It Wasn't Supposed To End This Way (A Starkid Fan Fiction)

Chapter 36-"Happy" Valentine's Day?

Chapter 36

It's like I open my eyes and suddenly it's February 14th.

Well fuck.

I stretch out on the floor, Nicki's fuzzy carpet tickling my toes as I go. I've been sleeping in here since she got out of the hospital. She's been sick a lot lately, the baby not helping her to get better. I convinced her to leave the hospital last week, when she said she was feeling better, only to have her come home and throw up for about half an hour and have cold sweats. The worst part is, she throw up blood. Not a lot, but enough to be a bit scared. She's been seen by at least five doctors now, none of which will tell me what's wrong other than some type of cold. Joey's been over. A lot, actually. He told me he tells Emma he's going out with Darren or me or someone else half the time, and then the other half he brings her here. I don't like it, and neither does Nicki, but it's all I can do not to say anything every time Emma walks through that doorway. I can't break up their love because it's not fair. But I can't sit back and watch Nicki suffer.

She won't talk to me. She won't eat. She won't drink. She doesn't even want me in her room. But it's not like she has the power to stop me. 

"Why can't you just leave me alone, Alex?"  She had asked me last night when I fluffed my pillow and pulled the blanket up on the inflatable one person bed I had bought. 

"Because that's not what a best friend does," I had responded. She didn't say anything else, just went on her phone. She's been on that a lot lately.

I sit up and look at Nicki, asleep finally after having another rough night. She'd woken up twice, once to throw up and another time from a nightmare. Maybe I heard wrong, but I could swear she was calling out Joey's name...

The knock on the front door startles me, so much so that I slide out of the inflatable bed. "Fucking thing," I mutter as I rub my butt and stand. Who could be here? Sadly, when I look at my phone, I notice it's already 10:30, so what did I think, people were going to wait until after noon to come to the door?

I'm not surprised to see snow falling again outside the window this morning. It'd all melted by the beginning of the month, but obviously it didn't matter since it all came back anyhow. This snow was falling so much a lot of the schools in the area, hell on the East Coast were having multiple snow days this year. I'd heard that they had used about six or seven. Couldn't that have been me in high school?

I grab my Starkid sweater, my new favorite article of clothing, and my feet pad against the wood floor on my way to the front door. I'm curious who this could be. Usually the Starkid's knock and then walk in when they come to see Nicki. 

The only person I haven't seen lately is Dylan. Denise came twice in the last week since Nicki came home, but no sign of Dylan. Maybe it doesn't help he heard me telling Clark 'I love you' last week before Nicki came home after rehearsal. I don't know why it's a big deal to me. I realize now that Dylan never actually cared for me in the romantic kind of way. He's always been my best friend, and Clark saying he loves me opened my eyes to that once and for all.

I grab my glasses from the counter that I had left them for some reason there, and slide them onto my face before opening the door to the person on the other side.

A straight haired blonde with green eyes, large black framed glasses, a Rolling Stones sweater hidden under a large dark blue pea coat and jeans with uggs is standing at my door.

"Alex?" She asks me. 

"Holy shit, Natalie?" 

It had dawned on me a few days after therapy that Nicki had been on the phone with her younger sister, Natalie. And here she is, Natalie Joyce McKay, in the flesh, standing on our stoop. "What the hell are you doing here in New York?"