises to the staff members who were doing the interviews. Within two weeks of qualifying Chelle had been on shift as a brand new staff nurse, with Adie, once again, her mentor.
So now one of her best friends was laid across her couch aimlessly flipping through TV channels all the while moaning about how her stomach thought her throat had been cut.
“Turn it back, turn it back,” Adie yelled quickly and as asked Chelle did and laughed at her pathetic friend when she realised who was on the screen.
“Your so pateictic, he’s not even been gone twenty four hours and your already going gooey eyed over his music videos,” she laughed throwing a cushion at her friend.
“I’m allowed to miss him,” she struck back by throwing the cushion.
“So is everything okay now?”
“What do you mean?” She asked confused.
“The whole lack of a ring,” she reminded.
“Yeah it’s fine,” she lied.
“You never discussed it with him did you?” Chelle asked knowingly, sighing at Adie’s silence. “If your not happy with the situation its only going to get worse Adie and before you know it you’ll be finding every flaw with him, getting angry at him over the pettiest things, you’ll drift apart and before you know it there is going to be nothing left to salvage.”
“Maybe I’m over reacting. I mean we don’t have to get married, we’re happy,” she shrugged.
“He might be but you’re not. If it wasn’t an issue you wouldn’t be thinking about and I think you need to tell him. A conversation that you had over a year ago doesn’t count.”
“I know what his answer is going to be so what’s the point?” She replied dejectedly.
“His views may have changed. Even if they haven’t at least then he’ll know how you feel, you cant keep something like this hidden forever, eventually it will all come tumbling out but by then it might be too late.”
“I just I’ve always had this plan in my head, knew exactly what my life was going to be like and since I met him everything’s changed, I’m not even sure of who I am anymore,” she admitted.
“Is that a bad thing?” Chelle asked before she took a sip of wine, analysing her friend as she spoke her next words.
“I’m not sure. I’ve always felt the need to know where I was headed in life, to have a goal or an aim like with the career I wanted and I have that, and meeting the right guy and falling in love and I know I have him, I know he loves me and I love him…”
“But?” Chelle Prompted.
“I just feel like we’ve come to this big fork in the road and he’s heading down one and I really want to go down the other. I know marriage isn’t everything and I know why he has such a negative view about it and he’s totally right about most marriages ending in divorce today but I still want to do it. I just feel he’s already conceded to the fact that its going to fail without even giving it a chance.”
“Well you need to tell him that.”
“Why? I know its not going to change anything, he doesn’t want to get married and I do,” she said the pitch of her voice getting a bit higher.
“So what are you going to do then? If he is adamant that he doesn’t want to get married? Are you going to leave him?”
“No…I don’t…I deserve to be happy don’t I?” She asked.
“Of course you do. But there are other ways to be happy together that doesn’t involve marriage. I mean what else would make you happy? What do you think is missing from your relationship?”
“Honestly?”
“No fucking lie to me,” Chelle said sarcastically shaking her head at her friend.
“I would like to have a family,” she admitted.
“How does he feel about that?”
“I don’t know we’ve never really discussed it.”
“I’m seriously going to kill you. You cant expect him to be a mind reader about these things, I mean he’s a guy, cut him some slack,” she defended.
“I just always had it in my head that I would get married and have a few kids and grow old with the guy that I loved, like my parents did,” she tried to explain taking a large gulp of her wine when she was finished.
“Adie…” she sighed, “…you have to understand that you were and continue to be very lucky where your folks are concerned. Not many people can be proud of having a marriage that has lasted as long as theirs, a lot of people have a tainted view of marriage because of what they saw their parents go through and Nick’s one of them and your not going to be able to make him change his mind over night. I’m not saying he won’t or hasn’t changed his mind because he may have but your going to have to be patient.”
“That’s the problem though he won’t talk to me about that stuff, he’s private about it, he very rarely shows his true emotions, hell I’ve never seen him cry,” she told Chelle.
She contemplated what had been said for a few seconds before reaching over and refilling her glass. “Talk to him about it, he may surprise you.”
“Yeah we’ll see.”
***
He quietly made his way down the stairs, trying to avoid making too much noise so he wouldn’t wake up the other two occupants of the house. He had been laying in bed for over two hours but sleep would just not come, he didn’t know whether it was the nerves from the up coming tour, the thought of how many hours he was going to spend trying to remember the old dance steps and still get them wrong or because of how she had sounded on the phone.
His flight had ended up being delayed for two hours due to technical difficulties, so of course he had been frustrated and slightly agitated about that, nervous about getting on the plane when it had apparently been fixed. He however had managed to make it to Orlando in one piece and by the time he had managed to drown out Alex’s repeated moans about having to wait around it had been eight o’clock by the time he had phoned.
She had been drinking, he knew that much, her voice was slightly higher pitched then normal and she kept calling him Nickers something she only said when she was drunk but something just wasn’t quite right, she sounded…well different. Slightly sad but he had expected that, she hadn’t been able to get off the phone quick enough and had been hissing to someone, most likely Chelle, to “shut up!”
He also swore that on more then one occasion he heard Chelle in the background saying “Tell him or talk to him.” It was confusing and ever since she had hung up with the excuse of dinner arriving he hadn’t been able to get his mind off it. He made it in to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water before sitting at the island in the centre of the kitchen, aimlessly swirling his phone around wanting to call her but knowing she wouldn’t appriciate it at the present time in the morning, she was probably going to have a hangover from hell anyway.
He was just about to get back up and head into the den to watch some Tv when her vioce startled him. “Jesus Rach,” he whined making her laugh.
“I love scaring people,” she chuckled as she made her way over to the sink after she retieved a glass from the cabinet. It amazed him how two people could look so alike and yet act so differently, if you put her and Adie side by side you could quite easily mistake them for twins, sure there were a few subtile differences, for instance Adie’s eyes were green and Rachels hazel, Adie had a small mole right in the corner of the nose and Rachels was quite freckly. It was the personality differences that stuck out the most, Adie had always had her head screwed on, was always organized, always had a plan, Rachel just went with the flow, expected everyone else to make a plan for her, that’s why she had fitted in so well when they were touring, she just followed the itinerary, Adie usually ended up changing it. Not that it was a bad thing, the changes usually always worked out for the better but she would get so stressed out about things when she felt they weren’t going right.
“So why are you up? Missing my sister?” She asked as she took a seat oppistie him.
“Maybe.”
“Loser,” she giggled, frowning slightly when he didn’t laugh with her, “You okay?”
“Do you think Adie’s okay?” He asked.
“What do you mean? Because I know we look a like but we are not one, there is no telepathy going on here.”
“Haha!” he laughed sarcastically before returning to all seriousness, “She was weird on the phone,” he told her.
“Weird how?”
“She didn’t sound happy and she couldn’t get off the phone quick enough.”
“She just misses you.”
“Do you think she’s happy with me?” He asked not knowing whether he wanted her to answer honestly.
“Where’s this coming from? Has something happened between the two of you? I swear I go away on honeymoon for a week and everything fall apart in my absense,” she joked.
“Nothings happened, I just feel like we’re drifting apart ever since we got back after you guys got married, like she’s not happy with me and with us,” he admitted.
“Has she talked to you about anything?” Rachel asked a little too carefully and he knew she was aware of something that he wasn’t.
“To do with our relationship?” he asked and she nodded, “No. Why is there something I should know? Something she’s not telling me?” He questioned.
“You should talk to her.”
“Rach come on, if you know just tell me. Have I done something? Said something? Because you know me half of what I say is utter crap. Have I hurt her in some way and not realised?”
“Look I just think this whole seperation thing is just playing on her mind a lot, since you moved to Nashville you’ve never spent more then a few weeks away from each other. She knows that with this tour you’re going to be gone a lot longer and she just cant fly out whenever she wants she’s got work,” she rationalised.
“That’s her chioce though, not mine,” he bit back.
“It’s something your going to have to get used to though Nick. She’s not like the others you’ve dated she’s not going to drop everything to be at your beck and call.”
“You did it for Alex,” he pointed out.
“Yeah I did but I think we’ve already established that I’m not like Adie. She’s very driven Nick, she always has been, she knows what she wants and she has worked really hard to get to where she is right now. She’s in a job that pays shit, she works in what has to be the most depressing environment ever, she’s special Nick.”
“I know she is, I’ve seen what she does and I’ve heard all of her stories and how her whole face lights up when she tells me about the child whose life she helped to save, I know all that.”
“I didn’t mean special in that way, yeah she’s great at saving lives and that in itself is a gift but I meant she’s special in the way she helps familes deal with the loss of someone they loved. Have you ever seen her help a grieving mother? Seen her break bad news to a family? Because she’s better then most doctors who have to do it, she’s always had a way with helping people through things like that, I mean look at how her and Alex go off together and have their little chats when he’s really down. You cant expect her to give that up,” she told him.
“I know that, I know how amazing she is and I know how missed she would be if she did quit and how much she would miss it but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
“You guys are so mellow dramatic, this tour isn’t going to last forever,” she laughed.
“Feels like it is,” he whined. “I’m going to be the only one on this tour without someone with me.”
“That is so not true and you know it. Leighanne and Baylee aren’t going to be out for the entire tour, hell I probably won’t do the entire tour,” she admitted.
“Does Alex know that?” he asked.
“No so don’t you dare tell him. There’s only so much travelling on a bus I can do with you guys before I end up killing one of you and lets face it Nick it would more then likely be you,” she laughed.
“Hey! I’m no that bad,” he pouted.
“Oh please. I sometimes have no idea how my sister puts up with you.”
“Actually I do wonder that myself sometimes,” he confessed.
“On that note I am going to bed, and so should you, arent you rehersing all day tomorrow?” She questioned.
“Don’t remind me,” he groaned as he trundled up the stairs behind her.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Nick leaves for tour rehersals giving Adie more time to think about their realationship
Chapter End Notes:
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