Chapter 18 #2
“Yeah. We’re best friends now.”
My head jerks back.
“Kidding! But seriously, we had a good time watching the last couple of games.”
“Huh.”
“So why do you feel guilty?”
“Because her ex was an asshole and I didn’t know it.
He was fucking abusing her and I was clueless.
So were my parents. And even when I found out, it didn’t sink in right away how fucking disgusting it was, how Julian treated her.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t physically hurt her.
But emotional abuse is still abuse. Even when she came to stay with me and she was so…
different, so subdued compared to her usual self, I didn’t realize what was going on.
I still feel like a complete tool for being so dense.
I fucking hate that she went through that and I didn’t do anything to protect her. ”
Nikki’s silent and I glance at her. Her face is solemn.
“I’m an idiot,” I add.
“Have you talked to Mabel about that?”
“Oh, yeah. She knows I’m an idiot.” I feel her chiding look. “Okay, yeah, we talked and I apologized. A lot.”
She nods. “That’s good.”
“One thing she doesn’t know…” I make a face. “Is that I went to see Julian.”
“You did?” Her eyes shoot open wide.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “I told him that if he ever so much as talks to her again, I will rip out his intestines and use them as a jumping rope.”
Nikki snorts and covers her mouth.
“And called him a disgusting monkey-licking maggot.”
“Aaaah!”
“Okay, now you go. Tell me something about you I don’t know.”
“Hmmm.” She taps her bottom lip. “Do you remember I told you how I was kind of scatter-brained as a kid?”
“Yeah.”
“And my parents told me if I wanted to succeed I had to be more disciplined?”
“Right.”
“When I was twelve, my parents took me to the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. It was like my biggest dream come true. Rory Wright was nominated for a Grammy that year and I was so excited to go and cheer her on. I saw other musicians I loved on the red carpet, then getting up on stage to accept their award. Some of them sang and got standing ovations from their peers. I wanted that so bad. I wanted to be part of that world. I wanted to be recognized as one of the best.”
“That’s where the Grammy goal comes from.”
“Yes. And when I told my parents that as we drove back to our hotel, they told me I would never be a success in music unless I learned to focus. Unless I learned to be more disciplined and less impulsive. They thought they were being supportive, but the words ‘you’ll never be a success in music unless…’ have stuck in my mind ever since then. ”
A hard knot forms in my chest. “You are a success, Nikki. You’re doing what you love and people love your music.”
“I didn’t want to prove my parents right,” she continues. “I wanted to show them I could do it. I wanted to show them that my dream of winning a Grammy wasn’t just a silly fantasy.” Her head drops forward. “And then…”
My heart torques in my chest. “It’s not a silly fantasy. And you can do it.”
“On the plane on the way home from the Grammys, I pulled out a notebook. It was my favorite one, with a cover that looked like antique sheet music. At the top of a page I wrote—no, first I scribbled it—MY PLAN. Then I looked at it and saw how messy it was, so I crossed it out and rewrote it neatly. Then I wrote GOAL: WIN A GRAMMY.”
A rush of empathy has my belly tightening.
“I listed the things I needed to do to be disciplined and focused. I thought a list would help. So I wrote down, in neat bullet points, things like do homework every night, practice piano two hours every day, go to bed at 9:00 every night, have a skincare routine. And then I thought about being impulsive, and I wrote down… follow the rules, save my money instead of buying more shoes, eat healthy food, and learn time management skills.”
I imagine her as a girl, sitting on the plane, carefully making her lists in her notebook, so earnest and specific. I think about the hurt she hides under that carefree exterior and I hate it but I understand it. Because I’m the same.
“And then I thought more…” She halts, then finishes, “and I wrote down, be perfect.”
“And you’ve been trying to be perfect ever since.”
Her head dips forward but she doesn’t speak.
“What happens when you make a mistake when you’re playing piano?”
She slants me a look, eyebrows pulled together. “I… keep going. I improvise.”
“Okay. Yeah. That’s probably a good way to live your life, right? When you make a mistake, you keep going. You improvise.”
Pursing her lips, she gazes at me for a long moment. “Right.”
“There’s no such thing as perfection, you know.”
“Music. Music is perfection.” She pauses. “No, it’s not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because… music is trying to express the incomprehensible. So we can try, and we might get close, but we’ll never be able to fully articulate what we want to say. There’s always something missing.”
I let that sink into my pea brain. “I think I get that. Like, when I listen to music, sometimes I feel… well, all kinds of stuff, but sometimes it’s a… a yearning feeling.”
“Yes! Because you’re yearning for what’s missing in the music, even though you might not know what it is.”
“I feel that when I listen to your music.”
When I glance sideways at her, she’s sucking on her bottom lip. “Thank you.”
“Can I make a confession?”
“Absolutely,” she says fervently.
“I sing your songs in the shower.”
Her jaw unhinges. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I make a face.
“I didn’t know you sing.”
“I’m a terrible singer. But I like music.”
She nods slowly. “Okay. Wow.” After a beat she says, “Okay! Different question. What’s your favorite sexual position?”
I give my head a shake, one corner of my mouth ticking up. “You don’t know?”
“I have my thoughts. You tell me, though.”
“Well. It’s tough to narrow it down to one.”
She shoots me an amused look.
“I think it has to be missionary, even though it sounds boring. But I can see your face, and kiss you, and see your tits… also, if I kneel up straight and lift your hips, I can see my cock push your stomach out a little. That is so fucking hot.”
“Oh,” she says faintly.
“But there’s a lot to be said for doggy style,” I go on. “The view is incredible, obviously. You have an amazing ass. It gets me so hard.”
She swallows audibly.
“I want to take a few licks before I go in, right from your pussy to your tailbone.”
I think she whimpers, and I repress an evil grin.
“And then of course there’s your butthole. So tight and pretty. I’d love to fuck you there.”
“Oh my God.”
“And the other good thing about it is, it makes you come so fast, I guess because of the angle and how deep I can go.”
“How much longer till we’re there?” Nikki chokes out, tugging at the neckline of her sweater.
I swipe the back of my hand over my forehead. I kind of got myself going there, too. “I think about half an hour.”
She shifts in her seat. “Our room better be ready.”
“Damn right,” I say grimly, gripping the steering wheel.
Finally, we’re pulling into the small town of Afton on Cayuga Lake. The GPS directs me to the inn and Nikki waits while I go check in. And yeah, our room is ready—score! It’s not just a room, though, it’s a cottage.
“Bluestone Cottage is down the lane.” The receptionist smiles and gestures. “We had snow yesterday, but it’s been plowed so you’ll have no trouble. I see you don’t require housekeeping services, but if you need anything at all, please call us.”
“Thank you.” I take the keys and return to the vehicle.
“We’re leaving?” Nikki says.
“No. Our cottage is a little farther away.”
“Oh. A cottage.”
I pull into the driveway of the white house.
“This is big for a cottage,” Nikki says.
“It is. It’s about two thousand square feet. Two bedrooms, two baths. A kitchen.”
“Oh.” She turns big eyes to me. “I was worried about staying in a hotel. But this…” She stops and I can see the relief in her eyes.
“Yeah.” I nod. “This works.”
“It’s perfect.” Her pretty eyes swim with emotion.
Yeah. She’s feeling things.
“It’s beautiful.” She gazes around as we walk through a screened-in porch which is too cold to use right now, but probably nice in the summer. The living room is furnished and decorated more like a home than a hotel, modern style mixed with antiques and interesting accents.
“It was built in the 1850s,” I tell her. “But you’d never know it.”
“The floors.” She admires the wooden floors. “And the doors and windows. So much character. But the kitchen—look, it’s gorgeous. And even flowers!”
A bouquet of white flowers and greenery sits on the small table.
“Amazing!” She skips to the bedroom and my heart clunks at the sight of her lighthearted energy. It’s such a normal Nikki thing to do, and I haven’t seen her do that for a long time. “A king-size bed! You’ll be happy!”
I follow her. “I made sure of that before I booked.”
She sits on the cream and white bedding.
Masses of puffy pillows rest against the padded headboard, with a long cylindrical cushion in shades of blue and green in front of them.
“Feels nice. Or did you get a two-bedroom cottage so I’d have my own room and you’d have the king-size bed all to yourself? ”
“Oh, yeah, totally.” I drop one of our bags on the rug. Then I walk over to her, bend, and set my hands on the bed on either side of her hips. “You think I’d let you sleep alone now?”
Her lips part and her eyes glow. “I hope not. I sleep a lot better with you.”
“I know.” I kiss her, fast and hard. “And you need to be fucked for giving me a boner while I was driving.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”