Chapter 14
14
Nora
“ H i honey. You’re home early.”
Mom was on the couch when I walked through the front door. It was after ten so my dad was in bed, which was for the best. My dad always knew when something was bothering me even when I was trying to hide it.
And tonight, I was very bothered.
And definitely trying to hide it.
That moment on the dance floor. We’d nearly kissed. Right there in front of everybody. Like we were just two random people at a wedding, when we had history. Heartbreak.
We were star-crossed and he acted like it was no big deal.
He broke my heart so badly it changed the trajectory of my life, and now he wanted to make out on the dance floor at Terry and Tom’s wedding like we were drunk strangers?
I was getting mad again just thinking about it.
“Oh. Am I?” I said. “It feels like it was a long night.”
Mom patted the cushions next to her. “Come sit and tell me everything. I love a good wedding story. Did she make a run for it?”
It was the first question my mother always asked, because once upon a time, she had made a run from her own wedding.
Not the one to Dad, but her first wedding, to some asshole her parents picked out for her.
Statistically, Mom was one in a million. Most brides don’t run. But she was always on the lookout for a kindred soul.
I kicked off my shoes and plopped myself down next to her. “She did not make a run for it. She looked beautiful and very happy.”
“And Nick?”
I stiffened. “What about Nick?”
“Was he a good date?”
“Mom,” I protested, like Charlie when she was given a curfew. “It was not a date. I told you that. He just went to the wedding with me…out of pity.”
“Hardly that. Nick, of all people, would never pity you, Nora.”
“Well, it wasn’t a date. That would be…crazy.”
Mom cocked her head and tucked herself up against me. She smelled like dinner and the mango hand lotion she kept on the window sill over the kitchen sink. Mom. She smelled like Mom. “Why would that be crazy?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked and she gave me a blank look. “If Nick and I went on a date. An actual date. Everybody would lose their minds. Dad especially. He’s…he’s Nick. He’s twelve years older than me. He’s…he’s Nick.”
Mom nodded. “Your father would go a little crazy. That’s true. But your father goes a little crazy anytime he thinks you’re serious about someone. Always afraid he’s going to lose his little girl. But I don’t think everyone would care. In fact, I think…” she looked at me carefully. “I think everyone would think it was about time.” She ducked to look into my eyes. “Did something happen at the wedding?”
Almost. Maybe.
I shook my head no.
“No?” she mused. “You’re probably right. You’re very good friends. And you know what they say about friends getting together.”
“What do they say?”
“That it never works out. Except of course, your Uncle Jackson and Aunt Lola, they were friends growing up. Until they weren’t. So that’s not really a comparison. Then of course, there’s Monica and Chandler.”
“Monica and Chandler? From Friends ? Mom, those are fictional characters!”
“Hmm. Yes. Well, it’s a good thing this wasn’t a date then.”
“It wasn’t,” I insisted.
Not when he picked me up looking freaking smoking hot in a shirt and tie. Not when he asked me to dance. Not when he…
Ugh. I already knew I was in for a long night. There would be no shutting off that moment in a loop in my brain. My fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. His hands squeezing my waist.
My thigh brushing against his impossibly large erection.
Nick was…gifted.
There were times I resented never talking about the night of my birthday. I’d gone to school and then to France and I’d never said a word to anyone. So, I never had anyone I could break down all the things he’d done and said that made me fall in love with him in the first place. I never got to put into words how much his rejection had taken from me. There’d been no commiserating over ice cream or stalking his Instagram. I’d tucked that night and my relationship with Nick into a little ball and buried it.
And so, there was no one who could help me double and triple guess his actions tonight.
Asking me to dance to a slow song? Pulling me into his body.
What the hell was that if not intentionally messing with my head? With my heart?
He knew he couldn’t do that.
Didn’t he?
“It’s past my bedtime,” Mom announced, slapping a hand on my knee and pushing herself off the couch. “Sleep well, baby girl.”
She kissed the top of my head and made her way up the stairs, every step creaking as she climbed. After that, the house was strangely quiet. It was just me. Alone with my racing thoughts and Nick’s erection imprinted on my thigh and in my brain.
I got mad at him all over again. We were going to have to talk about this. I was going to have to say things like:
You shattered my heart once and I got over it, but I won’t survive a second assault.
You can’t look at me like you want me. You can’t make me want to kiss you. Because I do. I still do. I will always, always want you. I’ve just learned to live with not having you.
You can’t give me hope, Nick. Because I will carry the torch for as long as you tell me and that’s not fair.
All of that was going to make me seem sad and pathetic and I was mad at him for that too.
There were other options. Ignore that it happened. Pretend I wasn’t affected at all. Start wearing my prettiest outfits with my best perfume to work, to make him suffer with lust and desire only to leave him entirely unsatisfied.
That sounded like fun.
Except the truth was the truth and I knew myself too well. I wasn’t tough enough for that.
Which meant we were going to have the talk.
Monday Morning
Dad pulled up to the garage and put the truck in park. The seagulls were up and the sun was turning the eastern sky pink. It was just after dawn so I was surprised to see the garage bay doors were already opened.
Usually, I was one cup of coffee in before Nick came down from the apartment above the garage.
Not today.
Maybe he couldn’t sleep either.
“Nick says you’re looking at used cars,” Dad said, lifting his chin in the direction of the garage.
“I need to find something. You can’t keep driving me to work, like I’m a teenager.”
“I thought this was our time,” Dad said with a yawn.
I laughed at him. “You don’t talk the entire drive over here.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it’s not our time.”
That was such a Dad thing to say I couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling. Affectionately, of course. “Do you want to be a part of the decision?”
“Thank you. I know Nick knows his shit, obviously, but I just want…”
“To be involved,” I supplied for him. “I know. But, Dad, if I decide, even if you think it might be wrong, you have to let me do it. It’s called maturing.”
“It’s called stupid,” he grumbled. “But I’ll do it.”
I leaned over to kiss his cheek and got out of his old truck. Walking across the street to the garage, I took a deep breath and prepared myself for what could possibly be the most awkward conversation of my life.
It couldn’t be more awkward than the night of my eighteenth birthday, could it? It couldn’t be harder than moving to France all on my own. It couldn’t be worse than being humiliated in front of the whole world.
That’s right. I was tough. I was a woman of the world. Nick was just Nick. I didn’t have to be scared.
I stepped into the garage and Nick popped out from under a car hood.
He wore navy coveralls and his chin was scruffy and his hair was messy and my tough woman of the world heart skipped a beat.
Nick – upon seeing me – winced.
Yes. Winced! Like seeing me caused some phantom pain. Reminded him of things he’d rather forget.
Asshole.
“Nick,” I said, not letting myself back down from the hard conversation. “We have to talk.”
Thoughtfully, he nodded. “I’ve been thinking a lot the past two days.”
Interesting. He was admitting to having thoughts. About me. For two days.
“And?”
“I say we just ignore it.”
“Ignore it?”
Honest to God, I should have expected that.
“Yeah,” He nodded, smiling like he’d solved the problem, and I stomped past him back to the office. If I was going to have a real conversation with this emotionally stunted man, I was going to need to be caffeinated.
I stopped just inside the door of the office. On the desk was a to-go coffee cup and a brown paper bag from Common Grounds.
“Bribery isn’t going to work, Nick,” I shouted over my shoulder.
“You should see what’s in the bag before you decide,” he called back.
I plopped my purse on the desk and took off my jean jacket. Was I wearing one of my more flattering pairs of jeans? Yes. I was. Plus, my last really good designer shirt that I hadn’t been able to sell because it had a small stain on the neck that was barely noticeable. The shirt did amazing things for my boobs, my abs and my eyes.
I had my weapons and he had his. Which were coffee and…I looked inside the bag.
Damn it.
A chocolate éclair. My favorite.
Undeterred and unbribed, I took a monster bite of the éclair and a large chug of the coffee.
“So?” He said, coming up behind me. “We’re good?”
“No, Nick,” I cried. “We’re not good, just because you bought me coffee. We’re two adults. We need to set this straight. Now.”
“You’ve got some…” he waved his hand around his mouth. “Cream on the corner of your…mouth,” he reached toward me like he might actually touch me and I got there first, swiping at my mouth with the back of my hand.
His eyes were still fixed on my lips. The way they’d been on the dance floor two nights ago.
“Holy shit! You want to kiss me again,” I accused him.
“I do not!” he shouted back. “First of all, this is a work environment. I’m your employer. Any attempt at any kind of sex…stuff, would be wrong. Really wrong. Possibly grounds for a lawsuit or some shit. I don’t know. So I definitely don’t want to kiss you here. In my garage.”
“But you want to kiss me. You practically just admitted it.”
“You’re hearing things that I’m not exactly saying.”
I pushed on his chest with both hands and barely moved him an inch. “You are not going to gaslight me. Not again, Nick Renard.”
“I have never gaslit you. Ever,” he insisted. He ran his hand through his hair and paced between me and the bumper of Jeanie McNeil’s Ford Taurus.
“You don’t even know what gaslighting is,” I accused him.
“Of course I do. Where I try and convince you something is true when it’s not. Or that something isn’t true when it is.”
Close enough.
“Okay,” I said. “So tell me the truth –the real truth – about what happened on the dance floor.”
He stopped pacing. “Fine. I got some really terrible advice and I decided to see if maybe something had changed. Between us. So I figured there would be hardly any harm in dancing with you. Maybe prove to myself once and for all you were just a sister to me.”
“Pretty impressive hard on you got there for your sister , Nick.”
He winced again. “I don’t know what happened,” he said softly. “I mean, I know. I just...I’ve never…it’s never been there for me. With you.”
Oh, wow. Well, I wanted the truth, didn’t I? I’d asked for it. Demanded it.
You know those trick cans of candy you get at toy stores? You take the lid off and a bunch of accordion snakes come springing out? My heart was a can full of accordion snakes. I’d folded all my powerful feelings for Nick and folded and folded again and again until I could press them into that stupid can and put the lid on. That lid had been rock solid for six long years.
Until right now.
I was absolutely full of accordion snakes. A mess of them.
And all of them were rage and vengeance.
Who the fuck did he think he was, to play with me like this?
“So. Something did change? You want me? You want to…do it?”
“Do it?” he asked, like I wasn’t being clear.
I gave him my best double pump hip thrust. “Bang me. Take me to pound town. Do nasty things with my body all night-”
“Please stop saying and doing that,” he whimpered. He took a deep breath and seemed to gather control of himself. Which was so very Nick of him, it made me want to laugh in his face. “No. What happened at the wedding was an aberration. An anomaly. A deviation from the norm.”
“You just said three things that are the same thing.”
“I’m trying to emphasize my point.”
“Fine,” I said choosing to let it go.
We were far from done. Nick thought he could pretend it didn’t happen. That he didn’t feel anything for me, that the attraction was an aberration ?
Well, that dummy had another thing coming.
“Okay?” He looked too hopeful that he’d made it through the worst part.
“Yes. Okay. Whatever. We got close, we danced. I did that thing you like when I scratched your neck-”
“How did you know about that?” he asked, like he was a prosecutor, and I was a hostile witness.
“Observation,” I spat. “I think your point is, that it was just the circumstances. You took this really bad advice, and my close proximity-”
“And you smelled really nice.”
“It is a custom scent made in Paris,” I shrugged like his attraction to it was inevitable.
“Also your shoulders were bare,” he said, checking out his feet. “I don’t think that helped.”
“So noted. Nick has a thing for shoulders.”
“You laughed…at the ceremony. Louder than everyone else.”
“And you liked that?”
He shrugged. “Also I could see down your dress, a lot.”
“This is quite a confession, Nick.”
I should have worn the mini skirt to work. The belly shirt that was a size too small. I should have worn my hair up and dosed myself with the last of my scent from Paris.
My decision to take the high road and not torture him was stupid.
He should be tortured. Needed to be tortured with this newfound desire for me.
“Good. Perfect,” I said. “Then you won’t have a problem taking me to Julie’s wedding.”
“Huh?”
“Remember, I told you? Why I needed to raise the money for the new dress. Three weddings, Nick. Terry’s wedding. Then Julie’s wedding, with basically the same crowd, then Samantha’s wedding. Now, Samantha’s wedding I’ll need to repeat the strapless burgundy so you won’t want to have anything to do with that wedding. But if I promise to cover my shoulders, not wear perfume, or laugh, we’ve agreed that absolutely nothing can happen between us. So I don’t see why you can’t just take me to Julie’s wedding too.”
He looked around the garage as if possibly there was a camera filming him. “Am I being mind-fucked right now?”
I stepped toward him, got into his space enough to make it uncomfortable, reached up and patted his face. “Nicky, when have I ever mind-fucked you?”
He growled. “Don’t call me…”
“Nicky. I know. Are we agreed? You’ll take me to Julie’s wedding where you will be a polite escort and not want anything to happen between us.”
“I don’t want anything to happen between us!” he shouted.
“Understood. Now, if we’re done with this conversation, I need to get to work.”
I strode off, away from him, like a queen victorious in battle. I did not turn around to see if he was checking out my ass in my fancy jeans.
Because in my soul I knew he was.
This was going to be fun.