Chapter Fourteen
The bell over the door dinged while Vi was in the middle of hauling the old vacuum cleaner out of storage.
“I’m so sorry. We’re actually closed,” Vi called, leaning the vacuum cleaner against the counter. “I just shut down the register, but if you— Oh.”
Nick waved from the doorway. His usual tank top was gone, replaced by a blue linen button-down. Vi had never seen him in so much color; usually, he was all blacks and whites and grays.
Seconds passed. Nick pointed at himself. “Nick. Nick Wicker. I run the book club now. And I eat you out on the reg.”
Vi laughed. Then she looked around, her cheeks flushing as she checked the bookstore for eavesdroppers who might have heard that Nick had indeed been eating her out for weeks now.
But there was no one. She had already rounded them up when she did her final checks at five minutes to close.
Even Mosey was nowhere to be seen, which was worrying.
He hadn’t even shown up when she announced that his dinner was ready.
“Sorry,” Vi said. “I was just . . . I’ve never seen that shirt before.”
Nick looked down at it like he’d never seen it before, either.
“Ah, this old thing,” he said in an accent that could be mistaken for old-timey New York, if the speaker was very drunk.
Then he slipped back into his normal voice.
“I don’t know why I said it like that. Yeah, I went shopping after work.
My good shirts were ones with the fewest holes, so . . .”
“It suits you,” Vi told him. Her neck immediately went slick with sweat.
It was such an innocent comment, and yet, she felt like she’d told him about how she wanted to bite his thigh last week when he’d gotten up to retrieve her bra off the floor.
He liked picking up her clothes while she lay there, although he didn’t always like giving them back to her.
Sometimes, she got the feeling that he wanted her to stay the night, which was ridiculous.
He didn’t even walk her to the door anymore, only waved from the bed and then went back to scrolling his phone.
He didn’t care if she stayed or left, which, of course, meant she had to leave.
It was part of their Friends with Benefits agreement, after all. Vi didn’t go back on her promises.
Nick nodded at the vacuum cleaner propped up next to the counter. “I can vacuum, if you want.”
“Oh,” Vi said, surprised. “This isn’t actually for cleaning. This is our old one. You know Lydia, from book club? Hers broke, so I’m going to drop this off.”
“Of course you are,” Nick said. There was something underneath it, but Vi was pretty sure it wasn’t mockery. “Let me guess, you have charity work after that?”
“No,” Vi said. “Not until Friday. My evening’s actually free. I was supposed to FaceTime with Gabs and Mom but they both canceled.”
“Are they alright?”
“Yes, just . . . Well, Gabby is inspired. Can’t reschedule inspiration. And Mom has a headache, so . . .” Vi bent down to pick up the vacuum cleaner.
Nick waved her away and picked it up himself. It lifted easily into his arms, and Vi forced herself not to look at the button-down straining over his flexing green muscles.
“You don’t have to,” she began.
“I got it,” Nick said, unbothered, as he carried it out to her car. She’d parked it on the curb outside rather than taking her bike, and Nick seemed to know exactly which one it was without her saying.
He must’ve noticed the puzzled look she shot him, because he grinned. “You have a plastic book hanging off the rearview mirror. Don’t need a high school diploma to make that leap.”
She opened the trunk for him. “You didn’t graduate high school?”
“Nope,” Nick said, heaving the vacuum into the trunk with minimal effort. “Hated it. That and I kept failing, so it was that or let the school kick me out.”
“Why did you fail? You’re smart.”
Nick looked at her, bemused. Then he saw her earnest expression, and his brows rose.
“Oh,” he said. “Uh. Thanks? I just sucked at school, I guess. Always did. Give me anything to read and my eyes would glaze over. This book club is the only time I’ve actually enjoyed reading. I think it’s ’cause I’m—”
He paused, blowing out a noisy breath of air and slamming the trunk door closed so loud that Vi jumped.
“—reading them aloud,” he finished, and cocked his head. “Huh. Yeah, actually reading them aloud really helps!”
Vi stepped back, letting him join her on the sidewalk. It was a cool night, and she hugged her cardigan tighter as she replied: “You’re reading them aloud?”
“Uh-huh,” Nick said. “Only way I can follow what’s going on.”
Vi hummed thoughtfully. She always assumed that Nick just didn’t enjoy reading. But that sounded like it could be a learning impairment.
“You could try audiobooks,” Vi suggested.
“Ah, Chester says they don’t count,” Nick said. “Which is ironic, ’cause, uh, never mind. I’ll try audiobooks! Bet they can pronounce words better than I do. Remember when I tried to say hyperbole as ‘hyper-bowl’?”
“I thought that was very sweet,” said Vi indignantly. “My mom always says that a mispronounced word is something to be proud of. It means you read it in a book somewhere.”
“Yeah, guess so.” Nick scratched his messy hair, grinning. He looked so cute, Vi had to stop herself from grabbing him and kissing him right there in the middle of Main Street. She rubbed her arms instead, shivering at the cool wind. Winter was really on its way.
“Let’s go back inside,” she said. “I still have to close up the shop.”
“Okay!” Nick looked delighted to be invited back inside. Vi almost thought she caught him skipping for a moment as he followed her in, both of them tapping the Closed sign as they went.
* * *
“So,” Vi said as she waited for tomorrow’s restocks to print. “What brings you to Sweethelm?”
“I have to have an excuse?” Nick asked, leaning on the other side of the counter.
Vi gave him a wry look.
“Okay, okay,” Nick said. “My orc senses started tingling, alright? I got the uncanny sense that there was a tiny human who needed someone to carry a vacuum.”
Vi laughed. She couldn’t help it. Over the past few weeks, she had finally started to see what everyone meant when they said Nick Wicker could be charming.
He just did it in a different way than everyone else claimed, all dorky sweetness rather than the suaveness that everyone said he possessed.
Case in point: how he immediately went stiff and weird as he continued.
“I, uh . . .” Nick stared up at the fiction overstocks, his head bobbing awkwardly. “You’re, like, a pillar of the community or whatever. Not like me! Nick Wicker, king of staying in my own lane. I . . . admire that about you. How you help everyone out. It’s cool.”
Vi’s stomach filled with butterflies. She fought them down and grabbed the last of the restock sheets from the printer, shuffling them into a neat pile.
“You make it sound heroic! People just ask for things. And I say yes.”
Nick’s face contorted. He had such an expressive face. She’d wanted to punch it for so long. Among other things. She was shocked to realize that since she had impulsively kissed him a few weeks ago, she hadn’t wanted to punch him once.
“Then say no,” he said.
Vi gave him a look.
Nick rolled his eyes. “Fine! Oh, Vi, my lawn is so overgrown, and I just don’t have the time to mow it. Can you help me?”
Vi snorted. “Your lawn is fine! I saw it last night!”
He ignored her, clasping his hands under his chin so hard, it dug into his fangs. “It’s turning into a forest! You need to help me! Mow my lawn, Vi!”
Vi giggled. “No!”
Nick stopped, blinking hard. Then he broke into a grin, so bright and blazing Vi’s breath caught in her chest. “There we go! I’m proud of you.”
Vi wrestled against another flood of stomach butterflies.
She hadn’t even done anything. Not really.
If someone genuinely asked her, she would probably say yes.
She actually had mowed a neighbor’s lawn last year, but that was when he was recovering from an injury.
And it wasn’t just her; everyone else on the block had helped out.
It was actually really lovely to watch, even if it had made her secretly sad that none of the other endless tasks she agreed to turned out like that.
She felt like she might do something stupid if she kept looking at his big stretchy mouth, so she turned away.
“Mosey! Where are you? Your dinner’s waiting in the back room!”
“He’s in the fiction overstocks,” Nick said instantly.
As if in response, a pathetic meow rang out from above the fiction wall.
Vi sighed. “Stuck again? Okay, I’m coming over.”
Nick followed her over to the moving ladder. “Can he not get down? He’s a cat. He has wings!”
Another sad meow. Mosey’s paw flickered out from the top of the fiction wall, where he was nestled amongst the surplus stock.
“He’s afraid of heights,” Vi said flatly.
She headed for the rolling ladder.
Nick jumped in front of her, wrapping an arm through a tall ladder rung. “Can I get him down? Pretty please? I’ve always wanted to try the ladder.”
Vi badly wanted to say, You watched an old man break his leg on this thing a few weeks ago and now you want to try it? But before she could come up with a different, politer thing to say, Nick continued:
“My shoes are extra grippy. And my bones are so strong, you have no idea.” He cocked his head. “And you’ll catch me if I fall, right?”
Vi had to bite her cheek against a laugh. “Fine. Go on.”
Nick’s foot faltered on the first rung. “Seriously?”
Vi nodded, stepping back.
Mosey meowed again, impatient.
Nick glanced up at him, then back at Vi. “Is this a test?”
“It’s not a test! I let people go on it sometimes! Everybody in book club gets to go on their birthdays.”
“I,” Nick declared, “have had loads of birthdays.”
He scaled the ladder with a speed that made Vi wince, eyeing those large yet clumsy limbs. Any second, she expected him to bang a knee or elbow and come crashing down. Instead, he made it to the top and reached out for Mosey.