Chapter Thirteen Not Nearly Enough
Chapter Thirteen
Not Nearly Enough
I hop on my bike and ride down to the beach cabins, but there are no signs of life there. It occurs to me that she might not
have even checked in yet, since everything about her tonight suggested she once again came straight from her flight.
At a loss for where else to look, I spend some time circling the town, trying to figure out exactly where she could have gone.
I even stop by the church since it’s literally across the street. I hold my breath as I tug on the massive wooden door. It’s
been a long time since I’ve stepped foot in a church . . . but it was locked. Feels fitting, honestly, that the one time I
would turn to God he’s unavailable.
Okay, think, Anderson.
The options are limited in this town for this time of night. I’ve just chucked my bike behind my house, ready to give up,
when I consider one more spot she could be.
It wouldn’t be ideal, but it would make sense.
The Spotty Dog is the closest bar to my apartment—a dive spot that the locals love and the tourists tend to run away from. It’s one of the few bars that stays fully open year-round, its bright neon signs shouting out in the windows, acting as beacons to the lost and the lonely.
It’s where I came after the beach my first night here, with Gouda in her carrying case sitting on the stool right next to
me. It’s where I met Johnny, who came over when he realized I was alone, dying to know why I had brought a cat to a bar.
Hopefully it’s where I’ll find Nikki too.
I push open the heavy oak doors and scan the people inside. There are a few people I recognize, mostly regulars who hang out
at Johnny’s shop to talk about cars and occasionally follow him over to In Bloom to grab bouquets for their families on special
occasions.
There’s a bunch of guys I don’t know playing pool in one corner. The stereo is blaring some weird country-pop mash-up I’ve
never heard before and hope to never hear again. I’m about to turn and leave when I see the edge of her coat peeking out from
one of the booths in the farthest back corner of the bar.
A swirl of disappointment washes over me that she ran right back to her old ways, but I stomp it down with every step I take.
She’s a big girl; her choices are her own. It’s not up to me to drag her out or ask her to stop . . . but I do still need
to apologize. I pause a few steps before her booth, hesitating. I’m not sure exactly what to say or even where to start.
“You can sit if you want,” she says, startling me.
I slide into the booth, embarrassed. “How did you know I was there?”
“I could feel you,” she says.
“Really?”
“No,” she laughs, pointing to the mirror on the back wall of the bar, directly in her view.
“Right,” I mumble. “Sorry, I was kind of glitching out for a second.”
“It’s okay,” she says, spinning the glass of whiskey slowly in her hand.
I take a deep breath, watching the dark liquid ripple as the glass snags on the rough surface of the table.
“How many of those have you had?” I ask, trying not to sound condescending about it.
“Not enough,” she answers, and I fight the little rise of anxiety that spikes up my spine. She sounds too much like the old
Nikki for the first time since she’s been here, and I hate it.
It’s bringing everything back up—all the days when I was made to feel like drinking and drugs and industry parties were more
important than me. All the nights when she would go out after every argument—or even in the middle of them. How the tabloids
were all too happy to take pics of the mess we had become. The transition from Nikki being social user to substance abuser
was swift and unexpected. Eliza did an excellent job of spinning it in the media to look like I was the bad guy in all of
this.
They didn’t go so far as to outright say I was driving her to drink, but they implied it.
Not to mention the countless blind items like, “Every party has its pooper: This clingy C-lister made a scene at yet another industry event, dragging her A-list partner out with a shout.” (The only reason I even showed up to that stupid Vogue party was because Nikki had called me crying.
It wasn’t my fault that she had blacked out and forgotten that in the time it took me to drive there.)
I wonder if she’s remembering the same sort of things or if her memory has done another Uno Reverse like in the chapters she’s
shared. I wonder if she’s written all the ugly parts of her story yet. I wonder if I even want to read them.
Nikki glances over at me, but then goes back to people watching in the mirror. The men by the pool table are bickering over
something, and in the back—or, well, I guess the front—a woman in a trucker hat is slowly grinding against a guy with an unfortunate
beard to another song that doesn’t deserve it.
“What are you doing here?” she finally asks. “I don’t need a babysitter, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Historically, that hasn’t been true,” I say, tipping my voice up at the end to lighten the words.
“Historically, you haven’t been around, and I’ve been managing just fine.”
I give her whiskey a pointed look, relief washing through me as she slides it to the side of the table away from us, rather
than pounding it.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” I say, which seems to surprise her. “I even rode my bike down to the cabin.”
“Jesus, Ducharme, it’s freezing out! Don’t you have a car?”
“No.” I shrug. “Don’t need one here. Everything’s walkable, and if it’s not, then I have Regan and Johnny.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why were you looking for me?”
“I wanted to apologize on behalf of my friends.”
“Just your friends?” she asks, biting the inside of her cheek. Her classic holding-back position, always biting something—her cheek, her tongue, her lips. The face I’ve seen during a hundred arguments, the warning that if I don’t let up, the next thing to come out of her mouth is going to hurt.
I’m tempted to feed into it, to fall back into old patterns where she pushes, or I pull, and neither of us gets anywhere good.
The roller coaster that turned into a Ferris wheel that we could never get off in time.
Only I did, finally, and I’m not about to get back on.
“I’m not sorry for hooking up with him or anyone else,” I say, “but I should never have told him about any . . . private things
between us. That’s nobody’s business but our own. You were a mess back then, we were a mess back then, and you don’t deserve to have an intimate moment like that thrown back in your face. Especially not
by a man you don’t know while he’s acting like that. You shouldn’t have been put in that position.”
She seems to consider my words, letting them hang between us before she finally breaks the heavy silence. “Do you know why
I cried those last few times we were together?”
“Because you were strung out and/or hungover?” I laugh awkwardly.
“Because you were fucking me like it was a goodbye.”
Each one of her words pierces into my chest, niggling their way into my heart and shredding it to tatters. She’s right, it
was a goodbye—they all were at the end.
I had decided to leave weeks before I actually did—waiting for just the right opportunity to avoid ending up on another gossip
rag or having to deal with her melting down in person. I knew I needed out, that it was best for me, probably for her too,
even. We were so unhealthy back then. We were.
I just didn’t know that she felt it too, the finality of it all.
The same desperation I had to hold it in my palm, to memorize her skin in case it was the last time I got to touch her, to feel the dips and curves of her body, to lick, bite, tease, taste until it was all burned into my memory in a way that could never be scratched out, like picking at the scab until the scar became permanent.
I wanted it to leave a mark, and it did. It did.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, not even sure what part I’m apologizing for anymore, but still meaning it with my whole heart. I
see now that she felt it too. That it mattered to her. That saving myself, even though it was necessary, had also meant hurting
her.
Nikki reaches over, brushing her fingers against mine, just barely, just in case I’m going to pull back, but I don’t.
We sit there, longer than we should, not talking or moving, just letting her skin and my skin get reacquainted by centimeters.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so damn sad. Two emotionally constipated adults sitting at a bar, barely holding hands. Their
growth stunted by childhood celebrity turned trauma queens, the oldest story in the book, just an absolute embarrassing cliché.
There’s always a little truth in those things, isn’t there?
Nikki takes a deep breath and I hold mine. Her pointer finger trails back and forth over my hand, and it feels like a knife
cutting through all my defenses. I don’t know what bomb she’s about to drop on me, but I know it’s coming.
“I’ve missed you so goddamn much,” she says, her voice breaking on the words.
I’m lost in the sound of her anguish. Those seven syllables crash into me like a rogue wave.
I’m left drowning, kicking uselessly and gasping for air, destroyed by the intensity of her glassy stare, and I don’t care if it’s the whiskey that’s dialing her emotions up to an eleven or not, because they’re here now, finally.
No more smirks or banter. No more bravado. We are a kite in a windstorm, a cut string trailing behind us where our sense of
obligation and morality used to hang, and fuck it. Fuck it. Let’s see where we land.
I link my fingers with hers and isn’t it such a shame that they still fit so perfectly? Her hand meant for mine. Her skin . . .
“Will you walk me home?” I ask.
She licks her lips slowly before leading me out of the bar, our fingers never separating for a second.