Not a Chance (Sweet Nothings)

chapter TWENTY-THREE



Arden woke up slightly hungover from drinking too much wine with Alice the night before. She dragged herself out of bed, showered and brushed her teeth. Then she went and sat on her bed. It was time to assess her situation. She looked around her room. She saw Nick's stupid favorite movies on her TV stand. One of Nick's stupid t-shirts over her footboard. The stupid perfume Nick had bought her that she hated. And since she was discovering that everything associated with Nick was, indeed, stupid, she decided it was best to purge her environment of the offending artifacts.

She went to her closet and grabbed a laundry basket. Then she started hurling everything that belonged to Nick, had been given to her by Nick, or even remotely reminded her of Nick, into the basket. She moved at a frenzied pace until she could find nothing more to put in the pile. The basket was nearly full. Nick had been a part of her life since she was a teenager. Arden stood over the basket feeling an exhilarating sense of accomplishment. She felt cleaner...lighter.

Then she looked down at her ring. She touched it lightly with the fingers of her free hand. She took a deep breath and gripped it. The phone rang.

Arden grumbled under her breath and picked up the cell phone. Emma's name was on the call screen.

"Hello?" Arden answered.

"Tonya had the baby," Emma said, without prelude. She sounded out of breath.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I got to be in there with her. It's just really amazing to me, watching a birth. Very exciting." Emma caught her breath again. "Dustin is supposed to come pick me up. I thought you might want to ride out with him. Travis is kind of in shock. It might do him good to have some company."

"Emma, I don't know..."

"Just meet him at the garage in fifteen minutes. He's expecting you." Then she hung up.

Arden hadn't planned on going out today. She shoved out of the ratty t-shirt and sweat pants that she'd put on, and into some jeans and a nice sweater. Then she pulled her hair up in a ponytail, grabbed her keys, and headed out the door.



Travis stood next to a nurse in Tonya's room. She was showing him how to change a diaper and then swaddle the baby like a burrito. Travis was mostly concerned with flirting with the nurse who, after she'd found out that Travis was not the father of the baby, was more than happy to flirt back.

Tonya cleared her throat from the bed in the background and Travis and the nurse turned to face her.

"Maybe you just hand me my baby and take it somewhere else, huh, Travis?"

The nurse looked up at Travis. "I've got some more patients to check on. But if you want, we could meet for lunch in the cafeteria."

"I don't know," Travis sighed, pretending to deliberate upon the subject. "I've got an awful short attention span and lunch is a long time away."

"Surely there's something I can do to help you remember me," the nurse said, staring at him seductively from under her long lashes.

Travis grinned and slid his hand around her trim waist, pulling her closer. He was about to say something when Tonya cleared her throat even louder. Travis dropped the nurse and glared at Tonya. He turned back to the nurse and smiled patiently. "Lunch would be perfect," he said.

"Great," the nurse said, clearly disappointed at being interrupted, but also excited about her date with Travis.

She bundled up the baby, handed her to Tonya and then left. Tonya stuck a bottle in the baby's mouth. Travis wondered why she wasn't breastfeeding.

"You know, Travis," she said, "It's very tacky to try to pick up that nurse when I just had a baby."

Travis shrugged. "It's not my baby. Are you jealous, my former bride?" He winked at her, which must have made her feel better because she blushed and smiled.

"Not by a long shot. I just don't want to see you do what you do. If you don't mind."

"Right," Travis nodded. "I will wait until I'm out in the hallway before flirting with anymore nurses. And I'm going to, too...because did you see that one who came in to change your sheets earlier? With the short, curly hair and that ass?"

Tonya shook her head. "She's not interested in you. I can tell."

"She just doesn't know me well enough, that's all. You'll see."

There was a light knock at the door and Emma came in, dragging Dustin by the hand. "Dustin wanted to see the baby," Emma said, beaming at Tonya.

Dustin wasn't smiling. "I was told that I want to see the baby."

"Oh!" Emma squealed. "Can we hold her?"

Tonya nodded and handed Emily to Emma. Emma in turn thrust the baby at Dustin who had no choice but to hold her in the crook of his elbow. Dustin looked up at Travis in horror.

"Looks good on you," Travis said.

Emma sighed and put her hand on her heart. "You really do look good holding a baby," she said. "Oh, you're going to make such a great father."

Dustin went completely pale and looked at Travis again. Travis just laughed.

Emma turned to him. "Arden's in the waiting room, if you want to take a break and go see her. We'll stay here for a while."

It was Travis's turn to go pale. He didn't know whether he wanted to see Arden or not. There were some really nice nurses here. But Emma took his arm, turned him around and shoved him out the door.

He found Arden in the waiting room, hugging her purse to her stomach and looking shell-shocked. She looked up at him. "I rode over with Dustin," she said. "Your brother does not like me."

"You just now figuring that out?" he asked.

She nodded. She set her purse in the chair next to her, stood and hugged him. When she stepped back she kept her hands on his upper arms. "How are you doing?"

Travis shrugged. "I don't know. Good I guess. I've got a date."

"Oh, you do?" Arden laughed.

"Yeah. You surprised?"

"No. A nurse I suppose. What's her name?" She was grinning at him like she thought it was cute that he'd gotten a date. He was slightly annoyed that she wasn't jealous.

"Name? Uh...I think it was Jamie...or Jenny..."

Arden shrugged. "Close enough. How are Tonya and the baby?"

Travis shrugged again. "No complications. The baby seems healthy. It just lays there, so I don't know how you tell. But it breathes and cries and shits and stuff...so I guess it's healthy."

Arden was smirking at him, still. He wondered what the hell was so amusing. "She, Travis. You call the baby...she."

"I'll call it 'she' when it starts looking more like a human being and less like a squid."

Arden sighed and rolled her eyes.

Just then Travis's nurse came out to talk to another family. Travis's back was to her. Arden stood on her toes and peered over his shoulder. "Is that her?" she asked, an amused glint in her eye.

Travis glanced back. The nurse saw him and smiled. He turned back to Arden. "Yep."

"She's cute," Arden said. "She's coming this way."

Travis turned to meet her.

"Hey, handsome," she said. But Arden came up beside him, slid her arm around his waist and rested her other hand on his chest so that he had no choice but to put his arm around her shoulders. The nurse's smile died. Travis stared down at Arden in confusion.

"Hi..." Arden looked down at the nurse's name plate. "Hi, Jessie. I'm Arden. His fiancée."

Travis's eyes went wide. He looked at Jessie and laughed nervously. She glared pure death at him. "Nice to meet you, Arden," she growled, still staring up at Travis.

Travis opened his mouth to talk, but nothing came out.

"You'll have to forgive him," Arden said with mock sweetness. "He's new to the whole monogamy thing. Sometimes he forgets about me."

Jessie gave her a tight-lipped smile. "Of course." She walked away, giving Travis one last deadly glare and a flip of her middle finger.

Arden was grinning, clearly trying not to laugh. She turned and went back to her purse. She slung it over her shoulder and came back to his side. She took his hand and started pulling him toward the hallway. "Come on," she said. "Let's get coffee."

They were halfway to the cafeteria when Travis finally laughed. "I don't know what just happened back there."

"Oh, don't worry. You dodged a bullet. You're welcome by the way."

"I don't agree. She was really nice."

"No, she would have been one of those super clingy women. When you tried to break things off she would have gotten all vindictive and scary. I saved you."

They made it to the cafeteria and Arden bought them coffee. Travis collapsed at a table, confused, more than angry. The cafeteria was relatively empty and therefore quiet. Arden sat across from him, slid his coffee across the table and lifted her own to her lips. There was something different about her. She looked peaceful. Travis didn't know what this meant.

"Was that fun for you?" Travis asked.

She smiled, closed-lipped. "Yes. And I think I want you to quit making dates with strange women for a while."

"Really?" Travis felt a sudden surge of excitement.

Arden nodded. "And when you get Tonya settled back home with the baby and you find you can get away for an evening, I'd love for you to come over."

"To your house?"

She nodded matter-of-factly. "I had so much fun during our snow-storm whenever we cooked together. Maybe we can do that again. I've been recording Food Network shows that I like so I can learn how to make some of the recipes they demonstrate. Sound fun?"

Travis swallowed and shifted in his seat. "Yeah. Sounds fun."

"So, maybe Saturday? If you're able to get away?"

Travis nodded vigorously, trying with all of his might not to knock over the table and tackle her right then.

She stared into her coffee and smiled. "I appreciate you restraining your excitement."

Travis cleared his throat. "You're welcome."

"I've got another treat for you," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Yep. You get to drive me home. Because I don't care if Emma is with me, I'm never getting in the car with Dustin again."

"What did he say to you?" Travis asked.

Arden added another packet of sweetener to her coffee and swirled it around. "Nothing. He did nothing but look at me dirty. I tried talking about you and when he had to reply, it was in monosyllables and grunts. I've never known with so much certainty that someone hated me."

"He doesn't hate you, sweetheart. He's just convinced you're the source of my misery lately."

"Am I?" Her hair fell into her face and he longed to push it back. She did that herself, though.

"Not entirely."

She nodded. "Well I won't hurt you anymore. I have to finish breaking up with Nick before anything can happen between us," she said, just as though she were discussing her to-do list for the day, "so I'm not going to kiss you today."

Travis felt the blood leave his brain at the mere mention of kissing her. He was so starved to be loved by her that just the thought of a kiss lit him up. "But you're going to kiss me after you break up with Nick? Maybe on Saturday?"

"Oh, definitely on Saturday. Possibly before if the break-up is pretty clean cut. I'll call you."

Travis sat on the edge of his seat. She was digging around in her purse for something. "Arden?" he said, getting her attention. He looked into her pretty brown eyes and felt himself start to smile. "You're so straight-forward and calm about this, I just have to make sure...we have a date on Saturday...right? A date? Like, I can put the moves on you and you won't completely reject me, right? That kind of date?"

She looked into his eyes, smiling. But suddenly her eyes welled up and her smile became strained. "A real date." She nodded, some of the tears spilling down her cheeks. "I'm very much looking forward to having the moves put on me. My parents are going out of town this weekend. So we've got the whole place to ourselves."

Travis couldn't sit still for the excitement. He grabbed her hands and brought them to his lips, closing his eyes and relishing the feelings that filled up his chest. He opened his eyes and looked at the ring on her finger. "When's this come off?"

She pulled her hand back and started digging through her purse again. "Soon as I can find...oh, here it is." She pulled out a small, velvet drawstring bag. Then without any hesitation, she slid the ring off and dropped it in the bag. "I'll try to get this back to him today. I'm thinking about doing it at the bank while he's working. It can't get too ugly if we're in public."

Travis felt a brief moment of fear. He hoped she would never break up with him. But if she did, he hoped she would show more emotion than this. "Don't you love him at all?"

She met his eyes. "No. I don't. And I was recently made to realize that everything I want out of marrying him, I can actually have by myself. Which leaves me no reason to marry him."

Travis reached for her hand again, and she didn't pull it away. He held it and stroked her fingers with his thumb, thrilling at the absence of that ring. "This is the single best moment of my life," he said softly. He hadn't actually meant to say it out loud.

"Oh, Travis," Arden said. She was trembling just slightly, the only sign of emotion there was. "I'm going to see to it your life is filled with moments even better than this one."

He grinned then. "Saturday."

She nodded. "Saturday." She drank the last of her coffee. "Can we go see the baby?"

"Sure."

Travis kept his hand on Arden's back all the way back to Tonya's room. While she held the baby and leaned over it, he brushed her hair back behind her ear. He rested one hand on her waist and watched her face as she smiled and made baby talk at the baby. Travis couldn't stop touching her. She didn't seem to notice him hovering around her, or else she didn't show it. He figured as long as he wasn't annoying her, he was just happy to follow her around.

She handed the baby back to Tonya and made a little small talk with Emma. Then she took Travis's arm and looked up at him. She was telling him it was time to go. Like they'd been married forever and all they had to do to communicate was send little signals back and forth. Travis beamed down at her.

"I'm gonna take Arden home," Travis said, not taking his eyes off of her. "I'll be back in an hour or so."

"What?" Dustin jumped to his feet. "You're leaving me here? Alone?"

Travis looked up at him in surprise, prepared to tease him for being such a wimp. But then he saw the genuine fear in Dustin's eyes. Something was going on with him.

Emma laughed. "You won't be alone, silly," she said, wrapping her arms around Dustin's waist. "You'll be with me."

Dustin was silently pleading with Travis and Travis couldn't understand why. Still, he couldn't leave his brother in this situation if it was so uncomfortable for him. "Well, actually, you could drive Arden home, Dustin. You have to get back to the shop anyway. Neil's there all alone."

Dustin nodded. "Sure. I could do that."

Arden went stiff at his side. "No!" she said sharply. "That's okay. I'll walk. Thanks."

Travis touched her cheek. "He doesn't bite. Do you Dustin?"

Dustin shook his head. "Not at all. I'm more than happy to take you home, Arden. Give us a chance to talk about Travis behind his back, right?" Dustin laughed nervously.

Arden stared at him like he'd just sprouted a third eye. She looked up at Travis and he begged her with his eyes to please go silently. She looked back to Dustin. "Okay. Thanks." She gave one last wary look at Travis.

Emma kissed Dustin goodbye, clearly oblivious to the fact that he was having some sort of problem. Then Dustin ushered Arden out.

After they were gone, he found Emma grinning at him. "So?" she asked. "What's changed?"

He smiled, feeling more peaceful inside than he'd felt in years. "Everything," he said.