Chapter 13 Nico #2
“Yeah. Once it’s on the blade, it doesn’t rinse off easily.
Soap works, but you have to actually scrub because those sulfur molecules cling to surfaces.
Some people swear the stainless steel trick helps, but the real solution is cleaning the knife well or switching to a fresh one for fruit or sweets. ”
“Huh. Cool,” she says, then: “What’s your bad tattoo that Tom was talking about on the beach?”
I shrug, feeling the back of my neck get hot. “Just a dumb joke.” I walk away before she can ask me anything else. There’s no way she subscribes to NakedReactions, but I ain’t riskin’ it.
A bit later, I’m in the middle of explaining some of the classes and research I did here when I hear: “Is that Nicholas Giannuzzi I see?” Fuck. Of all the fuckin’ people…
“This fuckin asshole,” I mutter under my breath. I turn, body already tense. “Hey, Turney,” I manage.
The man whose skin always reminded me of cottage cheese ambles over. “Nicholas, what are you doing in Durham? Aren’t you supposed to be up in New York? Line cook for the Times Square Olive Garden, right?” He chuckles at his little fuckin’ joke.
I let out a deep sigh, resigned to doing this. I look at Annie to start introductions but jolt with surprise to see she isn’t paying him any mind. She’s reading me instead, her little eyebrows furrowed. Concerned.
“Annie, this is Professor Damien Turney. He was my advisor for a hot second.” Before I finally dropped his ass. I look at Turney, who’s predictably salivating over the insanely magnetic woman standing next to me. “Turney, this is Annie Li, my—”
When I analyze this moment later, I will realize that the next minute is a calculated power move by scary Annie Li.
Because in the span of a few moments, Annie reads my body language and tone of voice, analyzes his sleazy look and the maybe twenty words he’s said, figures out this guy is a piece of shit, decides I am in need of protective Annie, and chooses to do that by eviscerating him.
“Girlfriend,” she finishes for me. She seems to vibrate with a low hum of terrifying energy.
Turney looks disappointed. Even more so when Annie glances down at Turney’s outstretched hand and doesn’t take it.
Instead, she looks down her nose at him even if she stands half a foot shorter.
“You must be the ‘has been’ who’s been trapped at Duke for the past forty years,” she says with absolutely no fuckin’ shame at all.
Both Turney’s and my mouths drop open.
This might also be the moment that I fall a little bit in love with Annie “My Lord and Savior” Li.
He takes a second to recover. “I’m only forty years old,” he sputters.
“Oh,” she says, which roughly translates to I know, but I wanted to emasculate you.
I can’t help it. I wrap my arm around her neck and pull her into my side. She takes my hand, the one hovering by her shoulder, links our fingers together and brings them to her mouth for a kiss that I feel all throughout my body.
Turney blinks. “So how is the Times Square Olive Garden? Heating up frozen breadsticks?”
My ears still get hot when this dude talks to me like this, but the woman under my arm has surrounded us in a force field made of knives and barbed wire. “Postdoc, actually,” I tell him. “I work with some of the best restaurants in the world.”
He chuckles. “Oh, wow, listen to you. You probably fit right in with the kitchen staff. Fuhgeddaboudit!”
I am ashamed to say this gets past the force field. I wince. I’d forgotten to use my academic voice, probably ‘cause I’ve been spending the last several days with someone from home.
Don’t matter though.
Annie moves forward.
Turney steps back.
For a moment I’m halfway convinced Annie might unhinge her jaws like a snake and swallow him whole. Instead, she bares her teeth before tearing him limb from limb.
“How does it feel to be churning out the same research for forty years that no one cites?” she hisses.
“Advising undergrads who surpass you before they even graduate. Watching them go on to careers you’ve dreamed of while you’re still stuck here, recycling the same lecture notes from the ’90s.
” I love that she’s chosen this decade to ruin him with.
“Must be humbling. Or maybe you’ve convinced yourself that tenure is just another word for relevance. ”
Turney seems to shrink into nothing while Annie only grows sharper and more lethal.
“That must be the real research project—figuring out how to stay important when the world has already moved on. But hey, at least your name still shows up somewhere… even if it’s just in the acknowledgments.
Maybe one day they’ll even name a garbage can on campus after you, though I’m sure it’ll be the one in the basement of waste services. ”
Am I levitating? I look down at the ground to make sure I’m not.
Then I take pity on this motherfucker (sad Damien Turney, sorry Damien Turney) and pull Annie back towards me.
“Retract your claws, honey,” I whisper in her ear, then kiss the top of her head.
“We gotta go,” I tell Turney, who looks as if he’s just been disemboweled.
“I hope you continue to have a mediocre life.”
I pull Annie out of the building.
“Nico,” Annie laughs.
“That was so hot,” I say as I drag her around the corner. “That was the hottest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever seen.” I find a giant bush and pull her behind it before pressing her into the wall of the building and kissing her senseless.
She lets me in immediately, her hands flying into my hair, her hot little tongue in my mouth.
Dragging against and dancing with mine with the same sort of skill and confidence and energy she just tore Turney apart with.
I band an arm around her back, arching her into me and feeling her tits against my chest. It’s frantic and aggressive and far too vulgar for broad daylight.
“Shit,” I mutter, tearing myself away.
She looks up at me with swollen lips, her dark eyes heated and sparkling. Fists my shirt and pulls me back in.
I offer no resistance, take her mouth immediately and all but shove my tongue in.
This time when I try to step back, she pulls my bottom lip between her teeth.
Traps it there while I move, the slight tug going directly to my dick.
I rest my head against hers and try to catch my breath.
I get Annie’s whole addicted-to-adrenaline thing, because I’m gone for the way she has my heart rate up.
“I could tear you up against this wall right now,” I admit.
She laughs, shakes her head a little. “Bad idea,” she whispers. But she takes me in her arms for a hug. I rest my head on her shoulder while she scratches my scalp through my hair. “Are you okay?”
These three words make me want to melt into a puddle or explode into a thousand little butterflies. “Fuckin’ amazing.”
“Who the hell does that guy think he is?” She’s still so angry on my behalf on the ride to the house, and I could not for the life of me explain how exhilarating it feels to be on this side of the wrath of Annie Li.
“I mean, honestly, you called it,” I tell her.
“Exactly what you said. He was my advisor for all of about two seconds before I realized what a dick he was. He was one of my professors and had a massive chip on his shoulder. I think Duke hired him as some sort of promising young professor, but his research never amounted to much of anything. I guess just enough for tenure, since he’s still at Duke. ”
She huffs.
“How did you figure it out?” I demand to know. “How did you know he was such a shithead?”
“He looked like someone who wraps his entire mouth around a water fountain spigot.”
The car swerves, the force of my laughter twisting the wheel.
“Why did he have it out for you so badly?” Annie is so grumpy I could tickle her.
“Because I was better than he was,” I admit.
“Smarter. Excellent grades. I was accepted into some of the best PhD programs in the country—Cornell, MIT, Stanford. But then he decided he could lord one over on me when he found out I was going for an unconventional concentration. Food chemistry is kinda frowned upon. Also when I decided to go to NYU. ‘Cause NYU’s good, but it’s not the best.” It also paid PhD students the least amount of stipend money, at least relative to the cost of living in New York City.
“Go Bobcats,” Annie mutters, with an enthusiasm reserved for airport security lines. “Why’d you decide to go to NYU?”
“Ma got sick,” I tell her. “Wanted to be close to home.” It was so soon after Dad died that I freaked out. Would’ve dropped the PhD dream altogether and worked in a kitchen somewhere close to Bensonhurst if I hadn’t gotten into a New York program.
“Oh.” Annie reaches over and squeezes my knee. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Is she okay now?”
“She’s doing better. We finished paying off all her medical debt.” Entirely thanks to NakedReactions and the advance for the cookbook from Hawk Publishing.
“Well, good for you,” she says indignantly. “You should be damn proud of all the choices you’ve made.”
We pull up to the rental. This one also has a separate pool house, which is definitely for the best considering I’m in the mood to show Annie my gratitude with hundreds of orgasms. Would eat her pussy for three to four hours—
“Like, come on,” Annie says. She waves her hand at all of it.
“Handsome, successful, rich Dr. Nico. Taking care of his mom’s medical bills.
This is amazing. Look where we are. Own every single one of your choices that brought you here, and fuck what everyone else has to say. You deserve to do what you love.”
I stop the car and smile over at her. You know what? Maybe she wouldn’t judge me for NakedReactions after all. After that whole shpiel? I should put her in touch with Ali.
On second thought, maybe they should never meet.
“Thanks,” I tell her, “but can you take your own advice? Why don’t you own all the choices you made? Look at you now. And you say you regret them, but how fucking cool are you? You’ve had all these crazy experiences and an amount of fun that most people only dream of having.”
She looks out the window and doesn’t answer.
I’m dropping her off before heading to the restaurant in town. She decided she didn’t want to go, and I’m not arguing with her about it. Not arguing with her about anything after the stunt she just pulled for me.
Before she gets out of the car, though, she gets all quiet. “That comment he made about your accent.”
I shrug. “I’ve had worse.” From you, I don’t say.
“He wasn’t used to hearing you with an accent because you got rid of it. You wrestled it out. You changed your whole voice. Because of me. Because of the way I bullied you about it.”
I shrug again. “Successful scientists definitely don’t sound like Tony Soprano dollar slice dimwits. Probably would’ve dropped it even if you hadn’t harassed me about it.”
She turns and looks me directly in the eye. Hers are fierce. “I’m really sorry about that, Nico.”
I’m kinda taken aback by the force of it. “It’s okay, Annie. We’re past it.”
“I don’t care. I want to apologize for being such a bitch. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I’m sorry.”
I take her hand and kiss the finger with the heart on it. Her middle finger. “Apology accepted, honey.”
She smiles and my world ends, because Annie Li is smiling at me and it’s so debilitating it’s apocalyptic.
I did that, I think. I suddenly cannot breathe.
It’s warm instead of ice, it’s directed at me, and it fries my brain with the force of a laser beam.
I decide in that moment that I’m going to spend the entire rest of the trip working for more of them.
“Since we’re doing big apologies, is now a good time to talk about the rest of high school?” It’s mostly a joke, but I’m currently brainless.
Clang. Wrong move, buddy. Her steel reinforcements slam down. She sighs deeply and opens her door. “Let’s end today on a positive note,” she says, then shuts the door. She walks around to the trunk and gets her own luggage, starts rolling it up to the pool house. “Have fun tonight. Later.”
I rub my neck to help alleviate some of the whiplash and bang my head on the steering wheel a few times. Get out of the car, load all my shit into the house, then get back in and start driving.
I’m almost to the restaurant when I realize I unpacked the Pacojet that was meant for them.
Sometimes our lab gets random kitchen tools, and we promised this Durham restaurant this extra Pacojet we had lying around.
The thing purees deep-frozen ingredients into super smooth textures without needing to thaw them, so the head chef wants to give it a try with sorbets.
Thirty minutes later, I’m aggravated as hell and pulling back into the driveway. I jump out of the car, don’t even bother to close the door, run in the house, and grab the damn thing.
On my way back out, I glance over at the pool house, wondering what Annie’s up to and if she’s gonna be all set for dinner. Maybe I could ask the kitchen to whip her up a little something and I can take it back for her. I’m here already, so I may as well go ask her.
The pool house is angled away from me, so I gotta round the side to get to the front door.
I peek in through one of the windows as I walk by.
And then I die.
Once I’m resurrected, I sit on the ground. Sit right there on the ground, crisscross fuckin’ applesauce, because my blood and soul and dignity have drained out of the top of my body at lightning speed and are promptly replaced by adrenaline and now I am dizzy and a little bit nauseous.
Am I fucked?
Because Annie “My Worst Fuckin’ Nightmare” Li is sitting on the couch with her back to the window. And Annie Li’s laptop is open on the coffee table in front of her.
And Annie Li is watching me cook bacon and eggs in the nude.