Chapter Sixteen
Nixon
I was nervous.
Which was fucking ridiculous.
She was only doing it because I'd conned her into it.
This was not—in any way shape or form—a real date.
Yet all I could do was keep picturing the picture that had been sent to my phone much later the night she'd been out drinking with Krissy. And her brother. Who happened to be the guy from all the Facebook photos.
It had been taken by someone other than Reagan, clearly, as she was completely in the picture, half the room away, dancing with Krissy, who was wearing a black dress that fit like a second skin.
I barely spared her a glance, though, since my gaze was fixed elsewhere.
On the woman next to her. With her hands thrown up in the air, making the white tank she was wearing slide up to expose her skin several inches above her belly button.
Flat and smooth, though not toned, showing off a gentle flare of hip.
Krissy had been right.
She stripped when she was drunk.
There was no way she had gone out in a tank without a bra. And, well, her pants were missing. Which only served to show off her long legs. She had on fancy panties in a rosy pink silk and white lace pattern that was soft and delicate and sweet. And made me itch to rip them off her body.
Her brother must have taken the picture and sent it, likely in cahoots with Krissy, both deeming Reagan a little too rigid. Though, I was pretty sure most people would look rigid alongside Krissy.
I'd been counting down the days until the next Sunday dinner. Not because of the spread of food that was both delicious and over-the-top, but because I actually wanted to see her again.
So, yeah, while the rational side of my brain understood this was more of a transaction than anything, the other part was nervous.
That feeling stuck with me as I let myself into the building, made my way up the stairs, this time hearing the bustle of office life, but interrupted by the bass of a stereo playing some early two-thousands pop song that hadn't even charted long enough for me to remember a title or artist.
I moved into the space, immediately spotting Krissy sitting off the side of a desk, bare foot tapping along to the beat in the air.
There was clicking coming from the desk in the back that was completely blocked off from view.
And there were two figures to the far back, faces turned away.
"Look who it is!" Krissy declared, smile immediately beaming as she hopped off her desk. "I knew that picture would work. I made Luis snap it when she wasn't looking, then totally used her finger after she fell asleep to override her password to send it to you. And here you are!"
Yeah. That sounded like something one of my brothers would do to me.
"We actually had this set up before then," I told her, watching as her eyes slit small.
"That lying whore," she said affectionately, tsking her tongue. "She lied right to my face about you. Well, yay, you're here. Are you taking our Reagan somewhere fun, or just going right back to your place to fuck?"
The me I had been years ago might have been thrown off by that comment.
But this version of me, the one that had been an extended part of the Mallick family for so long, was accustomed to women who made comments like that.
Hell, Fiona said worse than that over casual dinner conversation if the kids were out of earshot.
"Krissy, can you tell me when... oh," Reagan said, moving into the doorway of her office in wine-colored slacks and a white shirt, holding a flowing light yellow sundress by its hanger.
"When your date—that you didn't bother to tell me about even though I am your best friend, but it's okay, I'm not butt-hurt about it or anything—arrives?" Krissy finished for her with a smirk.
"I, ah, well, yes. When Nixon arrives. But he's here," she said, turning a smile in my direction, one that was tight at the sides. Like maybe she was nervous as well.
"He looks handsome in his suit, doesn't he?
" Krissy asked, moving closer to me, running a hand down the front of my black shirt.
It was flirtatious, but not personal, if that made any sense.
It was like flirting was her default setting, so she didn't know how to turn it off.
I was more waiting for Reagan's response to that since she so clumsily avoided answering me the other night about if she thought I was hot or not.
Which pretty much confirmed that she did, but I had to admit, I wanted to hear it from her lips.
"You clean up nicely," Reagan told me, voice a throaty purr. "You didn't shave."
"I like scruffy men," Krissy chimed in. "You get that little burn on your inner thighs when they go down on your—“
"My ears!” another voice joined, higher, younger, belonging to a slip of a girl with long, wavy wheat-blonde hair and the cornflower blue eyes to go with it, all made even more wholesome-looking by the smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose.
Young.
She had to be in her mid-teens.
What the hell was she doing working at a whiskey company?
"That's not even the raunchiest thing she's said today," yet another voice chimed in. He was around the age of the girl, tall, thin but not gangly, with brown hair and mischievous green eyes.
"Nixon," Reagan offered, moving closer to make introductions. "This is Marley and Calvin. Our juvenile delinquents."
"Literally," Krissy chimed in.
"Literally?" I asked, shooting Reagan a look.
"It's a program we worked out with their school and the police station. Instead of going to juvie or getting kicked out of school, we have a couple kids work here as punishment."
"Yeah, this place seems like a fucking hellhole. With your thousand-dollar coffee machine and all," I drawled. "What'd they do?"
"Well, Calvin here got caught stealing," Marley volunteered.
"What'd you steal?"
"The cow off the top of the butcher's shop," she told me. "So he could put it on West's football field."
"I'm fucking lost," I admitted.
"It's an old school prank from the eighties,” Krissy explained.
“We have two rival high schools. West and East. Back in the day, they used to take this giant cow statue off of the butcher shop, and put it in the middle of their competitor’s football field.
The butcher shop thought they solved the problem when they bolted the goddamn thing to the roof.
But, what can we say, our Calvin here is the determined sort. "
"It was a stupid thing to get arrested for, Marley declared.
"Says the girl named after a fucking dog," Calvin shot back.
"Oh, please. Like it is cooler to be named after jeans.” She added a pretty epic eye roll at that. They reminded me of the Mallick offspring, and I couldn't help but wonder if they went to school with any of them.
"What’d you do?" I asked, watching as the two kids shot daggers at each other.
"Marley was hauled in for inciting a riot," Krissy volunteered.
"It was hardly a riot. It was a peaceful protest. Until someone showed up with his friends and started pissing everyone off."
"Anyway, yeah," Reagan cut in. "We figure that getting some work experience and structure, mixed with a little more freedom than they are used to all day locked in class, will do more to rehabilitate them than anything else. Though, I mean, I hardly think they need to be rehabilitated. They’re good kids.
I think they just needed people who wouldn't look down on them for being pegged as 'delinquents. '"
"It's alright. I was a delinquent myself until a few years back," I admitted, not sure why I felt compelled to do so, feeling oddly interested in these people, in their dynamic, wanting to integrate myself into it in some small way.
"Yeah?" Calvin asked. "What’d you do?"
"I stole shit. A lot of shit." It was as close to the truth as I was willing to get.
"From the rich? To distribute it?" Marley asked, clearly idealistic.
"He's not fucking Robin Hood, Marley," Calvin shot at her.
"You're an asshole," she snapped back.
"Now children..." Krissy said, but there wasn't even a hint of authority in her voice. If anything, she seemed to enjoy their banter.
"How about you two go make everyone some coffee before your parents get here?" Reagan tried, a little more stern, making the two of them hop to, whisper fighting the whole way across the room.
"I give it... six more months," Krissy said when they were out of earshot.
"Six months for what?" I asked.
"Until they realize all that animosity is actually misplaced attraction."
"Not every situation is a rom-com come to life, Krissy," Reagan said, shaking her head, but she was smiling softly when she saw Marley hip-check Calvin so hard that the spoonful of sugar fell out of his hand, clattering onto the door table.
"Oh, let me have my fun. Besides, what is wrong with rom-coms? Everyone loves a stern and ambitious Katherine Heigl sort of character finding a charming and laid-back Mr. McDreamy sort of character who—“
"Twenty-five states have no laws in place determining how old a child must be to marry, resulting in over thirteen thousand child marriages in the US last year," a voice called out from behind the cubby.
"What... the fuck was that?" I asked, shooting Reagan a lowered-brow look.
"That," Marley volunteered, handing me a coffee that looked more milk than actual coffee, but it was the thought that counted, I guess, "was Harvey."
"Harvey?" I repeated.
"Whenever one of us spouts off anything he thinks of as pop-culture and shallow, he yells some depressing fact about the state of the world back at us," Marley explained.
"It's not a bad idea," I said, shrugging.
"He's not going to work here, is he?" Marley asked about me, clearly not one for worrying about offending people.
"I, ah, no. I mean," Reagan stammered, at a loss. Since she had told her staff I was in advertising.