Almost Mine (6 page)

Nick didn’t live with his parents. His own home, that he’d purchased responsibly when he was eighteen, was being redecorated to accommodate a growing family. He was always older than his chronological age. He was twenty two, but he’d always worked, saved money; everything that he had, he earned. He succeeded at school and had a strong ambition to follow in his dad’s footsteps to work in the ever-growing winery. There was no house on the estate now, but with his family’s blessing, Nick was planning to build a homestead on the property sizable enough for a big happy family for when he took over the running of the business. And given that his dad’s overworked, sixty-two-year-old body was about to slow down on him, Nick may get his wish sooner rather than later.

A light drizzle sprinkled over my face just as I neared the end of the trail and out onto the street. Because I couldn’t help it, I glanced back over my shoulder in the direction that I had come, wondering if I would see Roy, and thankfully he wasn’t there. Letting out a cleansing sigh that admittedly left a slight residue of how wonderful Roy sometimes made me feel, I took the steps that would lead me to my comfortable, fruitful and safe life.

Making my way up the four front steps, I reached down to my belly as it again cramped under my fingers and massaged my muscles gently. I’d been ignoring this aching for a few days, but put it down to pre-wedding nerves — or prayed that it was just nerves. As I took the final step, bitter reality and suffocating pain forced its way in and made me acknowledge that today they were different: blindingly intense. My eyes lost focus as the pain tore through my insides and as hard as I fought to stop them, panic collapsed my legs and drew the ground out from beneath me. I fell to my knees as the pain intensified, spreading from my abdomen around my hips to my back, like a vice clamp that tightened with every breath I took.

Oh God, please don’t let this be happening…

As quickly as the last one ended, another gripping pain took over my body, my panting breath in no way helping me to remain calm.

…No, no, no, no please be ok baby…

I silently prayed, hoping against all hope that this was normal, and that maybe this happened to woman as their bodies adjusted to a growing baby. I didn’t know what was normal. And even my dampening legs under my woollen skirt didn’t completely convince me as to what was happening, because it couldn’t possibly be happening to me.

‘Nick!’ I screamed through restricted breath and immediately I felt his hands under my arms, scooping me up and whisking me inside. ‘It can’t be happening. Right? Nick? The baby’s ok, isn’t it?’ My cry bordered on hysteria as Nick tried to hush me; but his efforts to speak came out in jagged breaths which terrified me further. ‘Everything is going to be ok, right Beth?’ I asked her as she followed closely behind. Beth didn’t answer.

In his old bedroom that in times gone by we’d filled with laughter, I wept while Nick laid me on his bed.

‘Shh, sweetheart,’ Beth soothed as I sat gingerly on the bed next to me. ‘Nicholas, get a heat pack from the bathroom please, and pass me those towels.’ Beth lifted me gently as she spread the towels beneath me.

‘But I’m twelve weeks. I’m past the danger period —’ My voice was taken by another fierce pain and I pulled myself into a ball when another cramp took over my whole body. I released the agony with a scream into the pillow and it was then that Beth finally saw the crimson staining.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she murmured sorrowfully.

Nick returned a heartbeat later, holding what his mother had asked for, and I opened my eyes to see him hovering helplessly in the door way. He didn’t need to say what he was feeling right now; no baby, no Cate. I knew him well. He gave me a brief smile to show me that it was ok, that I didn’t need to explain, and then he stepped inside the room, handed the heat pack to his mother and left. I squeezed my eyes closed again, failing to hold back the flow of imminent tears, and when I opened them again he was gone.

‘Please, I need Nick, please, Beth?’ my voice rose with panic as I heard his car start up in the drive way. Beth sat on the bed and brushed my tear stained hair from my face.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ she soothed, ‘what you need, what Nicholas needs, is time to let this heal. Right now it’s very overwhelming isn’t it?’ I nodded as fresh tears fell down my face. ‘Nick knows he’s not in control of this, you know how much that scares him, so just give him time to let this sink in. For now you need to rest. I’ll call Dr Crawford and then I’ll check on you, ok?’

She stood from the bed leaving me with the mess that was consuming my thoughts. There was only one thing that I knew for sure; I needed Nick.

The following day I found Nick at the winery, startling him when I tapped him lightly on his flannelette-shirted shoulder as he stood amongst the rows of naked vines.

‘Can we talk?’ I asked him as he wiped his hands on the front of an old pair of jeans. He nodded once and I took his hand, leading him out of the vast vineyard and onto the shaded porch of the work shop. It was overtaken by infectious wisteria that Nick’s dad had fought good and hard to rid the timber pillars of, but with no success. And for this I was grateful. Nick and I had spent countless hours out here, laughing, picking on each other and just being jubilant, comfortable childhood friends. And whenever they were in view, I found myself gazing upon the blossoms and the plush green grass that still appeared as soft and inviting as it did the night when we were seventeen and Nick had gently laid me down on it; he’d touched me with such unparalleled sweetness that night under the starry sky. I never wanted anything about this place to change, and remembering such a perfect scene helped me to put what I wanted from my life into perspective.

As I closed my eyes and summoned the beautiful memory, I envisaged Nick above me and remembered his petrified expression; his shaking nervousness was vivid even in memory. He was, and still endured to be, the most endearingly real person that I knew, and it seemed, unexpectedly, that I was perhaps beginning to love him for that.

I blinked once and I was back, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the top step of the porch with Nick, as he was no doubt waiting for me to tell him what he didn’t want to hear.

Hunched, with his forearms on his thighs, his hands together as if in prayer, he spoke.

‘Are you ok?’ he asked me, and I answered with a slow nod and the sort of pained smile that is dragged from the depths of anguish and helplessness that I was sure that we both felt. I opened my mouth to speak but he stopped me. ‘Please, don’t say it,’ he murmured. I reached my hand across to his and interlaced our fingers, mostly so that I could easily stop him if he tried to walk away from me, but also because I suddenly needed to feel his skin on mine.

‘I want to marry you, Nick,’ I said. I squeezed his fingers in my grasp, but I could never hold him down if he didn’t want to be. He pulled his hands away from mine to create a platonic distance between us.

‘You’re no longer tied to me, so don’t feel obligated to follow through with the wedding,’ he delivered his well-rehearsed monotone answer. He sounded sure of himself, but his tell-tale, unfaithful lower lip trembled nervously, revealing his fear.

‘But I
want
to marry you.’

‘Tell me why. And I want the truth,’ he dared me, just like old times.

I didn’t miss a beat. ‘Because I never realised what we could give each other before. We both want to get married young, we both want children.’ I took his hands again. ‘Family is the most important part of both of our lives, and I can’t imagine sharing something like that with anyone else but you.’

‘Not because you love me?’ he said with a hint of hope, and I faltered, straightening my shoulders slightly. Of course he was hurt, but also intrigued by my decision. ‘You’d accept me as your husband even though you don’t love me? Don’t you want more for yourself?’

‘You can give me the family that I’ve dreamed of and I love you for that.’ It was all I could offer in all honesty. He seemed to ponder this for a few seconds before he let out a resigned sigh. ‘I do love you, Nick. I guess I’m not as generous as you are with it.’

‘Well, I guess that’s all I can hope for, for now.’ His lips upturned a fraction. ‘And Roy?’ I swallowed hard and I knew he recognised the hesitation that I’d hidden very well so far. We both knew what Roy was to me, and how raw my break-up still was. After all, Roy was still my life-line less than four months ago and he had aided me to camouflage so much anguish for all of those blurred years; but he was a band-aid that had served its purpose, and, for the greater good, he had to be ripped off and discarded.

‘It’s over,’ I finally assured him despite the fact that my insides clenched as I muttered the words.

‘Be absolutely positive that this is what you want. Marriage is a once in a life time thing for me, and you are the one that I choose to be my wife. I know that I’m not your first choice, but I will not give you any reason to regret choosing me as your husband. This opportunity, as crass as it sounds, is your only chance to get out of this. You know how much I love you, but I’m willing to let you go if that’s what makes you happy. This has to be your decision alone.’

I refocussed my attention from the past and to the future. I smiled. ‘Do you want to know what I think?’

‘Always.’

‘I think that the baby, our baby…I think that he was sent to us to show me how good we can be together, to give me a much needed slap upside the head, pushing me to see you for who you really are. I don’t want to take this chance and waste it. And I don’t want to take it for granted that another you will come along; someone as loyal and steadfast and devoted as you. You are top-shelf quality, you know.’ I leaned in and kissed his mouth and he leaned into my lips, letting go of my hands only to tenderly cup my face as he kissed me back. ‘I really do want this,’ I repeated before I kissed him more persuasively, hoping that he wouldn’t ask for any more reassurance, but then my lips froze as I belatedly realised one vital element. ‘That is of course that you actually still want to marry me, and that my not being pregnant any more is not an out for you.’

With his fingers now entangled in my honey blonde hair he pulled my mouth to his again. ‘You’re crazy if you believe that,’ he murmured against my lips and kissed me deeply to prove it. Under my palms I felt his heart pick up speed and I had no way of denying what he wanted. Though I kissed him back without hesitation, there was something that I needed to know before we reset the wedding plans back into motion. I pulled back.

‘Then help me to understand where all of this certainty is coming from. I could never understand why you felt, or feel, so strongly toward me.’

He faltered and shifted uncomfortably, reforming our shoulder to shoulder position as if the moment had not a second ago seamlessly merged from platonic to the cusp of passion.

I acknowledged his discomfort. ‘I’m not asking this to put you on the spot, or for an ego boost, or for any other reason than to wrap my head around where all of this is coming from. Surely someone as plain and unremarkable as me cannot invoke such love and deserve it. I really don’t think that I’m as special as you make me feel.’

He spoke as if he was explaining an obvious answer to a simple question. ‘True beauties can never recognise who they are, and that’s why they are so unique and absolutely breathtaking.’

‘So two plus two equals four? Ordinary Cate equals breathtaking beauty?’

‘You’re a quick learner,’ he grinned.

‘You think that you’ve found a lost treasure and that I’m a rarity to behold,’ I laughed with scepticism, dramatically reciting the words as if in a play on Broadway, ‘as if letting me go would be like throwing a pearl into the deepest of oceans, never to be found again?’

‘You took the words right out of my mouth. But, it’s more than that. There’s something about you that has always resonated with me.’

I turned on the step and eyed him with intrigued curiosity as if he were about to explain to me an urban myth, and doubted that he could make his explanation plausible. ‘Tell me.’

‘I don’t know how to explain it without being cheesy.’

I nudged his knee with mine. ‘Give it a go.’

‘Ok, well, when I see you, my heart races and when you leave it stops. When you smile I smile and when you cry I want to bring hell down on the reason for your tears. All I know is that I would stop at nothing to give you everything, and I’d do this because I know that every need that you have comes from the deepest part of your heart, and not from an entitled want. You’re breathtaking when you daydream as you watch the wind blow through the tree tops, and when you use the very tips of your fingers to tuck your soft hair behind your ears and when you dip your chin and blush when someone gives you a compliment—.’

‘Ok, that’s enough,’ I laughed sheepishly and then dipped my chin as my cheeks turned pink.

‘I could go on, you know.’

‘Spare me. That really was cheesiest of cheesy.’

‘But, nevertheless, it is as true as the sky is blue.’ Our attention was drawn to the leaden clouds above us, ‘or grey in today’s case. I love you, Cate. Who knows exactly why people feel the way they do about each other. Perhaps I’m just pre-programmed to feel this way; like some people are born to play the piano or to be Olympians, I’m wired to love you.’

‘Can I just say that I feel a bit…’ I swallowed down the overwhelming lump in my throat.

‘It’s ok,’ he smiled, ‘we are not all pre-programmed. We can’t all be Bach.’

‘My not being Bach won’t disappoint you.’

‘It also won’t be the end of my world.’

‘So you’re saying that loving me isn’t a conscious choice?’

‘Maybe not, but what I do with what I feel is. I could always just ignore it, couldn’t I? From now on I choose not to.’

This returned the smile to my face, and the beat to my heart.

‘Bach played the organ not the piano, anyway. Do you know what you’re going to get with me? Are you being honest with yourself?’

‘Absolutely,’ he winked. ‘My eyes are wide open.’