LOGINPOV: Nichole"Nichole?"Xavier called as his eyes widened in shock seeing me present in his engagement party.The whole hall went silent and every glass stopped moving. All conversation died and over two hundred people turned and stared at the door where I was standing and nobody made a sound.Xavier had a velvet box in his hand and his knee was still coming off the floor. He looked at me like he was seeing something he had buried weeks ago suddenly standing in front of him and breathing.Elena placed her hand against my back as we walked in.My heels hit the floor and the people moved to the sides, clearing the way for me, but I kept my eyes on Xavier and kept walking.Then his mother stepped in front of me."What are you doing here, you creep?" She spoke with so much venom in her words. "How did you get in here?""I need to talk to Xavier Ma'am."I said."No, you need to turn around and walk back out the way you came.""Please, just let me….""I said get out of here! Let you what?" S
(POV: Xavier)We arrived at the most anticipated engagement party ever. Mira and I were to be engaged today. The hall was full and every seat was taken, every corner was occupied by someone important.Chandeliers pushed warm gold light across the room and the air smelled of expensive perfume and catered food with the ambition that gathered whenever enough wealthy people stood in one place. My guests got so busy with conversation and many crystal glasses caught the light and different calibers of people laughed in their conversation with polished bursts from every direction. Honestly, by any measure, it was a perfect evening.But I was very calmly walking inside the hall. I moved through it with a champagne glass I had not touched and a smile I had been practicing since six o'clock.Precisely it's just to shake the hands of my guests and welcome them warmly and move on. I said to myself.I had done this a hundred times in different boardrooms, charity dinners and shareholder meetings.
POV: NicholeI was still in bed at nine o’clock.I heard Elena moving around in the other room. Hangers sliding along the rail in my wardrobe and a zip opening and the sound of her getting things arranged a sif we are going to somewhere. She had let herself in early and started without even asking me because she knew that if she asked, I would say no.I stared at the ceiling.‘I'm not going,’ I thought. ‘I have already decided and I am not going.’Elena appeared in the doorway holding a deep green dress on a hanger and looked at me the way a woman looks at someone who is about to make a mistake she has already seen coming."Get up," she said."Elena, I've been thinking about this and I don't think….""Get up, Nichole.""I don't have an invitation. I don't belong there and I can't just walk in there and make a scene and it'll look like I'm desperate and….""You are carrying his child Nichole," She said it flat and clear, with no softness around it. "You are not desperate. You are a wo
POV: NicholeThe test was on the bathroom counter reading two lines, clear and pink and not going anywhere no matter how many times I looked away and looked back.I sat on the cold bathroom floor with my back against the tub and my knees pulled to my chest and I sobbed greatly, more like a kind that takes over your whole body, and makes your ribs hurt and your throat burn with your hands shake so badly you have to press them between your knees just to keep them still.“Xavier is getting married next month.”And I was sitting on the bathroom floor with a positive pregnancy test and nobody to call except the one person who had already seen me fall apart twice this week, which was my friend Elena.I called Elena right away and she arrived in eleven minutes. She must have driven fast because she lived twenty minutes away. She let herself in with the spare key, walked straight to the bathroom and sat down on the floor beside me without saying a single word. She looked at the test on the c
POV: Nichole Going out was not part of my plan. Elena left a list quite long on the kitchen counter before she left for home last night. Milk bread, fruit, crackers. She had specifically underlined crackers twice and besides that, the note was simply saying I should eat something real. So I grabbed my bag that Saturday morning, put on a hoodie and sunglasses and told myself I would be in and out in twenty minutes.I was not trying to appear like something. I had not slept well. My hair was loosely pulled back; no makeup, just me and whatever my face decided to do that morning. I moved through the aisles slowly, dropping things into the basket without really reading labels, just trying to get through the list and get back home.Anyway, I stood in the fruit section squeezing a mango, which I knew I was not going to buy, that was when I heard my name from behind my back. "Nichole?"I looked behind. A guy was standing about a couple of feet away holding a basket with one hand and look
POV: NicholeGoing out was not part of my plan. Elena left a list quite long on the kitchen counter before she left for home last night. Milk bread, fruit, crackers. She had specifically underlined crackers twice and besides that, the note was simply saying I should eat something real. So I grabbed my bag that Saturday morning, put on a hoodie and sunglasses and told myself I would be in and out in twenty minutes.I was not trying to appear like something. I had not slept well. My hair was loosely pulled back; no makeup, just me and whatever my face decided to do that morning. I moved through the aisles slowly, dropping things into the basket without really reading labels, just trying to get through the list and get back home.Anyway, I stood in the fruit section squeezing a mango, which I knew I was not going to buy, that was when I heard my name from behind. "Nichole?"I looked behind. A guy was standing about a couple of feet away holding a basket with one hand and looking at me







