My Baby, My Darling.

After lunch with Monica, I drove back to the Cafe because I was scheduled to work the evening shift. Sandra, the manager, understood how hectic my schedule was and worked around my classes, which meant that I either worked early in the morning or late at night. And I was fine with that, I guess I had to be since it was the only thing that paid all of my bills. It occurred to me that if I lived with Dexter, I wouldn’t be able to pay nearly half of what he pays for that upscale apartment he lives in. That’s not the kind of person that I want to be, the kind that can’t pay her share of things. If I moved in with him, I wasn’t going to be dependent on him for everything. I wanted to make enough money to equal him. But that was never going to happen. He’s a doctor for fuck’s sake. He’s got money coming out of his ass.

I shivered through the doors of the Cafe like a scared little chihuahua and Sandra’s polite smile turned into a full-on chuckle when her eyes landed on mine. She asked me if it was that cold outside and I nodded, my teeth chattering against itself. Of course it was cold outside, but she wouldn't know that. She was always here, working. My mother would be proud.

“Che-Che! You’re here.” Gabe’s voice erupted from the other end of the Cafe and I caught Sandra rolling her eyes.

“He’s been here for over an hour and all he orders is french fries.” She muttered and I stifled a laugh. “Him and his friend have been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry.” I said, biting my lip. She wasn’t fond of Gabe, but she was never one to tell people what she thought of them, especially customers. I shrugged off my coat and she traded me for an apron.

“You have ten minutes until your shift starts.” She said to me and I nodded, turning to make my way towards the table. As I approached, my eyes landed on the back of Travis’s head and I froze. I hadn’t seen him since-

“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting here for over an hour.” Gabe said, waving a fry at me. Travis turned around and flashed me a tired smile.

“Um,” I walked up to Gabe’s side of the booth and he scooted over so that I could sit down. “I was having lunch with Monica, sorry.”

Gabe choked on his fries and Travis sent me a quizzical look. “Why were you having lunch with Monica? Aren’t you supposed to hate her or something?”

“I do not hate her.” I said, rolling my eyes at Gabe.
“Right. Well, I guess you have to get along with her now that you and Dex are back together.” Gabe said absentmindedly as he reached for the ketchup near the holster by the window. I noticed Travis’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look at him.

“She really isn’t as bad as I thought. Did you know that she knits?”

“No kidding.” Gabe said, paying little attention to me as he doused his fries with ketchup. “Hey, Trav. Didn’t you once date someone that knitted you a sweater or something.”

Travis cleared his throat in front of me and I made the mistake of looking over at him. His eyes were boring into mine as he spoke. “Yeah.”

“What was her name again?” Gabe said, paying no attention to how Travis was staring me down. “Wasn’t it Sally or Sasha or something?”

“I don’t remember.” He said, still looking at me and I don’t know why, but I couldn’t look away. It’s like he was daring me to say something, some sort of explanation as to why I didn’t answer all the times he had called me, why I hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. Now he had found his answer, and he looked at me as if I was obligated to give him an explanation.

“No. I don’t think it started with an S. Maybe it started with a P or an R. Rachel, or something like that. You remember her, she had like red hair- a really cool red, like fire or something. It was pretty bad ass. Come on, you remember.”

“Rebecca.” He said and I realized that I was not breathing. I took a deep breath and Gabe looked over at him. Travis removed his eyes from mine and I looked down at the plate of fries in front of me, doused in ketchup and what was, I think pepper.

“That was it. Rebecca. She was really hot, man. What happened to her?”

“She wasn’t my type.” I heard Travis say, noticing the deepness to his voice. Gabe shifted in the booth beside me and I felt him flick my shoulder.

“That’s a shame, man. Chels, get out of the booth. I have to take a piss.” He said and I let out something between a scoff and a sigh.

“No.” I muttered, partly because I just sat down and partly because I didn’t want him to leave me alone with Travis.

Gabe groaned, “Look, unless you want to scrub urine off of this leather seat, then I suggest you let me out of this booth because, let me tell you, when I gotta whizz, I gotta whizz. And when I whizz, let me tell you, it’s like Niagra fucking falls.”
“Okay, okay. Fine.” I said, sliding out of the booth and I stumbled forward as he used my shoulder to hoist himself up from the table.

“Alright. Now, don’t go anywhere. When I get back, I have to tell you about what happened when I took Nicole to that Ice Rink on Rochester. She ate major shit and it was fucking ridiculous. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be back.” He said, moving past me toward the other end of the Cafe where the bathroom is. When he passed Sandra at the hostess stand, he gave something between a smirk and a wink and Sandra looked over at me with a disgusted grimace.

“Hey.” Travis said and I looked down at him. He ran his fingers through his mess of bed hair and gestured toward the other end of the booth to sit down.

I shook my head. “Trav, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“We’re just talking. I don’t see the harm in that.” He said, a tired smile forming on his lips. “And I think we need to talk.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and nodded, sitting down in the booth across from him. “Look, I’m—I’m sorry for not calling you. A lot has been going on.”

“I can see that.” He said, a tinge of intensity in his tone and I looked up at him. He looked…irritated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay.” He didn’t say anything for a while and I didn’t know what to do. He asked me to sit down so that we could talk, and now he wasn’t saying anything.

“So, you two are back together then?” He said, his impassive tone returning.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Alright.” He said, clearing his throat. “Okay. That’s good to hear, I guess.”

I couldn't help but shake my head at his response. This wasn’t him. He was being polite and civil and very stand-offish. This wasn’t who he was, around me, at least. Around me, he spoke truthfully, he said what he thought. That’s what I liked about him.

“You don’t—You don’t have to say that, you know? I mean, if you don’t mean it. You don’t have to say things that you don’t want to say.”

“What are you talking about?” He smirked, fiddling with the pepper shaker in front of him.

“You usually say exactly what you’re thinking. And if you don’t have anything to say, then you’re quiet. You mean what you say, you know? It’s an admirable quality.”

He blinked, shaking his head as he looked at me. “Don’t—Look, you can’t say things like that, okay?”

“Say things like what?”

“Like that.” He said, pointing at me. He looked so frustrated and I wondered whether or not I should just get up and walk away from this conversation. I knew this wasn’t a good idea. “You can’t say things like that.”

“I’m sorry.” I said before I could think. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be sorry for. All I knew was that I was sorry it brought that reaction out of him. This was a side of him that I wasn’t used to. He was usually composed, always in control. “I didn't mean to—I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath. “Look. I’m sorry. It’s just—If you’re going to be with Dexter, then you can’t be around me and say things like that. Nice things. It kind of, it doesn’t sit right with me. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what are you suggesting we do here? I’m just supposed to, what? Be a bitch to you. Is that what will make you act normal?” I was getting angry. He asked me to sit down and talk to him. And when I sit down and talk to him, he gets mad at me. I didn’t know how to win here.

“Normal.” He laughed, running a hand over his face. “I don’t think anything you do will make me normal. If anything, it prompts the opposite.”

“Trav,” I breathed, watching him. He was struggling. I knew that the mention of Dexter and I would send him on edge. This is what I had been avoiding. I should have been the one to tell him, and I didn’t. I put it off, and now he was trying to figure out what to do.

“He came to see me, you know. The morning after. He wanted to pick up your bag.” He said and I recalled what had happened that morning. I was so worried that Travis told Dexter about the kiss.

“I didn’t tell him.” He shook his head.

“Are you ever going to?” I asked and he scoffed at the table before shaking his head.

“Thank you.” I whispered and he looked up at me. He looked confused, like he was looking at me for the first time and had no idea who I was. And then, he looked angry.

“I don’t think that we can be friends, Chelsea.”

My brows furrowed in confusion. “Trav, you don’t have to-“

“Don’t.” He said, forcing a grin onto his tired face. “Don’t make this hard on me. We can’t be friends. And it isn’t because you’re with Dexter. It’s just—you’re different now. And I know that I’ve told you that before, believe me, I know. I kicked myself around for days after I told you that because I saw how upset you were after I told you. Sometimes being honest has its faults. But, do you ever stop and listen to yourself?”

His green eyes were, once again, boring into my own. His gaze was intense and even all the will-power in the world could not make me look away from him. I’d never seen him this angry before. I don’t think anyone had seen him this angry before.

“You just told me that my honesty is what you admire about me. And I used to think the same thing about you. And then you go and you ask me to lie for you. God—Do you know how upset you get when people lie to you? Everytime you caught one of your idiotic, jock boyfriends in a lie. Everytime Nicole blew you off saying that she had something urgent to do when she was really sneaking off to see that musician guy. Do you remember all of that? Because I do. And I also remember how much it used to piss you off.”

“Travis-“ I started but he shook his head.

“You aren’t the same person anymore. You aren’t.” He said and I felt like I was being stabbed in the chest. He rose from the table and pulled his jacket on. “I’m sorry. Tell Gabe that I’ll see him later. Tell him I had to go to the record store or something. Come up with a lie, you’ve been really good at that lately.”

I watched him walk away from me, his naturally sluggish walk unusually brisk. Just as he disappeared through the front door of the Cafe, Gabe came striding past the hostess stand, he glanced out the window and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion before making his way toward the booth.

“Where’d Travis go?” Gabe said, sitting down across from me. It took me a minute to process what he had just said. I took a deep breath before answering, plastering a smile onto my face.

“He had to—um, he had to go somewhere. I don’t know.” I stuttered, pushing strands of hair out of my face.

“I guess I’ll have to catch him later.” He grinned and I forced my lips into a tight line. “So anyways, the ice rink…”

After Gabe finished his story, I made him go home so that I could start my shift. What was planned to be a five minute story, ended up being a fifteen minute story and I had to promise Sandra that I would stay and close up to make up for my late start. My shift was long, and there were barely any customers. Sandra left about an hour until closing and after I balanced the check books and counted the money in the register, I helped the crew polish silverware. It was half past midnight by the time the kitchen crew left and I couldn’t have been more relieved to lock the doors behind them.

I trudged up the stairs feeling like literal shit. My day that started off shitty, was now ending even more shitty. The door to my apartment was unlocked when I reached for it and I just assumed that I’d forgotten to lock up in my rush to class this morning. However, when I pushed it open, I realized just how wrong I was.

“Nik, what are you doing here?”

Nicole looked up at me from her seated position on my kitchen counter. “Hey, bitch. You are out of pop tarts.” She said and my eyes traveled to the empty wrappers littering my kitchen counter.

“Get out of my apartment.” I said, not playing into her game. We haven’t spoken in weeks, but she was acting like we had just spoken yesterday. She was acting like everything was fine, like everything was back to normal. But nothing had changed. She still cheated on Gabe, and she still hasn’t told him. The last time we spoke, I warned her that if she didn’t tell Gabe about what happened with Daryl, then I would. But I never did. No matter how much she fucked up, I wasn’t going to do that to Gabe. From what I saw, he was still the happiest man in the world. And I wasn’t going to be the one to change that. My mind flashed to what Travis had said earlier today, about how the truth didn’t matter as much to me as it once did. And I wondered just how true he could be. He was right in aspects like these. But the truth still mattered to me. Which is why I’ve been radio silent with Nicole for as long as I have. The truth still matters something to me. If it didn’t, then Nicole and I would still be friends.

“Don’t be a debbie downer, Chels.” She said, the smile on her face faltering slightly.

“You can’t do this.” I shook my head. “You can’t just show up in my apartment and act like everything is okay. This isn’t how it works. And this isn’t just some fight that will blow over. I meant what I said. We are no longer friends.”

“Chels-“

“Have you told Gabe yet?” I narrowed my eyes and she was quiet, her eyes darting away from mine. I clucked my tongue and nodded, stepping aside to show her my open door.

“Can we just talk? Can I talk to my best friend for one second, please?”

“Nicole.” I snapped, looking up at the ceiling. “You cheated on Gabe. You cheated on him.”

“I know. I know, okay? I know.”

“Then I don’t understand what we are talking about here.”

“I fucking miss you, okay? I miss my best friend. You will not answer my phone calls.”

“Do you know how many times I have lied for you? How many times I’ve told helpless, lovestruck guys that you string along that you’re out of town visiting your grandmother or had to suddenly cancel plans because you have the fucking flu.”

“I know. And it’s because you’re my best friend.” She said, moving towards me but I backed away.

“I lie all of the goddamn time for you and I hated it. I hated doing it every fucking time. But this is Gabe. Gabe.”

“I know.” She cried. She was fucking crying. And it was like we were back to Gabe’s hallway three weeks ago. “God, I know.”

“Look. I’m just really tired. Will you please, will you just go?”

“Chels, will you please just listen to me?”

“I can’t do this right now.” I shook my head, moving past her and into my bedroom. She followed behind me and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The only way that she was going to leave was by orders of the fire marshall.

“Do you remember Wes Lewinski?” She croaked and I stopped in my tracks. Wes was one of Nicole’s many boyfriends during our junior year in high school. He was captain of the track team and in Nicole’s words, “had abs that made you cry tears of joy.” They dated for three months, which was a record for Nicole. She usually only stuck to guys for two weeks, a month at most. But Wes was different. He was a churchgoer and he was the kind of guy that took his girlfriend to every family gathering and social event. Nicole loved that, she loved being shown off as something that Wes was proud of. And after two months, Nicole showed up to my house sobbing. And it wasn’t a normal kind of sobbing like after she watched the season finale of One Tree Hill. It was the kind of sobbing that left tear-stained mascara all over her face, so much that she’d stopped trying to wipe the tears away. When I asked her what was wrong, she was quiet. She had stopped crying entirely and she was staring off into space, like I wasn’t even there. I crouched in front of her, forcing her so that she was at eye level with me. And when she opened her mouth to speak, my heart dropped to my stomach and I began to cry for her. She was pregnant.

“Nik,” I whispered, spinning around to face her. And when I looked at her, it was like she was the same sixteen-year-old that showed up to my door three years ago. Her mascara was smeared and her eyes empty. “Oh, my God.”

“Are you sure?” I whispered, moving towards her and she nodded, bursting into more tears. “I took four tests.”

Three years ago, it turned out to be a false alarm. She wasn’t pregnant. It turned out to be a false pregnancy. I was the one that drove her to the clinic and held her hand while she got an ultrasound. I was there to cry with her when the doctor told her that it was a false test and that no, she was not pregnant. But this was real, this was serious.

“Nicole.” I breathed, shaking my head. She cried again and this time I pulled her into a hug. Even though she was inches taller than me, I tried to hug her the best that I could.

“I don’t even know if it’s Gabe’s.” She sobbed into my shoulder and I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was pat her back and cry with her. She needed me. She needed the girl that kept all of her lies. She needed the girl that listened to her talk hours on end about her obsession with James Franco. She needed the girl that held her hand during an ultrasound three years ago. She needed her best friend. And as much as I hate what she did, I was still her best friend. I was always going to be her best friend.