Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
ATTICUS
A couple of weeks later, with Nicole back in New York, I had my first appointment with Dr. Jensen in a while. I took a one-hour break from recording and brought my laptop out to the parking lot of the studio where we’d been working.
One by one, I’d conveniently canceled all of my appointments with her since New Jersey. My schedule while we were in the studio had made fitting her in difficult, but mostly I was hesitant to continue from where we’d last left off.
But I finally felt ready. As I’d told Nicole, we needed to face everything in order to move forward.
“Atticus!” she greeted when our video chat connected. “It’s been a while.”
I nodded. “It has. Things have been really busy with the band.”
“My husband was listening to The Rocker’s Muse the other day. That’s such a great album. I was tempted to tell him you were my client, but I wouldn’t dare violate confidentiality.”
“You should’ve. I don’t care.”
She grinned. “Do you have something new you’d like to discuss today, or shall we take up where we ended last time we spoke?”
Feeling rusty when it came to talking about my feelings, I sucked in some air. “We can continue where we left off.”
She scribbled something down. “The last time we met, you were recalling for me the time after Nicole and you got divorced. You indicated that the two of you were falling in love all over again from across the miles. There was hope for a reconciliation, and she was considering moving to California. She’d been talking to you more about some of the reasons she walked away. And then you alluded to something happening that changed everything…”
Swallowing, I nodded. “Yeah.”
She nodded.
I cleared my throat. “Nicole had booked a flight to come out to L.A. It would’ve been the first time we saw each other since the papers were signed. I had a couple of weeks before the band had to start touring, and I made all these plans for us.” I paused. “But then a week before she was set to fly out, I got a phone call.”
Dr. Jensen tilted her head. “Okay…”
I shook my head. “So—I need to back up.”
“Alright.”
“The night the divorce was finalized was the darkest of my life. Everything seemed over, like all hope was gone. All I wanted to do was forget. So, I made it my mission to get fucked up. I went to this bar by myself and drank so much that I blacked out.”
“I believe you mentioned that in passing the last time we spoke.”
“I took pills, too, and I have no recollection of anything that happened that night.” I grimaced. “Including sleeping with someone while I was drunk and high.”
Dr. Jensen shut her eyes momentarily and nodded.
“Some time later, after Nicole and I were talking again, this woman named Giselle called me. I had no idea who she was. None. She told me she was pregnant, and that I was the father.” I took a deep breath. “I couldn’t remember her from that night, but she knew exactly who I was because of the band. She’d gotten my contact information through my manager, told him it was an urgent situation. I hung up on her, thinking it was some kind of joke.”
A troubled look crossed my therapist’s face. “Oh my.”
“I tried to forget about it, but it kept gnawing at me…”
“Understandable.”
I sighed. “I talked to Tristan and Ronan about it, and they convinced me I was being stupid. They were right. I couldn’t remember anything about that night, so it was quite plausible that I’d had sex with someone.”
“Right…” She nodded.
“I still had Giselle’s number in my phone, so I called her back. She lives in New York, where I’d been that night. I flew her out to L.A., and we met in person. Once I saw her, I did vaguely remember her. I soon realized she seemed pretty level-headed and honest, as much as I’d wanted to deem her a liar. It was clear she didn’t want the situation any more than I did. But she wasn’t going to have an abortion…”
“How did you feel about that?”
“Well, I didn’t allow myself to feel anything until I knew the truth. She agreed to let me pay for an in-utero paternity test.” I exhaled. “All the while, Nicole was calling me every night and still planning to come out to L.A. While I waited for the results, I pretended nothing was happening, as much as it killed me. I prayed so hard that it wasn’t mine.” I shook my head. “The results came in about a week later.”
“And you were the father?”
I nodded.
“Wow. Okay.” She jotted something down. Probably, holy fuck .
“I realized then and there that life as I knew it was over. I knew Nicole, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to handle this.” I shook my head slowly. “Not because she didn’t love me enough, but just the opposite. She loved me too much to stand by and watch our dream unfold…with me and someone else. And I hated the thought of her experiencing that.”
“Oh, Atticus… What a tough situation. How did you tell her?”
My chest constricted. This was the hardest part for some reason. “I told her there’d been a change of plans, and instead of her coming to L.A., I flew to New York. I didn’t want to give her that kind of news away from home, where she didn’t have a support system.” I closed my eyes and breathed for a moment. “When I got to her apartment, she opened the door with the most beautiful smile on her face. She took one look at me, though, and knew something was very wrong.” I cringed at the horrible memory and had to stop.
“Then what happened?” Dr. Jensen prompted a few seconds later.
“Then I had to have the most difficult conversation of my life.” I paused. “I told her everything. She cried. I cried. And exactly what I knew would happen did. I hurt her so badly, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t fathom how I was supposed to be a father to that child when it felt like I’d lost everything—lost my soul, lost my entire life as I knew it.”
“But somehow, here you are, still standing.”
I laughed angrily. “Barely, but yeah.”
Dr. Jensen’s eyes widened. “You have a child now…”
“A son.” I smiled. “Christian.”
She leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms. “All this time you’ve kept that from me.”
“Well, I would’ve had to tell the whole story, and I wasn’t ready.”
“When we first started working together, that had to have been around the time you found out about him. I remember you would refer to things you couldn’t talk about, and we focused on your general anxiety, but it’s no wonder we weren’t able to make much progress if you were holding back something so major.”
I looked away. “It’s not that I was ashamed of him. I was mainly ashamed of my own actions, and I couldn’t talk about how badly I’d let down the person who means everything to me. In order to talk about him, I would’ve had to talk about that .”
“So, after you told Nicole you were going to be a father…what happened?”
“She didn’t want to see me for a while. I went back to L.A., feeling as horrible as you might imagine. When she was finally willing to talk to me again, we had a couple of long conversations where the conclusion was basically what I already knew—that she couldn’t handle it, and it was better if we went our separate ways—for good this time.” I felt my eyes water. Fuck. “And if you thought things couldn’t get worse after that, you’d be wrong.”
Her brows drew together. “What happened?”
“Months later, I found out Nicole had reconnected with a guy we’d both been friends with years before. Julian had grown up in our town in New Jersey but had moved to the city for work. That sent me spiraling—acting out on tour, sleeping with women. I hadn’t been with anyone sexually since Giselle, until I found out Nicole was dating Julian. It felt like my life was over and I’d lost her forever. But then I had a new baby, and I had to find a way to focus on that, despite still being a mess.”
She nodded and wrote a few things down. “Tell me about when Christian was born.”
“When Giselle went into labor, I flew to New York. It was hard being close to Nicole geographically yet feeling worlds away. I wasn’t in the room when he was born. I didn’t want to be. But they called me in after he arrived, and the moment I held him, I fell in love. It was the first time in months that I’d felt like I had a reason to live. I was still heartbroken and messed up, but he gave me a little bit of strength back.”
“And you and Giselle…did anything ever happen there?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. She’s a nice person, but I never had feelings for her like that.”
“How old is Christian now?”
“He’s two. He still lives with his mother in New York. She’s engaged to a great guy now, David. We all get along and do our best to make this work. I go back to the city whenever I can to visit my son. Obviously with my schedule, whenever I can is not really enough. But I’m pretty much bicoastal when I’m not traveling or recording. I have an apartment not far from where he lives.”
She just looked at me for a few seconds. “I can’t believe I never knew you’re a father.”
“While my son is a blessing, I still have a lot of trauma about everything I lost in the process.”
“Nicole, you mean…”
“She is everything, yeah.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“That’s the thing… One of the reasons I called you for this session is because she and I reconnected—yet again—when she came out here for Tristan’s wedding a couple of weeks ago. That was the first time I’d seen her since we left each other in New Jersey. Without getting into too much detail…one thing led to another.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“It was the first time we’d taken things that far, and before she left L.A., she said she wanted to meet Christian. That’s a huge step for her.”
“I should say. And a huge step for you . When do you think she’ll meet him?”
“Well, I’m stuck out here recording for a while. So, hopefully when I’m able to get back to New York, if she hasn’t changed her mind.”
“You must be ecstatic.” She smiled. “That she’s open to it.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Just the opposite. Because now that she’s facing everything head on, she might decide she really can’t handle it. And then what?”