41. nick
NICK
SOMETHING THAT BOLTS YOU DOWN
An hour before I had to leave for Tomasini’s charity gala, I sat on the edge of my bed, head resting on my closed fist, phone pressed to my ear.
“I feel like I drank a cup of battery acid.”
“Filhinho,” my mom chided me. “Go to Tallulah or I’ll fly there myself.”
“I fucked up earlier. I didn’t know what to say to her.”
“Tell her you love her.”
“I can’t just say that. People don’t do that.”
“People do it all of the time.” I could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “I tell the grocer, the florist, the barista at my favorite coffee shop, oh, she dyed her hair turquoise, it’s so beautiful—”
“That’s different, M?e. You’re just weird like that.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
Rat nudged me, butting her head against my side. I scratched her under her chin, and she purred. “Tallulah could say she doesn’t feel the same and it ruins my life.”
“It won’t ruin your life. Maybe ten years of your life, but in the big, wide world, what are ten years?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t do it. Maybe I’m rushing this and it’ll ruin everything, I don’t know. What if I tell her, and then we get off the plane in Houston and she ignores me?” I muttered. “M?e, I can’t take that.”
“Life is like a box of chocolates—”
“A box of chocolates?” I repeated in disbelief.
“Yes. If you refuse to eat the chocolates and enjoy yourself, one day, you will develop diabetes and never be able to touch the chocolates anyway. What was the point of denying the box?”
“Are you joking?”
“No, I never joke about love.”
“What if I tell Tallulah I love her for real and she doesn’t love me and it was all for nothing?”
“Does she make you happy?”
“Yes,” I managed.
“Does she make your life better?”
“Yes.”
“Then you spent your time loving someone who made you happy and made your life better. It wasn’t a waste.
Loving is never a waste.” Her voice softened.
“Nicholas, not everybody is meant to be in your life forever. Sometimes, they are flashes of light and all you can do is appreciate them for giving you something beautiful.”
I sighed. “Where’d you get that one from?”
“One of my new podcasts,” she answered easily. “I love them, they’re these two rock climbers—those ladies are wonderful, I listen to them on the elliptical.”
I sighed, holding Rat close to my chest. If this was the end between me and Tallulah, it was one of the last times I’d get to see the kitten. My heart hurt at the thought.
“Love is never a regret,” my mom assured me.
“Never?”
“No. To love and be loved is what we’re supposed to do.”
“M?e?” I hesitated. “You don’t have…regrets?”
“I don’t believe in looking at the past like that, you shouldn’t either. Regret is something that bolts you down. Keeps you from moving forward.”
“Where’d you get that one from?”
“Nowhere. I just made it in my mind.”
I snorted, for a moment not thinking about the incoming collision course I found myself on with Tallulah. Not for long.
The possibilities tugged at me again, a looming dread. There was something Tallulah didn’t know, and I didn’t know how to tell her. I kept trying to buy myself time, to avoid the hurt, the confession. It did nothing but make me lash out, trying to prevent the inevitable.
I stared at the floor, listening to my mom’s level breathing. How could my mom, after everything she’d been through, tell me to go through this with Tallulah? How could she be so optimistic? Why? I didn’t understand.
“No regrets?” I prompted.
“None.”
“None at all?” I asked, letting the unsaid question settle between us, like a layer of dust making it hard to breathe.
“Oh, filhinho,” she murmured. “How could I ever regret something that gave me you?”
My throat tightened. I struggled to speak.
I had to talk to Tallulah. I knew I did. I couldn’t let the fear of her not feeling the same prevent me from saying what I needed to say.
“Go get your girl. Go on!” my mom urged. “I want to meet her for Christmas!”
An hour into the charity gala and I was fucking exhausted.
Tomasini presented me like a show dog to his donors, his business partners, and anybody above a certain tax bracket.
Elderly women squeezed my biceps, men twice my age made estimations on how much I could bench.
It was fucking humiliating. Which wasn’t anything new traveling with Tomasini.
It was his punishment for me skipping a game at the Winter Olympics two years ago, and then when I badmouthed him to my Minnesota coaches—the entire reason I’d been fucked over by that team too. The reason I had to transfer to Marrs in the first place.
Not to mention, Tomasini just liked doing this shit. It was a power trip. We both knew I couldn’t complain.
If I dropped from the Blades, if Tomasini publicly called me out on it, who’d want me on their team? Hockey was my life. It was the only thing I was good at, the only thing I knew how to do. As long as Tomasini stayed on his throne, I couldn’t say shit to him.
“You know why I’m parading you around?” Tomasini asked me, lips curled into his usual pleasant snarl. “Because you’re the only hockey player on your team that has all of his fucking teeth. That’s what you offer this world.”
“Thank you, sir,” I retorted before I thought better.
“Don’t be a smart ass.”
Slowly, I inhaled through my nose, fighting the urge to say another smart-ass line. “Yes, sir.”
“Cyclists,” Tomasini muttered under his breath as we approached Max’s team. “Somebody should put fucking cowbells over their necks so I don’t have to suffer through their steel oat breakfast bullshit—” His frown morphed into a smile. “Good evening, Olympians!”
I stood stiffly beside him, waiting while he shook hands.
Such bullshit. If the cameras weren’t here, he would’ve gladly spit on them.
The cyclists seemed to know that too. Most only offered meek smiles.
If they didn’t know Tomasini personally, they knew someone who had a chair thrown at their head.
Max’s pleased expression redirected to me. He was the only one to break rank from the other cyclists and shake my hand.
“Maximus,” I said.
“It’s Maximilian,” he corrected me, pulling me in, clapping my back. “May the better man win.”
I pulled him right back. “I want you to know that I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, purposely keeping my voice low while Tomasini shook hands with a group of gymnasts. “For everything that happened between us. I was shitty to your teammate. I knew it, I especially knew it when I had to tell Tallulah—it was wrong. I’m sorry.”
Slowly, Max nodded. “Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“I really don’t give a fuck.”
“Yeah, I thought you wouldn’t.” I shrugged. “I’m still sorry.”
“No, you’re going to be sorry. We’re throwing a party for the Olympians tonight, and I know for a fact that Tallulah’s—”
“Tallulah’s mine,” I stopped him, sidestepping to stop him from leaving.
“I’m also sorry that you’re in the middle of this.
Not as sorry as I am when it comes to Tallulah’s ex-boyfriend, but still sorry.
Neither of you deserved to get caught up in this.
You’re a footnote in our story. Nothing more. ”
“Who is that?” I heard Tomasini ask, confused.
I glanced over my shoulder. My brain was slow to catch up with my eyes as the figure walked through the giant doors.
Tallulah carefully made her way inside in a sky-blue dress—gown?
That had to be a gown, it had the skirts underneath to give it volume, to give it a dimension that made it different from every other dress in the place.
The top, or chest piece or whatever, was decorated in these petal patterns of soft blue fabric.
A dress that was designed to knock the heads off of everyone in the room.
Her long, dark hair was tied into two braids close to her scalp, drifting down her shoulders. Her lips were a bold red, a color I’d never seen on her before. Her face was flushed with the blush darkening her skin. Which made sense. So many people were staring at her—me included.
“Who is she?” Tomasini echoed. “One of the…First Nations representatives or something?”
My correction was automatic. “She’s Cherokee and Diné—”
He jerked back. “Did I ask you to speak? Shut the fuck up.”
Don’t punch him, don’t punch him, vibrated inside of me. My knuckles twitched.
“Andrew!” Tomasini snapped his fingers and Andrew scurried over. “Who’s she?”
“That’s Tallulah Walker, sir,” Andrew told him excitedly.
Interest flashed across Tomasini’s face. “That’s Tallulah?”
With another snap of his fingers, we were heading across the room towards Tallulah. My heart rate picked up when I stopped gawking at her for five seconds. What would Tomasini say when he recognized her? From the Toronto game?
“Tallulah Walker, incoming junior at Marrs University,” Andrew quickly whispered to Tomasini.
“Her paper was the one on the Toronto library system. Her research is astounding, she’s on top of deadlines, soaks in knowledge like a sponge.
Her typing speed is immaculate, eighteen hundred words in twenty minutes—”
“Would you stop whispering in my fucking ear?” Tomasini hissed. “Like a eunuch advisor. Do something useful and get me a drink so I don’t have to stay sober looking at that pile of razor shavings you call a fucking mustache.”
Andrew disappeared and my heart leaped to my throat when Tomasini came close to Tallulah, surrounded by a small crowd.
“Tallulah Walker,” Tomasini said joyfully, hand outstretched.
Holy shit.
He didn’t recognize her.
I breathed out the sigh of relief, ribs aching. Tallulah gazed at his hand for a long moment, her lips pressed before she took it.
“You’re one of my interns,” Tomasini continued, pleased.
“Yes, sir,” she replied quietly.
To anybody else, I was sure she appeared relaxed and poised. Not to me. I knew how to read her. The tightness in her expression, the stiffness in her movements.
“You and I are getting lunch,” Tomasini assured her, taking the drink from Andrew when he returned. “When are we getting lunch, Andrew?”
“Erm, I’d have to look at your schedule, sir—”
“Isn’t that what I pay you for? Not to stand around, pondering things in your misshapen skull?”
Tepid laughter followed from the crowd. Tallulah narrowed her eyes.
“You and I are getting lunch,” Tomasini said again. “I read your paper on the Toronto library system, and it was one of the few things I’ve read in my life that didn’t bore me to sleep. Which is a high compliment. Coming from me.”
Tallulah frowned. “You read my paper?”
Andrew cleared his throat. “Sir, that was the—uh—”
“Right, right.” Tomasini nodded, exhaling. “I heard about that. I’m sorry, I read parts of your paper. Eh, you and I are going to be good friends regardless.”
Tallulah didn’t even crack a smile at him, or at me, when we took our leave, Tomasini shaking more hands on a loop around the ballroom. I hated leaving Tallulah like that, but I couldn’t move more than a foot from Tomasini’s orbit, especially at an event like this. I walked away, feeling like shit.
“Do you know why I put that internship together?” Tomasini asked me.
“Because you’re so very generous, sir.”
“Cut the smart-ass remarks or I’m adding an hour to your gym time tomorrow,” he warned.
“No, those educational tax breaks are the only good fucking thing this country has beyond maple syrup and—what’s that porn actresses’s name—Hillary Hoser.
I didn’t even have to rent a place for those interns, I stuck them in the Olympic Village—that fucking place wasn’t even done yet!
” He snorted, covering his laughter. “It got me another tax credit. And every business they wrote about paid a marketing fee, all supplied by the Canadian government—that was nice. It padded my wallet like I committed a robbery—but you know what’s the best part? ”
“Can’t imagine what plans you could’ve crafted, sir.”
“I need a new writer for my next release. Next twenty releases. Someone young I can mold, someone I can build a publishing empire with.” He tilted back, taking another look at Tallulah. “I want her.”
“What?”
“She’s clearly better than the dumb-fucking-antelope they have her running with.”
“Sir?” Andrew interrupted.
“Jeeves, if you interrupt me again, I’ll have someone swallow cyanide and bird feed it into your mouth—”
“Sir, Tallulah Walker is living with Nick.”
The interruption made my blood run cold. Tomasini turned to me, his eyes sharp. “You’re living with Tallulah?”
“She’s staying on the couch,” I managed.
“Don’t lie to me.” He scoffed. His gaze darted between Tallulah and me, calculating and cold. “When I hire her, I guess I’ll have to add maternity leave to her contract. You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes without pouncing on that girl.”
I lapsed into silence, fingers curling into fists.
“You’re going to go over there and offer her the job,” he told me.
“Isn’t that the prize of the internship?” I said, trying to dodge the request.
“Don’t tell me how to run my fucking circus. One of them will win and I’ll let them believe they’ll get some future contract. I don’t give a fuck about them, I want her.” He pointed towards her. “You do what I tell you to do. Go offer her the job.”
I stared hard at him. “No.”
“Did you say no to me?” Tomasini demanded. “That’s not one of the words I allow you to say.”
“She’s busy, sir.”
“I don’t care if she’s shining shoes for fucking royalty—”
“Good one, sir,” Andrew managed.
“Stop sucking my dick, that’s your sister’s job,” Tomasini snapped, turning to me again. “Tallulah won’t sneer at the check. Shut up, Kurosawa. You’re going to talk to her.”
“No.”
“You—”
“No.”
He caught sight of a group of politicians, distinguished by the pins on their formal wear. “We’ll discuss this later. And by that I mean, you’ll agree to do it or I’ll laugh when you cry blood at the gym tomorrow.”
Silent, I followed him. My eyes slid across the room, landing on Tallulah again.
For a moment, she made me feel better, because she looked so incredible. She always looked incredible, but now there was this regal air around her. Like a princess. She was clearly set apart from everyone else, Tallulah lit up the room.
My breath quickened when I caught sight of Max moving in.
He talked to her in a quiet voice and the way she looked up at him…shit. What were they talking about? I straightened up, watching them as Max dipped down to take her hand in his, the grin playing across his face.
Were they talking about the afterparty?
Was Tallulah actually considering going to that party?
At least it wouldn’t be run by the dumb shit asshole who told her ‘I love you’ then took it back. Fuck. Fuck. My mouth ran dry, I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t watch this, knowing I had to stay another two hours with Tomasini, while Tallulah would go to Max’s party.
“I’ll go talk to her,” I told Tomasini.
“Huh? Talk to who?” He frowned. “Tallulah?”
I didn’t bother to respond, I abandoned my post beside him, and headed for Tallulah.