She stays in the hospital overnight and I curl up on the chair next to her. James never comes over and neither does her mother. I tell Nicholas to go home but he stays and sleeps out in the waiting room. When the nurses wake Sydney up with a breakfast tray, and I take a sip of her coffee, she tells me that she has made a decision.

“I’m not getting married.”

“What do you mean? Your wedding is in five days.”

She shrugs.

“What about everything you said?”

“What happened last night was everything that I needed to know about both my mother and James. I needed them, but they were nowhere to be found.”

I’m about to say something but it’s hard to argue with the truth.

“I don’t need them in my life especially if having them means only existing on their terms.”

I give her a sight nod. I want to believe her but I’m afraid that she’s just saying this now and will go ahead and marry James anyway.

“I heard what you and Nicholas were saying last night,” she adds, her voice cracking.

My throat closes up.

Oh, no, she was supposed to be asleep.

“I wasn’t,” she says, reading my mind. “He was in New York, huh? He was in Boston and when Nicholas told him what happened to me, he went to a strip club instead.”

A part of me wishes that we had talked about this out in the waiting room, but now I know that it’s right for her to know the truth, however she found out about it.

“My baby and I deserve better,” Sydney says. “I’m going to take care of her on my own.”

“Her?” My eyes light up. She laughs and nods.

“Yep, they told me the sex. It’s a girl.”

I wrap my arms around her. “I’m so happy for you, Sydney. Now I get to be an auntie!”

“You’re going to be the best auntie in the world!”

“I’ll always be here for you,” I whisper into her ear and hold her for a long time.

31

Nicholas

When I invite her to dinner…

Sometimes, you have to go through a whole lot of shit to realize how lucky you really are.

These last few weeks with Olive have changed my life. I thought that I loved her before but now my love has magnified.

Being with her in a real place and being a normal couple, without the drama of what our lives were like before, has made me realize exactly why I want to spend the rest of my life with her.

Real life is all about the everyday moments. You can have an explosive love that takes you from one day to another, but it’s the moments in between that matter the most.