38. Nikki
I must have beena special kind of stupid. I really thought I could walk in there, tell Rome Blakely—Rome freaking Blakely—that I wanted a relationship with him, and then we’d skip off into the sunset together.
The tears didn’t hit until I was nearly home. Actually, I didn’t start crying until I walked in and saw my teal couch in my unfamiliar apartment, with all my boxes of junk yet to be unpacked.
This wasn’t home. It never would be home, because I couldn’t afford to stay here unless I found a steady job with a decent paycheck. Even then, did I really want to stay somewhere that Rome’s people procured for me? Did I want that constant reminder?
I stood with my back to the door, and the whole crushing wave of emotion bore down on me. I was broken under the weight of it, pulled out into the open ocean by its undertow. Sliding along the door, I fell until my butt hit the ground, and realized tears were soaking my cheeks and dripping down onto my dress.
What a ridiculous idea—to think I could actually get everything I wanted! To think I could ask for a man to choose me and be delusional enough to believe he would.
I’d never been good enough to be chosen. Not for a promotion, not for a friendship, not for a shopping spree, and certainly not for a loving relationship. What was there to love in a placeholder? There was nothing to me except an empty vessel, a vague shape of a woman that people could use when they had nothing better lined up.
And Rome had no qualms in showing me exactly what he thought of me.
I tried to explain. I tried to tell him that I wanted him—and he didn’t care. He didn’t reject me because of a misunderstanding. He rejected me because I simply wasn’t good enough.
And why would I be? Did I really think this was some kind of Cinderella story? I’d be swept off my feet, and land in the lap of luxury ensconced by the strong arms of a gorgeous, wealthy man?
Things like that didn’t happen to people like me.
At some point, when the light changed and I realized I’d been on the floor for hours, I picked myself up and shuffled to the kitchen. I stared at the sink for a while, then went to the bathroom. A shower made me feel more human, but it barely helped.
I took out my phone and told myself to make a doctor’s appointment. I needed to deal with the other issue—the one growing inside me. But making an appointment meant admitting that it was happening.
I was pregnant, and my baby’s father wanted nothing to do with me.
As if to underscore that point, my phone chimed with an email from the Blakely HR department. I was officially terminated from Blakely, with full severance. I snorted when I saw that, even though I knew I couldn’t turn my nose up at a chunk of money. Not when I was jobless and pregnant and alone.
But Rome was just buying me off, exactly the way he did in that conference room when he first presented me with the companion contract.
I actually thought he cared about me. I actually believed all this insatiable sex meant something more.
Like I said—special kind of stupid.
Two and a half months ago, I’d thought my life was on a downward spiral. I had no idea what was coming. This was so much worse. I’d actually had hope that life would get better, only for it to be snatched away.
I turned my phone off, buried myself in my duvet, and slept.
I slept for nearly three full days, shuffling up to use the bathroom and shovel food in my mouth when the grumbling in my stomach became too insistent. I turned my phone back on at some point and saw messages from my group chat with the girls, a few photos from Penny, a text from Eleanor. I answered none of them.
Did these people actually want to speak to me? Unlikely. I wasn’t worth their time. They probably kept me around for pity, or because I filled some specific function in their lives. I made them feel better about their lives by comparison, probably.
My bed became my refuge. It was hard to do anything other than the necessities, and even those sometimes became too difficult. I showered as much as I could, ate whenever I could force a few bites down, and tried not to think of anything. I stared out my bedroom window a lot, at the fat snowflakes that fell down, the orange light from the streetlights, the concrete wall across the street. One morning, a cat jumped on my windowsill on its precarious journey somewhere else.
Christmas came and went. I forced myself to answer whatever messages came through, but I ignored the phone calls from Penny and Layla. My mother didn’t call. Neither did Rome.
New Year’s fireworks alerted me that another week had passed. I rolled onto my back and listened to them booming somewhere over the river, thinking about all the people reveling all over the city.
Was Rome kissing someone new already?
The thought made me puke. I nearly missed the toilet as I stumbled from my bed to the bathroom, nausea making my ears ring. Hugging the porcelain, I began to sob.
Something popped then. Some soap bubble that had been keeping my emotions muffled, my mind protected from the worst of it. I thought of Rome moving on within days of our fight, and I cried as I flushed the toilet, cried in the shower, and cried as I dried myself.
But when I stepped out in my living room, my hair wrapped in a towel turban and my body in a terrycloth robe, the tears dried up. Piles of boxes stared back at me, some of them flapping open, taunting me.
Was this really how I wanted to spend my days? Sick, in bed, throwing up and barely eating, ignoring the reality of my situation?
Everyone else could treat me as a non-person, but I existed. I was real. I was flesh and bone, and I mattered. Maybe not to my family or friends or lovers. Maybe not to my bosses. But I mattered to myself.
Stomping across the room, I tore open the nearest box, yanking it so hard the flap ripped and took half the cardboard with it. Books came tumbling out, along with a random throw pillow.
The pillow was a soft pink crushed velvet with ridiculous tassels at each corner. I picked it up, feeling the softness of the fabric, the waterfall of the tassels’ ends between my fingers. Stroking the pink pillow with my thumbs, I marched over to my couch and set the pillow in one corner, fluffing it slightly so it looked right. Then I stood back with my hands on my hips, and a painful twist in my chest smoothed out.
I mattered. My home mattered. My things mattered.
I deserved to unpack all the knickknacks and possessions, if only for myself. I deserved pink velvet pillows and bookcases with perfectly aligned and alphabetized spines. I deserved a new plant, damn it.
No one else was going to buy me one.
Gritting my teeth, I picked up the books that had spilled out from the ripped box and set them in a corner. I’d need a new bookcase. My vintage Turkish rug was rolled up behind the couch, so I pulled it out and spread it over the floor, tucking it under the front legs of my couch. My coffee table was nudged under the window, buried under half a dozen boxes. I set the boxes aside and put the coffee table where it was meant to be.
I had a beautiful quartz tray that I used as ornamentation, and I knew I’d packed it in a small box…there! Triumphant, I pulled the tray out of the box, as well as a pretty little jewelry jar that was too small to fit anything in it but looked pretty on the tray.
Bit by bit, with a kind of zeal I hadn’t felt in a long time, I unpacked my things and found homes for every useless little trinket, every book, every bauble. No one could accuse me of being a minimalist, but that wasn’t a club I wanted to belong to. As I arranged my living room then moved on to the kitchen and bedroom, my shoulders straightened and my mood lightened.
This wouldn’t be my home forever, but it was my home now. It was the new year, and I’d be damned if I spent it wallowing in self-pity, wrapped in a duvet surrounded by bare walls.
I’d wallow in self-pity wrapped in a duvet surrounded by fabulous artwork I’d bought at a dozen different flea markets over the course of a decade, thank you very much.
Chuffing to myself, I worked through the night. By the time the sky outside lightened, I collapsed onto my favorite teal couch, surrounded by all my beautiful things, and I smiled.
That was better.
I was still wearing my robe. My hair had mostly dried in my turban, and it would be a disaster when I finally decided to deal with it, but that was a problem for Future Nikki. For now, all I could do was rest my head on my soft pink pillow of crushed velvet—and sleep.