“Mmm…” she mumbled.
“You gotta get up and get dressed before Katie wakes up. It’s already eleven o’clock,” he whispered.
“Okay.”
“I’m going upstairs.”
“I’ll be gone by the time you get back. I promise.”
“No,” he said quickly. “Don’t go.”
She grinned. “You weren’t lying when you said it wasn’t a fling? I mean, you weren’t just caught up in the moment or anything?”
“Have you ever known me to lie?”
“I guess not.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m just going to get dressed.”
When he got upstairs, Katelin was coming out of her room. “Who were you talking to?” she asked.
He paused. “Listen, go get dressed, and then we need to have a little talk.”
“I’m not in trouble, am I?”
“No, you’re not. I just need to talk to you.”
In fifteen minutes, they were both dressed and cleaned up. Katelin followed Nick downstairs, but when she got to the living room door, she stopped in her tracks. “That’s my mother,” she said softly.
“Yeah, it is,” Nick replied.
“I thought she was dead.”
“She kind of isn’t…”
“Obviously not. She’s sitting on our frickin’ sofa. Where the hell have you been?”
“I’ve been in Austin, Texas, for the past fifteen years,” Michelle replied.
Katelin sat down on the floor and took a deep breath. “Does someone wanna explain to me what’s going on here?”
Michelle looked at Nick. “Do you want to or me?”
“I guess I will,” he replied. “You know your mother was my roommate for a few months, and then I kind of got her pregnant. She had you, and then we were engaged to be married. Just when you turned a year old, a few weeks before the wedding, she and I were having a lot of troubles. We fought all the time. I sort of gave her the impression that I didn’t love her, so she left.”
“You left?” Katelin exclaimed incredulously.
“Let me finish. She left a note saying she didn’t want to take you because she knew how much you meant to me. Leaving was her decision, and she wasn’t going to make me suffer for it. She told me not to try to find her or she would just move again. She said she loved us both.”
“Oh, and that makes up for you not being in our lives for the past fifteen years?” Katelin said to Michelle. “You loved us both?”
“This is what I thought would happen,” Michelle said softly.
“I can’t frickin’ believe this. I’d always thought my mom died fifteen years ago. Now all of a sudden you wanna come back into my life? I can’t let you do that.”
“Katelin, please understand,” Nick pleaded.
“And you, you lied to me! You told me she was dead!”
“That’s because I didn’t want you to hate her for leaving!”
Katelin stood up and stormed out of the room. “I can’t handle this right now. I’m going to Mike’s.” Both Michelle and Nick winced at the sound of the door slamming.