Awakening Lucy

by Susan Bella Ikin

  “I don’t know what to do next”, Nick confessed, “That outfit is pretty amazing, it seems a waste to take it off, but on the other hand, I like what is under it very much, so I’m in two minds what to do here!”

  “Well”, I suggested slowly, “We’ve got all night, maybe we can try a few different ideas out”. With that I put my arm down and rolled over so that I was lying on my front, again giving Nick a good view of my backside. With a growl, he strode to the bed and laid at my side, looking into my eyes while he half laid over the top of me and snaked a hand down my back. Nick slid the hand over the skin on my buttock, and then massaged downwards, between my legs, slipping the little bit of string to one side as he worked his hand around to the front. I squirmed. Nick’s magic fingers began to work on me, thrusting in and out and making sure that I was fully aroused and eager for him to enter me with his shaft, which seemed to be growing larger by the second. Nick moved around behind me and pulled me upwards so that I was kneeling on all fours on the bed, and then slipped the tiny piece of material to one side and entered me from behind.

  We hadn’t tried this before, and I reveled in the new sensations from the different position. I was able to use my hands and knees to rock backwards as Nick thrust forwards and so he was able to thrust quite deep, each time causing me to gasp in exquisite ecstasy. Nick was kneeling between my legs and holding me by the thighs, and using the leverage he had to push deep and grind his hips before he withdrew each time. Before long I was immobile as my inner muscles were contracting harder than ever before and I didn’t think I could move. Suddenly I heard Nick give a loud grunt and push deeply, holding the position as he climaxed as well. I collapsed forward to the bed, breathing deeply, as Nick went to the bathroom.

  When Nick returned, his face was grim.

  “It broke”.

  “What broke?” I asked, looking at him – he seemed whole.

  “The condom. I don’t know if I wasn’t careful putting it on, I was in a bit of a hurry, or if maybe because we were a bit rougher than usual we might have torn it, but for whatever reason, it broke”, and he looked at me with curiosity, and something else I couldn’t identify, in his eyes.

  I exhaled, and wondered what this could mean. Clearly pregnancy was a concern, but I wasn’t a child anymore and the thought wasn’t all that scary. But was Nick worried? Is that what that emotion in his eyes was? I didn’t know what to say, but realized that Nick was waiting to see what my reaction was.

  “Well”, I started slowly, “Does that worry you? It doesn’t worry me as much as it probably should, a baby wasn’t part of my plan, but if that’s what happens, I can deal with it, can you?”

  Nick hesitated for a very long time, and something started to die inside me. I hadn’t been thinking in terms of marriage and babies, wanting just to enjoy what we had and see where it went, but if Nick was so reluctant to have a permanent tie to me, then it appeared his intentions were clear. I watched his face for a while longer, then slowly got up from the bed and walked into my own room, closing the door behind me.

  20.

  The next morning we breakfasted in silence, then checked out of the hotel and caught a taxi to the airport, where we were meeting our parents for the connecting flight to LAX, where we would board a flight to Australia. It appeared that Nick had nothing to say to me, and I certainly didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t believe that I had misjudged him so badly. While I didn’t expect him to be overjoyed at the idea of an unplanned pregnancy at our age, I also didn’t expect him to ignore me or the prospect of a child either. After all, the sex had been consensual and we had both participated, it wasn’t like I had forced him into anything!

  Thankfully when we met up with Mum and Percy, they were both so full of excited chatter that they didn’t notice that neither of us was saying very much, and I encouraged their chatter with questions about their trip in order to cover up any obvious silences from Nick and myself. During the flight to LAX, Mum and Percy were sitting in the row in front of us, and Nick and I were seated side by side. I put on my earphones and watched the inflight entertainment. We had a short stopover, so I told Mum I would meet her at the gate as I had some duty free shopping to do. In actuality, I had already done enough shopping on this trip, I just wanted to be alone for a while. I made it to the gate in time, telling Mum that I hadn’t seen anything I liked, and took my seat when it was time. Luckily I was so tired from the last few nights of broken sleep, that I was able to spend a lot of the flight time sleeping, and so I could easily avoid talking to Nick. By this time, the silence between Nick and myself was obvious, and I intercepted a few worried glances from Mum, gently shaking my head at her so that she didn’t ask any questions.

  On arrival at Tullamarine, we collected our luggage and Nick and I stood to one side while Mum and Percy said their goodbyes. We then got in separate taxis, and as soon as the door shut, Mum turned to me but I silenced her by holding my hand up.

  “Not now Mum, it’s been a long day, and I want to go home, shower, brush my teeth, and have some real sleep. We’ll talk later, promise”.

  Mum nodded and sank back in her seat, commenting on how different the weather was now. Of course it was still winter in Melbourne, and we had just spent almost two weeks in a northern summer, so our travelling clothes were a bit light for the season.

  As soon as I laid my head down on my own pillow, the tears that I had been holding back for the last day and a half became too insistent, and I turned my face into my pillow to muffle the sound of my sobs, and cried like I hadn’t cried for years. After I had cried myself out, I slept deeply and without dreaming.

  I woke up feeling disoriented, and realizing it was still the middle of the night, I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and rummaged in the pantry for something to eat, finding a soup for one mix and putting the kettle on to boil. I took my snack back to bed and sat up in my bed sipping my soup and scrolling through the photos on my phone. There were so many photos of Nick, I was having trouble understanding how quickly the mood had changed. He had been so solicitous, and so tender, and later so passionate, how could he be so uncaring now? Finally I felt tired enough to try sleeping again, so turned out my light and laid down, but instead I just lay there thinking.

  I knew that the baby that Adam and Sarah were expecting hadn’t been planned, but instead of shutting Sarah out of his life, Adam had persuaded Sarah that they should get married. Not just because of the baby, but because he loved her and wanted to marry her anyway, the baby just made him want to hurry things along. While I didn’t expect Nick to want to marry me, we hadn’t even talked about any sort of future together, I would have thought he would at least want to know if he was going to be a father or not. I would have expected him to want to be involved somehow, but clearly I was wrong.

  No matter what, it didn’t matter. If I was pregnant, I was keeping the baby, and I was going to love the child just as much as if I had planned to conceive. I had locked my heart away for so long, I wasn’t going to do it again.

  The next day I gave Mum an edited version of events, telling her that her strategy had initially worked, that Nick and I had enjoyed our privacy in the hotel rooms with the adjoining door that she and Percy had engineered, but that we weren’t compatible and had decided not to continue to see each other. I don’t think Mum believed me, but she accepted the explanation, or maybe she didn’t but was going to compare notes with Percy, I really didn’t care which.

  During the day I received a number of calls from Nick’s number, and a couple of texts asking me to call him back, but wasn’t ready yet. I was still feeling very washed out from the flights home, with the stopover time we had spent almost a whole day travelling, and with the time difference I felt very disoriented and tired. As I was returning to work on the following Monday, I wanted to get some rest so that I would be able to do my job properly. If I was pregnant, I was going to need my job, so I didn’t want to jeapordize it.

  That started me t
hinking about my job. Now I understood what Adam had been concerned about. If things went sour between myself and Nick, it would make it difficult for me to keep working with Adam. If Nick and I had just decided to stop seeing each other as I had falsely told Mum, then I thought I could still have worked with Adam, but what if I was pregnant? The child would be his niece or nephew, and what would that do to our working relationship if I was pregnant with his brother’s child, but no longer seeing his brother? Well, I would deal with that if I had to, I thought, and not before.

  21.

  The next day, Mum went out to catch up with her bridge friends and tell them all about her trip. I used the time to call Nick, he had continued to leave messages so I thought if I didn’t he would continue to call. His voice sounded so good when he answered the phone, that for a brief moment I forgot how angry and disappointed I was with him.

  “Lucy, we need to talk”, he said, when he realized who was calling.

  “Really? I thought the time for talking was in New York.” I responded, stung to anger, I had been reliving the events of our last day over and over and had been stewing on how badly I felt about how it had ended.

  Nick exhaled and said, ”Look, I know I handled things badly, and I’ve been going over it all in my head and I understand why you’re angry, but there’s a few things about me that you need to know. Can we meet somewhere private so we can talk? If you like, I can pick you up and we can go for a drive somewhere, or I can come to your house, or you can come to mine, whatever you prefer, but I really want to speak to you”.

  Well, he sounded sincere. If we were going to be parents, we would have to be civil to each other, so I decided to talk to him. But where? My house was out of the question, Mum would be back in a couple of hours. Somewhere public was probably a good idea, but what if I got upset? I hated the thought of crying in front of strangers, and if we were in Nick’s car I would be stuck wherever we were at the time. I decided to drive to Nick’s house, so that I would have my car there and could leave if I wanted to. So I asked Nick for his address, left Mum a note telling her I was going out and didn’t know when I would be home, and drove to Nick’s house.

  As I pulled up in the driveway, I had to admit that I was impressed. I was expecting some sort of townhouse, or apartment, something suitable for a bachelor, but this was a really big house, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. Not the horrible, concrete boxy construction that is so popular as it is probably cheap to build, but this was a house full of corners and details that invited a person to want to explore the inside to see if it was as interesting as the outside.

  I walked up the front steps and as I raised my hand to ring the bell, the door was whisked open and I saw Nick. He looked nervous. He held open the security door and I walked in, heading in the direction he indicated and finding myself in a lovely sunny family room area overlooking a terraced garden with a pool near the glass doors. I remembered now that Nick was a builder, so I supposed that he had custom built this house to suit himself. The pool explained his physique, he obviously used it to keep fit.

  I sat on the couch and accepted the cup of tea Nick offered, looking around as the kettle boiled and he prepared the drinks. When Nick returned to the seating area with the drinks, he sat in the chair opposite me so that he could face me as we talked.

  “Ok, I’ll start. I’m sorry about how I acted in New York. The prospect of you being pregnant scared me” – he held up his hand as I took a breath to interrupt – “please Lucy, let me speak. You know I was married, and that my wife died, correct?” At my nod, he continued. “I don’t speak about Amy any more, it was a long time ago and I don’t know if Adam or Amelia have said anything to you, but I am guessing not, correct?”

  “No, Adam only told me what you‘ve just said, and Amelia didn’t say anything at all”, I replied, wondering where he was going with this information.

  “Amy was my first girlfriend ever. We met in high school, and started dating before graduation. We got married, and had our whole futures ahead of us, and eventually decided to start a family. Amy went into labour, and everything was fine at first, but during delivery something went horribly wrong. The placenta detached from the uterus during labour, and Amy hemorrhaged. I lost them both, Lucy. Both Amy and our beautiful little baby died before the doctor could do anything to save them. It was the worst day of my life”. He broke off and stared into space for a while, and I felt so awful for him that I moved to the arm of his chair and sat on it, enfolding him in a hug. I thought I could see where this story was heading. After a while I returned to my chair and indicated for him to continue.

  “After that, I was unbearable for a while. I don’t know how my family put up with me. Eventually, the pain was a little less. Then Amelia got married and got pregnant, I was a nervous wreck and drove her and Robert crazy with questions about her health, until finally Robert took me aside and told me to stop badgering them, Amelia was really worried about me – Amelia was worried about me, and she was the one who was pregnant – and I had to accept that what happened to Amy was an awful tragedy, but it was rare. I was so relieved when Josh was delivered safely and Amelia was healthy, and was a little more relaxed when Amelia fell pregnant again, but as you know, Lana came along, so I accepted that Robert was right, and complications such as Amy had were rare. When Adam told me about Sarah, he told me to shut up and not worry, Sarah didn’t need to know about Amy or she would worry about me, so Sarah doesn’t know either.

  Amy died over fifteen years ago, and I haven’t seen many women since then. I have always been extremely careful, I wasn’t ready to go through pregnancy and childbirth with a woman ever again.

  So, that brings me to what happened between us in New York. I overreacted big time. I know that you might not fall pregnant at all, and even if you do, what happened to Amy shouldn’t happen to you, but I was just thinking of myself, and how I felt, and I wasn’t thinking about you and what you must be thinking. So, I thought you had a right to know why I acted like a great big idiot. That’s all I can say really”.

  By this time I had tears in my eyes. If I thought I had a tough time, being tossed aside by an immature boy, and losing a baby during pregnancy, surely Nick had experienced worse, having his wife die in the labour ward, and losing their child too. At least I had survived my problem pregnancy, and had the opportunity to try again. But I still had concerns about where we would go from here.

  “Ok, I understand why you behaved the way you did. I won’t say I wasn’t hurt and angry, because I was, and when I tell you my story, you will understand why, but first, there’s a question I have for you. Just say I’m not pregnant this time, and we keep seeing each other, would you be happy for me to ever get pregnant?”

  Nick looked confused at this, I don’t think he had thought past the immediate problem.

  “Well, I don’t know. I suppose I never even thought about whether you wanted a child or not, I was too busy at first just not scaring you away, then in New York, well I was too busy enjoying the time we had together to really think about what might happen in the future. Why?”

  “Well, it’s like this”, I started to say. “You guessed right when you guessed that I was hurt by a man in the past, and that’s why I’ve been reluctant to get involved with anyone since. He was actually more of a boy than a man, and I was young too, as you know. He convinced me that he loved me, when all he wanted to do was to get in my pants. Once he did, I never saw him again, and I never got to tell him that I had fallen pregnant”. Nick started at this, but I kept talking: “I lost the baby. Mum knows. I was upset about everything, losing the baby most of all, but also about being stupid enough to think myself in love when it was only teenage lust and curiosity, and allowing myself to be used and tossed aside by someone who didn’t even care enough for me to make sure I was ok, or even to check if I was pregnant. He didn’t care at all, we didn’t use any protection and he never called me again.

  I was so sad when I lost the baby. I knew I was
too young, and still in school, and it wasn’t the right time, but none of that mattered. I wanted that baby and was shattered when I lost it. That was more than twenty years ago, and I kept myself locked away from men all that time, asleep until you woke me up. Now I am awake, and have rejoined the world, I don’t want to let life pass me by anymore. If I’m pregnant already, that’s fine. I can deal with that. I have worked all my life and have some decent savings behind me, and have been fortunate with my investments, so I will get by just fine. But if I’m not pregnant now, that doesn’t mean I won’t want to have a baby in the future – I’m getting older and there aren’t many years ahead where I will have the chance. So what I need from you is for you to think about what you want from me, and if we are right for each other. Because as much as I have loved being with you lately, I have to think about myself now, and whether we are right for each other”.

  After this long speech I sat and looked at Nick and he sat looking back at me. After a while he said:

  "You've given me a lot to think about Lucy. I knew how I felt, and was guessing how you felt, but I obviously guessed wrongly. I thought you might be angry or have concerns, but can see know that you aren't. I hadn't thought past the immediacy of this particular situation, but you’re right, I should have. Of course, if there is a baby, you won't be alone, I'm not a callous youth who would just ignore you or our child, so that's not an issue. I guess the real issue is where we go from here, and what has changed between us?"

  I thought about that for a while. It was clear that something had changed between us, even knowing why Nick had reacted as he had didn't make things 'alright' just like that. Our relationship had to change, one way or the other. I remembered how Adam and Sarah had 'reset' their relationship, by having a new beginning, and I suggested that.