Chapter 11 Annie
ELEVEN
Annie
Can you send me the rental info I’m gonna catch a cab
I send Nico the text and slump down onto the pavement, leaning my back against the building.
I take shelter in Nico’s sweatshirt, pulling it over my knees, pulling the hood over my head so that I likely resemble a soft boulder.
I’m surrounded by fuzzy warmth and his smell, cozy and familiar after three days and hours and hours in a car, and it’s this feeling of safety that lets me think.
I was doing great until I wasn’t. Sister Annie held strong in the face of everything in the beginning—the people, the drinking. The flirting. But it was the one-two punch of the Mark and the coke that did me in.
Something I’ve learned about myself over the last ten years is that I give good party. I don’t know if it’s a scent I give off, like a bitch in heat, except a bitch in erratic, fun decisions or something, but it’s always been this way. People take one look at me and say, this girl can hang.
It really used to work for me. Now, Sister Annie hates this about herself. She’s been unable to find a balance.
Where are you
What I’m one hundred percent sure of, though, is that I don’t want to be an issue for Nico, because that would be the icing on the intricately frosted cake.
Perfect Dr. Nico the Active Listener, swooping in to save the miserable fuckin’ hurricane of serious issues who causes fuckin’ problems for everyone around her.
And he’s the type of person, I’m learning, who will drop everything, including a fun party and a beautiful woman who is clearly into him, to make sure I’m okay.
And that’s not okay with me. So I’m not going to be a problem.
I ignore the odd thing chewing at my insides, but I suddenly find myself on the verge of crying again.
I need to get out of here.
Don’t worry about it just forward me the email
I text him from inside the soft cavern of the hoodie, the phone lighting up the small space. He texts back immediately.
Are you outside?
I mean, obviously. I can’t get anywhere else without the keys to the car or the information about the house. I’m in the middle of typing out another request for the house information when I hear the door to the restaurant swing open. Goddamnit.
“Hey, you,” I hear, and it’s not Nico. It’s Mark.
I groan.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I’m clearly thriving here, says the girl curled into an upright fetal position on the ground and hiding in a hoodie.
“Are you out here to smoke? Do you want a cigarette? You smoke Parliaments? That’s all I got.”
Mark has clearly done the blow he laid out for us on the table, because he hasn’t stopped speaking and I’m still in my hoodie shell and haven’t spoken one word and he hasn’t noticed. I’m actually quite jealous of his emotional disconnect right now. “Mark—” I attempt.
“Ah, shit, I left them inside. I can go in and grab them? Or I can sit next to you? You okay? Wanna talk about it?”
I sigh. “No, Mark. Please go back inside.”
“Are you sure? I mean, look at you. You clearly need someone to talk to.”
I finally pop my head out an inch to eye him. He can’t stop moving. “Probably, but that person isn’t you.” I retreat back into my shell.
“Why not? I’m a great listener, and I thought we were getting along in there, and I thought—”
I don’t hear whatever profound realizations Mark’s made because he’s suddenly cut off by a rich voice with a Brooklyn accent that mostly comes out to play when he is feeling a strong emotion. “Hey, honey.”
The wave of relief that rushes through me is overpowering. “Hi,” I answer, and even that small word comes out strangled. I stay in my hoodie cave.
“Mark, go back inside,” he says. Commands, actually.
“Whoa, sorry, bro. I didn’t… I wasn’t… are you two—”
“No,” I say, at the same time Nico says, “Yes.”
“Right, man, well, sorry, I didn’t know. Claire seemed to think you two were, or you two seemed pretty, you know—”
I take deep, centering breaths.
“Inside, Mark,” and then I don’t hear his cocaine-fueled rambling anymore.
Suddenly, I feel the warmth of Nico’s body as he takes a seat right next to me on the pavement. Settles himself right into my side without any concept of personal space.
“I would actually kill someone for a cigarette right now,” I manage after a minute of warm, comfortable silence.
“Same,” he says.
“Do you have any?” I ask him.
“I quit after you told me it was gross.”
There’s a burst of warmth in my chest. “You said I was so sexy, it was gross.”
“Still true.”
I’m glad I’m still in the hoodie. “I quit everything,” I confess.
I feel his body stiffen. “Everything?”
“Everything. Just up until the wedding.”
His big body expands with the breath he takes. “And I brought you here.”
I shrug. “It’s my problem, not yours.”
“Still, Annie—” he starts with aggravation.
All coziness halts. I hate that tone in his voice, sick and tired of people getting aggravated with me, like I’m a permanent piece of gum stuck on their shoe.
I’m really trying my best! Am I really that aggravating to be around?
This is what I wanted to avoid in the first place!
“Can you please tell me the info for the rental now?”
He scoffs. “Absolutely not. I’m taking you home.”
I whip the hood back and look at him. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I told you I was taking a cab.”
“Don’t be fuckin’ ridiculous, Annie.”
“How the hell am I being ridiculous—”
“I brought you here, so I’m fuckin’ taking you home—”
“Just give me the info—”
“No.”
“Nico—”
“What the hell is your problem?”
Problem, problem, problem. “Hello? You said it—I’m a miserable—”
“Enough about that,” he roars. “Do you need another fuckin’ hug?”
I stand and rip his hoodie off. “I don’t want anything from you,” I snarl, throwing the bundle into his lap.
He looks down at the hoodie as if it were a spear I’ve just launched into his stomach. “Why won’t you let me drive you home?”
“I don’t want to make you leave,” I finally shout, pacing back and forth across the pavement.
“I don’t want to be the crazy one you need to bring home.
I don’t want to ‘cause fuckin’ problems for everyone around me.
’ I want you to stay here and have a good time with your fucking friends and fucking Claire! ”
Nico stands, too. “I think your brand of crazy is mine, honey, ‘cause I’d rather solve all your fuckin’ problems than spend any amount of time with anyone else, including fuckin’ Claire.
” He catches up to where I’m standing on the pavement, jams his hoodie back over my head, and marches me towards the car.
I’ve lost the use of my arms, so I try to push back using only my feet. “Nico!”
“Get in the fuckin’ car, Annie,” he roars for the eighth or ninth time in three days.
“Hey!” Mark suddenly yells from the door of the restaurant. “Is everything okay?”
“Fuck off, Mark!” the two of us shout.
Nico presses me against the side of the car, his hand solid at the center of my chest so he can use the other hand to unlock the car and wrench open the passenger door.
I push forward, but his hand holds me firm. A second later, his body follows, pressing me into place. I struggle, twisting against him—until I don’t.
Until I freeze.
Suddenly, I’m aware of everything. The solid weight of him. His thigh wedged between mine. My breasts flush against his chest. My lips grazing the heat of his neck.
My fight dissolves. In fact, I think I melt.
He finally gets the door open, but neither of us moves. He looks down. At us.
His breathing, already ragged from our struggle, turns uneven. I watch the pulse in his neck hammer.
He tilts his head down. Instinctively, mine lifts.
Neither of us blinks.
His breath ghosts over my lips, warm and shallow. The soft, pretty pink of his mouth is right there, close enough to taste.
“Nico!”
My head whips towards the restaurant. I look over the car, on the other side, towards the door. It’s Claire. I look back up at Nico. He hasn’t moved an inch. Hasn’t even shifted his eyes.
I use the weight of my body to shove him off me, and I get in the fuckin’ car.
I hear a repetitive thud against the metal of the car. If I’m not mistaken, Nico is banging his head against it.
While I’m buckling up, Nico rounds the car towards Claire. He wraps her in one of his award-winning hugs, and I throw the hood over my head so I can’t see anything else, closing myself off from the thoughts of the heavy press of his body against mine.
“I hope you told Claire she could come back to the house,” I tell him, ten minutes into the silence of our drive.
He doesn’t answer immediately. “Shut up, Annie,” he finally murmurs.
I clench my teeth together.
Fuck Sister Annie.
The next morning, the sun fully illuminates the gorgeous details of my room, of this house. I check my phone and shoot Chef a quick reply.
From: ali@
To: chef@
Yes, Chef. I did what you asked. I opened up. Just a little bit, though. But mostly because I found someone who might’ve been willing to listen. Am I a good girl now?
Now it’s your turn. I’m writing your book, after all. Tell me all of your deepest, darkest secrets. Open up. I’m on your side, too.
I stay in my room as long as possible so I don’t have to run into Claire doing any sort of Walk of Pride.
That’s what Izzy and I have renamed the Walk of Shame, by the way.
No one should ever be ashamed of their nocturnal choices.
Well, maybe everyone except me, because of my dubious choice of partners, but whatever.
Getting some is something to be proud of.
And Claire is gorgeous. I’d bang her too.
She would probably be Walk of Shaming away from me, though.
I stay as long as I can. I get myself off two (or three) more times to a combination of one (or three) of Chef’s old videos. But then I start smelling bacon.