Divorcing The Earth chapter 2

Chapter Two
He owed so much to Nikki. She helped him to know himself for the first time. He’d never told anyone the things that he’d told her. Hell, he never thought anyone was interested. Sure, he was respected…maybe even admired among his colleagues, but they never showed much interest in him personally and he never volunteered anything. His family was never very close or vocal. He had a good group of friends that helped make up for his rather emotionally austere upbringing, but he was never as close with anyone as her. It was just too bad he didn’t realize how special their relationship was. Maybe if he hadn’t taken it for granted, or worse, been so much of a coward; maybe she would still be here. He would give anything to have the chance to tell her how he felt about her, but he couldn’t. It was too late. And he always wondered if she knew how much she meant to him.
They both met about four years ago. Kevin was a news editor and reporter for a small suburban newspaper. Nicole came on board as the new features editor. At first, they couldn’t stand each other. They were constantly butting heads. She was a little too opinionated for his taste, and she thought he was arrogant. She was a privileged, conservative white girl and he was a liberal, black guy from a working class family, so automatically when it came to certain articles there were differences of opinion on what angles to take; not to mention a myriad of personal, social ambiguities. But somehow, slowly but surely, their argumentative encounters turned into a mutual respect. He trusted her because she told it how it was, even if he didn’t agree: or in most cases, agree right away. Much to his chagrin, he found that more often than not, she was right. She wasn’t the most intellectual person in the world, which is something he prided himself in, but she knew people. How they worked. And She knew long before he did, that they were going to be together. Once you got to know her, she was as sweet as could be, but she was more mature than he was. Despite what appeared to be a privileged background, she had overcome some real struggles in her life. Maybe that’s what drew him to her. He had a strong personality but at the same time he was idealistic and sometimes too naïve.
They became friends. With time they became good friends, and after a little over two years of sharing the ups and downs of a small town newspaper they became something more. But in the beginning, they were both involved with other people. She was in a relationship with a photographer named Dean. They’d been dating for three years. She moved to town for the features editor job, and left him behind. They did the long distance relationship thing for about four months. She never missed an opportunity to talk about him though. It was always Dean this, and Dean that. My little pooh bear. It was sickening. Which is why, ironically, it was cool when he landed a job there as a sports photographer. They were together again, she didn’t have to dote over him so much from afar, and Dean actually turned out to be a pretty good guy. In fact they all got to be good friends in the coming years.
Kevin was dating a girl named Shawna at the time. She used to work with Kevin at the same newspaper, before Nikki came along. She had moved to New York a year earlier. She was tired of the “sticks” as she put it. Not enough excitement for her. An old college buddy of hers pulled some strings, and got her on as a beat reporter for the New York Times. He was proud of her. An intelligent young sister with ambition to spare. Hell, the New York Times was a dream for any reporter. He sometimes wondered if he was meant for anything other than pushing a small rag in Porter, Texas. He had a photographer buddy who was always asking him to come interview with the Dallas Morning News. But he would have to start all over as a beat reporter and there always seemed to be something that held him back.
Eventually Shawna got enough of the big time. She never said why, exactly, but maybe the hustle and bustle and the bright lights got to be too much for her. Who knows? She moved back a little over eight months later and got a job doing public relations at a big pharmaceutical company, a couple of towns over. They had never had anything more than brief flirtatious encounters the whole time they worked together, but after she moved back, he got up the nerve to ask her out.