Chapter 2
2
Nick
S hit.
I watched her pull down the alley and she didn’t even signal at the stop sign before turning left towards home.
Shit.
What a…I didn’t even have a word for it. There were no words for it. But I needed to make sure she got home okay. I needed to…do something.
Shit.
How did I not see that coming? That hand kiss tonight, that had been a lot coming from her, but I just thought it had been the emotions. The car. The toast. The eighteen-year-old of it all. But this…love? And fucking taking her virginity?
Blindsided. Blindsided didn’t even cover it. It was like I’d been hit by a train.
“Nick?” Sheila came out of my bedroom to stand in the doorway in the black lace bra and panties I’d taken off her not too long ago. “What’s going on? Who was at the door?”
No way was I telling Sheila that it had been Nora. “Just a family emergency,” I said. “In fact…”
I couldn’t even look at her right now. Something about Nora being at my door and Sheila standing there in her underwear made me feel like an asshole. Which was bullshit, I knew that. But still, officially, I’d hit my limit on drama.
“I need to go,” I said to Sheila. I grabbed my t-shirt from the pile of clothes by the couch, which is where we’d taken them off each other. I pulled it on, and then, in perhaps not the smoothest move, I picked up her dress and threw it at her.
Whatever. My world was rocked.
“You’re kicking me out?” she asked with equal parts outrage and pout.
“Not at all,” I said. Lied, really. “You can stay if you like, but I need to go. And I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“For a family emergency?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Pipes. At my folks’ house.” Oh, I was digging myself in deep with bullshit. I shoved my feet into my Timberlands and grabbed my keys from the counter. Sheila scowled at me and tugged her dress back over her head. She grabbed her shoes and purse from the floor. “You know, Samantha said you were like this.”
I didn’t give a shit what Samantha, the last woman I’d slept with, said about me. I’d been honest and up front the whole time with her, it was her own fault she hadn’t listened.
“She said you were in love with someone who wasn’t interested in you and you were a real dick to other women.”
“Sheila,” I said, holding open the door. “I’m not in love with anyone. I have never been in love with anyone, and truth is, I never will be. If that’s something you can’t understand, then we’re done here.”
She walked past me with a sniff. “The sex was awesome, but you got a real chip on your shoulder, you know that?”
“I’ve been told,” I said and closed the door behind us. She took her sweet time going down the stairs, and all I could think of was Nora, emotional, wrapping that Mini around a tree.
At the foot of the stairs Sheila stepped right to her car and I line-drived left to my truck.
I had my truck started and was backing up while she was still standing there. Flipping me the bird.
The single women of Calico Cove were going to have a field day with this. I probably wasn’t going to get laid for a year.
I sped through town to get to Nora. To make sure she was all right. To try and make sure we were all right. She was leaving for school in a few weeks and I hated the thought of her leaving town without us being solid.
The Mini was not in front of her house, so I kept driving. I went to all the coves. The band shell. I didn’t see her car anywhere and she was not answering my texts. When I called, it went right to voicemail.
“Swear to God, Nora,” I said. “If you got in a crash, I am going to kill you.”
I went back to her family’s house and parked in front. Where there was still no sign of her car.
Fuck.
Should I wake Roy? And tell him what? That his daughter came to my house, told me we were destined to be together, offered up her virginity, and when I turned her down, she drove off and now I couldn’t find her. Anywhere.
Roy would kill me. Then he would kill Nora. And then he’d kill me again.
But what else could I do? The idea of Nora being somewhere, hurt and scared, filled me with such nauseating fear that I could barely breathe.
I got out of the car, just as the headlights of a Mini Cooper came up the street. I sagged against the side of my truck, my head going light with relief.
She parked and got out with a bag of fast food. “Get lost, Nick,” she said, without looking at me.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re fine.”
“Great, thanks. Now fuck off.”
“Can we…maybe talk? You’re leaving for school soon and I don’t-”
“That’s right, Nick. I’m leaving for school and I’m going to go and have an amazing life. Also, I’m going to fuck a dozen guys who don’t think I’m no one.”
“I don’t think you’re no one-”
“You said I was no one,” she all but screamed. She all but breathed fire at me. I shut my mouth and tried to step closer. She held up her hand and I stopped on a dime. I’d never been scared of Nora before – this was a night of firsts, all the way around. “I am going to have a huge life. An exciting one. As different a life as I can have a million miles away from Calico Cove and you,” she spat as she walked up to the front door.
I stepped forward and touched her hand, but she moved so fast I barely got a sense of it before she shoved me off the landing. “Get,” she shoved me. “The fuck,” she shoved me again. “Away.”
The front door opened and Roy and Vanessa stood there, looking startled and pissed.
“What’s going on?” Vanessa asked and Nora dive bombed past her into the house.
“Nick is an asshole and I don’t want to see him,” Nora cried. Roy and Vanessa shared a quick look and Vanessa stepped inside, closing the front door behind her.
Leaving me alone with Roy.
Shit.
“Nothing happened,” I said. Which, as I thought about it, was not the smartest thing to say.
“What could have happened?” Roy said, stepping down off the stoop onto the walkway with his hands in his pockets like he was oh so casual. I couldn’t help but take a step back.
Roy was a friend. A mentor. A father figure. But he would fuck me up in a heartbeat when it came to Nora.
“She came to my house. Upset. I was worried she might get in an accident, so I just made sure she got home safely,” I said, making my voice as firm as I could. I was a grown ass adult and I’d done nothing wrong. Except listen as the word virginity came out of Nora’s mouth. And then fuck a dozen men . Oh my God, Roy was going to kill me.
“What was she upset about?” Roy asked. He clapped his hand on my shoulder and there was something about that, something familiar. The same clap on my shoulder I’d been getting from this guy since I was a kid.
I rubbed my hand over my face and the truth came out of me. Not the virginity stuff, no, I’d take that to my grave. But the rest of it.
“She has it in her head,” I whispered, “that she loves me. Like, for real. And that I love her. And I do.” I looked at Roy only to find him nodding sympathetically. “You know I love her, but not… not like that. I swear Roy. I would never…”
“I know, Nick. I know. Vanessa’s been saying it for years, that this crush she has on you has gotten out of control.”
I sagged with relief. He understood. He wasn’t going to kill me.
“And that she was only going to get hurt,” Roy said.
“I swear I tried not to hurt her. I let her down as easy as I could, but I was so fucking…”
“Blindsided?” Roy said with a laugh. “The whole town has watched that girl follow you around with hearts in her eyes since she was a baby and you’re the only one who never caught on.”
“I’ve never thought of her like that. Not once.”
Again, Roy clapped me on the back. “I know. You’re a good man. Her teenage heart has taken a beating, something we all go through I think. But she’s going off to college and she’ll be all right.”
I was scared that she was going off to college burning with rage at me and that she’d make bad decisions. Roy nodded like he could read my mind.
“She’s upset, but Nora’s got a good head on her shoulders. She always has.”
“Can I talk to her, do you think?” I hated her being mad at me.
Once, when I was fifteen and she was four, I was babysitting her and I took her to the beach. Vanessa told me I had to be really careful putting sunscreen on her, so I did, but I never put it on myself. I ended up with a terrible burn on my back. It bubbled up and peeled. I was sick to my stomach and my skin felt tight for weeks.
This feeling was like that feeling, but inside my body.
“No. She’s upset. Let Vanessa calm her down. She’ll call you before she leaves for school.”
I wasn’t so confident, but I wasn’t going to argue with Roy. I was just so grateful he understood the situation.
He gave me another clap on the back and I got back in my truck. Looking at the house before driving away.
Call me, I thought. Please Nora, let’s get over this.
But she didn’t.
I didn’t see her again. For three years.
Three Years later
Christmas Eve
Nick
I took a deep breath as I made my way up to the front door. I could hear the party happening inside. Knew Ant and Birdie would already be here with my sister and brother, Mads and Julian.
My family. My rocks. The people who claimed me and who I claimed back.
My family had been coming to the Barnes house for Christmas parties for as long as I could remember. We’d hosted their entire crew almost as many times for Thanksgiving. Which was no easy feat when you’re talking about cooking for six kids.
Antony and Birdie loved it. They would have brought enough food for thirty people to this party. The leftovers would go on for days. It was my favorite time of the year. It always had been.
Until something, or rather someone, had changed all that.
Once again, I had to consider if it was my fault.
No, that wasn’t true. I knew whose fault it was originally. It was Nora’s fault for getting some stupid crazy idea in her head. It was the stuff that happened after that night, so maybe I had to share some of the blame.
Avoiding her those last few weeks of summer before she left for school.
Staying away, creating space between us, seemed easier.
Then there was her farewell party before she went off to college in Vermont…and I’d stayed away from that too.
Simpler, I thought. Because what we really needed was time apart. Time to reset. Time to forget everything she’d said, so we could go back to being what we were.
Lifelong family friends.
Only now I could see that might have been the wrong approach because she seemed to get the back-off message a little too well.
Because Nora didn’t come home for that Thanksgiving or Christmas, choosing instead to go out west with her roommate to see California. She went to Florida over Spring break. She stayed and worked at a summer camp in Vermont for the entire season, never once coming home to Calico Cove.
Instead, the Barnes family took a trip to see her.
Then last year it had been her new boyfriend, Brian, whose family she’d spent the holidays with.
Roy hadn’t been happy. He’d made that known when I asked him about why she wasn’t coming home, but he’d said he had to acknowledge that Nora was an adult and could make her own choices. That he’d needed to start letting his little girl go.
Letting go seemed a bit harsh to me. She was barely an adult having just turned twenty this past summer. Not even legal to drink.
Now here it was Christmas again. Nora was in her junior year at school. As far as I knew, the boyfriend was in the rear view mirror and no one had tempted her with trips to other parts of the country, so she had deigned to finally come home.
To celebrate her glorious return, the Barnes were having a massive Christmas Eve open house. Basically, everyone in town was invited to stop in and say hello.
It would have been odd, if I’d stayed away from this party. People would have talked. Asked questions.
Also, I didn’t want to stay away.
Counting it down, it had been two years and six months since I’d even laid eyes on Nora Barnes. Surely that was enough time for any awkward events to be considered firmly in the past? There was no reason to expect that I wouldn’t open the door to the Barnes family home, feel the heat and press of the partygoers, and minutes after that, feel the arms of Nora wrapping herself around me in a huge welcoming hug.
Because it had been two years and six months since she’d seen me too. Hugging was to be expected. Wasn’t it?
Another deep breath, and I opened the unlocked front door.
It was as I expected. The heat from the house hit me in the face as soon as I stepped inside, a direct contrast to the cold wind swirling just outside the door.
It was loud. Christmas music was blasting over a portable speaker. There was chatter and boisterous laughing.
Kids sprinted between adults. People shouted at them to stop running. I took off my flannel lined denim coat and found a spot for it on a hook weighed down with about ten other coats already.
Surely the Barnes house couldn’t hold this many people. Would Sheriff Bobby cry foul at what had to be a fire hazard? Probably not.
I made my way through the throng of people. Telling myself I was looking for some representative of my family, but the truth was, I was looking for her.
It had been two and a half damn years.
I had to make this right. I had to get us back to some semblance of normal. I wasn’t so self-absorbed that I attributed her staying away from Calico Cove to me. But I did know this opportunity might not present itself again for another year, so I had to take advantage of it.
I ran through a bunch of introductions in my head.
S’up, Kiddo?
Come here and say hello, Squirt.
How you been, Norry?
Always with one of the annoying nicknames she hated.
Because that would be normal between us. She’d glare at me to put me in my place, then she’d smile and launch herself into my arms.
And the world, my world, would return to normal.
It wasn’t until I stood among the crowd of locals, most of whom had a drink in their hands as they tried to talk over the background music of Mariah Carey, that I realized how desperate I was for all that to play out.
Realizing she wasn’t in the living room, I pushed into the dining room which led to the kitchen and another family room off the back of the house. I’d helped Roy build the extension ten years ago when Vanessa was pregnant with Bethany.
He’d showed up at the shop, said Vanessa was knocked up again and they were going to need a bigger house.
I’d laughed my ass off, explained the merits of condoms, although secretly I think both Roy and Vanessa adored having a troupe of kids always around them, and gotten to work.
Had it been that summer, that I’d basically spent shirtless with a hammer in my hand in her backyard, that Nora had gotten…ideas about me?
Immediately, I shook off those thoughts. That was the point of coming here tonight. To make all that go away. To not think about it anymore.
To go back. All the way back.
“Nick!” I turned my head and waited for the explosion of female energy to charge at me, only it wasn’t Nora calling my name. It was Charlie, her closest sister in age. She’d just started her first semester of college, and I noted that, like a good daughter, she’d actually come home for the holidays after being away for months.
Charlie had all of Vanessa’s blonde coloring, and sometimes when I looked at her, and saw how completely different she looked from Nora, that’s when I remembered. That Nora wasn’t Roy and Vanessa’s biological child. But the daughter of a distant cousin of Roy’s, who’d tragically died from drug addiction when Nora had been just a small baby.
“Hey, Charlie,” I said with a chin nod. “Good to see you.” Keep it cool, I thought. “Where’s Nor?”
“Merry Christmas to you too,” she said with a smile. “Nor’s outside. Dad built a bonfire. Everyone’s roasting marshmallows and freezing their asses off.”
“Sounds fun.” I shoved the bottle of whiskey I’d brought, Roy’s favorite, at her. “Put this away somewhere, yeah?”
“Yep,” she chirped and bounced off with the bottle.
With intent now, I pushed my way through everyone gathered in the kitchen. It was no surprise to see Antony and Birdie hovering over a stove that was covered in pots and casserole dishes. Their backs were to me, so I didn’t bother to interrupt their work.
Instead, I stepped out through the sliding glass doors onto the deck, then out to the backyard where I could see the fire pit lit up. Only a handful of people were standing around it.
Nora.
She was telling a story about something and everyone in the circle was glued to her every word. Her younger brother, RJ. Conner, Jackson and Lola’s oldest. Bobby and Mari’s daughter, Stella, and Gail, an old friend of Nora’s from high school.
Her hands were in the air, she was gesticulating wildly, and when she finally got to the punch line, because with Nora there was always a punch line, everybody started laughing hysterically.
That felt normal.
Stepping up close enough so I could be heard, but not yet entering the circle of people around the fire, I asked into her ear, “What’s so funny?”
Immediately, her head whipped around as she recognized my voice.
That’s right. It’s me. And it’s been two and a half years since you saw me. And who’s fault is that?
I expected joy. I expected her eyes to light up. And for a second…maybe a second, that was there, in the flicker of the yellow flames. But then it was gone and a polite mask fell over her face.
“Oh. Hi, Nick. Merry Christmas,” she said, then turned her head back to the group. “Okay, well that’s my story. I’m going to go back inside and warm up.”
She turned away from everyone as if she was going to leave. As if all I was going to get was a fucking Hi, Nick. Merry Christmas.
Oh no, definitely not.
“Hey,” I said and reached for her wrist. My fingers circling it to stop her in her tracks.
I didn’t know what to say. My breath was caught in my chest. It had been so long and I wanted, no needed, to reset us. Fix us. Put us back the way we were. Like how we always had been.
“No hello hug?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” She leaned in, her hands on my upper arms. Maybe her cheek brushed mine and then she was pulling away again.
“It’s been…a while.”
Fuck, was that awkward? I didn’t want this to be awkward, but it was already.
“Yeah,” she said a little breathlessly. Then she tucked her dark hair behind both ears, something she did when she was nervous and it made me feel a little better. “You’ve been good?”
I nodded. “Garage is always busy.”
She nodded. “Dad won’t let go of his truck. I think partly to make sure you always have a customer.”
I laughed. Say something. Say anything remotely not awful. “School going good?”
She nodded. “I’m spending next year abroad.”
“What?” Abroad sounded far away. Very far away.
“France,” she said. “First semester I’m staying with a family in the north. Then the second semester in the south. Wine country, actually. I’m super excited. I’m nearly fluent now, but that will really be tested when I’m living there.”
Right. She’d majored in English but had a minor in French.
“So you’re just going to be in a foreign country. Alone. And Roy’s okay with this?”
Her lips twitched in a way that I knew my tone had annoyed her. “I’m not going to be alone. I’m going to be staying with a family. Taking classes. It’s still college, it’s just college in France.”
“France,” I repeated, like the word was a curse.
“Why do you care where I go anyway?”
“Don’t,” I said. Maybe a little too firmly.
I glanced around and saw that folks had wandered back inside. The cold brisk air cut through my button down and jeans, but I didn’t feel it. Nora was wearing a coat, but I could still see that her nose was red. I pulled her back closer to the fire.
“Don’t pretend I wouldn’t give a fuck about you moving off to France for a fucking year,” I growled. “What’s that movie? The one where the girl gets kidnapped?”
“I’m not going to get kidnapped and you’re not Liam Neeson,” she hissed. “I’m living my life, Nick. That’s what adults do.”
“Adult,” I snorted. “You’re not even twenty-one.”
“Age is just a number,” she fired back. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve grown up while you weren’t looking.”
I looked. She did look different. More mature. Her curves a little fuller…fuck, I wasn’t looking at her curves.
“I wasn’t not looking, kiddo. You stayed away.”
Wow. I shouldn’t have said that. That made it sound like she’d stayed away intentionally. From me. I knew it couldn’t be true. I knew it was selfish to even think it.
But what if it was true?
“I didn’t…” she stopped herself, took a breath. “I think we should go inside.”
“I think we should stay out here and finish this conversation.”
“There’s nothing to finish,” she said and pulled her wrist out of my hand, where I hadn’t even realized I’d still been holding on to her. “You need to accept the fact that I’m a grown up. Who will make her own choices in life.”
“I do accept that. I just think going so far away from your family, your home, is that really the best idea?”
“It’s what I want to do. Mom and Dad both support me.”
“And I don’t count.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact. I just couldn’t believe it was true.
“And you don’t count,” she repeated, which for some reason felt like a knife sliding through my chest.
We stood there for a minute too long in the silence. This hadn’t gone the way I wanted. We hadn’t gotten back to normal at all. Instead we’d taken a further step apart.
“It’s never going to be like it was,” I finally acknowledged. “Is it?”
I didn’t have to elaborate. Or explain myself. She knew what I meant.
We were never going to be what we were.
“No,” she said. “I…I don’t know why, but I think…maybe I should tell you. I mean, you heard about Brian.”
Brian? Brian. The boyfriend. “Yeah. I thought that was over.”
“It is. But he was really nice. He was very sweet and the sex was…it was okay. I mean, my first time, it was all good. Nice even.”
I closed my eyes. This was fucking excruciating.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, my voice three octaves lower.
“I don’t know,” she said and bit her lower lip. “I get why I shouldn’t, but I just…I just wanted you to know that I’m good. I’m happy and dating. And all of it. All that silly teenager stuff…it’s gone. Okay?”
It was a little bit of an out. That silly teenager stuff. She’d put a name to it at least.
She was trying to tell me she’d moved on. She’d fucked some guy named Brian. And in a few months she would leave for Europe and who knew when I would see her again.
She would become her own person and I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.
She’d be Nora Barnes. Just an old friend of the family.
A part of my soul howled inside. But I nodded. “You should get back inside.”
“Yeah, it’s freezing out here,” she said and rubbed her hands together. “Nice seeing you again, Nick.”
She left, but I couldn’t follow her. The cold chilled my body, but I welcomed it.
“Have a good life, Nora,” I whispered to the fire.
Only the God of Fire must not have been listening.