Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
ATTICUS
The next morning, Nicole got up before I did, so I didn’t have a chance to make her coffee. I’d overslept because I hadn’t fallen asleep until around four AM after tossing and turning on the floor.
She stood at the counter buttering toast, and I came up behind her. She flinched as she became aware of me.
I spoke low into her ear. “I’m sorry I lost control last night. It won’t happen again.” But even as I said it, I found myself turned on as my chest grazed her back. I knew my promise was a lie.
She turned around to meet my gaze. “I’m sorry I made you sleep on the floor.”
“What did I tell you before about apologizing to me? You owe me nothing. Certainly no apologies for reacting to my bad behavior.” I shrugged. “Anyway, my sleeping on the floor was probably a good idea.”
I reached for a mug and poured myself some coffee. “I’ll be gone for an hour.”
She stopped mid-bite. “Where are you off to?”
“I have my therapy session at noon. I wasn’t expecting to oversleep.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She licked the corner of her mouth. “I guess you can always count on me for new material, right?”
“Yeah.” I chuckled. She was definitely the star of my therapy sessions. I took a sip of my coffee and lowered my voice. “Later we should talk about when we’re gonna tell Mimi about Louise.”
She cringed. “We do have to tell her.”
I usually hated therapy, but I’d take a session with Dr. Jensen any day over having to tell Mimi that her caretaker had passed away. That wasn’t gonna be fun, and I dreaded it.
I downed my coffee and found my laptop before walking out to my car. After logging in to the chat portal, I waited for Dr. Jensen to appear on the screen.
She finally popped up and smiled. “Atticus. How have things been going in New Jersey?”
The first thing that came to mind was last night. “I fucked up.”
Dr. Jensen tilted her head. “What do you mean by that?”
“I crossed the line with Nicole.”
She drew in her brows. “What did you do?”
“I came on to her physically.”
“How did she react?”
I smiled slightly. “She seemed turned on, to be honest, but also uncomfortable with her reaction. Ultimately, she pushed back and told me to sleep on the floor. So that’s what I did, tossing and turning all night. Served me right.”
“What do you think caused you to act in such a way?”
“I’d gone to New York for the day, and I really missed her. Then we found out Mimi’s caretaker passed away. It was an emotional day. I guess it fucked me up a little, made me feel like I needed that physical contact.”
Her eyes widened. “Her grandmother’s caretaker died?”
“Sorry. Yeah.” I sighed. “What a shock. She had a heart attack while on vacation, and we need to find a way to tell Mimi. It’s gonna suck so bad.” I exhaled. “It looks like I’m going to be here longer than I originally thought.”
“Well, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“The messed-up thing is… I’m sort of happy about it.” I raised my palms. “I mean, not that Louise died, of course—didn’t mean to imply that. Just happy that I have a little bit of extra time here with Nicole. I feel like, at the very least, we’re working our way back to a friendship, even if she’ll never consider more than that with me again.”
She jotted something down. “You keep talking about your relationship as if it’s completely unsalvageable. From what you tell me, it seems like the two of you still have a lot of unresolved feelings for each other. So I’m surprised you don’t seem to have any hope.”
I rubbed my eyes. “It’s complicated.”
“I know we haven’t delved into what happened between the two of you. I haven’t wanted to push you into reliving what was clearly a trauma until you’re ready. But I do think we need to go back a little today and continue your backstory with her.”
I swallowed. “Okay.”
“Let’s talk about the time when Delirious Jones started hitting it big. You said that was when your relationship with Nicole began to deteriorate…”
“Yeah.” I sucked in a breath and repositioned myself in the seat. “A couple of our songs went viral, and suddenly everyone was listening to our other stuff, too. We just blew up overnight. Or at least, it felt that way. Our manager set up our first multi-city tour soon thereafter, and everything started happening really fast.”
“What stage of your marriage were you in at the time?”
“Nicole and I had been married for about five years. We were living in Brooklyn at the time. Tristan and Ronan lived in New York back then, too, so we were all there. Nicole had built a big clientele in the city with her hairstyling. She’d been making all the money while I was a struggling musician.”
She nodded. “So that part changed almost overnight, too.”
“Right. I was suddenly making more money than we’d ever dreamed of. But Nicole loved her job and was taking steps to open her own salon. I didn’t want her to give up her dream just because mine was coming to fruition. When I had to go on tour for the first time, she stayed behind to continue working. I thought that was the right decision because she would’ve lost everything if she’d dropped it all to come on the road with me. Back then, the tour amenities weren’t what they are now, either. We mainly stayed on the bus—no hotels the break things up. It wouldn’t have been comfortable for her. I didn’t want her to give up her life to sleep in a bunk for months.”
“So she stayed back, and you went on your first adventure…”
I nodded. “Yeah, and it was harder than I ever imagined. The distance really tested us.”
“Were you loyal?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yes. I’ve never cheated on Nicole.”
“Okay…” She paused. “So tell me more about why it was hard.”
“We argued a lot. Just about the future. What was best for us…”
“She didn’t want you to continue your music career?”
I shook my head. “No, that wasn’t the issue. It was more like…she started expressing concern about whether us being married was the right thing, in light of my new life. She never discouraged my career, just the opposite. She’s always been my biggest cheerleader. But her doubts about us wrecked me. I’d get off the phone with her and my performance would be shitty. Or at least what I considered shitty. Our fans don’t tend to notice the difference. I was ready to quit, though. But Nicole wouldn’t let me. She kept saying how hard I’d worked to get where I was.”
“How long was the tour?”
“Only a few months, but she knew it wouldn’t end there. She knew my life would never be the same, that our lives as we knew them had changed. She pushed me away slowly—until one day she admitted that she didn’t think she could do it. She didn’t think she could be a rockstar’s wife.” I shut my eyes.
“So she asked for the divorce?”
I nodded. “I would’ve left the band if it came down to a choice between Nicole or my career. But again, she refused to let me give it up. Refused to give me a choice. She sent the message loud and clear by filing the papers.”
“That must have been quite a shock. Where were you when you got them?”
“It was right after the tour. She waited until I got home. I think she truly believed it was best for me not to have the pressure of a marriage. Maybe she felt like we’d made a rash decision when we eloped and I might’ve chosen differently if I’d known what was gonna happen with the band.”
“Is that true?”
“Fuck no. But maybe she would’ve chosen differently.” I leaned my head back on the seat. “I didn’t understand how she could give up on us. Her filing put me in a really bad place. But even then, I knew it was about more than just me. Nicole has trust issues.”
“In what way?”
“Her father. He cheated on her mother, had a long-term girlfriend no one knew about. That really messed with Nicole’s head. She found out when she was twenty-two, shortly after we got married. So the emotional wounds were still fresh. Deep down, I know her decision had to do with her father, even if she never wanted to talk about it.”
Dr. Jensen nodded. “So it was maybe partly trauma from her past and partly that she felt like she was holding your career back by staying married to you?”
I nodded. “But no matter the reasoning, she was wrong to ever think I was better off without her. I’ve proven that in the years since. I’m all kinds of fucked up now, and I’m unhappy every day that we’re apart.” My head was starting to hurt.
“What happened after the divorce papers were filed?”
“Everything went down so damn fast at that point. I kept trying to convince her to give us another chance, but she insisted it was best for us to not be married anymore. She refused any money from me, and we didn’t own much together at that point, so there wasn’t much holding up the process. Everything moved faster than I wanted.”
“You signed the papers?”
“What choice did I have? I didn’t want to force her to be married to me if my life wasn’t what she’d signed up for.” I closed my eyes for a moment as I resisted the pain of one of my worst memories. “The night the divorce was finalized was the first time I ever went off the deep end. I drank so much I blacked out.” I blew out a long breath as shame washed over me. “About a week later, though, I got this clarity that the divorce was just a bunch of papers that had been born of her panicking. I didn’t give a shit whether we were legally married or not. She was all that mattered to me. And I thought maybe the divorce was enough to take some of the pressure off. I wondered if I could still make things work with her without the pressure of having to maintain the perfect marriage.”
Dr. Jensen tapped her pen against her chin. “Interesting that you went from rock bottom to hopeful again, even though nothing had changed.”
“Well, there’s nowhere but up to go from rock bottom. So, yeah, I decided to not give up on us. She meant too much to me to just throw away everything we’d built. But I did it quietly. Nicole used to tell me not to share my dreams, that no one could dissuade me if I kept them to myself. So that’s what I did. I didn’t tell her I was hanging on to hope. I didn’t tell anyone. I just chose to believe that everything would work out, that somehow the universe would bring her back to me.”
“Based on the current situation, I assume that never happened?”
“Not exactly. It almost happened. I moved out to L.A. after the divorce, but we talked a lot on the phone, many times late at night East Coast time. We were still in each other’s lives, slowly finding our way back to one another. It was like we were falling in love all over again—this time without the pressure of a marriage or a label.” My eyes followed a cat walking across the street. “Our conversations ran pretty deep during those calls. She admitted that she was freaked out by my sudden fame. But more than anything, she admitted that she still loved me. And I think my resilience when it came to us after the divorce helped her see how much I loved her. She told me she’d consider moving out to L.A. and building a clientele there. She had a friend who was gonna hook her up at their salon. Life was all of a sudden good again. But it didn’t last long.” I looked back at the screen. “Then my world turned upside down.”
“What happened?”
I looked over at my phone. There wasn’t much time left. No way I was gonna go there today. “You usually stop us by now. Session is about to end.”
“We can go a little longer today.”
Of course this would be the one time she would say that. But I wasn’t ready. “No.” I shook my head. “I need a breather.”
Dr. Jensen nodded and closed her notebook. “Next time, then.”