A Petrelli Family Affair (3/3)
Title: A Petrelli Family Affair (3/3)
Fandom: Heroes
Rating/Genre: PG/femslash
Characters/Pairing: Nathan, Heidi, Angela, Arthur, Peter, Simon; Angela/Heidi, Nathan/Heidi
Summary: How did it happen that Nathan Petrelli married a girl like Heidi? They liked to spend time together; not exactly like dating, but there was a connection between them, and she got along so well with his family… Eventually, she became more than friends with Angela, who would have been a wonderful lover - if it weren’t for one little detail that kept bugging her and disturbing their peace…
Word count: 3 142
Spoilers/Warnings: No.
Notes: This story became longer than I thought it would, so I’m posting it in three parts. Part One is here,
and this is Part Two.
Heidi quickly realized that she had not known what good sex was before she slept with Angela. The woman was more than amazing; just by looking at her, Heidi felt that she oozed sensuality from her pores.
Heidi remembered her high school crushes. Nathan had been one of them; she had attached some of her dreams to him, she watched him in class and knew that he was unattainable. It was a childish thing, but felt real at the time; when she became older, she realized that she had mostly needed someone to daydream about throughout her teens. He would never notice her, she thought, so she was safe. Wouldn’t get hurt. But he had a beautiful family, and she liked to watch them from a distance; she particularly admired the mother. If ever there was a real lady, young Heidi decided, Mrs. Petrelli was one.
Funny of life turns out, Heidi thought, in the very opposite of your expectations. Something had happened that made Nathan notice her; something made them like each other, and made certain expectations arise. And yet she wasn’t Nathan’s lover, but Angela’s.
They never had sex in Angela’s home. After the first time, they didn’t even kiss there. No, all of that happened in Heidi’s apartment, far from the guy’s eyes. Angela held her there; embraced her, devoured her. It felt sometimes like a hot summer’s day in the middle of the January night, Heidi thought her brain was melting like ice cream, and she enjoyed it. The touch of Angela’s lips and fingers was like a famous pianist forcefully playing scales on a Steinway, and Angela was never as pleased as when Heidi’s cries of pleasure filled the whole room. And that was just about always.
But after a while, it seemed like something was nagging on Angela’s piece of mind. One day she told Heidi about it.
‘I want you to promise me not to marry Nathan. You can’t do that.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Heidi asked, because she hadn’t been thinking about Nathan in that way for a very long time.
‘Oh, I just… No, never mind, darling. Let’s not talk about that.’
‘No’, Heidi agreed, ‘I’d rather not talk about it…’
And they kissed and didn’t talk about it. But the next time Heidi saw Nathan, she wondered if he perhaps had fallen in love with her, and if his mother had noticed. Why else would she say such a thing? Heidi thought that it must be obvious to everyone right now that she and Nathan were just friends. Nathan didn’t even touch her when they went out, and Peter had stopped talking about her eventually becoming something like a “sister”.
But there was Arthur, of course. He kept making allusion to future sounds of little feet tapping on the marble floors of the Petrelli mansion, and Heidi could see why that made Angela uncomfortable - obviously Angela couldn’t tell her husband that Heidi was her lover.
One Wednesday afternoon when they were in bed - because they never met in private during the weekends and nights - Heidi tried to talk to Angela about a possible way to make everyone more relaxed and comfortable.
‘You know’, she began, ‘I really like you. I mean, I like you a lot.’
‘Darling’, Angela said, ‘I like you too, you know. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’
‘Yes, but wouldn’t you like it if we could be together for real? I know that you’re still worried about Nathan and me…’
‘Yes. I know that you like him, but it won’t be good in the long run. I’d rather see that you didn’t spend so much time with him.’
‘But Angela!’ Heidi stared at her. ‘You’re being ridiculous now. And anyway, I could spend a lot more time with you quite easily if… if we came out, so to speak.’
‘But my dear girl…’ Angela smiled, ‘you forget that I’m married.’
‘I assure you that I’m not forgetting that. But I don’t think it’s quite fair that you’re jealous of Nathan while you’re still married…’
‘But’, Angela protested, ‘my marriage to Arthur is different from… And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as long as you don’t get pregnant, Heidi.’
Heidi laughed and kissed her lover.
‘Don’t listen to Arthur’, she said, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I can’t get pregnant, unless scientists find out a way to let two women make a baby together. Well, that would be nice, though, don’t you think?’
Angela turned away and didn’t answer, and Heidi sighed. This was beginning to get complicated, she thought.
‘Did you marry Arthur because you got pregnant?’
‘Oh.’ Angela shrugged her shoulders. ‘Yes, that might have been part of it…’
Heidi felt that Angela wasn’t in one of her talkative moods, but she kept on asking things.
‘If you hadn’t married him, would you have been with a woman instead?’
‘Who knows what could have been. It’s better to focus on the future than to dwell on the past. Or better yet: to be in the present for as long as possible.’
Angela turned around to look at her.
‘The past is over, and the future will come. So let’s be wise.’
‘Who are you, like Yoda or something? What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that you ask far too many questions, my dear.’
‘So I’m a bore, is that it? Or you just like me better when I’m quiet - you just want me to be your silent little trophy, your obedient little toy thing…’
‘Heidi, don’t talk like that!’
‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’
‘Now my darling, what is that supposed to mean?’
Angela tried to take her in her arms and kiss her, but Heidi pulled away.
‘Nothing. Just that I’m only your “darling” in bed, and now you even want me to stop seeing your son. Are you afraid that I’ll tell him about us if we’re still friends? Are you so afraid of getting caught that you want to keep me away from your family?’
‘No, Heidi, that’s not it. I’m afraid of loosing you. Not only of loosing you to Nathan, but loosing you altogether. That’s something that will happen sooner or later - I just want to make sure that it’s much later.’
Heidi sighed deeply, then she crept closer to Angela, cuddled up next to her and started fondling her naked breasts.
‘I don’t know how I can argue with a possible future that’s only in your imagination,’ she said, ‘because you’re obviously too pigheaded to listen to reason. But I’d still like to try. How about kissing those stupid thoughts away?’
Heidi started placing light little kisses on Angela’s forehead. The older woman smiled weakly and looked Heidi eagerly in the eyes.
‘Yes’, she said, ‘kiss me… And make love to me, and look me in the eyes the whole time - because I don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t want to see anything but you, as you are right now.’
Heidi smiled.
‘Dearest Angela, what else is there to see?’
But if Heidi had thought that that was the end of the discussion, then she was wrong. It turned out that Angela couldn’t let go of her suspicions, and she tried to make Heidi promise not to see Nathan so much, and if she did, she had to promise at least not to go somewhere far away with him, because Nathan was too fond of fast cars.
‘Really, Angela!’ Heidi sighed. ‘I know that he’s your son, but he’s not a child! Nathan is a responsible driver. This is just about control isn’t it? I used to think that your husband was the control freak of the family… You can’t control what everyone is doing all the time, Angela.’
‘No’, Angela replied and suddenly she looked very tired. ‘Believe me, I know that I can’t. It’s just that sometimes, I think that it should be so easy to avoid certain things…’
‘I don’t understand you…’
‘Oh, of course not. I know that you don’t, and I should know better than to…’
‘If you didn’t look so troubled’, Heidi said, ‘I would suspect that you’re actually trying to drive me away because you’re bored with me or something…’
Angela sat up in the bed and started rummaging about after her clothes.
‘What are you doing?’
‘If that’s what you think of me, I think that I prefer to leave.’
Heidi watched her lover hastily get dressed in silence, and then she reached out her hand and tugged at Angela’s arm.
‘No, don’t go. Why can’t we talk properly about this? I don’t even know what we are fighting about. You’re accusing me of doing something I haven’t done, something I don’t even want to do…’
Angela’s back was tense, stiff. Then she turned around and looked at Heidi with tears in her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, darling. I just… You will want to do it, Heidi.’
‘I have no desire to sleep with him; I don’t intend to marry him - I don’t know why you keep suggesting that. I’m with you; don’t you get it?’
Angela took Heidi in her arms and kissed her violently, as if to convince herself of the truth in Heidi’s words.
Heidi put her arms around the older woman and thought that maybe it was over now; maybe Angela would start trusting her.
Angela gasped in her arms, and for a long time, neither of them spoke. Then Angela said:
‘Heidi, you should go. You should go far, far away and never look back on the Petrelli family.’
***
By the look on his mother’s face whenever he brought Heidi up, Nathan concluded that the two of them had a serious falling out.
That worried him a little, since he still figured that he should one day make Heidi his wife. On the other hand, Heidi had gone to Europe; she said it was because of family business, but she wouldn’t say when she was coming back, and he hadn’t spoken to her in two months.
His father was clearly displeased with him, and suggested that Heidi would still be there if he had only handled the situation better. And maybe that was true?
When Peter asked if he could have Heidi’s phone number because he missed her and wanted to talk to her, Nathan snapped at him, and that brought on an argument; their father interfered and provoked them both to be rude; they made Arthur angry, which almost made Peter cry, and Nathan called him a big baby.
‘Boys, be quiet!’ Angela commanded. ‘One would think that you’re no older than seven, all three of you. Yes, Arthur; you’re no better than them. I want no more of this; I have a headache, and I’m going to bed.’
All of them knew better than to fight, or even to laugh and play, when Angela had a headache.
Heidi’s absence seemed to have upset the peace of the family, and Nathan was beginning to fear that she was not going to come back.
Angela walked out of the dining room. Her heels clacked angrily against the floor. Peter jumped up and followed in his mother’s wake. At the door, he turned around and pulled a face at Nathan, who stuck his tongue out in reply, and Arthur sighed heavily.
Angela turned swiftly around.
‘What?!’
‘Nothing’, Arthur quickly replied. ‘Nothing, my dear. Sleep well.’
Father and son sat in silence for a while; it wasn’t exactly a comfortable silence, but they were both having coffee, and Nathan couldn’t think of any reason to get up and leave.
Arthur didn’t say anything, but as soon as Nathan thought that he wouldn’t say anything either, the question came:
‘So… What’s up with you and Heidi?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you break up?’
Nathan sighed inwardly. However did he manage to put himself in a situation where his father wondered if he had broken up with a girl he wasn’t even together with in the first place?
‘No, dad’, he said.
His father gave him a piercing look and Nathan got the uneasy feeling that all his thoughts were as visible as if they hung in clusters outside his head.
‘Remember’, his father said calmly, ‘that I only want what’s best for you, my boy. I trust you to do the right thing.’
‘The right thing; what is that anyway? Like you would know!’
‘Trust me, I do.’
With that, his father got up and left. Nathan remained alone at the table. He felt so heavy and tired.
‘I know that you respect and look up to your father, and that’s good.’
Nathan looked up and saw Angela at the door; he hadn’t heard her coming back, and he wondered how long she had been watching him.
‘You don’t always have to listen to him, though’, she said softly. ‘He doesn’t always know what’s best.’
‘Unlike you, you mean?’
His mother didn’t answer, but he knew that look on her face. It had been there as long as he could remember, whenever anyone contradicted her. Both his parents were headstrong, and he knew that he needed to be twice as strong as both of them together to be able to get anywhere in the world and build a life of his own.
But now, as they seemed to pull in different directions, he didn’t know which way to turn.
After a while, Heidi came back. She told him that she had thought about staying in London, but that she changed her mind after a while.
‘I missed my life here. And I missed you.’
‘I’m glad to hear that’, Nathan said and couldn’t believe the relief he felt, ‘I missed you, too. And so did my whole family.’
But it took some time before Heidi started seeing the family again. There was a strange tension in the air the first time he brought her back to a Sunday dinner at his parents’ house, but all of them pretended not to notice.
‘Ma, what’s going on with you and Heidi?’ Nathan asked afterwards. ‘Did you have a fight, or what? Can’t you be friends again, for my sake?’
‘I have always been very fond of Heidi’, Angela said, ‘but your relationship is between you and her. Leave me out of it.’
She had that look on her face that made him realize that this was a time to keep his mouth closed.
But he was still curious and confused, and he asked Heidi about it, too.
‘When you left New York… did my mother have anything to do with it? Did you leave because of something she said or did?’
‘I’ve always liked your mother a lot. I left for a number of reasons. I don’t want to talk about it.’
And that was all anyone ever said about it.
Nathan and Heidi started going out again; to clubs, to bars, to parties.
Everything went back to normal. And then one night at a party, their mildly flirtatious jargon started to feel like it was getting serious. On the other hand, Heidi seemed to use the same jargon when she was talking to a very pretty female friend of hers.
Nathan was far from thinking that such a thing was a problem.
Nathan hadn’t had sex in months. This blonde bombshell seemed to be a good option; she was certainly not unwilling, she was a friend of Heidi’s, and Heidi seemed to like hanging out with her.
‘What do you say, you two? How about going somewhere private to have some fun, the three of us?’
‘Ohh’, Heidi’s friend said, ‘you mean like bedroom fun?’
Nathan smiled, and the blonde smiled back at him.
‘I like the sound of that…’
Heidi turned away.
‘Well, I don’t. But by all means, go ahead and have some fun, you two. That will help you decide which one of your parents you want to please.’
‘What do you mean by that?’, Nathan asked, and concluded that he had misread the situation.
‘Your father seems to want you to be with me. Your mother doesn’t.’
Nathan snorted.
‘My parents need to learn to mind their own damn business!’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Heidi laughed. ‘I’d like to hear you say that to their faces!’
Nathan looked at the beautiful brunette who was his best friend, the only woman who had ever understood him and liked him for who he truly was. He knew that it was now or never.
‘I’ll say it to their faces when we are married. Heidi, let’s get married.’
‘Nathan, do you really mean that?’
Nathan nodded and pushed the blonde girl aside. He took Heidi’s both hands in his and looked her in the eyes.
‘Yes. Yes, I… I do love you, I love you more than… I love you as much as I love my brother.’
‘And that means a lot, huh?’ Heidi looked at him and seemed to search his soul for answers. He didn’t know if he had them, but he squeezed her hands hard, as if he could make her believe in his dedication that way.
‘Well’, she said, ‘I’m not in love with you… but I do love you. Is that good enough?’
‘It is for me’, Nathan said, ‘and it’s probably more than I deserve. Heidi, we can make this work, can’t we?’
Heidi nodded her head slowly, and he knew that it was a promise; as if they were already married in that moment. Nathan remembered the night they had met, the vision he had had when they were holding court on that couch. Hadn’t he known already back then that she was going to agree to be by his side?
‘Yes’, she said, ‘I believe we can.’
‘Um’, Heidi’s friend moved hesitatingly. ‘I’m getting the feeling that three is a crowd here… I guess I’m leaving.’
***
Angela looked at the newborn baby boy with tears in her eyes. She reached out her hand and touched the pink little nose, the cheek, the chin with the tip of her finger.
‘He is so beautiful’, she whispered.
‘Yes’, Heidi agreed. ‘He has got your mouth. You know… last night when I woke up and looked at him, I got the funny feeling that he’s not really Nathan’s son, but that he rather belongs to you - ’
‘Hush!’ Angela said sharply. ‘Don’t talk like that. This is Nathan’s son, and you are Nathan’s wife. That was your choice. You are now the mother of my grandson. That is all you are to me.’
‘Yes, Angela. I understand.’
Angela’s smile was cold, and she was already on her way out.
‘You will be a good wife to Nathan and help him a lot in his career, I’m sure. That is all that matters now.’
The End.
.
Fandom: Heroes
Rating/Genre: PG/femslash
Characters/Pairing: Nathan, Heidi, Angela, Arthur, Peter, Simon; Angela/Heidi, Nathan/Heidi
Summary: How did it happen that Nathan Petrelli married a girl like Heidi? They liked to spend time together; not exactly like dating, but there was a connection between them, and she got along so well with his family… Eventually, she became more than friends with Angela, who would have been a wonderful lover - if it weren’t for one little detail that kept bugging her and disturbing their peace…
Word count: 3 142
Spoilers/Warnings: No.
Notes: This story became longer than I thought it would, so I’m posting it in three parts. Part One is here,
and this is Part Two.
Heidi quickly realized that she had not known what good sex was before she slept with Angela. The woman was more than amazing; just by looking at her, Heidi felt that she oozed sensuality from her pores.
Heidi remembered her high school crushes. Nathan had been one of them; she had attached some of her dreams to him, she watched him in class and knew that he was unattainable. It was a childish thing, but felt real at the time; when she became older, she realized that she had mostly needed someone to daydream about throughout her teens. He would never notice her, she thought, so she was safe. Wouldn’t get hurt. But he had a beautiful family, and she liked to watch them from a distance; she particularly admired the mother. If ever there was a real lady, young Heidi decided, Mrs. Petrelli was one.
Funny of life turns out, Heidi thought, in the very opposite of your expectations. Something had happened that made Nathan notice her; something made them like each other, and made certain expectations arise. And yet she wasn’t Nathan’s lover, but Angela’s.
They never had sex in Angela’s home. After the first time, they didn’t even kiss there. No, all of that happened in Heidi’s apartment, far from the guy’s eyes. Angela held her there; embraced her, devoured her. It felt sometimes like a hot summer’s day in the middle of the January night, Heidi thought her brain was melting like ice cream, and she enjoyed it. The touch of Angela’s lips and fingers was like a famous pianist forcefully playing scales on a Steinway, and Angela was never as pleased as when Heidi’s cries of pleasure filled the whole room. And that was just about always.
But after a while, it seemed like something was nagging on Angela’s piece of mind. One day she told Heidi about it.
‘I want you to promise me not to marry Nathan. You can’t do that.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Heidi asked, because she hadn’t been thinking about Nathan in that way for a very long time.
‘Oh, I just… No, never mind, darling. Let’s not talk about that.’
‘No’, Heidi agreed, ‘I’d rather not talk about it…’
And they kissed and didn’t talk about it. But the next time Heidi saw Nathan, she wondered if he perhaps had fallen in love with her, and if his mother had noticed. Why else would she say such a thing? Heidi thought that it must be obvious to everyone right now that she and Nathan were just friends. Nathan didn’t even touch her when they went out, and Peter had stopped talking about her eventually becoming something like a “sister”.
But there was Arthur, of course. He kept making allusion to future sounds of little feet tapping on the marble floors of the Petrelli mansion, and Heidi could see why that made Angela uncomfortable - obviously Angela couldn’t tell her husband that Heidi was her lover.
One Wednesday afternoon when they were in bed - because they never met in private during the weekends and nights - Heidi tried to talk to Angela about a possible way to make everyone more relaxed and comfortable.
‘You know’, she began, ‘I really like you. I mean, I like you a lot.’
‘Darling’, Angela said, ‘I like you too, you know. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’
‘Yes, but wouldn’t you like it if we could be together for real? I know that you’re still worried about Nathan and me…’
‘Yes. I know that you like him, but it won’t be good in the long run. I’d rather see that you didn’t spend so much time with him.’
‘But Angela!’ Heidi stared at her. ‘You’re being ridiculous now. And anyway, I could spend a lot more time with you quite easily if… if we came out, so to speak.’
‘But my dear girl…’ Angela smiled, ‘you forget that I’m married.’
‘I assure you that I’m not forgetting that. But I don’t think it’s quite fair that you’re jealous of Nathan while you’re still married…’
‘But’, Angela protested, ‘my marriage to Arthur is different from… And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as long as you don’t get pregnant, Heidi.’
Heidi laughed and kissed her lover.
‘Don’t listen to Arthur’, she said, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I can’t get pregnant, unless scientists find out a way to let two women make a baby together. Well, that would be nice, though, don’t you think?’
Angela turned away and didn’t answer, and Heidi sighed. This was beginning to get complicated, she thought.
‘Did you marry Arthur because you got pregnant?’
‘Oh.’ Angela shrugged her shoulders. ‘Yes, that might have been part of it…’
Heidi felt that Angela wasn’t in one of her talkative moods, but she kept on asking things.
‘If you hadn’t married him, would you have been with a woman instead?’
‘Who knows what could have been. It’s better to focus on the future than to dwell on the past. Or better yet: to be in the present for as long as possible.’
Angela turned around to look at her.
‘The past is over, and the future will come. So let’s be wise.’
‘Who are you, like Yoda or something? What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that you ask far too many questions, my dear.’
‘So I’m a bore, is that it? Or you just like me better when I’m quiet - you just want me to be your silent little trophy, your obedient little toy thing…’
‘Heidi, don’t talk like that!’
‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’
‘Now my darling, what is that supposed to mean?’
Angela tried to take her in her arms and kiss her, but Heidi pulled away.
‘Nothing. Just that I’m only your “darling” in bed, and now you even want me to stop seeing your son. Are you afraid that I’ll tell him about us if we’re still friends? Are you so afraid of getting caught that you want to keep me away from your family?’
‘No, Heidi, that’s not it. I’m afraid of loosing you. Not only of loosing you to Nathan, but loosing you altogether. That’s something that will happen sooner or later - I just want to make sure that it’s much later.’
Heidi sighed deeply, then she crept closer to Angela, cuddled up next to her and started fondling her naked breasts.
‘I don’t know how I can argue with a possible future that’s only in your imagination,’ she said, ‘because you’re obviously too pigheaded to listen to reason. But I’d still like to try. How about kissing those stupid thoughts away?’
Heidi started placing light little kisses on Angela’s forehead. The older woman smiled weakly and looked Heidi eagerly in the eyes.
‘Yes’, she said, ‘kiss me… And make love to me, and look me in the eyes the whole time - because I don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t want to see anything but you, as you are right now.’
Heidi smiled.
‘Dearest Angela, what else is there to see?’
But if Heidi had thought that that was the end of the discussion, then she was wrong. It turned out that Angela couldn’t let go of her suspicions, and she tried to make Heidi promise not to see Nathan so much, and if she did, she had to promise at least not to go somewhere far away with him, because Nathan was too fond of fast cars.
‘Really, Angela!’ Heidi sighed. ‘I know that he’s your son, but he’s not a child! Nathan is a responsible driver. This is just about control isn’t it? I used to think that your husband was the control freak of the family… You can’t control what everyone is doing all the time, Angela.’
‘No’, Angela replied and suddenly she looked very tired. ‘Believe me, I know that I can’t. It’s just that sometimes, I think that it should be so easy to avoid certain things…’
‘I don’t understand you…’
‘Oh, of course not. I know that you don’t, and I should know better than to…’
‘If you didn’t look so troubled’, Heidi said, ‘I would suspect that you’re actually trying to drive me away because you’re bored with me or something…’
Angela sat up in the bed and started rummaging about after her clothes.
‘What are you doing?’
‘If that’s what you think of me, I think that I prefer to leave.’
Heidi watched her lover hastily get dressed in silence, and then she reached out her hand and tugged at Angela’s arm.
‘No, don’t go. Why can’t we talk properly about this? I don’t even know what we are fighting about. You’re accusing me of doing something I haven’t done, something I don’t even want to do…’
Angela’s back was tense, stiff. Then she turned around and looked at Heidi with tears in her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, darling. I just… You will want to do it, Heidi.’
‘I have no desire to sleep with him; I don’t intend to marry him - I don’t know why you keep suggesting that. I’m with you; don’t you get it?’
Angela took Heidi in her arms and kissed her violently, as if to convince herself of the truth in Heidi’s words.
Heidi put her arms around the older woman and thought that maybe it was over now; maybe Angela would start trusting her.
Angela gasped in her arms, and for a long time, neither of them spoke. Then Angela said:
‘Heidi, you should go. You should go far, far away and never look back on the Petrelli family.’
***
By the look on his mother’s face whenever he brought Heidi up, Nathan concluded that the two of them had a serious falling out.
That worried him a little, since he still figured that he should one day make Heidi his wife. On the other hand, Heidi had gone to Europe; she said it was because of family business, but she wouldn’t say when she was coming back, and he hadn’t spoken to her in two months.
His father was clearly displeased with him, and suggested that Heidi would still be there if he had only handled the situation better. And maybe that was true?
When Peter asked if he could have Heidi’s phone number because he missed her and wanted to talk to her, Nathan snapped at him, and that brought on an argument; their father interfered and provoked them both to be rude; they made Arthur angry, which almost made Peter cry, and Nathan called him a big baby.
‘Boys, be quiet!’ Angela commanded. ‘One would think that you’re no older than seven, all three of you. Yes, Arthur; you’re no better than them. I want no more of this; I have a headache, and I’m going to bed.’
All of them knew better than to fight, or even to laugh and play, when Angela had a headache.
Heidi’s absence seemed to have upset the peace of the family, and Nathan was beginning to fear that she was not going to come back.
Angela walked out of the dining room. Her heels clacked angrily against the floor. Peter jumped up and followed in his mother’s wake. At the door, he turned around and pulled a face at Nathan, who stuck his tongue out in reply, and Arthur sighed heavily.
Angela turned swiftly around.
‘What?!’
‘Nothing’, Arthur quickly replied. ‘Nothing, my dear. Sleep well.’
Father and son sat in silence for a while; it wasn’t exactly a comfortable silence, but they were both having coffee, and Nathan couldn’t think of any reason to get up and leave.
Arthur didn’t say anything, but as soon as Nathan thought that he wouldn’t say anything either, the question came:
‘So… What’s up with you and Heidi?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you break up?’
Nathan sighed inwardly. However did he manage to put himself in a situation where his father wondered if he had broken up with a girl he wasn’t even together with in the first place?
‘No, dad’, he said.
His father gave him a piercing look and Nathan got the uneasy feeling that all his thoughts were as visible as if they hung in clusters outside his head.
‘Remember’, his father said calmly, ‘that I only want what’s best for you, my boy. I trust you to do the right thing.’
‘The right thing; what is that anyway? Like you would know!’
‘Trust me, I do.’
With that, his father got up and left. Nathan remained alone at the table. He felt so heavy and tired.
‘I know that you respect and look up to your father, and that’s good.’
Nathan looked up and saw Angela at the door; he hadn’t heard her coming back, and he wondered how long she had been watching him.
‘You don’t always have to listen to him, though’, she said softly. ‘He doesn’t always know what’s best.’
‘Unlike you, you mean?’
His mother didn’t answer, but he knew that look on her face. It had been there as long as he could remember, whenever anyone contradicted her. Both his parents were headstrong, and he knew that he needed to be twice as strong as both of them together to be able to get anywhere in the world and build a life of his own.
But now, as they seemed to pull in different directions, he didn’t know which way to turn.
After a while, Heidi came back. She told him that she had thought about staying in London, but that she changed her mind after a while.
‘I missed my life here. And I missed you.’
‘I’m glad to hear that’, Nathan said and couldn’t believe the relief he felt, ‘I missed you, too. And so did my whole family.’
But it took some time before Heidi started seeing the family again. There was a strange tension in the air the first time he brought her back to a Sunday dinner at his parents’ house, but all of them pretended not to notice.
‘Ma, what’s going on with you and Heidi?’ Nathan asked afterwards. ‘Did you have a fight, or what? Can’t you be friends again, for my sake?’
‘I have always been very fond of Heidi’, Angela said, ‘but your relationship is between you and her. Leave me out of it.’
She had that look on her face that made him realize that this was a time to keep his mouth closed.
But he was still curious and confused, and he asked Heidi about it, too.
‘When you left New York… did my mother have anything to do with it? Did you leave because of something she said or did?’
‘I’ve always liked your mother a lot. I left for a number of reasons. I don’t want to talk about it.’
And that was all anyone ever said about it.
Nathan and Heidi started going out again; to clubs, to bars, to parties.
Everything went back to normal. And then one night at a party, their mildly flirtatious jargon started to feel like it was getting serious. On the other hand, Heidi seemed to use the same jargon when she was talking to a very pretty female friend of hers.
Nathan was far from thinking that such a thing was a problem.
Nathan hadn’t had sex in months. This blonde bombshell seemed to be a good option; she was certainly not unwilling, she was a friend of Heidi’s, and Heidi seemed to like hanging out with her.
‘What do you say, you two? How about going somewhere private to have some fun, the three of us?’
‘Ohh’, Heidi’s friend said, ‘you mean like bedroom fun?’
Nathan smiled, and the blonde smiled back at him.
‘I like the sound of that…’
Heidi turned away.
‘Well, I don’t. But by all means, go ahead and have some fun, you two. That will help you decide which one of your parents you want to please.’
‘What do you mean by that?’, Nathan asked, and concluded that he had misread the situation.
‘Your father seems to want you to be with me. Your mother doesn’t.’
Nathan snorted.
‘My parents need to learn to mind their own damn business!’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Heidi laughed. ‘I’d like to hear you say that to their faces!’
Nathan looked at the beautiful brunette who was his best friend, the only woman who had ever understood him and liked him for who he truly was. He knew that it was now or never.
‘I’ll say it to their faces when we are married. Heidi, let’s get married.’
‘Nathan, do you really mean that?’
Nathan nodded and pushed the blonde girl aside. He took Heidi’s both hands in his and looked her in the eyes.
‘Yes. Yes, I… I do love you, I love you more than… I love you as much as I love my brother.’
‘And that means a lot, huh?’ Heidi looked at him and seemed to search his soul for answers. He didn’t know if he had them, but he squeezed her hands hard, as if he could make her believe in his dedication that way.
‘Well’, she said, ‘I’m not in love with you… but I do love you. Is that good enough?’
‘It is for me’, Nathan said, ‘and it’s probably more than I deserve. Heidi, we can make this work, can’t we?’
Heidi nodded her head slowly, and he knew that it was a promise; as if they were already married in that moment. Nathan remembered the night they had met, the vision he had had when they were holding court on that couch. Hadn’t he known already back then that she was going to agree to be by his side?
‘Yes’, she said, ‘I believe we can.’
‘Um’, Heidi’s friend moved hesitatingly. ‘I’m getting the feeling that three is a crowd here… I guess I’m leaving.’
***
Angela looked at the newborn baby boy with tears in her eyes. She reached out her hand and touched the pink little nose, the cheek, the chin with the tip of her finger.
‘He is so beautiful’, she whispered.
‘Yes’, Heidi agreed. ‘He has got your mouth. You know… last night when I woke up and looked at him, I got the funny feeling that he’s not really Nathan’s son, but that he rather belongs to you - ’
‘Hush!’ Angela said sharply. ‘Don’t talk like that. This is Nathan’s son, and you are Nathan’s wife. That was your choice. You are now the mother of my grandson. That is all you are to me.’
‘Yes, Angela. I understand.’
Angela’s smile was cold, and she was already on her way out.
‘You will be a good wife to Nathan and help him a lot in his career, I’m sure. That is all that matters now.’
The End.
.