Legal Bindings

25. Nick

Nick’s hands were shaking.Why are my hands shaking? That was illogical—nothing all that bad had happened. Yet there he was, unscrewing the cap off the vodka bottle that usually sat untouched in his liquor cabinet, and his fingers were trembling.

“Shit,” he muttered then decided against the drink. The last thing he needed was for Evan to come home and find him vulnerable. So he pushed the bottle to the back of the cabinet then sat on the couch to simmer in the complicated stew of emotions his brain was boiling.

Shame. There was shame, yes. But shame about what? The painting, probably. Maybe. It had taken him by surprise to see his own eyes staring back at him from the wall. He’d seen the piece out of the corner of his eye all night, but it was clearly the showcase—he hadn’t wanted to spend time with it until the gallery got quieter and he could really study Evan’s work. Which meant he hadn’t realized it was him until the worst possible moment. Post humiliation. Post Ben.

Ugh.Ben looking Nick up and down with that self-serving smirk on his smug face. But that was projection. Ben wasn’t the smug sort. He’d seemed upset, which shamed Nick more than anything else. At least this time Nick had run away instead of lashing out. He didn’t know if that was progress, but it was better than embarrassing Evan at his show.

Beyond the shame, there was anger—at himself for not realizing Ben might be there and at Ben for daring to be happier than Nick. And anger at Max for loving Ben better than Nick ever had.

And then there was Evan. Nick didn’t know if he was angry at Evan, which was frustrating, as Nick was used to being able to direct his frustration with laser-like precision. Yes, the fact that Evan had used him as a subject without his permission was infuriating, yet that feeling was tempered with curiosity.

He wanted to know why. Was it because Evan saw him as a stiff, boring, 1950s caricature of a man, or was it simply because Evan needed a model? Nick had no fucking idea, so he punched a pillow then lay down and closed his eyes.

Sometime later, he woke to the feeling of his phone buzzing in his pocket. He groped for it, and though he didn’t recognize the number, he pressed it to his ear with a sleepy “Hullo?”

“Um, Nick?”

“Sydney?” Instantly alert, he sat up and frowned.

“Hi. Um. So I tried calling Donna, but she’s in Oregon for the weekend, and I don’t want to call the home because then they’ll know I got in trouble, and—”

“Syd.” Nick didn’t care about the details. Clearly, something was wrong, and he needed the big picture. “Where are you?”

“Um. A police station in Covington.”

“What?” Nick leapt to his feet as if they might suddenly sprout wings. “Why? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding like someone who did know but didn’t want to say. “Can you please just come be my lawyer?”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” he said without hesitation. Whatever she’d done—or hadn’t done—to get herself picked up didn’t matter right then. “Can you get me an address? And don’t talk to anyone until I get there. You understand?”

“Yeah. Hold on.” Sydney’s voice was muffled before she came back to him with a street address.

“Don’t worry,” he said after jotting it down. “I’ll be there really soon. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice small. “Sorry for waking you up.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” he said, which was a lie but might make her feel better. “I’m leaving now. Just sit tight, honey.” The endearment slipped out, but he wasn’t sorry he’d said it.

Nick hung up then put on his shoes and grabbed his keys. When he opened the side door to get to the garage, he nearly collided with Evan, who’d been putting his key in the lock.

“Oh fuck,” Evan said, jumping back, and he’d had a drink or two. “Nick…”

“We can talk about it later. Sydney called. She’s at a police station in Covington.” He took a deep breath. “Will you come with me?”

Regardless of how muddled his brain was over his ruined evening, he didn’t want to do this alone. More than that, he wanted to do it with Evan. He needed Evan.

“She what?” Evan blinked. “How…?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that she called and she’s scared.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Evan followed Nick to his car, where he got in on the passenger side without a word. Nick put the address into the GPS, and they headed south.

They didn’t talk for most of the ride, and it was only when they were five minutes out that Evan turned to Nick and asked quietly, “Do you want me to come in with you?”

“Please.” A few months prior, Nick wouldn’t have been caught dead with Evan in public, but in the here and now, he didn’t care. Hell, he was about to walk into a police station with smudged mascara and eyeliner streaking his face—Evan was practically demure in comparison.

“All right, sure. And I know this isn’t the time, but… I’m sorry about the painting. I should have told you.”

“Is that how you see me?” Nick asked, because it was the question that had been bothering him the most. “Am I that uninteresting?”

“No!” Evan sounded horrified. “That isn’t the point of it at all.”

“Then what is?”

“It’s about subverting expectations, right? So she—I mean, the Donna Reed pastiche—she’s the drag component. But the guy, and I’m not saying he’s you, but whoever he is, at first glance it looks like he’s not paying attention to her. That he’s conventional. But if you look closer, he’s watching her, and his eyes are all crinkled up at the corners because he’s smiling.”

Nick gripped the steering wheel harder, turning when the GPS told him to. “I guess I didn’t look that closely.”

“Yeah, well, you were a little distracted,” he muttered then pushed a hand through his hair. “I didn’t use you because you’re boring. I used you because I couldn’t get you out of my head. As far as I’m concerned, that guy’s just waiting for her to get done vacuuming so he can drop to his knees and let her step on his panty-covered cock.”

Nick coughed. The car was suddenly uncomfortably warm. “Uh… oh. Wow.”

“There’s a little card next to it with a whole typed explanation, which you could have read if you hadn’t freaked out.”

“That was eighty percent Ben being there.”

“Yeah, well, that’s on me too. I’m sorry. I knew Max was coming, but I’ve been so stressed out about the show that I didn’t think about how weird it would be for you.”

“I should have realized Max would be there. And Ben, too, possibly.”

Evan reached over, touching Nick’s thigh. “I’m still sorry.”

“I’m sorry for walking out on your big night.” He paused. “Do you really want me to wear panties?”

Evan gave his leg a squeeze then laughed. “Only if you do.”

“We’ll see.”

The GPS broke in, telling them their destination was “ahead, on the right.” He pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine. “Come on—let’s go get the kid out of trouble.”

They went inside. Nick put on his best aggrieved-lawyer stance and approached the counter, while Evan took a seat on one of the long benches lining the waiting area. Five minutes later, Nick was taken into the back, where he learned that Sydney had been picked up for solicitation, of all things, in a gas station parking lot. Because of her age, she hadn’t yet been charged, which made it all the easier for Nick to draw himself up, full of righteous indignation, and ask the droopy-eyed officer whether he was seriously considering charging a sixteen-year-old kid with prostitution without a lick of evidence.

“She was bothering people,” the cop said with a scowl. “Asking for rides.”

“Because she’s sixteen!” Nick replied. “You didn’t do anything dumb when you were sixteen?”

“Sure, and if I’d gotten picked up while doing that dumb stuff, I’da told the officer why I was out there.”

Sydney, meanwhile, on Nick’s advice and her own stubbornness, hadn’t said anything. By some miracle, they hadn’t looked her up in the system, where her juvenile record was less than clean. That also told Nick they weren’t taking her behavior that seriously, and they knew they didn’t have much of a case. “It’s a hell of a leap from ‘scared kid’ to ‘prostitute,’ and if she’d been a sixteen-year-old boy begging for rides and bumming money, you probably woulda bought him dinner and a bus ticket. Come on, it’s late. I can vouch for her. I’m close with her social worker, and I can guarantee she’s not… doing what you’re accusing her of doing.”

The cop grunted, folding his meaty arms, the khaki straining. “I want to know what she was doing out there. If she doesn’t give me an explanation, I’m obliged to keep her here.”

Nick closed his eyes and counted to five. “Let me talk to her, then.”

Two minutes later, a sullen Sydney was led out from the very back. Nick rose when he saw her, and Sydney burst into tears, throwing herself at him for a hug.

“Yeah, you’re a real hardened criminal, kiddo,” he muttered as he held her, staring hard at the cop. “It’s okay, I’m here now.”

“I didn’t do anything, I—” She pulled back, glancing at the officer with suspicion written all over her face. The cop would read it as guilt, but Nick knew from experience that it was a lack of faith in official authority figures. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Right,” Nick said, hearing the implied with him in her statement. “Officer, we’re going to need a minute. Just the two of us.” Without waiting for permission, Nick put an arm around Sydney’s shoulders and drew her to a quiet corner. “I know this is scary, Syd.”

“It’s not scary,” she muttered.

“Fine, then. I know this sucks. But I need to know what’s going on. If someone brought you out here, or…”

She clenched her jaw, and Nick could see the tiny muscles twitching. “My mom died,” she said, her voice hitching.

The shock of the revelation made Nick’s jaw drop, and he reached for her, only to have her jerk away. “Syd—”

“I don’t care. I don’t. She liked her pills more than us, so whatever. Fuck her.” Her mouth twisted into a snarled, miserable little knot as she fought to keep tears at bay.

“All right.” Nick held up his hands then placed them on his knees. “I’m still sorry, Sydney. That’s hard.”

“It’s not hard for me. But when they called and told me, I knew they were gonna call Sam too.”

“Sam? Who—oh.” The realization hit Nick like a slap, and he was ashamed of himself for not thinking of it before. “Your brother.”

Sydney scrubbed a hand across her eyes. “He lives out here, and I didn’t want him to be alone, so I used my bus pass. I thought I could get close and then walk, but it’s a lot farther than I thought, and nobody wanted to give me a ride, and then it was too late to get back, and then some dick called the cops on me, and I wasn’t even doing anything!”

“I know you weren’t doing anything. But, honey, why didn’t you just tell them when they stopped to question you?” As sob stories went, it was a pretty good one, and while Nick didn’t know for sure, Sydney might have garnered a ride to her brother’s house from a sympathetic cop.

“Because then they won’t let me see Sam anymore,” she said, a tear spilling onto her cheek.

That time, when Nick reached for her, she allowed the hug, and he held her while she cried, planning his next move. The situation was one brought about by pure insane teenage logic—if she admitted she’d been trying to see her brother, Someone Who Had Authority might bar her from seeing him at all. If, however, she never mentioned her brother, then they couldn’t connect her behavior with him and punish her accordingly. It was nonsensical, sure, but that was what happened when one’s frontal cortex hadn’t fully developed.

“Sydney,” Nick said, pulling back from the hug and putting his hands on her shoulders. “Nobody’s going to keep you from seeing Sam.”

She blinked her red-rimmed eyes. “They won’t?”

“No, they…” He licked his lips and made a decision. “Not they—I guarantee it. Because the thing is, Syd, I, ah… I wasn’t going to tell you until I knew for sure, but I’m working with Donna on becoming a foster parent. And I was thinking maybe you’d…”

Sydney’s eyes widened, and her next sniffle turned into a hiccup. “Really?”

“Yes.” Nick reached for her hand. “And if I’m running the show, there’s nothing that’s going to stop me from letting you see your brother whenever you want.” Frankly, a system that kept them apart at all was bullshit, but it was what she had to deal with.

“Yeah,” she said, wiping a hand across her eyes. “Yeah, okay. That’d be, um… that’d be really good, actually.”

It wasn’t bubbling enthusiasm, but she’d had a long night. Nick pulled her into another hug and kissed the top of her head. “All right, then. That’s what’s coming. However, right now, I need you to go with me and tell the officer about why you were out here by yourself in the middle of the night. And between you and me, I think he’s going to be sympathetic to your story.”