Chapter 24
“Where was this during your suave mocktail lecture?” Ramona asks an hour, maybe two hours, later—she’s lost track of time. She’s reaching inside the small fridge in Nick’s kitchenette, pulling out a liter of sparkling water.
Nick pushes up on his elbows. They’ve been sprawled in bed naked, listening to records—another Tom Petty, and then a Velvet Underground that he insists is the most underrated of all their underrated albums. She’s not sure he’s ever looked softer than he does right now, with his messy hair and satisfied mouth, just minutes after making her come with her thighs spread across his face, hands gripping the headboard.
His glasses are folded on the nightstand—criminal, really, that he looks just as hot without them as he does with them.
“Oh. That might be flat, I’m sorry,” he says sheepishly, just as Ramona lifts it to her lips. “I was so nervous before you got here, I might have forgotten. There’s a soda maker in the main house.” He swings his legs to one side of the bed. “Let me run in and refill it for you.”
Ramona waves her hand, urging him to sit back down. “I’ll get it—I don’t mind. Your sister and Audrey are still out?”
“Yeah, they shouldn’t be home until nine.”
Part of it is curiosity, but he was so sweet, making sure his place was ready for her. She doesn’t want him to feel like he needs to wait on her, especially after he did so much for her at her own house. She’s perfectly capable of carbonating her own water.
So she shrugs on his T-shirt and a clean pair of his boxers that fit her like shorts, shimmying her hips to see what he thinks.
His lovely mouth tips upward. “You’re really tempting me to drag you back into bed,” he says, pulling her close so he can run his hands up the backs of her thighs.
He lifts the hem of the T-shirt and drops a kiss to her waist, her stomach—and when he finds a ticklish spot, Ramona dissolves into laughter.
God, that’s freeing. She winds her fingers through his hair, savoring this moment like she’s savored at least a thousand others tonight.
But if she doesn’t leave now, she never will, so she gives him a gentle swat with the plastic bottle. “I’ll be right back, and then you can do whatever you want with me.”
She pads over to the main house barefoot, her body stretched out in the most delicious ache.
A lifetime of no control, and there she was, so eager to give it up to him.
To share it. Probably because she’s never had a partner like Nick, someone who doesn’t take that control and warp it into something ugly.
They can keep doing this, she decides, though they haven’t explicitly discussed it. As far as she’s concerned, after watching him get on his knees for her and then fall apart inside her, there’s no other option.
There’s something charming about this house, not the size or the decor but the way it’s so comfortably lived-in.
Family photos on the walls, what she assumes are Audrey’s handwritten recipes stuck to the fridge.
A carefully curated selection of board games, a seventh-grade math book on the kitchen table.
All of it sparks a twinge in her stomach.
Not nostalgia, because she’s never experienced any of this, but something else.
The sting of not having her own mother in her life anymore, even though that’s the way it needs to be.
Her gaze snags on a Christmas photo from last year, according to the date in one corner. Must be Nick’s extended family—she thinks she can spot his parents, and who must be his sister and niece, both redheads.
And Nick. His expression catches her so off guard, she almost doesn’t recognize him. This must have been only months after the separation. His cheeks are hollow, dark bags beneath his eyes, and she wishes she could crawl right inside the photo and make him smile.
It occurs to her, distantly, that she’d do just about anything to keep him from looking that way again.
She hums a Tom Petty song as she carbonates the water in his sister’s kitchen. Takes a satisfying sip before twisting the cap back on.
Toward the front of the house, a door opens and shuts. The sound of shoes being kicked off, and then footsteps down the hall.
There’s fight, there’s flight, and then there’s what Ramona does: freeze in the middle of the room with the liter of sparkling water in her hand.
A teenage girl with an adorable curly bun on top of her head and giant headphones around her neck enters the kitchen. As soon as she spots Ramona, her mouth drops, her phone hitting the floor with a smack.
“What—” the girl starts, eyes wide and unblinking. “How—oh my god. Oh my god. It’s you.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ramona splutters, the girl’s nerves rubbing off on her. She has to fight the urge to scoop up the phone and make sure it’s okay. “I—I was just hanging out with Nick, and we ran out of sparkling water, and—”
Hanging out with Nick. Has she already said something she shouldn’t?
When the girl doesn’t respond, still looking like she might faint, Ramona tries a different tack. “You’re Audrey, right?”
“You know my name. Oh my god.”
Panic swells up in Ramona, like maybe she wasn’t supposed to see Audrey quite yet, maybe Nick or Lexi wouldn’t want this to happen. Then again, he asked if he could introduce them at the end of the quarter. They’re just…speeding that along.
She really hopes his boxers look like shorts.
“Is your mom here?” she asks.
Audrey shakes her head. “She just dropped me off before going to get something she left at the office.” Without even glancing down, she kneels to pick up her phone, and Ramona exhales in relief when she sees that it’s unscratched.
“I have all your CDs. Even a couple of the records. I went to see you in LA, at the Bowl. We wanted to do a meet and greet, but it was so expensive, and it sold out really fast.”
“I know, I’m sorry. The pricing was always kind of ridiculous, wasn’t it?
” With what she hopes is a warm smile, she beckons Audrey to come closer into the kitchen, since she’s still half in the hall.
“Thank you so much, though. It really means a lot to me—all of that.” Then, when Audrey doesn’t move: “Can I…get you a glass of water or something?”
Audrey nods, still unblinking. “Ramona Wilder just asked if I wanted a glass of water,” she mutters to herself, loud enough that Ramona can hear, and she has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
Nick’s niece is instantly endearing—not because of the ego boost, but because Audrey’s affection feels so genuine.
In an industry where so many things seemed fake, that was what kept her going—the girls like this who looked up to her.
Although maybe Audrey would reconsider that if she knew what Ramona was really doing here.
“Still or sparkling?” Ramona asks, and Audrey pauses for a moment. Then straightens her shoulders. Says, “Sparkling.”
When Ramona passes her a glass, the younger girl takes a few quick gulps, screwing up her face in this way that indicates she’s not the biggest fan of it. Recognition dawns—Ramona’s love for sparkling water is well-documented in interviews.
Suddenly she’s not sure what she should do—if she should leave Audrey alone in the house with her mother gone.
Though if her mother dropped her off, she supposes Audrey’s fine by herself.
Thirteen, Nick said, right? Her own parents left her alone starting much younger than that, since they both had to work and babysitters and daycare were expensive.
So Ramona’s never been a great barometer for these kinds of things.
“I…should probably get back to your uncle,” she says.
“You and Uncle Nick.” Audrey takes a long moment to assess Ramona’s clothes. Ramona wishes she’d thought to put her skirt back on but is massively relieved she’s wearing something on the bottom at all.
“We’re friends.” Will Audrey be able to tell she’s full of shit? “Good friends,” she amends.
“But he’s so…dorky.”
Ramona throws her hands up, laughing. “I know, I know. Turns out dorky is kind of cool?”
Audrey just stares, like she doesn’t quite believe her. And Ramona can’t blame her—she certainly thought the same thing at thirteen.
“I hear you’re a fantastic cook,” Ramona says.
“He talked to you about me?”
“Oh yeah. He talks about you all the time.”
As though he’s been summoned by his name, the backyard door slides open, and Nick appears wearing sweatpants and, thank god, a T-shirt. His hair’s still a little rumpled in the back, but overall, it could be worse.
Panic and affection fight for control of his face when he spots his niece. The affection—that’s the part that makes Ramona weak in the knees. “Hey, Aud!” he says. “Didn’t realize you were home.”
Ramona holds up the bottle of water. “We were just getting acquainted.”
Nick checks his phone. “A bit late. Probably getting close to your bedtime.”
“Like I’m going to be able to sleep after this!” Audrey says, and all of them laugh. Then, with a little groan-whine, she relents. “Okay, okay. I just have a million questions for you. About the music. About your life. About everything.”
“How about we just do one tonight,” Nick says, lifting his eyebrows at Ramona to ask if that’s okay.
Ramona nods back and Audrey takes a steadying breath, as though trying to pick from a whole barrage of questions stampeding through her mind.
Ramona prepares herself—something about her past boyfriends, maybe, or why she quit.
Instead, Audrey simply asks, “What’s your favorite song of yours?”
Ramona exhales with relief. “Probably ‘No Tomorrow.’ ” It’s the last track on her first album, one of the few she wrote entirely by herself.
An angsty ballad that she always loved to belt.
A song about heartbreak, though she hadn’t experienced it at the time.
“There was something so satisfying about the production being that stripped-down.”