"Nick? Nick are you there? Listen, it's Carla, please don't hang up. I need you to come to Devon, it's important... It's to see our baby, our baby girl..."

June 2016

Feeling used but I'm still missing you.

Call. Delete. Call. Delete. Call.

"Delete." I hear Leanne's voice in my head, the voice which once meant everything and now meant nothing. Now another voice was the one I longed to hear, but it's the one I also hated.

I can't see the end of this, just want to feel your kiss

Your kiss, the one which electrified me.

Against my lips.

She's not you.

Against my lips.

See to me first, I've missed you.

Against my lips.

I thought we were happy?

"We are, I meant someone else."

We were.

I meant someone else.

Someone else.

But not me.

July 2016:

All this time is passing by.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I swear this clock would be a lot quieter if I wasn't here alone. Devon. Of all the places I could be. If you had asked me five years ago, when I was strutting around my factory, walking easily in high heels down the cobbled streets of Manchester, I'd have said no way.

But I had no choice.

Here with Nick would have been heaven. Here by myself was a place which seemed alienated to me.

But I still can't seem to tell you why.

Why I did it. Why I didn't tell you. If I had told you straight away, maybe we could still be here, living the fantasy which was once reality; our future. Why did I feel the need to sleep with someone who meant nothing, when I had everything right before my eyes, for the first time in my life.

It hurts me every time I see you.

The last time I saw you, it broke my heart. You were running again, running like you told me you were when you first saw me. You stopped again, to look at me, this time not with wonder, but with hatred and memories and hurt and then you carried on running. You carried on running out of my life.

I realise how much I need you.

I want you, I need you, so badly. You were the best thing that happened to me, Nick. Everything I touch breaks, everyone I love hurts, I was cursed. I told you, I would hurt you in the end. Problem is, I used all my chances.

I look out of the window and see nothing. A lonely cottage, dull green fields, the sea a murky brown colour, all alone.

"Imagine us; our little cottage, green fields, the sea just in the distance, us pottering in the garden. Just the two of us... Maybe three of us. Nick we've not got forever."

We didn't have forever. We had so much less than forever.

August 2016:

I hate you, I love you, I hate that I love you.

Shut up. It's been almost three months. My head was fucking around, worse than it ever had before, except this was different, this was worse. I'd never been so incapable of thinking. Two juxtaposing emotions were colliding again and again and it made my head ache.

"Look, this is crazy." I turn to Leanne, the words falling out of my mouth in a rush to clear my head of these thoughts. She turns, her face conveying a look of confusion. It wasn't the same, but it was something. Something to cling onto. "Let me take you out."

Don't want to, but I can't put, nobody else above you.

I didn't want to take her out, but I had to try and replace Carla, even if I couldn't put anybody else above her. She responds in a friendly manner, a manner which insinuates she has not picked up on what I am meaning to propose.

"No, properly take you out." I sigh, trying to focus my feelings on her. Trying to fall back in love with someone I had forgotten about, just by looking at her, remembering what we had... A second best relationship. Well that's what I could have again. I was once her second choice, when Peter wanted Carla. Now I wanted Carla, but Leanne was my second choice. A silver medal might not be as good as a gold, but at least it gives me something to work towards.

September 2016

I stroke my thumb over my tummy, feeling a soft kick which had only begun a few days prior to this moment. I listen to the dial tone from the mobile I was holding in my other hand, wishing it was Nick's, longing to tell him but hating myself for it. Would he care? Course he would. But would he want to hear it? Probably not.

"Carla? Is that you?" I hear Michelle's voice and snap back to reality.

"Hi, sorry, yeah." I blurt out, nerves shooting through me. "I need to tell you something."

"So do I." She sounds elated, a lot happier than how I was feeling. I knew exactly what it was going to be, exactly the same news as I had to give her. Except hers was less shocking and a lot more welcomed.

"I'm pregnant." I squeeze out, before she can say the same thing, and there's a silence at the other end of the phone.

"...That's my line." She says, warily, clearly a bit disappointed at the same time.

"And mine." I confess and there's another long pause. "...Congratulations, I bet Steve is chuffed."

"He's not, actually." She mumbles and this surprises me. A few weeks ago she was telling me how excited the pair of them were. "I found out I was pregnant and he started telling me he had changed his mind. Before I could even tell him, may I add."

"So does he know?" I ask, kind of annoyed I hadn't had a proper chance to vent at my best friend about my current situation. I glance at the scan photo which lay on the coffee table.

"Yeah, he knows." She replies, harshness in her voice. "And now he's pretending to be totally alright with it because he knows he can't undo the baby making part... I mean, why didn't he just say so in the first place? I asked him if he was absolutely sure and he said yes, he was all up for it. Two years ago he was heartbroken when he thought I might be and I wasn't. What's changed?"

"Well... A lot but-" I begin.

"I mean, most married couples have kids, don't they? I mean granted, you and Paul didn't, or you and Tony, or you and Peter... Sorry." She stops herself and a lump forms in my throat as she says it. This was part of the reason I was so nervous; the miscarriage, it couldn't happen again. "And I know you and Nick didn't have time to have children, but if you had-"

"Nick and I are having a child, except he knows nothing about it and he lives four hundred miles down the road." I finish her sentence in an appropriate manner and she falls silent again, processing what I had said.

"It's Nick's?" She tries to hide the shock in her voice, as if surprised I hadn't been sleeping around in the party central location of Devon. "What... How? When?"

"Did you bypass the part where I said I was pregnant?" I dig, a sharpness to my tone which she picks up on. "Yeah, it's Nick's... What the fuck do I do?"

"When did you find out?" She coughs slightly.

"About a week ago, I fainted in the shower and kept feeling weird bubbly sensations in my stomach for about a week, so I went to the doctor." I explain. "Then that's where I found out. I had a scan yesterday, twenty two weeks and I didn't even bloody realise-"

"Twenty two weeks?" Michelle splutters down the phone. "How did you not realise? Carla!"

"Because I haven't slept with anyone since May, have I?" I remind her. "It isn't really the first thing that came into my head."

"But... Twenty two weeks? Are you sure?" Michelle stammers. "That means you got pregnant in, what? April? You were pregnant before it all blew up with Nick, you could've saved your marriage."

"You think I don't know that?" I snap. "It's all that's been going through my head for the past week. Anyway, I'm gonna call Nick, is his number still-"

"Woah." She stops me. "You can't call Nick, what?"

"Why can't I?" I persist, annoyed at her lack of support. "It's his kid! I don't have much time to decide what I'm gonna do with it, I need him to know!"

"Carla..." She trails off, softly. "Nick's back with Leanne."

The words hit me hard. Of course he was back with Leanne. As soon as I was out of town, he would be straight back to the rebound. Their relationship was built on rebounds and second options. Leanne couldn't have Peter, so she had Nick. Nick couldn't have me, so he had Leanne. I don't know why I was so shocked, he hated me, he'd never want to get back with me, no matter what. I should have known that.

You want her, you need her.

"She's pregnant as well Carla..." She continues, being urged on by the silence I had created. "With some guy called Scott, it's not his." Wow, well wasn't that reassuring? "But he's agreed to raise it with her..."

"...Oh." Is all I can muster. I felt genuinely crushed, and Michelle could hear the disappointment in my voice, the heartbreak. I really thought maybe, just maybe, this would give us a second chance. A baby, it's what he had wanted more than anything. Instead he was settling with raising someone else's. "Well... Fair enough."

"I'm really sorry Car." She whispers, as I place my hand back on my stomach, feeling the soft kicks. The soft kicks of the baby I was going to raise myself, because I fucked up and now he had run back to Leanne.

And I will never be her.

October 2016

I miss you when I can't sleep.

I glance across at Leanne, who was sleeping heavily in the bed next to me. The alarm clock read four in the morning. Six months ago I had been lying here next to my fiancé, now I was lying here next to my ex wife. No matter how much I tried to kid myself, the memories struck at this point at night, when I could never sleep and my worries of the Bistro, Leanne's baby and how David was coping had slipped away, it always came back to her; Carla.

I roll over, debating whether to try and go back to sleep, but my head was pounding and I knew any attempted efforts would just frustrate me. I get up, quietly pulling a T-shirt on and leaving the room. I brew the kettle, leaning up against the work surface in my apartment. Sometimes I wish I still had her coffee machine; Carla never knew how to work it but I picked it up quickly.

Or right after coffee, or right when I can't eat.

I try munching on a prawn cracker which I pull from the stray bag we had left on the surface, abandoning them after our Chinese take-away last night. It tastes of nothing and the edges have softened in their mission to go stale.

Stale. Like Leanne's relationship with me. It was old, it was outdated, it was a past trying to be moulded into a future. She would be gone by now, if I hadn't have climbed onto that bus and begged her to stay. Why? I didn't know. What I did know is why I begged Carla to stay. Climbing into the front seat of her car, watching her listen and understand. Not realising that there would be a many adventures in that car a few months down the line. Like when we went to buy our Christmas tree together or went to look at wedding venues, none of which compared to the Bistro.

I miss you in my front seat.

I missed that. I missed the casual conversations and I missed the serious ones. I missed the flirting and I missed the deep love. I missed the sexual tension, I even missed the rows. The rows which would be resolved in minutes. I remember fighting over restaurant premises in Devon. Disagreeing and bickering over who was the better business person. But it was quickly over with, once we went down to the beach, just as the sun was setting and the soft orange beams were cast over the ocean. I remember sitting down, her laying her head on my shoulder and talking about our future there, the two of us, maybe even three of us.

I remember her telling me that day, as the sand rippled through her interlinked fingers, that I had changed her. Never in a million years would she have thought she would be sitting on a beach in the south, ready to start a life and family there. It was because of me, I had made her a better person and she had made me a better person all the same.

Still got sand in my sweaters from nights we don't remember.

I remember the jumper I was wearing that night; a deep burgundy colour, one of her favourites. I remember her turning to me and biting her lip, the way she always did which set butterflies free in the pit of my stomach. I remember how beautiful she looked and how lucky I was to find someone who I fall in love with more every single day. I remember the strands of her hair, lit up and almost blonde in the evening sun, the few stars that began appearing above us, that I could only see when she gently pushed me back onto the sand, so she could lie on my chest. Not caring about the sand in her hair, or in her pockets, or in her shoes, for once, she didn't care, as long as we were together.

Do you miss me like I miss you?

Do you? Do you still stand there day after day? Looking out at the beach and remembering that moment? Those few hours? Where we both agreed we were the happiest we've ever been? Or have you completely forgotten about it? Maybe moved on, found someone knew, thinking about all the same things we did back then, but with someone else?

November 2016

All alone I watch you watch her.

I think about them together, as I stare out at the beach. The beach where Nick and I once sat, talking about our future, laughing, genuinely laughing, something I rarely did and hadn't done since. Since he left me.

But now he was with someone else, and he probably wasn't thinking about me. He was looking forward to his future with Leanne, their family, her baby which wasn't his but would be. He could have a baby with me that was his and still would be. But he didn't want that, because it was with me.

Like she's the only thing you ever see.

She's the only person you'll ever love. The person you fall back on. The person who's always there when you need her. I tried to be that person and for a while I thought I was. But now she's the only thing you ever see. You'll probably never see me again, you've probably completely forgotten about me now. Because your life is there and mine is here and that's how it has to be.

December 2016

I pace the empty Bistro, making no attempts to tidy away the broken bottles that I had smashed on the floor. It was silent, it was empty, it was dark.

Just as it had been a year previous to this, on this exact day, at this exact time.

"The answer's yes by the way."

"What was the question?"

What was the question? I wish I could go back to the day when there was only one question. I would kill for that right now. When I'm pacing the restaurant with so many different questions flying through my head.

You don't care you never did.

Did you ever think about me? When you were sleeping with him? Were you actually too drunk to realise? Or were you just drunk on self pity? Did you regret it straight away? Or did you just want the stability?

Did you ever care? Really?

These were all questions I could never ask her, because she was gone and she was never coming back and now I had to survive a life without Carla Connor.

You don't give a damn about me.

If you did, you'd come back. You'd walk through the doors right now and you'd say, 'I remember the question'. But you don't, do you? You've forgotten everything, you've forgotten me.

January 2017

I hate you, I love you.

Pick up, don't pick up, pick up. The words replay in my head.

Did I want to talk to him? Did I want to tell him? Would he want to talk to me?

I hate that I love you.

I loved him, I still did. It had been a year since I fucked it all up, but nothing had changed. Not on my behalf. Not emotionally. But at the same time, everything had changed and that part was my fault.

You want her, you need her.

He wouldn't answer, surely, he had Leanne and the baby. He didn't care about me anymore. I was nothing but a distant memory.

"Hello?" The voice picks up. The voice I had longed to hear for so long. I freeze. It was exactly the same, except more expecting. He didn't know my new number, he had no idea it was me. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

Shit. I had to talk, he was going to hang up and I would miss my chance.

It all comes out in one big mess. In my panic and urgency to get him to listen.

"Nick? Nick are you there? Listen, it's Carla, please don't hang up. I need you to come to Devon, it's important... It's to see our baby, our baby girl..."

I wait with bated breath. Why did he need to see our baby when he had one with someone he genuinely loved? Leanne had never pushed him away. She had never ruined him, or broken him or properly hurt him. I envied her for that. I envied everything about her. I wanted to be her, more than anything right now.

But I will never be her.

Please leave a review and let me know what you think and if you'd like me to continue this!x