Chapter Twenty-Two
Elena
Everything was changing. Before I had told Noah about the baby, I had been nervous that it would be the end of us. I had been sure that he would want to break up with me, that he would want nothing to do with me anymore. Now that he knew, and I’d realized he was okay with it, everything should have been all right. But it didn’t feel like it was all right.
I was pregnant when I hadn’t planned to be. I was nervous, everything was changing, and I was scared most of the time. And now someone was following us, too. Could this day get any worse? I knew I should have been grateful that Noah was excited about the baby instead of angry about it. And I was. But it was too much for me to take in. I was overwhelmed.
After Noah’s phone call where he told me we were being followed, I started to panic. He told me that it would be okay, and every time he said that before, he had been right. There was no reason for me not to trust him now. But my tires had been slashed the last time I had been to his house, and now a red car was following us. Everything felt wrong.
When I realized we had lost the red car, Noah drove home, and I followed him. We parked next to each other and heclimbed out, coming to my door. He opened it for me and helped me out even though it would be months before I needed this kind of attention.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
Noah shook his head. “I don’t know, but we’ve been getting a lot of attention lately, and there are some psychos out there. But we’re okay now.”
I nodded and let him lead me into the house. Noah made us tea. I couldn’t stomach fluid without throwing up, but I could handle tea and coffee. When we walked into the living room, I looked out of the window. I noticed the red car in front of the gate. Fear grabbed hold of me, and I struggled to breathe.
“Noah,” I said in a hoarse voice. “The red car is here.”
“I can’t believe this,” Noah said. As we stood by the window and watched, Nicole stepped out of the red car with a bag over her shoulder. She opened the bag and retrieved a small round object that she threw toward the cars. It hit with a crack, and I realized she was throwing eggs.
“What the hell?” I exclaimed.
“I should have known,” Noah said when he saw her. “Let me handle this.”
Noah walked to the front door. I stayed behind as he walked up the driveway toward Nicole. She was still throwing the eggs, ignoring Noah.
When hereached to her, she finally stopped and turned to him. I couldn’t tell what they were saying at first. Noah was talking in a calm voice to her. But she shook her head, waving her hand toward my car. Noah crossed his arms, defensively.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Noah said, his voice raising enough for me to understand what he was saying.
“Like hell, I can’t,” Nicole said. “You can’t treat people this way. You can’t just take what you need and walk away.”
Noah shook his head. “That’s not what happened, and you know it. Get out of here before I call the police.”
Nicole was furious, now. It was clear in how much she was shouting, in her stance and the way she jabbed at finger at Noah whenever she spoke.
“This is not the end of it,” she sneered.
Noah said something I didn’t catch. She turned around and picked up a rock, hurling it at my car. It smashed the back window with a crack. I pressed my hands to my mouth. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
“That’s it,” Noah said, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“You’re a filthy whore!” Nicole shouted toward the house before she jumped into her car and tore out of the driveway. Noah pressed the phone against his ear, talking into it as he walked back to the house. By the time he reached me, he had called the cops and he was fuming.
“Are you okay?” I asked when he was inside.
“She’s crazy,” he said. I could see how angry he was. “She’s lost it completely. I’m so sorry about that.”
I shook my head. “It’s not your fault.”
“No, but I’m still sorry you saw that. And your car window. I’m so embarrassed.”
I shook my head again. “At least Lilly wasn’t here to witness that.”
“Thank God,” Noah said. “I don’t want her to see that people can be like this, and I don’t want her to recognize Nicole as someone she knew, once.”
I nodded, not sure how to respond to that. I understood where Noah was coming from, but there was nothing I could say. Nicole had called me a whore. I knew I wasn’t one, I didn’t sleep around or anything, but I was pregnant and hormonal, emotional after the rough two weeks I’d had, and it had cut me nonetheless.
The police arrived a few minutes later, sirens wailing as if it could change anything. A squad car pulled up with two officers, and Noah explained to them what happened. He had security cameras everywhere, which I hadn’t noticed, and after he gave his statement, and I gave mine, Noah took them to the security room for them to see the video of what Nicole had done.
When they were done watching the video, Noah and I stood with the officers.
“It’s vandalism, that’s for sure,” he said, scribbling in his notebook. “And harassment. It’s hardly jail time but we have the footage, your statements, and a license plate. We’ll be in contact with her and give her a fine and a warning. If anything happens, let us know. The more complaints I get, the better our prospects become for a restraining order.”
A restraining order sounded like exactly what we needed. I couldn’t deal with someone like Nicole slashing my tires and throwing rocks at my windows. I had so much I needed to deal with already.
When the police finally left, I sat on the couch in the living room. The tea we had made was cold by now, sitting on the coffee table in front of us.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said to Noah after we had sat in silence for a while. I wasn’t only shaken up by what had happened, I was scared. What if this kept happening? What if Nicole did something more drastic?
“The police are looking out for her, now,” Noah said when I raised concerns.
I shook my head. “How long will it take before they can do something? She needs to do more before they can get a restraining order against her, but I don’t think I can handle more. This thing we have. I don’t know how to handle it.”
“We’ll be okay,” Noah said.
I rolled my eyes. “Will you stop saying that? It’s not okay. This isn’t fixed. You have a stalker that is on my case now, and I’m scared she’s going to do something to me. What happens next time I come over? Or we’re out together and Lilly is with us? What do we do then?”
Noah nodded. “I know it looks bad.”
“It looks horrible. I can’t be with someone that has this following them around.”
Noah’s face fell. “What are you saying?”
I took a deep breath, shaking my head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe I should go home.”
Noah nodded, looking somber. “I’ll call you an Uber,” he said. It was the second time I’d had to Uber home because Nicole had done something to my car. It was two times too many, and I couldn’t live like this. All the way home I wondered if it would be for the best if I stayed away from Noah.
When Iarrived home, my apartment door was ajar. I frowned. I had locked it before leaving the house earlier. I knew I had. I’d checked it. But it was open, now.
I pushed open the door slowly and cried out.
My apartment had been ransacked. Everything was turned over, the contents of drawers spilled onto the floors, curtains ripped down from the windows. Even the contents of my fridge had been pulled out.
I backed out of the apartment and dialed the police with trembling fingers. After I reported it and was told a squad car was on its way, I called Noah and told him what had happened, too.
“I’ll be right there,” he said but I stopped him.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please, don’t come.”
He sounded dejected, but I couldn’t deal with this. This was Nicole. I knew it was. There was no proof – I didn’t have security tapes like Noah had – but I knew it was her. It was since the press had caught wind of our relationship that everything had started going wrong.
“We meet again,” the officer said when he arrived and it was the same officer that had come to Noah’s place.
“It looks like it,” I said.
When I gave him my statement, and he took photos of the house, he sighed.
“If we can find anything proving that it was her, anything at all, she’ll do jail time for breaking and entering at the very least. And we can get a restraining order, too. But until we can be sure it was her, we have to go through the process. You might want to consider somewhere else to spend the night.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to stay here if she knew where I lived. But I didn’t want to go to Noah, either. It only pissed Nicole off more, and I’d had enough of Noah for now. I had to clear my mind and figure out what I was going to do.
So, I dialed the only other person that I knew would be there for me no matter what.
“Beth?” I said when she answered. “I need a place to stay for the night.”