Chapter Twenty-Four Love and Hand Dryers #2
summer heat. It set us back months in our budget. Thus the doorbell, more like a firehouse bell, currently going off in my living room.
It’s probably those kids who hang out around the gas station down the block all night. They’ve done it before. I glance at
my phone to see it’s nearly two a.m., prime time for ding-dong-ditch. I wait to see if they stop, but instead it rings again
in quick succession.
I grab the baseball bat I keep next to my bed, along with my phone, which I pre-dial to 911, and head downstairs.
I don’t want them to get annoyed that I’m not playing along with their little scheme and break a window or something instead.
We’re just finally firmly in the black now; we don’t need any unexpected surprises like that.
I tiptoe down the steps and unlock the door at the bottom, sliding through the floral racks, which seem spookier under the
moonlight. I contemplate turning on the heavy fluorescent lights, but the idea of me being lit up in the floral equivalent
of a glass fishbowl while whoever is outside gets to stay in the cover of darkness manages to creep me out even more.
I stick to the shadows instead, as whoever is ringing the doorbell continues their urgent pressing of the button outside.
I can kind of see someone moving out there. It looks like it’s just one person, not that it doesn’t mean the other kids aren’t
hanging out of sight, ready to, I don’t know, laugh at me? Rob me? Anything feels possible at this time of night.
My grip tightens on my baseball bat as I jump out in front of the still-locked glass front door, hoping the sight of a disheveled
woman wielding a bat is enough to scare away whoever’s at the door so I can finally get some rest. God knows I could never
actually hit anybody with this.
“Get the hell out of here or I’ll call 911,” I yell at the person on the other side of the glass. I can barely make them out,
thanks to the rain and darkness, but I can tell they’re startled.
Good.
“Andy? It’s me, Nikki,” she shouts through the door. She moves closer to the glass, and oh my god.
Oh my god.
I have never run to unlock a door so fast in my entire life.
My fingers fumble with the latch and I only half undo it, tugging the door prematurely.
The half-open bolt catches and slams it back shut.
I flick the light on before quickly flipping the lock the rest of the way, anxious to see her face.
I’m happy, so happy, to see her, but now that there’s light falling on us both, I can tell Nikki looks serious on the other side.
I pull the door open and step back, gesturing for her to come in out of the rain. She’s dripping across the floor, but I don’t
even care. Damn, I want to kiss her right now, but I don’t know if she wants it. It’s entirely possible that my decision is far too little, far too late—but Nikki came here. She flew here instead of to
her commercial. That has to mean something.
I swallow hard, wishing I had just the right words to make everything better. “Nikki, I—”
“It’s up to you,” she says, cutting me off before I’ve barely gotten a word in. “It’s always been up to you, Andy.”
“I don’t . . . what is?” I ask, because it feels very much like at this moment, things are up to her.
“You said you wanted to know how the story ends. It’s . . . that’s for you to decide, Andy. You know how I feel about you.
How I’ve felt forever, really,” Nikki says. “I wanted you when we were teens, and I wanted you when I was twenty, and I want
you still. I can’t imagine a world in which I don’t want you. I know I ruined things the first time, and whether we want to say ‘we met too young’ or blame it on Hollywood,
where most relationships are doomed from the start, or the drugs, or the fact that your cat hates me”—she pauses, watching
Gouda wind between my legs, her sleepy eyes growing sharper as she notices Nikki is the cause of the commotion—“the truth
is, I’ve made a hundred bad decisions, I’ve made a hundred mistakes, but loving you was never one of them.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe, because whatever speech I thought I had in my head won’t come close to topping hers.
She smiles, stepping even closer. “Is that a good holy shit, or . . . ?”
“How did you even get here? I thought you had a shoot tomorrow,” I say, my brain struggling to catch up to the fact that this
is really happening.
“I’ll always come running when you call.”
“Nikki, that’s . . .”
“Too far?” She winces. “I just—”
My lips are on hers in an instant, my fingers tangling in her wet hair as I pull her even closer. I cover her in frantic,
loving kisses, desperate to show her everything that I was too afraid to tell her before.
And Nikki’s there, all parted lips and matching energy, as she brings one of her hands up to hold my face. Her warm tongue
is a sharp, heady contrast to the coolness of her skin and lips—she’s trembling or shivering, I can’t tell, and it doesn’t
matter anyway, because our mouths are meeting like long-lost lovers and the thumb of her other hand is sliding over the bit
of bare skin between my sleep shirt and sweats.
This moment . . . it’s everything. It’s the whole world, the universe, the big bang, and all I could ever want or need, right here in this shop, surrounded
by flowers in bloom.
Nikki pulls back, still smiling, and then rests her forehead against mine. She presses our hands together as she squeezes
her eyes shut and I follow suit, content to just be breathing in each other’s air. And god, it would be so easy to fall into
bed with her right now.
Do it right this time.
I sigh, scraping the last of my willpower from the depths of my soul and taking a step back, just a little, careful to never
let her hand fall.
“I’m so glad you’re here and there’s nothing I’d rather do than keep kissing you forever,” I say. Nikki breaks out into a
grin that’s so bright I have to look away or I’ll lose my nerve to say the rest of it. “But we need to talk.”
She nods, her tired eyes going serious and strained and damn if I don’t just want to jump right back into kissing her, to
chase that lightness and laughter right down the rabbit hole and see where we end up.
But if we’re doing this, if we’re really doing this, then we owe each other this conversation—cards on the table, truth out in the open—real, honest vulnerability
on both our parts. It’s the only way.
I know it’s going to be just as hard for me as it is for her. I know that I’ll hear things that I won’t like, and she probably
will too. I know it’s going to be a lot, and nothing will be solved within minutes, but I believe we can build something from
the scraps.
I squeeze her hand, giving her another soft smile. “You with me?” I ask as I lock the door and lead her up the stairs to my
apartment.
“I’m with you,” she says.