Chapter 43
Felicity sat down on the old stone stairs outside her shop and surveyed the destruction. Feeling a lot like Ozymandias, except that she was the one dealing with despair.
Courtney had held her hand as they walked up to the courtyard. Felicity had known it was bad. She’d said she wasn’t ready to see it yet. She still didn’t feel ready. But she’d put it off for long enough.
Courtney had sat with her for a long while until getting called away.
Everything was gone. The pergola. The benches.
The new sign. The decking. The sod was ripped to hell.
Everything they had done since last fall was wrecked.
This had to be why Dylan and Derek had always come to dinner looking exhausted.
It was probably the real reason her father flew in wanting to help her mother with the shop.
Just cleaning up the debris must have been all hands on deck.
They would never win the pocket park grant with it looking like this.
She looked across the piles of rubble that used to be the elementary school.
At least the church and the old parochial school buildings were still standing. At least they were all safe.
A very tall shadow passed over her. She held a hand over her face so she could see his wary expression despite the glare of the morning sun.
He sat beside her.
The breeze blew around them. She could barely hear the wind chimes from the balcony.
Her mother must be yelling at her father about something in the shop because every now and then she could hear her mother hollering her father’s name.
The noise from the machinery in the schoolyard carried across the courtyard.
Felicity sighed. She leaned her head on her hand, elbow digging into her knee.
“Just because it all got broken doesn’t mean I regret building it.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “I don’t either.”
He looked out over the destroyed courtyard. “How pissed are you at me?”
“What do you think?”
“Pretty damn pissed?”
“Accurate.”
“I deserve that.”
Felicity gave him a once-over. “When I met you, you were gangly. I met fucking Nicholas Nickleby, but you came back and now you’re Sons of Anarchy Jax Teller.”
Nic huffed out a laugh. “How do you get from a fucking Dickens novel to a motorcycle gang?”
“I thought you looked like that actor. You were a tall string bean with ringlet cherubic boy-band curls in cashmere and froufy jeans, and I wasn’t wearing my contacts, and your accent was so different.
And now you’re”—she gestured to every filled-in inch of the muscled body next to her—“this. Also why are you all wet?”
His chest puffed out. “Fair.” He leaned back on the stairs, pretending like he was lounging. “I’m wet because I fell asleep in the garden.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah, my dad said he installed some automatic sprinklers.”
“I noticed.” He squinted at her. “Can we get back to the part where you were praising my mature man physique?”
“I was not praising your mature man physique.”
He shook his head from side to side, flinging water in every direction. “There was implied praise.”
“I thought I made you up.”
“I left you a note. Jeannie didn’t give it to you, but I never knew until right before she died.” He took out his wallet and pulled something out and handed it to her. “The tree showed up a few weeks later, and I thought you were saying goodbye. A ‘thanks but no thanks’ type deal.”
“Still, for the entire year before that, I thought I made you up. I thought I must’ve been slipped some peyote or something. You not showing up basically confirmed that. I tried to get rid of the tree when you didn’t show up. Aunt Jeannie said she’d take care of it.” She read the note and growled.
“She did take care of it though.”
Felicity stood and started to pace. When that wasn’t enough motion to soothe her ire, she yanked him up.
She pulled him back down the sidewalk to the lamppost where they had stood on that walk back from the dumpster.
She pointed to the exact spot. “Right there. You said your name was Nikolaj. That was literally the only part of the name I remembered because of that Game of Thrones actor.”
“I absolutely did not say my name was Nikolaj.”
“You did.”
“You asked me what my father would have said my name was. And that was true. That was what he had me baptized as in Germany—I think it was Germany, anyway—but I was born in California, so my legal name is the one she gave me. Do you need to see a copy of my birth certificate? I have one back in Texas.”
“It was true your mom called you Nicky?”
“Yep. The people I love have always ended up calling me Nicky.”
“Every time I saw the name Nick or Nicholas or Nikolaj anywhere for an embarrassing number of years after … I thought it would be you somehow. I’d see a blond dude when I was visiting here, and I’d convince myself you had come back.
I think that was why when you actually showed up, my mind had stopped wondering if you would ever come back. ”
She shoved him. “Fourteen goddamn years of thinking you just disappeared because you didn’t remember or care.”
“I’m really sorry.” He held out the note she had left for him on her nightstand. “Do you want to take this back? It’s wet, but we could probably dry it out, and then you could burn it if you want.”
She shook her head but let him put it in his pocket. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“What might change your mind?”
“I still don’t know how you feel.”
“I told you how I felt in the letter. Did you read all of my letter?”
“I did read the letter. It said ‘love is carrot cake’ and later it said”—she affected a mildly insulting version of his deep-voiced Texas twang—“‘the ball’s in your court, darlin’.” She reached for his pocket. “On second thought, I do want my letter back.”
“I might have accidentally skipped a line in there. In fairness, it was two o’clock in the morning when I wrote it.”
“You think?”
“Felicity Gallagher, I—”
“Wait. No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“No.” She placed her hands on her hips. “No, now isn’t the moment. My eyes are puffy, you’re soaking wet. And Hobo Jim Bob is over there catcalling me because I forgot to put a bra on.”
“Hi, Jim.” Nic waved. “He’s not catcalling you. He’s catcalling me. And he’s not a hobo. He runs a theater company and he’s from New Jersey, so his castmates always put that on the back of his T-shirts.”
“Hobo … Hoboken? Jesus Fucking Christ, Nicky, how many times did you come back here without running into me—”
His mouth found hers. One hand pressed into her lower back, clinching their bodies together, as the other held her head. There was nothing but this. His perfect lips coaxing against hers. His teeth. His tongue. She wanted all of him.
She gasped each time they parted because there was never enough breath.
But she couldn’t let him go. She held on to his wet T-shirt and didn’t let his mouth leave hers for more than a few seconds.
Felicity had wanted him to kiss her that night.
She had wanted it so badly, and then she’d woken up alone.
But it couldn’t have been more perfect than this moment.
In place of a full orchestra, there was only the sound of traffic and Hoboken Jim Bob cheering from across the street.
But it was absolutely perfect.
“Felicity—”
She pressed a hand to his lips. “You got to choose when you told me who you were. I get to choose this. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”
He nodded. “Do you want me to leave?”
Felicity startled. “No, you’re mine forever. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.”
His eyes sparkled like sea glass in the sunlight, and his toothy grin could have lit up a stadium.