Chapter Twenty-Six Rise and Shine
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rise and Shine
I wake up slowly, my excitement about getting to see Nikki sleeping on my couch tempered by my healthy fear that maybe everything
yesterday was just a dream. I’m terrified to open my eyes and find out none of it ever happened.
I hold my breath, listening for any sound of life beyond the purr of my cat. My ears strain so hard I swear I can feel them
trying to hear, but it’s shockingly silent on the other side of my door.
Or at least it was.
All of a sudden there’s an explosion of noise that sounds suspiciously like all my pots and pans toppling over and spilling
across my kitchen floor. I know that sound well. Gouda jumps, claws digging into me, and I wince. If Nikki was trying to be
quiet, my precariously-shoved-in-the-cabinet pans blew it for her.
“Shit,” Nikki says from the other room.
Gouda pins her ears back and hops off the bed, apparently deciding that she doesn’t care if she hates Nikki, as long as Nikki
has fingers that can open cans.
I smile and let the cat out of my room before making quick work of my morning routine.
I throw on a hoodie, nearly tripping over my vibrator that’s still on the floor where I tossed it—I have to remember to clean that later—and then search for a fresh pair of sleep shorts.
Once I’m reasonably put together, I stumble out into the living room, where
I instantly melt at the sight of Nikki crouching on the floor of my kitchen—still in my pajamas—trying to wrestle the pans
back into the cabinet.
“Morning,” I say, and she turns around slowly, giving me a bashful smile.
“You weren’t supposed to be up yet,” she says, standing up and into my hug. “I wanted to surprise you with breakfast in bed.”
“You should have thought of that before you threw my pans everywhere,” I tease. “Besides, I didn’t mind getting up. I’m just
glad this wasn’t all a dream.”
“The fact that you said ‘dream’ instead of ‘nightmare’ feels like progress,” Nikki says, looking very cute.
I kiss that look right off her face and then turn to survey the mess. “Let me help.” I wiggle most of the pots and pans back
into place within a minute or so and then pass her my favorite nonstick.
“How did you get those put away so fast?” she asks, utterly flabbergasted.
“Magic.” I shrug. “I have to do it every time I eat. I’ve gotten good at judging angles.”
“You know if you put them away properly every time this wouldn’t happen.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I ask, pushing myself up to sit on the counter as she scrambles the eggs for our breakfast. There’s a fresh loaf of sourdough beside my stove—our favorite lazy weekend breakfast when we lived together. Nikki must have snuck out to the bakery while I was sleeping.
I’m just about to insist she let me take over spatula duty—taking care of each other equally, remember—when I spy a terribly
made arrangement of flowers on my table. I almost make a joke that she should have just ordered from me instead of whatever
awful grocery store florist made this abomination, when I realize that they are the flowers that she ordered from me. The exact ones that came with the note to check my email—even the lone black rose.
The vase looks suspiciously like the ones we stock at the store too.
I hop down to inspect them closer. These are definitely from In Bloom.
“What’s all this?” I ask, and she turns toward me with a smile.
“I know it’s not exactly on your level, and yes, I do realize that they look terrible together now that I see them—what do you always say, ‘It’s important to have a cohesive arrangement’?
Well, these are not that.” She laughs. “I couldn’t help but notice you never made them and I wanted to fix that. It wasn’t
cheap, you know. Regan triples her prices for me.”
“I didn’t really think about them anymore after I saw the whole ‘check your email’ thing,” I say. “But thank you. No one ever
buys a florist flowers, let alone makes them for her.”
“We should change that.” Nikki smiles. “Except maybe I shouldn’t be the one in charge of pulling them all together.”
“You definitely should not be the one in charge of pulling them all together,” I say as I drop into a kitchen chair and kick my legs up onto another one.
I don’t miss the way her eyes travel up my long legs all the way to my teeny, tiny sleep shorts and then snag.
A blush rises to her cheeks that turns me on more than I want to admit.
“My eyes are up here,” I say, and she somehow blushes even harder before going back to stirring the eggs.
“I didn’t mean to stare,” Nikki says.
“It’s okay, you can. In fact, I encourage it.”
“Yeah?” she asks, glancing at me. She pulls the pan of eggs off the burner and turns to look at me. “Good, because I’m a little
in love with you. If you can’t tell.”
“Only a little?”
“Maybe a teeny bit more than that,” she says. “But I deducted points for the way you keep your cookware.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, hopefully it will even out, because I just gave you bonus points for using the language of flowers to woo me. Although I could have done without the black rose.”
“Why?” she asks, looking genuinely confused.
“Death? Goodbye? You scared the hell out of me with that.”
“No, it means ‘the end,’ I googled it. It was a pun because I finished the—oh my god, I didn’t even think how else that could
be interpreted.”
“I had a full-on existential crisis over that rose and it was a pun?”
“Whoops.” She winces. “Add another plant to the apology garden, because I am so sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m definitely in charge of flower picking from now on.”
“Agreed. You know, speaking of flowers,” Nikki says, leaning against the counter.
“That big bouquet I ordered the first day I was here, the one Regan put together for me before I even knew for sure I had gotten the location right? That was for you too. I was going to do this whole cathartic releasing into the ocean thing if I misunderstood your text and you weren’t actually here. Sounds cheesy, but . . .”
I scrunch my eyebrows together, remembering how grand it was. “Wait, did you study the meaning of flowers before you even
came here?”
“Maybe.” She bites the inside of her cheek, glancing at me before pulling some plates down and scraping equal amounts of eggs
onto each one. “I have another confession to make too.”
“I might need coffee before we do that,” I say, the words slipping out as my body tenses up.
“No, no, you’ll like this one.”
“Okay,” I say, dropping back into my seat. “Hit me.”
“None of those early bouquets I ordered were ever for anyone I slept with. I haven’t really been with anyone since I got clean,
no matter what TMZ says. Most of those ‘girlfriends’ at the beginning were my sober-living coaches. Even my first order wasn’t
to any one-night stand or whatever you accused me of. There haven’t been any. Not for years.”
“Who did they go to, then?” I ask, scandalized. “Oh my god, I was obnoxious and raunchy in the first few!”
“My agent, a couple friends, my sponsor, Julia. Pretty much anyone I could pre-warn about a tag that said ‘thanks for the
screaming orgasms’ without getting sued for sexual harassment got one.”
My ears go hot and start to ring. “Wow. I guess we’re about to find out if you officially can die of embarrassment.”
“Don’t go dying anytime soon, because you’ve been blowing up on the left coast after all that. Your style is fresh and unique. Everyone who’s seen them has been flipping out.”
“That explains all the LA orders. I just assumed that your exes had good taste.”
Nikki laughs and joins me at the table with both of our plates. I hop up and grab us each seltzer water and some napkins.
Equal partnership.
“I have a confession of my own,” I say. “Or more of an idea, rather.”
“I’m listening,” she says, tilting her head.
“Last night I was thinking about ways we could get to know each other again and reconnect.”
“Oh, is that what you call what you were doing last night?” she teases.
“After the whole vibrator thing!” I squeak. “I meant after!”
“Right, right, after,” she says. “What did you come up with during your post-orgasm glow?”
“It’s a little outside the box.” I wince. “It’s probably going to be a huge pain in the ass for you, and if you want to say
no, it’s fine. Seriously, it’s fine.”
“Immediately yes,” she says, sliding some eggs delicately into her mouth.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say!”
“You’re telling me that you have an idea that could bring us closer. I don’t care what it is. If it means skydiving naked,
I’m ordering a parachute after the breakfast dishes. I’m in, Andy.”
“It’s not naked skydiving. Sorry to disappoint,” I say, taking a bite of toast.
“Still,” she says. “I’m sure I’ll be into it, whatever it is.”
I should probably be afraid of her devotion—in my past life I would have been, but right now, here, with everything we’ve been through—it feels so damn right. So natural. Especially since I feel exactly the same way about her.
“I want us to cowrite the book—a total do-over, from scratch. You’d hear my stories, I’d hear yours. We could do alternating
chapters for the years we were apart or something—make it truly our story and write our own ending.”
Nikki sets her drink down and meets my eyes. “That’s going to ruin the whole anonymity thing you have going on here. You’d
be back in the spotlight, especially if it did the numbers they’re hoping for. People would recognize you, for real this time.”
“It’s time to ruin it. I’m sick of pretending to be Anne Lacy and acting like Andy doesn’t exist. I want to be both. I can be both. I’m not giving up the shop or doing flowers, but there’s space enough for my past and my future. I get that now.”
She grabs the side of my chair and slides me toward her. “A few weeks ago, you didn’t know what you wanted, and now you want
to tell the whole world—in writing—that we’re lovers?”
“Too soon?” I giggle.
“No,” Nikki says, kissing me.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you,” she says, pulling back to pepper my face with kisses. “Or did you mean the book? Either way yes, my
answer is yes.”
“Good.” I laugh. “We should celebrate my new book deal, then.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“It’s not our last first date anymore,” I say, letting my hand drift up her thigh to the edge of her sleep shorts.
“No, it’s not,” she says, her legs falling open to invite me in.
I slide my hand under the fabric, just a little. “Are you sure this is okay?” I ask. I wait for her to consider my question
and add, “We don’t have to, if you’re not feeling good about it yet. Being here with you is enough, it really is. I promise.”
“God, I love you for asking that.” She presses her hand over mine. “But it’s more than okay, Andy. It’s goddamn divine.”
I smile, leaning forward for another kiss.
“Your phone is buzzing,” I grumble into the pillow.
Nikki shifts, kissing the back of my neck before rolling off me to grab her phone. “Oh no, it’s my assistant.”
“Take it,” I say, rolling over. “Seriously, take it. If we’re going to make this work, we have to make the real world work
too. Which means, sadly, we both have jobs.”
She looks unconvinced, letting voicemail make the decision for us. “I’m scared,” she says with a sad little laugh.
“Of what?”
“That if I leave our little bubble something will happen—like you’ll change your mind or disappear on me again.”
“We have to trust each other,” I say, lacing our fingers together and kissing her hand. “We have to build fresh. You can’t
keep thinking I’m going to disappear, and I can’t keep thinking you’re going to hurt me. It’s going to take time, but we have
to believe in us.”
“Yeah,” she says, looking down at me. “I do. I trust us.”
“Good,” I say, sitting up to kiss her nose. “Now call your assistant back.”
Nikki nods and pulls up the number. Her PA starts talking before Nikki even gets a chance to say hi. “Yeah, okay,” Nikki says, looking at me. “If that’s the only flight out, I can make it.” She looks sad about it, so I give her a reassuring thumbs-up.
This is part of it.
This has to be part of it.
Nikki is going to have to leave for work, and I’m going to stay here and handle my business too. We have to be willing to
join our lives without holding each other back or we’re dead in the water before we’ve even begun.
“I’ll be there this afternoon, on time,” she says, grabbing my thumb and bringing it to her lips for a kiss. “No, I still
have my rental. I can drop if off at Logan. Okay. Yeah. Yes. I’ll see you there.” She clicks off and tosses her phone on the
carpet.
“How long do we have?” I ask, as she presses me back down into the sheets.
“Long enough to get my mouth back on you, if you’re not still too sensitive?”
“I think that’s doable,” I giggle.
“Promise me you won’t whip out that vibrator the second I’m gone?” Nikki asks, nipping at my breast. “I’ll be back in two
days, and I want you ready for me.”
“You’re mean,” I pout.
“That’s not what you said when I was—”
“Shut up,” I laugh. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” She grins and dives back under the covers.
And if she barely made it to her plane on time, running down the platform just before they closed the door, well, her assistant
never needs to know.