16. tallulah
TALLULAH
RATED G WHOLESOME MAKE OUT SESSION
Alone in the lobby of the Olympic Village, I waited for Nick with bated breath. I wasn’t completely ready for sex, and the test results hadn’t arrived, but the tension between us was my favorite part of my day, every day.
The lingering glances…wow.
I stood on my tiptoes, scanning the street until my eyes landed on the hockey player coming from the parking lot. My heart thumped at the sight of him. Nick arrived in a pair of black slacks, and a tucked-in shirt. It was such a simple outfit and he made it award-winning. The outline of his biceps…
“Tallulah.” He tipped his chin my way. “I thought you said this is a small thing?”
“It is?”
“Not with you dressed like that.”
I glanced down at the sundress, blueberry blue because my Grandma Wilma hated dull factory dyes. Whenever she bought me a dress, she refused to let me touch it until she beat the color into submission. “What about it?”
Nick cupped my face and I glanced up in time for him to kiss me, his words a mutter along my lips. “You make me look mediocre.”
Me? Make Nicholas Kurosawa look mediocre? I almost laughed, and I would’ve if tonight was a night for laughter.
I tried my best attempt at a smile and motioned Nick inside. In the daytime, the Olympic Village was full of headache-inducing construction. I thought it would’ve been nicer at night, but the plastic wraps and warning signs made it into a ghost town. Something abandoned.
Honestly, it was creepy.
“The dinner should only be an hour. That’s what Andrew said anyway,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. “Tomasini was supposed to host, but he canceled.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “No shit.”
“You know him?” I blinked, remembering the list of titles that Tomasini had for the summer. “Oh, I forgot, he’s running the Blades—”
“Running is a strong word. We don’t see him. Thank fuck.”
I sidestepped around a collection of plastic-wrapped chairs, bringing Nick deeper in the Village. “I know Andrew’s his corporate secretary, there should be some managing on Tomasini’s part, right? But sometimes I hear Tomasini yell over the phone at Andrew. Isn’t that weird? That he yells at him?”
“No, that’s Tomasini.”
“Oh. Well…Andrew’s miserable,” I admitted. “I don’t think he wants to be here.”
“Andrew probably fucked something up and this is, like, his punishment,” Nick remarked.
I huffed a small laugh, mostly in disbelief. Because that had to be a joke. My laughter faded with Nick’s sober expression. “Are you serious?”
“Different coaches have different styles.” A muscle in Nick’s jaw tightened. “Tomasini likes psychological shit.”
“Psychological?”
“Oh, yeah. He used to coach the Toronto Tigers. Every game, he’d have everyone on the team write the name of a player to get scratched from the lineup. If two names were picked, in a tie or something, the players with the least amount of votes got scratched.”
I ducked under a low-hanging, buzzing light. “What? Why?”
“His idea was, anybody who wasn’t liked enough on the team to get voted off, wasn’t worth it in the game. And if the team wasn’t coordinated enough to scratch the same guy, they all had to pay for it by getting rid of their favorite players.”
I faltered at the door to the lounge, staring up at Nick. “What the hell?”
“Yeah. He’s fucking crazy.”
Something about his tone made me feel cold inside. Did Nick know about that from personal experience? Was Tomasini doing that to Nick now? I stopped him from touching the door handle. “You—you’re working with him?”
Nick’s eyes flickered to mine. His expression unreadable.
“Nick?”
His lips curved for a familiar grin. “What—you worried about me?”
I frowned. “I’m serious—”
“Ooo, you’re upset.”
“Nick, this isn’t funny.” My words tumbled over themselves, I didn’t like the idea of Nick anywhere near Tomasini. “Are you? Is he your coach—?”
“No, Tallulah,” he said, amused. “He’s like an advisor for the Blades, I’ll barely see him. He’s working with the Olympics.”
Relief flooded my system, my shoulders slackened. “Oh. Good.”
“Aw, you caaare about me,” Nick teased.
I was too unnerved by the Tomasini story to respond to the teasing. How did Tomasini get so far in his career off of pitting people against each other? I hated it. Especially with Nick in somewhat close proximity to him.
I bit my lip, my gaze on the black metal door separating us from the lounge. I already didn’t want to go to the internship’s dinner. Now, I was even more nervous. I had a bad feeling about this.
“You could pretend to be sick and we could grab wings?” Nick said, his voice low.
With a sigh, I nudged the door open. “If only.”
The lounge was full of chairs, couches, coffee tables, all under the same plastic wrapping as the hallway.
Most of the lights were purposely kept off, especially with the electricians off-site.
The only real light illuminated the other end of the lounge.
There were a few fold-out tables, boxes of pizza, and Andrew, sitting bored in his chair.
The interns were a healthy distance away from each other in frigid silence.
“Tallulah!” Andrew called, taking his feet off the table. A smile crossed his face, he was genuinely glad to see me. “Someone took my offer for a plus-one!”
I stumbled to a stop, gripping Nick’s arm. Was I the only one with a date? No, no, no.
My words were hushed, only directed to Nick. “You have to go.”
“I’m not going,” Nick muttered back.
“You’re the only—”
“Tallulah, this internship is weird as fuck. I’m not leaving you here alone.” He wrapped an arm around my waist. “Smile. Don’t look them in the eyes.”
I couldn’t fight him on it, I knew he wouldn’t listen. Reluctantly, I allowed Nick to lead me to the table.
“Finally, somebody who can hold a conversation,” Andrew cracked open a can of soda, rolling his eyes towards the other interns. “I’m so sick and tired of hearing about Ivy Leagues. Can any of you spend a minute without talking about your benefactors? Your parents? Two minutes?”
I flinched and Nick wove his fingers through mine under the table, holding me tight. I was too sweaty for that, but when I tried to pull away, he squeezed tighter. As much as I wished I wasn’t dripping perspiration on him, it did make me feel better.
Because this dinner was horrible.
There were stacks of something blue I hadn’t noticed on the table, surrounding the boxes of pizza. It took me a moment to realize what the books were. Joe Tomasini’s biography?
Not only was it on the required reading list, they were our table center pieces. Irritation rippled through me. I couldn’t hold back the grimace, nudging one of them away as I ate a slice of pizza.
“We had dinner, we exchanged pleasantries,” Andrew said, like he was checking off a list of required chores “Now, we get to why I brought you here.”
Nick and I exchanged glances. This didn’t sound good.
“Tomasini wishes to weed out the students who aren’t willing to go the extra mile,” Andrew announced.
Chairs audibly scraped against the floor. Heads swiveled.
“He’s created a test to see who’s been paying attention.
” Andrew brought a whiteboard from the floor, covered with a large sheet of paper.
He gestured towards it, uninterested, bored.
“There are ten tickets hidden around the Village. Find one, and you’ll earn private feedback when the advisors judge your papers. ”
For a moment, I was sure I’d misheard him.
Was Tomasini seriously offering a scavenger hunt? I shot a look of disbelief at the other interns, the only one to do so. Everybody else was taut in their chair, focused on the task at hand, ready to spring.
Yes, the promise of feedback was tantalizing—even more than the prize of the internship itself! That wasn’t the problem. It was the stupid scavenger hunt to find scraps of paper. I sucked at field day in elementary school—I didn’t want to race against college students.
The whiteboard was revealed, and I stared at the series of numbers on separated lines.
The numbers I recognized in seconds.
My irritation morphed into anger.
“Go, get out of here, go find them.” Andrew ushered us away with a wave of his hand. “You have thirty minutes!”
Students scrambled for the door, everyone racing to find the elusive tickets while I remained in my seat, eyebrow twitching. The room was silent again. Andrew, Nick, and I were the only ones left.
Nick frowned my way. “Should we be running?”
I didn’t trust myself to speak. I pushed to stand, grabbing one of Tomasini’s biographies.
Andrew offered a tired smile. “Fabulous job, Tallulah.”
I didn’t dignify him with a response. I left too.
I couldn’t stay another minute in this lounge.
Nick was right behind me, and he didn’t let up with the questions as I stalked down the hallway.
I could hear the squeals of people’s shoes as they struggled to find the tickets, all while shouting horrible things at each other.
I took the stairs for the second floor, yanking open the door to my dorm, bringing Nick inside.
He cracked his knuckles. “Where do we look first?”
“This is awful.” I tossed the biography on the bed. “Tomasini is doing this on purpose.”
“Uh, yeah. That’s what he does.”
“I hate this internship,” I whispered, pacing. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it—”
“Tallulah, you can write up complaints to shout through a megaphone tomorrow.” Nick stopped me. “We need to find the golden ticket bullshit and win the chocolate factory—”
I flipped open the biography for him to see.
“Shit!” Nick exclaimed. “That’s—how did you—?”
“Tomasini labeled his chapters by years. That was his table of contents on the whiteboard.” Disgusted, I slammed the book shut.
“The reading list has his biography. That’s what this is.
It’s a punishment for people not reading his stupid book.
He’ll lord it over them when they can’t find the tickets—”
Nick glanced towards the door. “Then the rest of the tickets are in those books.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“We’ll rip them up—”
My eyes widened. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not doing that, Nick.”
“Tallulah, you don’t know Tomasini like I do.” His voice was uncharacteristically hard. “You won. Now he wants you to fuck over everybody else and rip up those tickets. That’s the second part of your prize—”
“I don’t care what Tomasini wants,” I interjected, surprised by the tone in his words.
“This is his game. You have to play by his rules—”
“No, I don’t. I’m not doing that just because Tomasini wants it!”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d raised my voice.
I never yelled, I never shouted, I never wanted to draw attention to myself.
The weirdest thing was that I felt comfortable yelling when I was around Nick.
Not that I wanted to yell at him, but I didn’t feel like I had to bottle up my emotions around him.
“People think journalism is just typing on a computer, it’s not!
” I insisted. “There’s editors and sources and teams that work together—that’s why I love working for the Marrs paper.
” I gestured towards the hallway and the muffled screaming match from the floor above.
“If this is what Tomasini wants, I don’t want anything to do with it! ”
Nick leveraged his gaze to the door. “They do, Tallulah. Everybody else in your internship signed up for it.”
I frowned. “No, they didn’t—”
“Why do you think you’re the only one shocked about this?”
I lapsed into surprised silence, staring at him. “I…”
“They probably had mentors and advisors and bullshit who told them exactly what this internship is. What’d you say? They knew about The Toronto Chronicle thing beforehand?" He thumbed towards the door. "Every one of them knows what they signed up for. You’re the only one who’s in the dark.”
“That—I—” I stopped myself. “Oh.”
“So, fuck ‘em.” Nick bypassed me for the door. “You stay here, I’ll rip up the tickets.”
There was a huge difference between the interns knowing more than I did and something like that. I hurried to stop him, sliding between him and the door. “Nick, no—”
He stared down at me, incredulous. “Why?”
“Because I’m not winning like that—”
“None of them would pass up the chance.”
“I don’t care!”
He was trying to help, and I knew I was being ridiculous by not taking this obvious leap, but I couldn’t do it.
I refused to stoop to Tomasini’s tactics.
I saw what he was doing to Andrew, I could hear how he was poisoning everyone upstairs, pitting them against each other, and Nick was weirdly uncomfortable when we talked about him.
Hell no, I wouldn’t play his game.
Nick put his arm above me, frustrated. “You’re too innocent, and gullible—”
“I’m not gullible,” I snapped.
“You are—”
“I don’t think the interns would do the same for me—”
“Then why do you care?” he demanded.
“Because it’s the right thing to do—”
“This world doesn’t work like that, Tallulah! You’re too nice!”
“I’m not changing my mind, Nick.”
“Thinking like that is going to fuck you over.” Irritation poured off of him, only inches away from me, his dark eyes piercing. “I won’t tell anybody back at Marrs.” His voice turned low, pleading. “Let me do it. Let me rip the tickets up—”
I jutted my chin. “No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
Nick was so close, I could taste his cologne. Feel the heat from his body, as palpable as his frustration. My heart pounded in my chest, blood roaring in my ears.
He was close enough to kiss me.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, making me jump at the sound, my phone beeping from my purse. The sounds overlapped. It didn’t interrupt the tension between us at all. Nick didn’t lift his heated eyes from mine, the intensity of his gaze once again bringing goosebumps to my skin.
He had me pinned against the door. I couldn’t move. All I could do was watch as he fished out his phone, and the change across his face as he read the screen.
“What—what is it?” I whispered.
He flashed me the alert.
His test results.