Chapter Twenty-One

~Nicole~

I paced back and forth in my living room, my new cell phone in hand as I waited for my mother to arrive.

It had been one hell of a week since James had left. No one at work knew about my change in situation because I didn’t let any of them know about my situation in the first place. But all of them did seem to notice a change in me, and I spent three days telling them that I had just started up a new vitamin regiment.

Somehow, during all that and settling into my new place, I managed to call my mother. It hadn’t been easy, and I had spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday evening just staring at my phone. But I knew I had to do it. James was right, I needed an emergency contact who was only an hour or two away instead of four.

I didn’t tell her much, of course, only that I needed to see her. I was… surprised at how happy she sounded to hear from me. Given how badly we had parted, I didn’t think she’d even pick up my call.

Not that I was ready to forgive her and call it a day. That would take a long road full of patience and I wasn’t sure I had that yet. But I could at least take the very first steps and let her know that there was the possibility of an olive branch.

My phone buzzed, and I answered it without missing a beat. Sure enough, it was her, and the sound of her voice made tears prick at the corner of my eyes.

“Hey, I think I’m upfront. Is there a place to park?”

God, I was crying way too much lately. I really hoped it was my pregnancy hormones because I didn’t think I could live with being so emotional for the rest of my life. The world was hard enough to survive already.

“Yeah, around the side of the building. I’ll meet you at the front door.”

“Alright dear, I’ll be there in just a minute.”

“Great.”

I hung up and I was suddenly just about as nervous as I had been when I had first moved to Vegas. I was opening a door that I thought I had long since closed, but it was what I needed to do. Anything for my little bean.

I grabbed my keys and headed out. I chose to walk down the stairs, figuring that I would ride the elevator up. After all, exercise was an important part of pregnancy, and I wanted to get it in before I was the size of a beach ball.

Sure enough, I reached the bottom just as my mother was calling me. I walked up to the glass door, pressing the button to let her in. I knew that the apartment’s logo on the door was enough to block my lower body, but she was going to see as soon as she stepped in over the threshold.

It was quite a surprise, but I didn’t know how to tell her. It seemed far too important to tell over the phone yet blindsiding her seemed rude too. Where was some TV psychologist to tell me what the appropriate move was?

I didn’t know, and it was too late, because she was stepping in, her arms open for a hug.

“There’s my baby!”

She walked towards me, intent on a hug, and I stood there for an idiot. She almost made it to me before her eyes flicked from my face down to my growing stomach, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

“Oh Nikki… are you…?”

I nodded slowly, and those stupid tears were trickling out again. “…you’re gonna be a grandma… if you want to that is.”

I had nightmares about this moment ever since she had said she’d come. Hundreds of variations ranging from her calling me a whore to turning on her heel and leaving right there.

Funny, I spent so much time telling myself that I didn’t need her approval, that she had never been very supportive for most of my life so why should I expect her to be now.

But the truth was, in this moment, I needed her to be. I needed her to smile and hold my hand and be a lifeline. I was strong, but there was only so much strength you could expect me to have when I was responsible for another life inside of me.

“A grandmother?” Mom repeated. I finally had the balls to look at her face and I saw that her eyes were misty too. “I’m gonna be a grandmother?”

I nodded and suddenly I was being enveloped in one of the tightest hugs I had ever been caught in. My mom, several inches shorter than me, was wetting my shirt with her tears, making me feel a lot less embarrassed about mine.

“Oh, my goodness, oh my dear lord,” she was sobbing. “My baby is having a baby!” She let me go but held onto my hands, stepping back to look me over. “Darling, you’re glowing. You’re absolutely glowing.”

We stood there for several moments, just crying and laughing and laughing and crying, until we were both sloppy messes. I didn’t know how much of it was because of the baby and how much of it was from just seeing each other again, but it was nice. I appreciated it.

“We should get upstairs,” I said finally, also not letting go of my mother’s hand. “I just got here so we don’t want the neighbors to get the wrong impression of me.”

“Yes, yes of course. I can’t wait to see it.”

I gave her hand a grateful squeeze and lead her back to the elevators, stopping only to ask her if she wanted a snack. But she seemed far too excited to eat and honestly so was I. If her reaction to my place was half as excited as mine, it would certainly be fun to watch.

“Wow, an elevator,” she remarked. “This is much nicer than your tenth-floor dorm with stairs only.”

“Yeah, but I had great quads that year,” I said with a laugh. Now that I was in a place of stability, it was easy to laugh.

“That’s my girl. Always looking on the bright side of everything. For being so practical, you were always so good at that.” She sighed and her eyes when to my stomach again. “I always wished that I had half of your confidence.”

“Confidence?” I snorted ever so slightly, if it was possible to slightly snort. “Confident is about the last thing I’ve been lately.”

“I… I don’t suppose I’m partially responsible for that… am I? I know I wasn’t the most supportive mother, and with what happened recently… well…”

Oh geeze, that was getting deeper than I wanted to be right off the bat. “Why don’t I show you my place before we start crying again?”

“Right,” she nodded, her lips pressed into a solemn line. She seemed just as relieved as I was that she had changed the subject. Maybe avoiding deeply emotional conversations just ran in the family.

“Anyways, when you see my kitchen, you are so going to flip!”

I lead her around my place, taking my time and showing her each and every detail. I liked to think that it was just to see her excited expression, but honestly, I was also delaying the conversation that I didn’t want to have but could feel brewing between us.

“And now that I’ve shown you the island, the fridge and the water dispenser, how about we move on to the bathroom? You will be so jealous of my bathtub!”

“Oh, will I now?”

“Uh-huh, I am ninety-nine percent certain you’re going to secretly hate me.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to use it as much as I can while I’m here. But for goodness sake, stop drawing it out and show it to me!”

I did, leading her to one of my favorite rooms in the apartment. Just like I knew she would, she oohed and aahed and did indeed swear that she was going to steal my tub. I guess we had surprisingly similar tastes considering how different we had ended up.

The rest of the place went by far too quickly. I really tried to draw it out, showing her every single possible nuance I could, but that could only last so long, and too soon we were sitting on the couch and the tour was over.

“I’m so happy for you, darling. Really.”

Darling? That was a new one. She was never much one for pet names, so the sudden sprinkling of them was weird. Did she feel guilty? I mean, she had plenty to feel bad about, but I didn’t want to have to play some sort of comforter while she confessed all of her sins. I had much better things to do with my energy.

Bu then she was opening her mouth and I had to brace myself for the onslaught. “I… why didn’t you tell me?”

Oh. That wasn’t what I was expecting. Was she choosing to go on the offensive? While my mother was temperamental and not very supportive, she never was one of those abusive narcissists who made everything about them.

“Well… Mom, we didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms.”

Her face screwed into a grimace. “I know, and I can’t apologize enough for that. I should have stood up for you, like you asked. It was wrong of me to tell you that you got yourself into the mess you were in -and I was wrong to call it a mess.

“Look, I know we’ve never been thick as thieves, and I made a huge mistake in how I treated you when you got back from college. But please, please know that you can come to me if you’re in trouble, or if you’re lonely, or just wanna talk. I want to make up for how much I wasn’t there for you before. If you’ll let me, that is.”

Oh wow. Now it had gotten the complete opposite direction. I didn’t expect her to full on apologize. I was so used to people dismissing my feelings or telling me that I was overreacting, that I almost couldn’t comprehend it.

“You mean that?” I whispered, hardly daring to speak.

My mother reached out and grabbed my hands, gently holding them within her own. “I do. I absolutely do, Nikki. I’ve done so much wrong by you and I just want to make it right.

“I can’t imagine you bringing my little grandbaby into the world on your own, so please, please forgive me.”

“I…I think I can do that. If given enough time.”

“Thank you,” suddenly she was reaching forward and enveloping me in a hug. I was surprised to say it, but it touched me in a way I didn’t expect. I had expected this whole trip to be a whole lot of shock, concern, lecturing and condescension. “I will try my hardest to be a good Mom to you.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that. I do.”

We parted, tears in both our eyes again. Goodness, I was going to need to rehydrate after leaking so much saline.

“So,” Mom said, wiping under her eyes. “Why don’t you tell me how this all got started?”

“Oh goodness, that is a story in and of itself.”

“Good thing we have the whole afternoon then.”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, realizing that there really was no way around it. “Well, you know how I went to Vegas, right?”

“The city of lights and sin? Yes, of course I remember. I was worried sick about you.”

“Huh, you have a funny way of showing it considering you never contacted me.”

She winced, and I felt a little guilty. If I wanted to heal this relationship, I couldn’t keep throwing her past transgressions in her face.

…did I want to heal the relationship? I felt like yes, but was I being pregnant, soft and hormonal? Ugh, when did like become so complicated?

“I know, and against I’m sorry. After you left, well… I thought that you didn’t want to ever talk to me again.”

“Well, you’re kinda right. I probably would have hung up anyways.”

She nodded solemnly. “I understand. In your situation, I likely would have done the same. But I do have to ask, why Vegas? You’re not into gambling, as far as I know, and you don’t really love dancing, so it wasn’t like you were going to be a show girl, so what took you all the way out of the desert?”

” Now that that was out of the way, she leaned forward. “But back to the story! You were in Vegas…?”

“Right! So, I was in Vegas, going to this interview, and it was a total sham! Man, you should have been there…”

I ripped off the band aid and dove right in. Obviously, I gave my mother the sanitized version; she didn’t need to know that James was literally the best sex that I had had in my entire life and that I had practically jumped his bones when he arrived in town, but I tried to be fairly honest other than that.

It took me a lot longer than I thought to regale her, with an especially large chunk dedicated to describing James’ hotel room. She didn’t seem nearly as impressed by it as I was, but I couldn’t help but feel it was because that suite was where I had made several life altering decisions that had completely changed everything.

I also left out how catty my coworkers often were to me and how lonely I had felt before James showed up, and how lonely I was afraid I would be once the newness of my situation wore off and I was all alone again. No one liked a mood killer, right?

By the time I was done, I felt like I had gone through the whole situation all over again, just at super speed. I was exhausted, my emotions were pretty raw, and I was feeling particularly vulnerable.

“Oh Nikki,” my mother murmured after a few seconds to digest everything that I had said. “I’m so sorry. I should have been there for you. Maybe if I had, none of this would have happened.”

None of this would have happened? I looked down at my rounded belly, which seemed like it had grown exponentially since I had a decent place to stay and so much less stress. There was no doubt that my life would certainly be so much easier without the precious life brewing inside of me, but now that I had my own, personal connection with whatever was growing there, I didn’t know if I could ever give that up.

I had chosen to bring this child into the world for reasons I still didn’t entirely understand. But I knew that my heart and soul was so wrapped up in the future I had planned for the two of us that even wishing to go back seemed like blasphemy.

“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe things were meant to be this way.”

“Maybe,” she said, squeezing my hand. “But I know for a fact that you weren’t meant to go it on your own. Look, I’m only a couple of hours drive from here and now that I’m collecting disability for my hip, I can come see you whenever you need. I respect that you’re independent and need your space so you won’t be asking for sleepovers every weekend, but when you need me, you call me, alright?”

The relief that flooded through me at that was uncanny. And for the first time in a long time, I was incredibly grateful for her presence.

“I will Mom, I promise.”

“Good, good.” She hugged me again and it was probably the most physical contact that we had had in years. “Now, how about I cook you some dinner? I brought the supplies for my famous lasagna in the trunk.”

“Lasanga?” I asked, perking up. “You know I would never turn that down!”

“I thought as much. You wait here, I’ll be right back.”

I watched her go, both of us smiling even if we were probably both feeling a little unsure about the future. I was just so glad that James had convinced me to call her. The world was a big place, after all, sometimes it wasn’t a good thing to be so untethered.