Falling for my Ex-Fiancee’s Best friend

Everything was going smoothly. Perhaps that should have told Nathan that something was about to go wrong. But it didn’t, and he continued, kept up hope and enjoyed the light that seemed to radiate from Demelza’s presence in his life.

They had both returned home from work one day, tired and determined to eat and sleep, and then perhaps rest in each other’s arms. They had gotten the eating part down, and Nathan had just pulled Demelza to himself when the phone rang.

“Baby,” Demelza muttered.

Nathan made shushing noises in his throat while he smothered her neck with kisses.

“The phone.”

“Don’t answer it. Don’t focus on the sound. Focus on my voice instead. Focus here…” he stressed.

Demelza closed her eyes and let Nathan’s wandering kisses take her someplace else. She was very close to floating now. She arched her back and pressed herself into him.

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“Oh, Christ.” Nathan groaned and rubbed his eyes, but Demelza was already off of him. She walked to the telephone in the living room, sauntering in a way that made Nathan’s eyes linger on her. She picked up the telephone.

“Hello?” she said into the receiver, but the call had been dropped.

She heard her ringtone playing from her phone. Odd, thought Demelza. The telephone was just ringing. Her phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

“Hello,” she said when she had picked it up.

“Mel baby.” The words came out in a garbled rush. Demelza didn’t like the sound at all.

“Mother?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you for a long time now. I tried the phone, I tried_”

“Calm down,” Demelza said and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I was on the phone just now when you called. What’s going on?”

Demelza heard her mother swallow. There was just that little moment that seemed like infinity passing. Then she heard her mother breathe again.

“It’s your father, baby. He’s sick again.” her mother broke the sad news to her.

“Again?” She was tired of hearing the same thing. Her father had been sick the last time and she had rushed over thinking that it was an emergency, and she had gotten herself abducted. Perhaps there was no real reason to rush whenever terrible news was broken. Perhaps…” she paused.

“You don’t understand, Demelza. We need you. The doctor… your father… just come to the hospital. And come quick.” her mother urged and the call ended.

“Who was it?” Nathan asked. Demelza walked like she was in a daze, back to Nathan’s arms. “It’s my mother.”

“Oh, what did she say?”

“My father’s sick.”

“Again?”

“That’s what I said.” Demelza said, still staring into space. She blew a puff of wind from her nostrils and looked at her phone again. What in God’s name have they done now? She thought as Nathan pulled her closer, rubbing her back and telling her that it was going to be alright. But she didn’t really feel like it was going to be alright. Nothing felt right. It all just felt different this time.

That brought an end to their romance and she told Nathan she just wanted to sleep. Rest in particular and escape the possibility that something might be wrong.

After thinking for a long time, she finally fell asleep and the night hours passed faster than she’d imagined. She kept tossing and turning on the bed until a nightmare brought her back to reality.

After she had spent the rest of the night bothering about whether to visit the hospital or not, because there was a chance that it wasn’t half as serious as her mother made it sound. Nathan had convinced her to take the day off work so they could go see her father in the hospital.

She consented only under duress. She wanted to see her father, but there were still a lot of things and emotions that she needed to process.

They both had a quick shower and they wasted no time in heading out. She was silent through the drive to the hospital and Nathan occasionally squeezed her shoulder to comfort her.

In a few minutes, they got to the hospital. Thankfully the traffic was not heavy and it was a free drive all the way.

“Oh, my baby.” Harriet cried the minute she saw her. Demelza went into her mother’s hug and stayed there while her mother sobbed into her hair. “I thought you weren’t going to come.”

“Why would I not come?” Demelza asked with furrowed brows. At that moment, the doctor stepped out of the ward. He was a portly man with wiry hair. He was studying the clipboard he held in his hand.

“Doctor,” Nathan approached him. “What’s going on?”

“Ah, there’s a lot going on, I suppose, who are you?” the doctor bumbled.

Nathan, taken aback by the question, hid his surprise with a cough and replied, “Nathan Storms.”

The doctor eyeballed him and retorted in exasperation. “Good to know. I was asking how you were related to the family, but that’s all by the way, anyway. His condition is not terribly serious. But we need to run a few more tests on him.”

At this, Demelza choked. “A few more? Wasn’t he here all night? Shouldn’t you have run all the tests you needed to run on him by now? We should at least know what’s wrong with him.”

“Perhaps you would like to do my job, miss? Since you’re the expert on inconclusive test results.” The doctor shot back. Harriet held Demelza by the arm to stop her from answering again. The doctor sighed. “I’ve said what I said. His condition right now isn’t too serious because we’ve gotten him stabilized. But we still need to run a couple more tests on him to be sure of what we’re dealing with here.”

His eyes darted between the three of them. “Sounds good to everybody?”

Nathan and Harriet nodded solemnly while Demelza glared.

“Good! Now if you’ll allow me, I have other inconclusive tests to run and more people to meet to do my job.”

When the doctor left, Demelza turned to her mother. “What was happening to him before?”

But Harriet only dragged her inside the ward. There, her father lay on the bed looking quite something unlike what she normally knew him to look like. He had lost a lot of weight. Too much weight. Even though he looked fine, his face was pale. She instantly felt bad for being away for so long.

Demelza wished she had come much earlier. It wasn’t at all like the doctor had said: that it was not so serious. The man in the stretcher looked like her father, had his name, but he couldn’t have been the one. This man looked way too different.

Demelza struggled to find words.

“It’s going to be alright.” Nathan spoke behind her. She leaned back into him, needing to feel something solid. Something safe. Someone secure. She could trust Nathan. She turned to him and buried her face in the crook of his neck.

“Don’t worry about any of this,” he said as he patted her on the back. “I’ll handle everything. You can head home. I’ll come back soon, too.”

Demelza protested, but Nathan insisted. Eventually, after she had nodded off, Nathan had picked her up, said goodnight to Harriet and driven her home. He placed her gently on the left side of the bed, and then he too, completely tired out by the events of the day, fell asleep beside her.

“Are you still awake?” Demelza asked as she placed her head on Nathan’s chest. They had taken off only the most liminal amount of clothes.

“Is this a real question?” Nathan whispered, eyes still closed.

Demelza ran her fingers over his chest. “I just can’t stop thinking about him. I keep thinking… what if he was gone?” Pause. “Harriet had called, and she was saying all those things, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘none of that matters. They’ll be fine. It’s never been serious. I need to actually start living my life.’ You know?”

Nathan ran a hand through her hair but said nothing. He knew better than to interrupt her now that she was talking. He kept thinking back to the activities of the day and how utterly tired he was. How utterly tired they both were, and how tomorrow was another work day.

The clock on the bedside table read 11:02PM. Almost a whole hour until midnight. It had not been too long ago since they had both woken up from their fatigue-induced sleep, and still not being able to do much else than stare at themselves, they had eaten a whole bucket of ice-cream pulled from the fridge, and wafers.

“I blame myself,” Demelza whispered in a very low tone. She thought Nathan had already fallen back asleep, but he stroked her hair again, and she knew he had heard her.

“Sometimes, I blame myself for leaving them.”

“There’s no reason to blame yourself, Mel. We all made choices. We just have to hold out hope that everything’s going to be alright.” Nathan thought for a while, swallowed hard. “We’ll go back to the hospital first thing tomorrow morning. You’ll be able to spend as much time as you want with them. Now, let’s get some sleep.”

Demelza exhaled softly and closed her eyes.

Then her phone began ringing again.