Chapter Three Nico
Chapter Three
Nico
When I prise my eyes open, the throbbing in my head has me biting back a groan. As the scene in front of me dips and weaves I wonder, dimly, at what point I got on a boat. I close my eyes again. The world seems to steady, and this time, when I open them, I realise I’m not on a boat. I’m in bed.
And I’m not alone.
It takes me a long time to organise the facts.
My arm is wrapped around someone, pulling her back against me.
She’s pressed, all warm, soft curves, against my front.
Sunlight streams over us, and I don’t care for it, but it does highlight the spill of gold hair across the pillow beside me.
Whoever it is, she smells good – sweet and a little smoky.
I realise I’m not wearing a shirt, but I am still wearing my jeans.
What am I doing in bed in my jeans?
Especially when there’s someone else in the bed with me. Drowsily, I stroke the blonde hair back, revealing the line of her neck, and she moves against me in her sleep, rocking her hips back against mine. Even with the pounding headache I can appreciate that.
‘Nico,’ the woman murmurs huskily, and that is the moment I go rock hard.
It’s also the moment I realise I’m in bed with Lee.
I freeze as she shifts again, but after several tense seconds tick by I know she’s still asleep, and it’s time to take stock of the situation.
What the ever living fuck happened last night? My brain gropes for memories that don’t seem to be there. Plus, thinking too hard seems only to intensify the blinding pain in my skull. Let’s start with something easier. Where am I?
Lifting my head is a Herculean task, but I manage it for long enough to take in my surroundings.
This definitely isn’t my hotel room. This is an enormous, ridiculous suite – the kind that costs an astronomical amount of money, the kind they put Beyoncé up in.
All the hideous daylight that is offending my abused corneas pours in from the huge windows that take up one whole wall of the bedroom.
I can see the entire strip laid out below us like a children’s toy, a stream of tiny Matchbox cars marching along the busy streets.
The bed we’re in is the size of a small, private island, but that hasn’t made much difference because Lee and I are wrapped tightly around each other in the middle of it.
Lee.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I wince again, trying to pull gently away from her. My hand is resting on her stomach, and I can feel the warm silk of her skin under my fingertips, but there’s fabric, too, the soft cotton of a waistband. She’s wearing pyjamas.
Okay, she’s wearing pyjamas and I’m wearing my jeans. This could be perfectly innocent.
But try telling that to my dick, which doesn’t seem to have received the message that the body it’s responding to belongs to my best friend’s extraordinarily off-limits sister with whom I have a strictly platonic relationship.
I carefully untangle myself from Lee, and roll so that there are several inches of expensive, ten-thousand-thread-count sheet between us.
After that effort I need a bit of a rest again.
Several minutes tick by as I screw my eyes shut and keep my body as still as possible.
I remember the poker game in Frankie’s ‘back room’, which turned out to be a cushy private den, all mahogany and red silk and cigar smoke.
I remember the way Lee sat serenely gathering in everyone’s chips and the way five retired gangsters grinned in approval.
I remember the raucous storytelling, the drinks being passed around.
So. Many. Drinks. I remember Lee and I heading to a different bar afterwards, and there being shots involved…
shots that were on fire, maybe? And after that it’s pretty much a blank.
Just as I’m psyching myself up for an attempt to move, Lee sends me careening towards cardiac arrest by sitting straight up in the bed like a fucking vampire.
‘Nico?’ she whispers, blinking down at me as she clutches the sheets to her chest. She looks dazed, and there are panda smudges of mascara under her indigo blue eyes.
‘Oh my god,’ I rasp, my hand pressed over my heart, which seems to be trying to beat its way out of my chest. ‘Do you always wake up like that? I think I’m having palpitations. I might need medical attention.’
‘You’re here,’ she says as if I haven’t spoken. ‘You’re… in my bed.’ Her eyes widen. ‘Did we…’ Her gaze drops to my bare chest, where it lingers for a long moment. Her lips part in shock.
‘No!’ I say firmly, then I pull the sheets back to reveal my denim-clad legs. ‘I slept in my jeans. Like a gentleman.’
Lee doesn’t need to know that I spent the night wrapped around her like a fucking vine. That was sleeping Nico, I can’t be responsible for sleeping Nico. Awake Nico thinks of Lee purely as a friend. Awake Nico is very respectful. And very, very hungover.
‘Okay,’ Lee murmurs, and she looks down at her pyjamas, which I now see are covered in weirdly cheerful tropical fruits. She seems, somehow, to have buttoned herself into the top half back to front. Her hand goes to the backwards collar that threatens to strangle her. ‘Okay,’ she says again.
I rub my hands over my face. ‘I think I died,’ I croak finally. ‘I think I am dead right now. My whole body hurts.’
‘If you hurt, you’re probably not dead,’ Lee points out distantly. Her brow is creased as if she’s deep in thought.
‘Oh, yeah. Well, that’s good news, at least. Then again the cool embrace of the infinite void sounds pretty inviting right now.’
‘It’s too early for existential dread.’ Lee sinks back against the pillow, her face pale. ‘Or is it? What time is it?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘What happened last night?’ she asks after a moment.
‘It’s a bit… hazy,’ I admit.
‘Yeah.’ Lee nods, and then winces as if the movement was painful.
‘There was the champagne. And the cocktails. And the shots—’ she cuts herself off abruptly.
‘Oh god,’ she moans, before stumbling from the bed and in the direction of a door that I’m guessing leads to the bathroom. It slams shut behind her.
With a groan I roll over onto my side and then slowly, slowly pull myself up to a sitting position.
My feet hit the floor and I hiss out a long breath.
The clock on the bedside table says 12:34 and I stare at it for a moment, trying to remember what numbers are and how time works.
I haul myself to my feet and shuffle towards the bathroom like an elderly man.
I’m thirty-eight years old. I should not be waking up this hungover in Vegas.
These are lessons I learned many years ago when I was young and full of vigour.
Then, I would have laughed this off and suggested we go for a morning hand of Blackjack and a cheeseburger.
Now, a hangover like this one could end up putting me out of action for a week.
I have to catch a flight in only a few hours, and the thought is monstrous.
‘Lee?’ I say, knocking on the door.
‘Go away,’ comes the miserable response, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone throwing up. Lee says something that my brain can’t make sense of.
‘Are you… speaking Japanese?’
‘It wasn’t me,’ her voice is forlorn. ‘It was the toilet.’
‘The… toilet?’
‘It shouts at you in Japanese,’ she mumbles. ‘I think it said something about warming the seat for me.’
‘You speak Japanese?’
‘Nico, is this really the time to get into my CV?’ she asks, and then there’s more retching.
‘Daisy, let me come in and hold your hair for you,’ I try.
‘Nico Hart, if you come in here right now, I will murder you.’
I rest my forehead against the cool, cool door for a moment. ‘Fair enough.’ Making my way (slowly) back to the bed, I lift the phone on the bedside table to call room service.
‘Coffee,’ I beg. ‘Please. All the coffee. And dry toast. And ibuprofen.’
‘Certainly, Mr Turner-Jones.’ The voice on the other end of the phone is unfathomably perky. ‘Can I also interest you in a couple of our vitamin blast smoothies? They’re just the thing if you’re feeling… under the weather.’
‘Sure,’ I reply wearily, too exhausted to correct her on the name thing. ‘Whatever you’d recommend to raise the dead. Thank you.’
I hang up the phone, managing to get it back in the cradle on my third attempt. There’s something dangling from the lamp beside it, and my fingers close around the scrap of shell pink lace, untangling it.
It’s a bra, the silk slipping cool as water between my fingers. I close my eyes. I could definitely live without the knowledge that my best friend’s little sister wears expensive French underwear.
The door to the bathroom opens, and I jump guiltily, throwing the bra up in the air.
Smooth, Nico. Really fucking smooth.
Lee’s face is clean of any makeup, and that tangle of gold hair has been ruthlessly subdued and coiled on top of her head.
She’s still bleached of colour, but she looks back in control.
She gestures for me to use the bathroom, which I do as quickly as possible, basically sticking my entire head under the cold tap in an attempt to clear it, and when I emerge she’s still standing in the same place, looking pained.
‘I can’t get out of this,’ she says, and it takes me a minute to realise she means the flannel pyjama top that’s trying to throttle her.
‘Right.’ I clear my throat. ‘Turn around.’
Lee spins and I stand behind her. She smells of soap and toothpaste and I start to undo the line of buttons running down her spine.
As each button is released it reveals another inch of skin.
There is a constellation of small, dark freckles on her back.
With a sinking heart, I realise that she could hardly have put herself into this shirt backwards, and from the rigid way she’s standing it’s a conclusion she’s probably already reached.
Finally, the last button is undone, and she turns, holding the fabric to her front, even though the sleeves mean it’s not going anywhere. ‘I’m going to shower,’ she says. ‘And then we can… talk.’
‘Great,’ I agree as she snatches the bra up from the floor where I’ve thrown it. There’s a touch of pink in her cheeks and she avoids meeting my eye as she heads back to the bathroom, turning the lock with a click.
I’ve made her uncomfortable, and a generous dash of self-loathing is added in to the potent cocktail of regrets rushing through my system.
I’ve known Lee since she was five years old and she’s the most by-the-book, rule-following, straight-laced person you can imagine – there’s no way this night of hard drinking was her idea.
I’m the wild one, I’m the one who gets blackout drunk in Vegas, the one who wakes up hungover in strangers’ beds.
(Admittedly, that hasn’t happened recently, but let’s say I’ve got form.)
Lee is the one who makes pros and cons lists about having a one night stand. She thinks I missed that one last night, but I didn’t. The words five months float through my mind, but I shove them away. Lee’s sex life is absolutely none of my business.
What is my business is this mess. She’s the most unflappable person I know, and one night with me has her hiding in the bathroom, embarrassed.
Jack would kill me for putting his sister in this position. Forget Jack, Gran is the real threat – even before she started doing Taekwondo. Hell, I want to kick my own ass.
I take a deep breath. I can fix this. First thing’s first: I’m going to put on a shirt.
Then I’m going to make sure Lee has breakfast. I’m going to crush any weird physical responses I have that are not those of an old, loyal friend.
I am basically about to go full emotional support animal on her.
She will feel nothing but safe and comfortable.
I pick up the phone again with renewed determination.
‘Hi, I’d like to add a couple of things to our room service order.’