22. Nick
Chapter twenty-two
Nick
We’re in the studio recording another one of our songs. I’m hyped up. It sounds unbelievable.
“And that’s it for this one,” the producer says. “You guys can take a break in the lounge.”
The lounge has two black leather couches and a fully stocked fridge, filled with name-brand water, seltzer, the latest fruit drinks, hand-pressed juices, and your usual selection of sodas. I hastily drink an entire bottle of water. I nod as my band members excitedly talk about the album.
I can’t get kissing Maddie out of my mind.
I wrote another song last night after she left, but I haven’t shared it yet with the band.
It’s too raw, too unfiltered. Because what was that?
I hated to let Maddie go. I wanted her to sleep over, even if we were just going to be sleeping.
Me? Mr. No Long-Term Commitment, My Career Comes First?
But when she grabbed my shirt… I felt such a feeling of…elation? Satisfaction? A high. Like I’d conquered a mountain.
But this is Maddie.
She was clearly born to drive me crazy.
And I’m still not the right guy for a woman like Maddie. She needs someone who will be home, not someone who will disappear for months at a time on tour. Even if she pushed back on my mom when she said that I wasn’t partner material. Was that part of the charade?
José says, “I have some exciting news. Elena is pregnant!”
My mouth opens wide.
“Congratulations!” Sayo says, as do Amira and Kyla.
“You’re having a baby?” I ask.
Amira punches me as I realize that my tone sounded full of disbelief.
“Yes, congratulations,” I say, trying to disguise my shock. Is José about to leave us?
José is glowing. He shows us an ultrasound photo. But how is José going to go on tour? He keeps talking about Elena’s morning sickness and how excited he is, as if this is totally thrilling news and not an announcement that he might be quitting the band.
How serious is Sayo’s relationship? Will she quit the band eventually, too?
I’m standing on my own little solitary island.
But they want this as much as I do. They work just as hard.
But maybe that’s because they have a ticking clock, because how long can you keep it up?
And we’ve already spent ten years pursuing this dream.
But now we’re finally about to make it.
We’re called back into the studio to record the next song.
I toss and turn. I haven’t seen Maddie since our epic kissing session last night.
I’m avoiding her. I’m not proud of myself.
But I need to figure out my feelings first. I need to tread carefully.
I don’t want her to think she’s not an amazing kisser and I’m not into her.
But if I give my usual excuses for why we can’t date, she’ll see through them.
I shake my head. I mean, she might think it’s her kissing and not me, when it’s definitely my career. But Maddie hasn’t been calling me, either.
Her no-bullshit brain probably recognizes I’m a bad bargain.
And I can’t believe José is starting a family. We’re about to go on tour. He can’t leave Elena here. But a tour is no place to raise a baby.
Beep, beep.
I turn over again. What is that noise? Is Maddie trying to torture me?
Beep. Beep.
It’s that alarm. That sensor alarm that Luca suggested installing. I sit up and grab my phone to turn on the camera.
A figure dressed in dark clothes with a ski mask is climbing up the fire escape.
I blink. Is this for real?
Did Luca hack my camera to play a practical joke on me?
No .
He’s on the fire escape above us. And getting on the ladder. With a hammer .
My blood runs cold.
Maddie .
I jump out of bed, grab my T-shirt and sweatpants from the nearby chair, my keys, and run next door. I bang on her door and then fumble with my keys. My hands are shaking. I find her key and unlock her door and slap on the lights.
“What the…?” Maddie sits straight up in bed.
“Guy on the fire escape. Need to get out. Now.” I pick up Sherlock.
Maddie is out of that bed in a flash and grabs her bag and her laptop as I pick up her sneakers by the door.
“Keys?” I ask, holding tight as Sherlock squirms.
She grabs the keys from the hook, and I grab her sweatshirt next to it.
CRACK!
We both jump. He’s hammering the window behind the curtain.
I push Maddie out the door, follow her out, and close the door firmly behind me.
“Where do we go?” she asks.
“I don’t know. My place isn’t safe.”
“Did you call the police?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I came to get you first.”
There’s a thud. He must be in the apartment. We need to get out of here.
Now it sounds like he’s hitting something with his hammer. Maddie flinches.
We run down the hallway to the staircase.
“The laundry room?” I ask. “He came from the roof.” If he doesn’t know the building, he won’t know the bookcase leads to a laundry room, and we can bolt the door. Plus, that back door escape route means we wouldn’t be trapped down there.
Maddie nods, and we hurry down the stairs. On the first-floor landing, she dials 911. Her fingers tremble. Sherlock is quiet, as if he knows we’re in trouble. Maddie tells the police there’s an armed intruder in her apartment and whispers our location.
“They’ll be here soon,” she says.
As we near the bottom floor, I insist on going first to make sure nobody is waiting in the vestibule. I hand Sherlock to Maddie.
The first floor is clear. But then we hear heavy footsteps above us. He’s coming down the stairs.
We scoot around the staircase to the bookcase in the back.
I pull out Shakespeare’s Sonnets from the middle shelf, and the door unlatches.
Maddie pulls it open, and we both slip through the opening.
I bolt it behind us. We’re safe. This door is made of metal.
We jump down the short cement stairs, and we’re in a cavernous, brick-walled basement.
A basket of unclaimed clean laundry sits on the dryer, like it’s a normal night.
Sherlock meows. Maddie takes him from me and puts him down on top of the washer. He shakes himself out and licks his paw.
We both slump against the washing machine and dryer and take a moment to breathe. My heart is still pounding. That was close. That was fricking close.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She looks pale. It could be the fluorescent lighting down here.
I move the basket of laundry to the center.
“Here, sit.” I pick her up and stick her on top of the dryer.
She protests at first but folds when she feels the solid metal beneath her.
She closes her eyes. Finally, I take a moment to really look at her.
She’s still pale and looks shaky, but she’s still beautiful.
I can’t believe she wears spaghetti strap lingerie to bed. I quickly look away.
She was so calm and collected when I woke her.
“I’m okay,” she finally says. “Are you?” She gestures to the clothes I had forgotten I was holding, as I stand here in only my boxers.
“That was scary.” That guy could have killed Maddie.
I slip on my shirt and sweatpants and then pull her close to me and hug her. “Maddie.” My heart is racing. That was too much.
She squeezes me back. “I’m okay, really.”
Sherlock butts in. So not a good wingman.
“Sherlock and I are both okay,” she says.
“If we hadn’t installed that sensor device…”
“Did you see him?”
“I saw him on the monitor.” I pull the camera monitor back up on the phone to show her.
Maddie dials the police again to tell them. “How long does that app save the footage?”
“For a week. But we can download it.” I do that.
“We should meet the police at the front door so they don’t break the door in or anything.”
“Right.” I hand Maddie the sweatshirt. “Put that on before you meet them.”
Maddie looks down at her silky and revealing lingerie and blanches. She quickly covers herself in her sweatshirt.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” she asks.
“That wasn’t a priority,” I say.
“Right.” Maddie nods. “You probably didn’t even notice.”
Women. I’ll never understand them. She looks upset about this—when she just survived some crazy dude breaking into her apartment.
Here I thought I was supposed to be a gentleman. But at least I can lighten the mood.
I tilt her chin up. “I very much noticed, Maddie. And now I regret that all those times you told me I was keeping you up and threatened to come over and throw out my guitar picks, I didn’t take you up on the offer.” I smile.
She sniffles but looks away, a small smile playing around her lips.
“Maybe you should wear my sweatpants,” I say.
“You’re going to greet them in boxer shorts?” she asks. “No. What if the press gets a picture of that?”
“I prefer that to their seeing your legs.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is practically miniskirt length,” she says. “You wear the sweatpants.”
I give her the sneakers, and she laces them up.
Then I text Luca. The guy is in security, and we need that now. No response.
After a brief call with The Intelligencer security department, she picks up Sherlock, and we head back to the lobby to meet the police.
“Don’t mention my story or my investigation,” Maddie says.
“But what if it’s related?” I ask.
“I can’t reveal my story. That’s the protocol,” she says. “Our paper’s security will also investigate.”
We explain to the police what happened and take them up to Maddie’s apartment.
They say they’ll check it first before we can enter.
Maddie and I hold back in the hallway while they survey the apartment.
But her ransacked studio is visible through the doorway.
Maddie shivers. Her monitor is shattered and in pieces on the floor.
I put my arm around her and pull her close to me.
“I’ll get you a new monitor,” I say. “Should we wait in my apartment? Let me get you some sweatpants.”
Maddie takes a deep breath and nods. I unlock my door and open it for her to proceed in.
“I can’t believe you didn’t even grab one of your guitars,” she says.
“The guy had a hammer . I only thought of you. ”
We stare at each other for a moment, registering what I said. Maddie looks like she’s about to ask a question. Her eyes are filled with uncertainty, but also a dawning awareness.
I don’t say anything more. What I said is true. I did think only of Maddie.
The crackle of the police radio next door interrupts the silence.
My comforter is in a heap on the floor, where I threw it in my haste to grab clothes and get to Maddie. Sherlock promptly makes his way over there to settle down. I hand Maddie a pair of sweatpants. “Now, can you humor me?”
She takes the sweatpants and retreats into my bathroom. Sherlock meows at the door, and Maddie opens the door a bit and lets him in.
She probably needs a moment to herself, as do I. I collapse into a chair. My phone beeps.
Luca: Are you okay? Can’t talk right now. In a client meeting.
Me: Yes, but worried about Maddie.
Luca: Send me the video, and I’ll run it through my database.
Me: I need to protect Maddie.
Luca: Got it. It seems unsophisticated. More like a warning. She would have woken up when he smashed the window.
Unsophisticated. That’s one way to look at it. She might have woken up, but she might have frozen and not been able to get out in time.
Me: Maybe.
Luca: You can stay at my place. I’m out for the month. Work.
As I start to text back that I’m not leaving Maddie, another bubble appears.
Luca: Both of you.
I take a deep breath, and a framed poster catches my attention.
It was my first live performance—in middle school—in an after-school band.
I knew then that I loved that feeling of playing, listening to what the other band members were doing, and finding my own way to express what I wanted to say but also to fall in with their rhythm.
I’d been obsessed with playing. Boy, had my mom been opposed.
The music teacher had taken her aside and said I had a gift.
And my mom acknowledged that it was clearly not something I was going to give up.
I really like Maddie. And not just as a friend or as a temporary girlfriend.
That same feeling I had with music back then, that this is right, that this clicks, is what I feel about Maddie.
I put my hand over my heart. I feel like I ran a marathon. We’re both okay, but we can’t stay here.