Chapter 24
BY MORNING, I’M FRAZZLED from all the tossing and turning, and my hair is a frayed mess once again.
Even worse than usual, actually. Even from inside this stuffy storage room, I can tell it’s going to be another hot day, and there’s a humidity to the air that makes everything feel heavy—and does nothing for my disastrous hair situation.
My phone is full of sweet birthday texts already, which I do not have the focus to reply to right now.
I lie back on the air mattress, replaying last night in my mind.
How afterward, I could barely get the still-damp bikini back on, and we both practically peed ourselves laughing about it.
Nate asked me to stay over, and I wanted more than anything to just get back into the tiny cot and lie there entangled in his arms…
But the very real possibility of everyone finding out the next day that we hooked up was starting to set in.
It would be way too embarrassing to be caught!
I insisted, and that quieted him. Then I had to race home half naked and sneak upstairs to my makeshift bedroom like a guilty teenager.
My running shoes are still somewhere over by the rope swing.
Still, last night was… incredible. Like something out of a dream. Far more romantic than anything they could cook up on LovedBy. Because it was raw, and messy, and real. And it didn’t feel like just two “friends” messing around.
That’s what scares me the most.
“Hey, Birthday Girl!” Emma chirps as soon as I video call her.
I groan in response.
“Is it that bad?” Emma asks. She’s out of breath, brushing strands of auburn hair out of her face and clearly running on a treadmill.
I let out a tiny sob as an answer.
“Nikki? Nikki!” Emma slows to a walk. I feel some tears forming, and I know she’s shocked because of how rarely she—or anyone—sees me like this.
“I don’t know what I’ve done,” I say.
She looks me straight in the eyes. “What’s going on, and do you need me? Is it an emergency? If you need me, I can be there.”
It’s such an extreme reaction, and I love her for it, for how at-the-ready she always is.
It’s why I called her instead of going to the group chat.
Willow’s the one you call for some spiritual wisdom—or a question about a tantric sex position.
Sybil’s the one you call when you need a getaway car, or a great distraction, or to borrow something skimpy and sparkly.
But Emma’s the one you seek out when you need someone to take over and give you a five-point strategic action plan for whatever your problems are.
“No, no. Don’t go to any trouble. It’s not an emergency,” I assure her. “I’m fi—”
“Nikki,” she says, using her stern voice. “Do not say you’re fine. Okay? Just tell me what’s really going on with you.”
I feel a lump forming in my throat. I try to sigh, to clear more space to talk. Where do I even start? “I’m going back on LovedBy,” I say.
Emma’s silent on the other end of the line. Which I know must be killing her.
“You can say it,” I prompt.
“Niks… are you… are you sure that’s a good idea?”
It’s a softer reaction than I’d expect from the woman who hurled a burrito at Aaron’s head after he broke my heart.
“No,” I admit. “I haven’t officially said yes yet. They want me for A Shore Thing. I’m thinking it over. Oh, also, I slept with Nate.”
“You what?” Emma practically shouts.
Now that’s the Emma I know.
“So are you, you know…” She leans heavily on those last two words.
“Am I what?” I ask.
“Flinging?”
I let out a little half sniffle, half laugh.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” I take a deep breath, trying again to find the right words to explain what I’m feeling.
“Do you remember that silly list we made together after I came off the show and you guys basically forced me to put myself back out there to start dating again?” I ask her.
“I wouldn’t say we forced you. Maybe enthusiastically encouraged?”
“Right.” I give a teary laugh. “Sybil and I were talking about that earlier this summer, before I left for home. Like, sure, the list gave me all the reasons I needed to risk jumping back into the fray. But lately the list was feeling kinda limiting and depressing, and anyway, we decided it was time I just throw away the damn list and just, I don’t know, do what other people do? Follow my heart?”
“So far, this is all sounding like fabulous advice to me,” Emma says.
I swallow again. “Sure. Sort of. Except, Emma, I…” I feel my throat closing up again but clear it, drawing in a calming breath. “I think I did follow my heart. Too far. And now I regret it.”
She stops walking on the treadmill. “Oh shit. Are you falling for Nate?”
I nod, too overwhelmed with the realization to say it out loud.
“Last night, when we—slept together….” I pause.
How do I explain why this felt so different to me.
So…beautiful. “It didn’t feel like a fling or a one-night stand,” I tell her, trying to figure out why it felt like more.
“I tried not to overthink it and to just be in the moment, be okay with this just being something fun and temporary…” But the truth is, I realize as I hold the phone and take another breath: I don’t want it to be that.
“Emma, when I’m around him, I just feel so…
I don’t know. Seen. Held. There’s just something about him.
I know it’s crazy fast and it makes no sense, I can’t explain it, it’s just… It feels like… like… like happiness?”
“Oh, Nik,” she breathes. “That’s great. What’s wrong with that?”
I shake my head. “Everything’s wrong with it. First off, he’s barreling toward becoming my brother-in-law. Or my sister-in-law’s brother, which is—I don’t even know what that makes him.”
Emma laughs. “It just makes him a guy.”
“A guy who’s built into family holidays for the rest of eternity, even if we break up?”
“Hmm, you do have a point there.”
“I’m thirty years old, Em,” I remind her. “And I’m hooking up with a guy who has said in a thousand different ways that he doesn’t want anything serious. How did I even get here? I mean, I have truly never met a more commitment-phobic man in my life.”
Emma sighs. “Did he tell you that? That he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you?”
“I—well, no, not in those words exactly. At least, not since last night.”
“So maybe you should try telling him how you feel.”
“Emma!” I shout, as if she’s just told me to march naked in next year’s Fourth of July parade.
“Okay, okay, it was only a suggestion.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“More complicated than your brother marrying his sister who happens to have dated your ex-fiancé and ruined your life?”
“Yeah. More complicated than that,” I say, laughing a little despite the mess I’m in.
“I mean, they asked me to come back on the show. To get a second chance at love. Which is, like, amazing and unexpected and terrifying. I will remind you again, I’m thirty.
Thirty, Emma! What am I even doing with my life?
Maybe this LovedBy thing is the exact thing I needed. Maybe this is all meant to be.”
She lets out a breath. “How long do you have to decide?”
“They need an answer by the end of the week.”
“That’s insane.”
I laugh again. “That’s exactly what Nate said too.”
“So he knows? What does he think?”
I sigh. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. I wanted him to beg me to stay, you know? To tell me not to go on the show but… but he didn’t.”
“It’s a huge decision, Nik. Maybe he just doesn’t want to influence you.”
“I want him to influence me. I want him to feel the same way. I want him to want a relationship. With me.”
Emma sighs. “My love. There is only one way to get an answer. And that is to ask the question.”
I sigh. “Ugh, my god. I hate it when you’re right.”
She blinks and smiles. “Which is always.”
I laugh. “Thanks for talking me off the ledge. At least a tiny bit.”
“Any time, babe. And Nikki?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to be anywhere by thirty but right where you are.”
And just like that, all the emotion comes flooding back up through my chest and into my throat. “Love you,” I say, and we hang up before I risk crying in front of her again.
AFTER I HANG UP, there’s this urgency pulsing through my veins. Because Emma is probably right. And now I know I’m not going to be able to relax or feel normal around Nate until I get the words out.
But I’m also a little nauseous and panicked—because what if Emma’s wrong?
What if telling him is just one more messy, off-script move to add to the list of disastrous choices I’ve been making this summer, from giving up my lease in LA, to thinking it was okay to try and “subtly sabotage” a wedding, to letting myself catch feelings for a walking-disaster commitment-phobe just because he has great arms and the sweetest smile in the world and makes me laugh in a way that causes me—for whole minutes at a time—to forget that anyone might be watching?
Just because of how he looks in my eyes, and how he reads my moods, and how he makes love to me in a way that makes me feel like I’m levitating?
I do some breathing exercises as I shower and get dressed, choosing my outfit carefully—a pair of high-waisted white shorts and a white eyelet tank top. The look is sweet and summery yet mature. But my hair is still being impossible even after I’ve blown it out.
“Mom?” I call down the stairs.
“In here.” Her voice wafts over to me from the sewing room.
“Do you know where the mousse is?” I ask as I leave the yellow bathroom and walk down the hall to pop my head into the sewing room.
My mom’s head is bent down over the sewing machine in the corner, sunlight from the window behind her pouring in, illuminating the gray amid the blond in her bun.