Chapter Fifteen

~Nicole~

I pushed my lunch around my plate, far too anxious to chow down like I wanted to. I didn’t know it was my pregnancy or just my nerves that had me feeling like I needed to vomit, but either way it wasn’t pleasant.

“Do you want to take that to go?” James asked after the third time I picked up my fork only to set it back down again.

“Yes,” I said in relief. I guess my mother had been so stringent about her clean-your-plate policy that I had subconsciously been worried that we would think I was ungrateful for the lovely lunch he was providing me. And the last thing I wanted to look like was ungrateful.

Don’t get me wrong, while I was surviving before, and I knew that eventually I would be back on my feet just fine, it was nice to have this little reprieve. I was a fighter, yeah, and I never just rolled over and gave up, but it was still nice to have a break in the dark clouds.

I was still scolding myself slightly for sleeping with him, something that I very much should not have done, but at least I got two incredibly nice meals out of it -even if I couldn’t eat one of them at the moment.

Not to mention that he was giving me a ride to all of the apartments we were going to see today. I had spent the morning calling around to the ones I had bookmarked in my phone and managed to get four of them that were willing to meet us.

That in and itself was amazing, considering it was last minute on a weekend, but I was dreading it slightly. Apartment hunting always made me nervous, and this time was no different.

The waitress swung by and James asked for the check and for her to pack up my meal to go. I was confused as she took my plate away, but my brain belatedly supplied that this was one of those fancy places that made your to go box for you.

Crazy, I thought that was just a thing in movies, and yet there it was right before me. I had a feeling that was going to happen a lot if I continued to interact with James. He really came from a different world from me, didn’t he?

Granted, I was still leery of his help. It would be so easy for him to troll along with me, saying he’d do this and that, only to disappear in a flash. That was the nature of people after all, always looking out for themselves first. Not that I could cast stones, considering that I had run out of an entire city and given up on contacting him to protect my own interests

“You ready to go?” He asked once the waitress returned with my food, packed all nice and neat in a box.

“Yeah,” I answered softly, trying to hide how my hands were shaking slightly as I grabbed the box and slid out of the booth.

Thankfully I wasn’t entirely to the waddling part of pregnancy yet, so I was able to walk somewhat normally as I followed along behind the towering James. I wondered if he would be around to see me get to that point or would duck out the first time I puked.

I didn’t know, so I supposed I would have to wait to find out.

Shrugging to myself, I hopped into his car. This time it was me who punched the address in and we were on to our first location.

“So, what made you pick this apartment?” He asked as we drove along, brick building after brick building whirring by. Apparently, St. Louis was the brick capitol of the world, or at least that’s what people told me. It wasn’t like I had researched that myself. “Is it near your work? Does it have a view?”

How did I explain ‘it was fricking cheap’? I had a feeling that someone like James wouldn’t really understand, so I baked up a reason that sounded at least demi-possible.

“It had utilities included and enough room for the baby.”

“Sounds reasonable enough.”

“Uh-huh. That’s me. Reasonable.”

He laughed at my little mini joke and I could only hope that his sense of humor kept on once we saw the place. I had never realized that hanging around a wealthy person could stress me out so much even when I enjoyed his company. I just found myself wondering if the things I liked or was used to would be irritating or unacceptable to him.

I should have never agreed to this, but it wasn’t like I could backflip out of his car and alley-oop into the atmosphere. So, I kept my nerves down until we reached our first stop.

“Is… Is this it?” James asked, sounding genuinely surprised as we pulled up to a tall but very skinny apartment building that looked like it once might have been popping in its hay day, but the ruthless progression of time had long worn at its edifice.

“Yup,” I said, forcing my voice to be arch and bright as I slid from his car, which -by the way- was possibly the nicest car in the entire neighborhood. “We should make it quick though. You don’t want to leave a ride like that alone for too long around here.”

He just raised his eyebrows, so I hurried to the door before he could think of how to phrase the question that was probably cooking in his mind.

I reached the front door and pulled out my track phone, half hoping that the man I was supposed to meet wouldn’t show up, but sure enough, he answered after one and a half rings.

“Y’ello?”

“Hi, it’s Nicole. I’m here for one of your apartments.”

“Ah sure! I’ll come down. I’m down in the basement working on the washing machine.”

“Oh, there are washing machines on site? That’s cool.”

But he had already hung up, so I put my phone away right as James joined me on the little three-step patio in front of the door.

We didn’t have to wait long, which meant I didn’t have to try to come up with some sort of assurance that the outside was worse than the inside. A few seconds later, I could hear a couple of locks click open and then an older man was standing in the doorway.

“Hey, you’re early,” he said, a bright smile on his older, wrinkly face.

I looked down at my phone. “Actually, I’m about three minutes. We hit a lot of red lights.”

“Well by St. Louis terms that’s early. Come on in!”

He stepped to the side and gestured me in, so I shuffled forward.

The inner hallway was just as cramped as it looked it would be from the outside, and the stairs leading upward were both thin and rickety, with well-worn carpet that was basically just frayed fibers in some spots.

All it took was a quick glance to James’ face to see that he was not digging it already. But hopefully he would understand that what was acceptable to me was far below even the lowest of his standards.

Thankfully, he didn’t say anything, allowing the older man to walk past the both of us and lead us to the third floor where the vacant apartment was. I was almost impressed that he got up them without much effort. I hoped that if I lived to his age that I would be just as active.

When we reached the door, it was impossible not to notice that the paint was chipping, and the handle was hanging on by just a few loops of the screws. The older man fiddled with the key for several moments, before finally swinging the door open.

Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I stepped in and there was no carpeting -I hated carpet with a passion- and there were plenty of windows. The morning light was spilling across the living room/dining area, and the small kitchen had a fridge and an oven that were fairly clean.

I stepped in, walking the edge of the room. I couldn’t believe it! I was actually impressed. There were no bars on the windows and every wall had an outlet, and the outlets were modern. I really couldn’t believe my luck. To have such a nice one right off the bat, well that was pretty much unheard of.

I turned to James, smile on my face, only to be brought back to reality when I saw that he was very much not feeling it.

“This is the place?” He asked, tone forced to such a neutral that it made my stomach flip.

“That it is, young man!” The older gentleman said, clapping the much taller James on the back. “Got a walk-in closet in the bedroom that can be used for the baby. Your sister here mentioned that she’s expecting in half a year or so.”

“Sister?” It was hard not to laugh at the incredulous expression on James’ face, but I managed. “Nicole, can we talk for a moment?”

“Sure,” I said, walking towards the bedroom so that we could have some privacy.

“Outside.”

“Oh, um, sure.” I looked to the older man and gave him an embarrassed smile. “We have a couple of other places to look at, but I’ll give you a call by the end of today.”

“No problem missy! Just let me know. I’m gonna get back to my air conditioning now, I’m still feeling summer in my bones during the day and winter at night!”

“Alright, you do that! Bye now!”

I hurried out, struggling to keep up with James’ insanely long stride. Somehow, without running, he made it out of the building and to his car before I could even reach the landing.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Are you serious with this place?”

“What?! I was actually impressed. I mean the outside is kinda meh but the inside was great!”

“Great? It was a slum in there!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “A slum? You want a slum you should have seen the trailer we lived in for a short while when my dad lost his job!”

“I…No. This is unacceptable. I cannot have my child living in a place like this! He could get lead poisoning, or-”

“You do realize that plenty of people live in places just like this and grow up to be both happy and healthy?”

“Good for them. But they are not my child-”

“Our child.”

“Right. Yes. Our child.” He leaned in close to me, his voice low. While he was being adamant, he wasn’t being forceful or rude. I could tell that his order was coming from a place of concern, but I could feel my temper flaring nonetheless. “Look. I’m just not comfortable with something like this.”

“I understand that, but these are the only ones within my budget month to month. I have to make sure that I have someplace safe for my child to live, but I also need to afford their medical care, schooling, food and save a little for emergencies.”

“Then let me pay rent for you.”

My heart skipped a beat at the thought and I shook my head adamantly. “No, absolutely not.”

“Why not? I’m offering you a perfectly viable way to live some place nicer.”

“Because you could just disappear at any moment! Or heaven forbid, die. Or change your mind and I would be stuck with a place I can’t afford. I’d be forced to break lease and scramble for another place to live after being spoiled by what you were providing with me!

“Look, I vastly appreciate how kind and accommodating you’ve been with this, but let’s be honest, you’ve had less than twenty-four hours to come to grips with a reality that I’ve been living in for a month. It’s easy to make promises now, but how will you feel two weeks from now? Or a month?

“I mean, the only reason you came here is because you want a divorce! And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the divorce too, but that’s not exactly the foundation on which we should build a dependency on. Emotions change and are unstable, and the last thing I need right now is instability.”

He didn’t answer for several moments, and I was afraid that I had crossed a line. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so frank with him, but sugar coating something to him just seemed disrespectful. He was a logical man, so I had gone with my gut and given him the practical answer.

“You’re right,” he said finally. “You need to protect yourself.”

Before I could ask him what he meant by that, he was pulling out his phone. I stood, on the opposite side of the car, watching as he dialed someone up with a stone face.

“Yeah, were you able to find someone?”

The voice answered on the phone, just loud enough for me to hear that someone was speaking, but not nearly audible enough for me to make out words.

“Great. Can you email me all that? I need to swing by them right now. Yes… really. Right now.” Another pause and the slightest of smiles crept across his face. “Thank you. I guess I owe you one at this point… yeah, yeah, I’ll remember it come time for the Christmas bonus. You have a good weekend now.”

He hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket. “Alright, hop in.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, somewhere between nervous and intrigued.

“You’ll see,” he answered, getting in himself. “But we’re going to make sure you’re protected.”

What the hell could that mean? I had no idea, but I guess I was going to have to trust him or barrel roll out of his car. I didn’t know what it was about this man that fascinated me so much and made me want to find out exactly what he was planning to do, but whatever it was, I hoped that it wasn’t going to get me killed somehow.