The Romance of Nick and Layla (Parts 1-3) (3 page)

"Who?"

"Missy Page."

I shrugged my shoulders and leaned on the counter, leaning closer to him. "She probably got a tip from someone who recognized me the day I went to the gynecologist. And her being the little wench that she is she decided to think of the most obvious thing. That I’m pregnant."

"But you’re not."

"No, Nick, I’m not. We’ve already had this discussion." I picked up my drink and headed towards my bedroom. I could hear Nick following me, his footsteps padding softly along the carpet.

"How crazy would that be? Having a kid together, I mean. A little carbon copy of us."

"Nick, that would be an act of God. I’d be more concerned about your one night stands getting pregnant all of a sudden. You see them more than you see me."

"Must be driving you nuts." I could practically hear the teasing smile in his voice. Everything in the world must exist solely for his entertainment. Especially me.

I stopped walking. I had to keep myself from dropping my alcohol all over the floor. I turned around slowly and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"All that thinking you do. All of your worrying."

"Believe it or not Nick you do not occupy my mind 24/7. I do have a life."

"Right. Your lovely, fancy, happy little life here."

"What are you getting at? This was our agreement. I am the back-up girl and live here while you be the slut in our home. Isn’t that the perfect arrangement for you, Nick? You get to have your cake and eat it as much as you want?"

"Well you weren’t exactly protesting as you boxed up all your stuff and hauled it all out here. Why is that, by the way?"

What an ass. I just rolled my eyes and walked into my room, setting down my glass by the bed and unpinning bobby pins from my hair. "You didn’t seem to mind it too much when I found out you were cheating on me and I turned my head the other way. I pretended that everything was still fine. I played our little game."

"And how many times have I asked to stop playing the game?"

"Including this morning? Once. Once out of how many months?" I slipped out of the stilettos and stretched my toes across the carpet. I glanced down at the clock. It was barely ten and I knew it would be hours before I could pour myself into bed. Hell, maybe I’d just drink myself to sleep. "Besides, you couldn’t be faithful to me if you tried."

"Yes I can. I can be faithful."

Sure. "That’s not enough for me Nick. I want more than that. That’s why I married you."

"Oh, so that’s why? And here I thought it was the sex." What a bastard. Didn’t he know how to be anything but conceited? I don’t know why I put up with his bullshit sometimes.

That’s a lie. I know why. Whoever asked what’s love got to do with it obviously never met Nick Hudson. I pulled a padded hanger from my closet and hung it up on a door frame. I slipped my dress up and over my head and hung it on the hanger to breathe. And then my heart stopped. I felt Nick’s hand touch my skin gently, just at my shoulders, and move down my naked back along the curve of my spine.

"How can I be faithful when you don’t have enough faith in me to at least try?" It was the softest I had heard him speak in a long time. I closed my eyes and slowly drifted further into my pain. His touch was electric. It always tore my heart up to pieces. But my skin always reacted to his touch, bumps raising, hair standing on end, skin heating.

"How can you possibly trust me if you don’t believe in me?" he asked. My breath caught in my throat as he caressed the back of my neck, from my hairline down to the tops of my shoulders. He was always so good at this. He made me so powerless just by touching me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak.

"I think about you every day, Layla. Think about how much I’d love to have you in our home again. You may have moved away, but you never left my heart."

"Nick," I whispered. It was the only attempt I could make to stop him. His hands were only gone for a minute then, but I felt them again, this time running down my arms. He pulled me against his chest and I could feel his skin touching mine. He was so warm. So soft. So manipulative. Oh but I didn’t care. I was lost in him. Lost in his touch. This pain he inflicted upon me was burning me up. I bit my bottom lip and tried to stop myself from moaning.

I opened my eyes as my courage came back to me. I turned around so that I was facing him, my bare chest against his bare chest. I looked deep into his blue eyes and found what I was looking for.

"Just because you can speak the way you do doesn’t mean I’m going to give in. You’re still a bastard and I’m still not interested in being taken advantage of." I ran my hands along his cheeks and down to his neck. Instinctively I pulled him down towards me and our lips connected. I kissed his bottom lip and pulled away with it slowly before letting go. He rested his forehead against mine and brushed his fingers through my hair, gently massaging my scalp.

"Can’t we just pretend for a minute that we’re not seriously fucked up, Layla? Just for tonight?"

"And what about tomorrow?" I saw something change in his eyes and I didn’t know what it was. "You’ll go back home, back to your life? And I’ll live mine here?"

"Or you could come back with me."

"No. I won’t share a bed with you. Not when you bring others in it."

"I won’t."

"Yes, Nick, you will. From this moment on I’m not your backup. You make me your wife, the only woman in your life... Or I’ll make you my ex-husband. What’s it going to be?"

Chapter Three

"You and Nick had sex last night?"

I looked up at Dr. Brown and felt uneasy. I always felt uneasy when talking to her about Nick. I always felt like she was judging me. I know she’s supposed to remain objective but if I were in her shoes I’d probably judge me. "Yes," I said, my voice strong and untainted by emotion. "Three times."

Dr. Brown nodded her head and jotted something on a legal pad. "And when was the last time you and your husband engaged in intercourse?"

I looked up to the ceiling as if the date were written on it. "Another awards show in January. In Vegas."

"So about two months."

"I guess." This is the way our sessions usually went. I would talk and then Dr. Brown would ask a question that would inevitably reiterate whatever I had just said. Then she’d jot it down, follow-up with a question that only adds further detail to the previous reiterating question and nod her head. And then I’d say something extremely intelligent along the lines of ‘I guess’ or ‘Sure, that sounds about right’. Then I’d look at the clock to see how much longer I had.

Twenty-five minutes. Damn.

"Where is Nick right now, Layla?"

"In bed. He wasn’t awake yet when I left."

"Does he know about your sessions with me?"

"I’ve mentioned it a few times but I seriously doubt he paid attention."

"All right. Let’s talk about last night. What happened?"

It was all I could do to keep the memory from taking over my body. I could still feel the touch of him on me. "Nick and I went to the Grammys, came back to my house, had a few drinks, started kissing, which then led to having sex. Three times."

"And how do you feel about that?" she asked. She adjusted a button on her blazer but kept her full attention on me and my messed up problems.

"I don’t mind. Nick usually likes to do it more than once."

Dr. Brown smiled politely. "I mean, how do you feel about having sex with Nick?"

"I’m favorable to it when I’ve been drinking. That’s when I forget about how much of a jerk he is."

"So you never sleep with your husband when you’re sober?"

Is she kidding me? "Doctor Brown, I don’t want to have sex only under circumstances of alcoholic inebriation. I’d like to have sex with my husband every night, possibly twice or three times or more a day. However, Nick has decided that his penis should be shared by as many of his adoring f as possible. Therefore, he gives it up to all of them and not to me."

"And how do you feel about that?"

Jesus Christ. I swear to God that the very first class any future therapist takes is How Do You Feel About That 101. "What am I going to do to stop it?"

"Ask yourself this question: What am I not doing to stop Nick from sleeping with other women?"

What am I not doing to stop Nick from sleeping with other women? I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "This is a trick question."

"How do you figure?" she asked me.

"Because if I tell you what I think I’m not doing to stop Nick from sleeping with other girls won’t you just say, ‘Well Layla, why don’t you do that?’?"

"Not necessarily. The point of this exercise is to give you clarity."

"Doctor Brown, no offense but... The point of Pilates is to make my ass look like a Kardashian. Only after a year of Pilates it looks more like a slightly rounded pancake, which I can live with. The point of coming to you is to help me understand why I’m married to such an asshole and how I can possibly make him fall in love with me again. Only after a year of coming to you I still can’t figure out what it makes Nick an asshole. And I have no earthly clue how to make him love me. So wouldn’t you say that doing Pilates provides more clarity than your so-called therapy?"

"So there it is." She gave me one of her psychology smiles.

I scrunched my eyebrows ever-so-slightly and stared blankly at her. Is she for real? Am I really paying a hundred and fifty dollars an hour for some lady to say ‘so there it is’ without even giving me a fucking clue first as to what IT is? "There what is?"

"You’re comfortable with settlement. You’d like to know why you married someone like Nick, but you’re fine with just realizing that he is the way he is. Am I right?"

"I don’t know. You’re the one with the PhD, not me."

"Layla, when you and Nick have an argument would you say you immediately give up trying to defend your side, or do you concede to whatever his side is? Or do you fight until he believes what you believe?"

"With Nick Hudson you concede. He’s the most bull-headed, stubborn man on the planet and there’s no changing his mind. That’s just the way he is."

"And you’re fine with that?"

"How am I supposed to change him?"

"I want you to try something Layla. The next time you and Nick get into an argument over something small, maybe the best basketball team or the best flavor of ice cream, whatever it may be, I want you to try and change his mind about his own opinion. If he says the Bulls are the best basketball team and you say that the Lakers are the best, change his mind. At the end of the argument I want you to have Nick conceding. Make him think that the Lakers are the best."

"Okay. And how will this help me?"

"I believe this exercise will help you to break down a wall. I have been observing you for quite some time and would say that you have a tendency to give in too quickly. Try to be the victor for once, not the conquered. Start small. And let me know how it goes."

" You’re telling me to have an argument with my husband... and to win?"

"Yes."

"But what if he’s right?"

"Don’t let him be. Make you right. Make him wrong."

"What about my ultimatum?" I asked. Yeah, what about it? That is why I’m here!

"Ah, yes. Either Nick remains faithful to you or you’ll divorce him. Is that correct?"

"Yes. I think it’s a perfectly fair request."

"So do I."

Huh? Wait a minute, since when does a therapist just agree with you? That’s not what they’re supposed to do! If they agreed with everything we said we wouldn’t have to see them more than once or twice.

"I think you have the right, as Nick’s wife, to be the only woman in his life. By giving Nick the ultimatum you’re letting him know that you want your relationship to continue on the way it should. Perhaps by being faced with the idea of possible divorce it will make him open his eyes and realize what he has before him."

Nick opened his eyes. "Are those fresh bagels?" He sat up in the bed and rubbed the sleep from his face. I sat down on his side of the bed, across from him, and laid down a white paper bag filled with fresh-baked bagels, muffins and other pastries. I handed him a cup of hot coffee from Starbucks and smiled cheerfully.

"Fresh bagels, scones, muffins, all your favorites. And a caramel macchiato, low-fat, just the way you like it."

"You went out for coffee and pastries dressed like that?" he asked before taking a sip of his coffee. I looked down at my outfit. Black pencil skirt, grey cardigan, black, low-heeled slingbacks and wire-framed glasses with my hair back in a sleek ponytail.

"What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? This is Anne Taylor."

"No, nothing’s wrong with it. I’m saying that it’s a bit overdressed for breakfast is all."

"I had an appointment. Come on downstairs. I don’t want crumbs in my bed." I picked up the bag of goodies and carried them into the kitchen. I pulled out a basket lined in blue and yellow cloth and placed each pastry inside carefully, trying to make it look pretty. Nick came in dressed in sweats and a white shirt. And he was wearing his glasses.

"How’d you sleep?" I asked as I poured myself a tall glass of fresh orange juice.

"Better than I’ve slept in months." He took a bite from a scone and I just barely got a plate underneath the pastry as pieces began breaking off. "But I always sleep good when you’re in bed with me."

"Well. You sleep ‘well’ when in bed with me."

Nick just rolled his eyes and took another bite. "So what’s on the agenda for today?"

I put my hands up on the counter and watched him watch me. "Well, I was planning on doing some shopping and maybe driving to Malibu for a late lunch. Is a driver coming to get you?

Nick’s face scrunched in confusion. "Huh?"

“To take you home?” I reminded him dumbly.

"I cancelled that."

"Why did you do that?" I asked stupidly.

"Isn’t that what you wanted?" he asked me.

"No, I don’t recall ever asking you to cancel your driver."

"I meant, isn’t that what you wanted subconsciously or whatever? For me to stay here so that you and I could attempt to reconcile?"