Chapter 10
10
Poker Night at Mal’s
Nick
“ H ey, did I see Nora opening the garage with you the other morning?” Sheriff Bobby asked me. Bobby hadn’t changed much in the years I’d been coming to this game, except every year his belly got a smidge bigger. His shirts a little tighter. He blamed it on his wife, who owned the local bakery. She took too much satisfaction in feeding him.
“Fold,” I announced and tossed my cards into the center.
Roy, sitting on my right, turned his head in my direction. “What was Nora doing at the garage? She looking for a car to borrow? I told her she could borrow mine when she needed it.”
“I wouldn’t let her drive that piece of shit truck,” I told him. “It’s not safe.”
“You said it’s perfectly safe.”
“For you. I’m not worried about you getting stuck on the side of a road at night.”
“She’s being stubborn about asking for help. Is that why she was there?”
This is the part where it would be easy enough to lie, but, like Nora always said, I was never good at it. It didn’t matter that she was working for me, I just didn’t need it to be all over town. It was our business. Mine. Hers. Once Calico Cove got involved, it became everyone’s business and that’s how rumors started.
“No. Not exactly.” I stood up and wandered over to the table set up with food in Mal’s card room. He’d taken over the old lighthouse and turned the cottage into something really special. Lots of polished wood and copper accents and one whole room dedicated to our card games. He had a fancy card table and Jolie used to put food down right in the middle of it, but now we had the side table groaning under food that lots of people brought.
I took a slider and shoved it in my mouth, hoping Roy wouldn’t ask any follow up questions.
“Why are you being weird?” Roy asked.
Great. A follow up question.
“I think I know,” Fiona said, her one eyebrow quirked. She was sporting this new gray streak of hair around her face. She said she was delicately dipping her toe into aging. It made her look like Cruella de Vil, but in a cool way. “Are you and our little Nora finally dating?”
“Finally?” I barked.
“Dating?” Roy barked.
“No, I’m not dating her…I’ve known Nora her whole life. That’s messed up.”
“Fiona, why would you even say something like that? You trying to give me a heart attack?” Roy clutched his chest.
“It was just a question,” Fiona laughed.
“I’m not dating Nora. I would never date Nora,” I said directly to Roy. He remembered that night. He knew. “Like…not if she was the last woman on the planet.”
His eyebrows lowered, which was never a good sign. “You don’t have to go that far. She is beautiful, and despite all the bullshit that’s happened, she has a huge heart.”
“Of course, she is,” I sputtered. “Beautiful, I mean.” Was it hot in here? I pulled on the collar of my shirt. “It’s not that. I…I…adore her. You know that. She’s practically my best friend. Besides, she’s just getting over a bad break up. She shouldn’t be dating anyone.”
“She didn’t care about that asshole,” Roy spat. “She was bored and wanted a little walk on the wild side.”
“Been there,” Fiona said, very dignified. “Done that. Raise.”
Bobby, Mal, Roy and Matt Sullivan all folded and Fiona won the pot.
It was my deal. I took the cards and dealt them out. Once everyone was in the pot, I dealt the flop on the table hoping the action would stop any more discussion of me and Nora. But Bobby, maybe it was a cop thing, wouldn’t let it go.
“So if you guys aren’t dating – please don’t bite my head off for using that word,” Bobby said quickly. “Then what is Nora doing at your garage every morning?”
I pointed to Roy. “Your bet.”
“Check. What was Nora doing at the garage, Nick?”
I sighed. No one needed to know my business, but I wasn’t going to get caught in a lie. “She’s working there. Helping me with office stuff. Billing and shit.”
The table got suspiciously quiet until Fiona started slow-clapping. Talk about dramatic. “He finally got help everyone. Can I get an Amen?”
Everyone cheered.
Jolie came from the kitchen with a fancy bowl of warmed and seasoned nuts. Her nuts were the best. She placed them on the poker table, making all of us groan.
“That’s what the side table is for!” Matt Sullivan said, pointing to the side table where all the food was.
“It’s my house, she can put her nuts where she wants,” Mal said.
“She’s put your nuts where she wants,” Fiona muttered and everyone howled. Jolie smacked a kiss on top of Mal’s head.
“What’s all the fuss?”
“Nora is working at Nick’s shop and helping him with invoicing,” Fiona said.
“Really,” Jolie said, clapping her hands. “I’m off the hook for firing her? Roy, does this mean you’ll start selling me your catch again?”
“No,” Roy said, his voice nearly a growl. “You are still on the hook for firing my baby. Two weeks, no fish.”
“But she’s working again,” Jolie implored him, then looked at me. “Oh God, Nick. Tell me you’re not going to let her around any of the tools.”
“She’s doing office work. So far she hasn’t broken anything.”
“Then that’s amazing! Nick finally has help!” Jolie cried out.
The clapping started again and I wanted to kill them all. This is why I didn’t tell people my business.
“Can we get back to the game? Fiona, it’s your bet.”
“Raise.”
Again the entire table groaned.
The game over and the food cleaned up, I was stuffing my well-earned twenty-three dollars into my back pocket as I made my way to my truck. The moon was high, reflecting off the water. The lighthouse light was spinning in its slow arc across the ocean, a warning and a welcome all at once.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine what the cove would have looked like a hundred years ago.
Just the same. Which is exactly what I loved about this place.
“Hold up,” Roy shouted from the front steps of Mal’s house. I looked around but I was the only one left in the parking lot. I’d stuck around doing my part to finish off those sliders.
I waited beside my truck for him to catch up, assuming he was going to have some words of warning about hiring Nora. If things didn’t work out at the garage and I did have to fire her, I tried to imagine what that would do to my relationship with Roy.
Two weeks of no morning coffee chats? I could survive two weeks. After that, though, it might get hard.
“What’s up?” I asked him as soon as he came around the truck. “Are you mad about that last hand? You know lying is part of the game.”
“Don’t care about the hand. I want something from you. Two things, actually.”
This was interesting. It wasn’t like Roy to ask for help outside fixing his truck for him.
“Anything.”
I meant that. I would do anything for this man and he knew it. Just like I would do anything for Antony and Birdie and my brothers and sisters.
What about Wyatt and Liam? Would I do anything for them? Was it time to put them in that mix?
I didn’t have an answer for that yet. I wasn’t even sure why I was thinking about them.
“I want you to see if you can get Nora back on social media.”
No way I heard that right. “You want her to get back on social media? Roy, why would you want that?”
“She was good at it. It made her happy. She likes to reach people and that was her platform. That asshole took that joy away from her, and I want her to have it back.”
“They destroyed her after it all went down. They trolled every video she made trying to explain what happened like…like…she was a fucking terrorist or something. I didn’t know mean like that existed in the world, and you want her to go back to it?”
My heart started thumping in my chest just thinking about it. She’d been in Paris, by herself, standing against what felt like an ocean of vicious menacing threats.
U R 2 stupid to live.
Hey dumb ass, buy me a watch and I’ll fuck you good too.
She asked for it.
In my life I’d never felt so helpless, so useless.
“You saw the videos?” Roy asked me.
“Some,” I lied. “They were kind of hard to avoid.”
“Yeah, there was a lot of gross stuff said. Nora told me not to read the comments, so I didn’t. But her videos used to be great. I could watch my baby spend a day eating her way through Paris and it would make me happy. Because she was happy. I want that for her again.”
“What makes you think she’ll listen to me?”
Roy snorted. “I think we both know why she’ll listen to you.” My neck got hot and itchy. He wasn’t talking about the crush. Right? No, he just meant our friendship.
“Yeah, well, six years is a long time.”
“Son, you’re going to learn, in the course of a lifetime, six years is nothing. You want her to be happy, don’t you?”
Pleasing Nora Barnes had been my life’s mission since I was fifteen years old and she made me play tea party with her and her dolls.
“Sure. Of course. What’s your second thing?”
Roy stepped closer like he was going to push me against the truck and it was such an intimidating move I couldn’t stop myself from taking a step back.
“Break her heart again and I will end you, Nick.”
“Break her heart…what are you talking-”
“I saw you on the boat when she had that can of ginger ale. I saw the way you looked at her. I see the way you sit up every time someone says her name. And now she’s working with you. Every day at that garage. She’s a woman now and you’re noticing.”
“I swear I’m…” I said, but I honestly couldn’t finish that sentence.
“Yeah,” he laughed with such menace I actually got chills down my spine. “That’s what I thought. I get it wasn’t your fault, but you destroyed her. Worse than that fucker in France and I’m not having your bullshit drive my daughter away from her home again. So, promise me Nick. Let’s hear it.”
I swallowed down the bile in my throat. Arguing wouldn’t get me anywhere with this man. I could only give him what he wanted. Needed.
“I won’t break her heart,” I swore.
“Good man,” he said, and slapped me on the shoulder so hard I fell into my truck. He left and I felt like that kid I’d been the first time I met him. Seen too clearly for my own comfort. Terrified to disappoint him.
I hopped into my truck and shut the door.
Fuck. I had been looking at her differently. And I was…attuned to what people were saying about her. But it wasn’t anything more than friendship. I was sure of it. Convinced.
I wouldn’t break her heart. I would rather break my own arm than hurt her like that again. And she wasn’t giving me any clues that she was slipping back into feeling more than friendship for me.
No. Nora and I were good. Solid.
As for the other thing… the videos. Roy wasn’t wrong. She’d been happy connecting with people through social media. Telling her stories, sharing experiences. And now that it was gone, her light seemed dim.
Checking to make sure everyone had already left, I pulled out my phone. It hadn’t really been a lie. I wasn’t on social media. I had an account without a name or a picture and I followed one person, saving all her videos.
I tapped on one of my favorites.
She sat in a street café, the blue sky behind her. She wore a yellow scarf and red lipstick that made her look sophisticated and sexy.
This is how you spend a morning in Paris. You order a coffee and then you sit at a table and just drink it. From an actual cup. No paper to-go cups. No spilling it down your shirt while you’re trying to navigate the metro and drink your coffee at the same time. This is what it means to just be in the moment. Enjoy the morning. With a quality cappuccino. Oh, pro tip, when you’re in France they put cocoa in the cappuccino. Not sure why, but if you want it without it, you have to say ‘pas du chocolate ou sans du chocolate’. They’ll understand. Mmmm.
The video stopped. Her eyes were closed, the cup was still at her lips. I could almost feel how delicious it was. How special that instant in time was for her. That was her magic. The way she pulled you inside, into her life.
Intimacy.
There was no other way to describe it. When you watched a Nora video she made you feel like you knew her. Like she knew you. Like you were friends.
Like maybe more than friends. Like if you were there, you could lean forward and kiss that foam from her gorgeous red lips.
Fuck.
I did a quick swipe to close the app. My addiction once again hidden. I drove away from the lighthouse like I was trying to escape.