"You asked him about the meds."
"Oh that," Thorne said. "That"s just...they"re a...antidepressants and other stuff that his therapist prescribed. He has to keep taking them for another year at least."
"Okay. Sorry if that was personal."
"Don"t say that," Thorne said, finally reaching for the tea. "We share bodily fluids. It doesn"t get more personal than that."
"Do you think he"s going to be okay?"
Thorne stared at his cup. "I hope so."
ELENA.
It was a beautiful evening and that was why we decided to walk. Well actually it was me who suggested it; Thorne wasn"t much of a walking enthusiast apparently. I on the other hand, loved the feeling of my feet on the ground, the fresh air all around me. I even liked to experience whatever it was we were pa.s.sing by, good or bad. Walking in the city could be an entertaining activity if you knew how to do it right. Too bad Thorne wasn"t seeing things my way.
"You don"t like doing this," I said, trying to keep a straight face as we walked.
"Watch a dog pee on a homeless guy?" Thorne said, avoiding a puddle. "Not so much."
"You haven"t even seen the s.e.xual deviants yet," I told him. "There"s this one street I know, where an old man will unzip his pants and show you his p.e.n.i.s...like every time. Doesn"t matter if you"re a guy or a girl, he still does it."
"No one"s taking him away?" Thorne asked in disbelief. "How could no one report something like that?"
"Well that"s cause people usually just end up feeling sorry for him. He"s really old and sad looking."
"I bet that"s just an act," Thorne said. "I bet he gets his rocks off this way and no one sees through the act."
"So what if he is. Nudity is overrated anyway."
"Look at you," Thorne was actually grinning. "You"ve suddenly become the wiser one."
"Excuse me but I was always the wiser one," I smiled back.
"Elena?"
We both stopped in our tracks to find out who had called me by my name.
The same hazel eyes that I"ve been trying to avoid, they were standing right in front of me.
"Nick?" I said.
He was right there, behind us, and he looked furious. There was anger in his eyes that I had never seen before. It was kind of intimidating.
"Nick," I said, finally able to find my voice. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here? Were you following us?"
But instead of looking at me, Nick started glaring at Thorne for some reason. I didn"t like one bit where this was going and I had that feeling inside that Nick wasn"t here to just chat. But there were people around us and I felt a kind of safety in that. Of course at the same time, my mind was thinking of possible escape routes in case something did go wrong.
"You haven"t told her the whole truth have you?" Nick almost spit the words out at Thorne. "You haven"t told her everything Mr. Ryker."
I had no idea what he was talking about but when I glanced at Thorne, I knew what that look meant-confusion and being caught off guard.
"What do you want, Nick?" I tried to make him listen and this time Nick looked right at me and started talking.
"Remember that girl you saw with me?" he said.
"Of course I remember Nick," I said. "It was one of the best moments of my life."
I hoped my sarcasm was obvious enough and Nick would back off but he kept going in the same vein. "That girl," he continued. "You know what her name was?"
"No Nick, I have no idea and I don"t give a sh-"
"It"s Cyndi," Nick said. "Her name was Cyndi."
I knew I"d heard that name somewhere...
Thorne.
She was at the club with Thorne, but I hadn"t been able to see her face...
"Thorne was the one who sent her to me Elena," Nick said. "He sent her to break us up."
It was obvious Nick was just lashing out, trying to find something about Thorne to be angry with him. And to make me angry. "You think you know him Elena," Nick said. "But you don"t. I just had someone tell me the whole story. Thorne has been after you for a while now. I don"t know, he must have seen you somewhere. Whatever. And he planned to break us apart, so he could take my place. It was all planned, Elena! Every moment! It was premeditated!"
Nick has to be lying.
"And I"m supposed to take your word for it, Nick?"
Nick reached inside his jacket and produced a folded piece of paper that he had obviously been carrying around for a few days, and he handed it to me. It was a printed picture. Of Thorne. And that girl...Cyndi...the blonde Nick was talking about, that hair that I know for sure is a wig. I handed the picture to Thorne.
"What is this?" I asked Nick.
Thorne was quiet and I wanted nothing more than for him to deny this. I wanted him to tell this never happened, that Nick was making it up.
Nick wasn"t done.
He produced an envelope and handed it to me.
"Look inside," he said.
I had no choice but to do this and get it over with. Nick had come with a purpose and he wasn"t leaving until it was done, so I opened the envelope. There was a folder in there. Inside the folder, there were details, and odd doc.u.ments, newspaper clippings and other paraphernalia, but there was one thing common about each one of those things: they were all related to me or one of my pen names. Okay, so that part does kind of sound strange.
"What"s all this?" I asked "That came from his office," Nick said, gesturing toward Thorne.
So Thorne had information on me, big deal. I mean, it was a little impolite and not such a great thing to find out this way but still, there was nothing incriminating about that.
"You a.s.shole," Thorne couldn"t hold it in anymore. "You"ve been digging into my private life!"
But Nick wasn"t really concerned about that. He was only looking at me.
"Look at the date," Nick said. "It"s from before we got separated. When we were still together, Elena! He did this to us! Don"t you get it? He"s been lying to you all this time!"
Once again, I turned to Thorne, hoping he would lie to my face just to have a second spin on all this.
"Elena," Thorne said. "It"s not what it looks like."
I was about to think of something to say, but Nick didn"t allow me to carry out the conversation. From out of nowhere Nick sucker-punched Thorne and I saw Thorne reeling with the impact of the hit.
"Nick!" I yelled but it was too late. There was already a small war going on between them, because Thorne couldn"t stop himself and neither could Nick Jones. They were cursing at each other and then, Thorne had Nick pinned down and I knew he was about to do something awful- "Thorne!" I yelled.
Thorne"s arm stopped mid-swing.
His hand lingered around Nick"s throat for a while and then he let go of him. I was standing there with so many thoughts going through my mind. I didn"t know how to react or respond, I just knew that I needed to be far away from all this. But first, I needed to send Nick a message that he would actually understand.
"Listen to me Nick," I said. "What Thorne did or what some hooker did, or what anybody else in the universe did is not my problem. No one was forcing you to sleep with her, Nick. You get that, right? This wasn"t the first time you cheated on me. This was the last time for sure, but it definitely wasn"t the first time you"ve hurt me, Nick. Ever since we started living together you"ve been an a.s.shole! How could you not know that? You were treating me like s.h.i.t, always taking me for granted! I kept telling myself it was going to get better. That you will get better but you kept hitting your worst Nick! You kept trying me! Testing my patience! Why are you so surprised that I left you? Are you really that dense, or do you get something out of acting like you"re some deep, loving guy that I would hate to lose?"
"I"ve made mistakes Elena," Nick said. "I"m not denying it. I told you a million times I know what I"ve done. I"ve apologized! And I"m telling you it"s not going to happen again. Why can"t you believe me?"
I felt tired.
"Nick," I said. "It doesn"t matter now. Don"t you get it? I"m over you. I have been for some time but I wanted to wait and see if I was right. And that night, when I saw you...with her...I knew it was the right time to do what I did. If it hadn"t happened that night, it would have happened some other night Nick. All Thorne did was to speed it up!"
Nick was listening to this and I thought he got the message. But then he went ahead and said, "You don"t mean that."
"Nick," I made sure he heard it this time. "I mean every word. Stop doing this. Stop acting like we have a chance because I am telling you right now that we don"t. It doesn"t matter if I"m with Thorne or not. What matters is that I am never going to be with you again. Please, for the love of G.o.d Nick, stop bothering me or I will get a restraining order! And I know how much you hate legal proceedings."
I said this and went over to Thorne whose face I just noticed was bleeding. Nick stared at me for a while, but then I think he couldn"t think of anything to say so he turned and left.
"Are you okay?" I asked Thorne who had a nasty bleeding cut on his cheek. "Let"s go get you help."
ELENA.
I had been on the laptop typing away random thoughts when I heard someone coming into the room. I knew who it was before I even heard his voice.
"Let me guess," I said, without looking away from the laptop. "Penny let you in."
"I just needed to talk Elena," Thorne said. The bandage covering the cut on his cheek was a new addition to his face. "Can you give me five minutes to explain myself?"
I heaved a sigh out of frustration, and set my work aside, turned towards him, ready to listen to whatever he had to say. "Go on," I said. "You have five minutes."
"I saw you two at some event," Thorne said. "I saw you and I saw him, and I couldn"t help myself. I wanted to get to know you but someone told me you were engaged to Nick. It felt to me like I"d never get a chance. I decided to let it go but then, sometime later I went to the men"s room and I saw Nick making out with some girl from the same party. I realized what he was doing and it made me mad. I just felt like maybe I should tell you but I wasn"t even sure you"d believe me.
"Then, I had a friend find out some history about you and I found out about your writing. And the more I read you, the more I started to learn about you Elena, and the more I wanted you. That night, the first night we met, when you left Nick, it wasn"t a coincidence. I was the one who set Nick up with Cyndi. I even made sure there were pictures, just in case you didn"t get home when you were supposed to. I would have made sure you found out one way or another. I don"t know why I did all that Elena; I"ve never done this before. I just couldn"t bear the feeling that I would never get to know you. Or worse, that that b.a.s.t.a.r.d would keep doing this to you.
"So I was there, just in case, waiting when you walked out of Nick"s place. I wanted to make sure you were okay. That"s all. That"s why I followed you to the motel. It was because of me Elena and when I saw you all alone that night, crying, I wondered if I made a mistake. But when I found out more about Nick, I wasn"t sorry anymore. I saw what a jerk he was to you that day and I saw how you reacted to him, how you tried to make it sound like it didn"t bother you, like Nick isn"t that person but we both know that he is Elena. We know he"s not a good person, not for you, and you"ve known it for a while now, you told me yourself. You"ve had plenty of chances to go back to him but you didn"t.
"He obviously wants you! So what"s stopping you? You chose to stay single over being with him. You chose to stay with me over being with him, Elena because you know how much you mean to me. I"m not lying about that. I"ve never lied about that. I love you more than I"ve loved any woman I"ve ever been with. And I know, I"m not the perfect person, and I know I should have told you sooner, but I"ve lost so many good things...I didn"t...I didn"t want to lose you too."
"Is that all?"
"For now."
"You know what," I said. "Thorne I"m starting to hate surprises. And I"m starting to think that people, who have these surprises in store for me, are really just not the right match for me. Look at what happened with Nick. If I let this go, you"re going to do something like this again! Because you obviously do this a lot! You met me and you never told me anything and you"ve been lying to me ever since! How can I possibly trust you again?"
"I wasn"t lying to you about everything," Thorne said. "Just this one thing. I"m still the same guy, Elena. I"m still the same guy you met once when you were really sad and I am still the same guy you brushed off so many times, and I"m still the same guy you started seeing because you saw something in me. Because you wanted to be with me."
"Did you maneuver the whole work arrangement too?" I asked. "Did you somehow make Penny give me Brenda"s card?"
"I may have spread the word."
"I don"t know what to say to you," I said. "I don"t know if everything I felt for you was even true. It feels like something you manipulated."
"So what if it was manipulated?" Thorne said. "What matters is how you feel about me now, and how I feel about you. That"s what you need to focus on when you start deciding the fate of this relationship."
"How are you not getting this?"
Thorne walked towards me. "I get it," he said. "I do get it. It"s just, by the time I realized what I was doing, I was already in too deep! I"m sorry, Elena. I"m sorry I made things harder for you and I"m sorry about the whole manipulation bit but please, you need to think about this before you decide to throw all of this away."
"That"s not what I"m doing-"
But my words hadn"t finished when Thorne kissed me on the forehead. "My five minutes are over," he said. "I hope you can come to a decision soon, because I"m really missing you."
He said this and started walking out the door, but stopped and turned to speak. "I"ll be waiting," he said.
And then he was just gone.
ELENA.