Chapter 36
Just as Nic pushed the third cheesecake into the fridge, his phone began buzzing. He silenced it without looking. He didn’t want to speak with anyone, except for the one person who had gone to bed early.
Marshall was back for a couple of months, and if Nic really needed to talk to someone, he could call him. Or Courtney and Thea. Or Sam and Abbott.
But none of them knew what Felicity was to him.
Jeannie was the only one who had known everything.
It’d been almost a year since she had died, and he still felt the occasional compulsion to jump in his truck and drive to see her. What would he even say if he could have one more conversation with Jeannie?
He would apologize, to start. He hated himself for missing her funeral.
Then, maybe he would present her with all the photos he had taken of Felicity over the last year to add to the bulletin board.
Then on Halloween when he made an ass of himself, going overboard (literally) after seeing that Felicity was reading that Viking romance.
Their entire group in the prickly butt pajamas.
The day they fell into the mud after the drainage system got clogged.
The silly photo at the Love Fern event when he pretended to chase her with a “murder cupcake” and she acted completely unfazed.
Nic and Felicity and little Ani at the hospital.
And his personal favorite, taken by Thea for the local paper: Felicity smirking while surrounded by orchids of every shape and color at the assisted living home greenhouse.
Looking every bit as mischievous as she did thirteen years ago when he first saw her climb out of a dumpster.
He would tell Jeannie his plan for tomorrow.
Felicity had been taunting him ruthlessly about his unacceptably flavored cheesecake long enough.
Tonight, he’d made three small ones for their dinner tomorrow, each one in a flavor that Felicity found acceptable with her strong dessert opinions.
Traditional New York style with a strawberry topping on the side.
Cookies and cream with a crushed sandwich-cookie crust. And a velvety caramel with a praline crust.
He was overdoing it, wasn’t he?
Yep.
Overcompensating for the months and months of omissions that might mean anything real between them was over before it could start. Again.
Still … three cheesecakes? He took inventory. A box of twinkle lights he planned on draping over the star jasmine. Candles and a tablecloth.
And his box with the letters.
It was too much.
Probably?
Definitely.
But as Felicity herself would say, they don’t exactly make greeting cards for this kind of thing.
God, he was going to look like a damned fool when she ran off screaming that she never wanted to speak to him again. At least he knew her well enough to know she would still take the cheesecakes with her.
More buzzing on his phone.
This wasn’t a call.
It was a tornado warning. He checked the projected path, and they should be okay, but you could never tell with these sorts of things.
“Shit.”
Nic had been so distracted all evening that he hadn’t noticed all the weather alerts coming in. He started calling and texting his people, checking in with everyone and making sure they were home safe.
Thea had called him four times. He called her back and said he would look for Courtney.
When the second warning came in, he still hadn’t found Courtney, but he made another decision in an instant. He grabbed the extra key Felicity had given him months earlier and headed up the metal stairs and found an empty apartment.
Where was she?