part0010

Selina was asleep by the time I got home. I was grateful not to have to face her interrogation while I was still dealing with my own confusion. Nick had ended up walking me home as we both preferred the fresh air over a stuffy car ride. After an awkward moment at the door, he kissed my cheek and said goodnight. I stood in the doorway watching him walk down the street until he was out of sight. Only after I got to Selina’s guest room, my new bedroom, did I realize I was still wearing his suit coat.

I didn’t know what to expect the next morning. Nick hadn’t been clear about what we would be doing and I wondered if he even had a plan. I needed to dress as comfortably as possible so I would be ready for anything. The challenge was to not also look like a total slob in the process.

“Where are you headed?” Selina asked, waiting for me in the kitchen. “I notice you skipped your run and smoothie this morning.”

“I overslept,” I explained. In fact, I had slept better last night that I had any night in the last five years. “Nick and I are meeting up today.”

“It wasn’t a date. It was just two old friends reuniting.” I tried to pretend that I wasn’t blushing. “But yes, it was nice. We have more things to discuss about the memorial so we’re going to get together today.”

“Mhmm,” she said doubtfully. “Is that why you are wearing that red sweater that makes your cleavage look amazing?”

“Stop. It’s just a sweater.” This time I couldn’t hide the flush in my cheeks. Selina knew me too well. “Nick is like a brother to me. Nothing untoward is going to happen.”

Selina turned serious. “You know that it’s okay if you like him, right? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“There’s plenty wrong with that,” I rebutted. “He was Michael’s best friend. He’s a world-famous playboy. He parties too hard and works even harder. I couldn’t pick a worse guy to date if I tried.”

“He makes you smile,” she replied easily. “Your face lights up when you talk about him, even when you are listing off his worst traits. He’s good to you, always has been. He cares about you, and it’s painfully obvious that you care about him, too. You’ve just been lying to yourself for the last five years. But we both know that he would never hurt you the way that Kevin did. I don’t know Nick that well, but I’m pretty sure he loves you.”

“Loves me?” I forced a laugh. “That’s crazy. If he loved me, and that’s a big if, I’m sure he stopped loving me when I gave him the cold shoulder for half a decade.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.” She reached over and straightened a wayward strand of my hair. “Spend the day with him and see if I’m wrong. But I bet I’m not.”

Nick arrived at 10:00 sharp. He was dressed casually in jeans and long sleeved gray t-shirt that was just tight enough to show off his muscles without being so tight that it looked like he was showing off. A dark baseball hat completed the look. I thought he looked even better dressed down than he did dressed up.

“Nice ride,” I said, glancing at the expensive looking convertible over his shoulder. “No driver today?”

“Yeah, yeah. You look good, too. Better?” I slipped on my sunglasses so I didn’t have to squint when I looked up at him .

“I’m glad you noticed my form.” He started toward the car, opening the passenger’s side door for me. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had noticed my form as well. That thought made me blush.

“No, no. It’s a beautiful day.” In fact, it was the nicest day of the season. 70 and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. “It’s the perfect day for a drive in a convertible.”

Nick turned the engine over and for a second I thought that nothing happened. I was about to ask if something was wrong when I realized that the car was just that quiet.

“If you’re worried about your hair getting tangled in the wind, there’s an extra hat in the glovebox.” He tipped the brim of his cap at me. “That’s why I’m wearing one.”

Maybe Old Nick would’ve had to worry about his wild hair getting tangled, but New Nick had a proper haircut. “I’ll take my chances with the wind,” I said as he pulled into traffic. It was still early enough that the roads weren’t congested. We made it to the highway in record time .

“This is a nice car.” I ran a hand over the smooth leather seat. “Do you have a lot of cars?”

“Do you still live in that high-rise near Broadway?” I realized that I didn’t know much about New Nick.

“I sold it a few years ago. Bought an old brownstone and fixed it up.” He shifted gears as we merged onto the highway. “You should stop by and see it sometime.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you did,” I said, instantly wishing I could take the words back. What was I doing?

“If you can’t tell, I must not be doing it very well,” I replied with a nervous laugh. I vaguely noticed that my hand was still nervously stroking my seat. “So where exactly are we going? I feel like I should be a little nervous that you’re driving me out to the country.”

“You’re right to be worried,” he said seriously. “I intend to make the most of our day together. And night. ”

“It just means that I have a lot of big plans for us.” Nick’s flashed a boyish grin. “I could use some Saturday-morning-drive music, how about you?”

He tapped a button and talk radio blasted through the speakers. Another tap of his finger and the station switched to classic rock.

“I don’t really do the club scene anymore.” He turned serious. “You may not believe it, but I really have changed, Logan.”

He was trying to sound nonchalant, but I could tell that he wanted me to believe him. The fact that I still doubted him caused him pain.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m even more unpleasant to be around than I used to be. I’m paranoid that the people I love are going to die suddenly. I haven’t been to work in over a week, since I can’t stand the thought of facing that bitch Marjorie that slept with my fiancé. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t have a job to return to anymore.” I took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “ And most disturbingly, I find that I actually enjoy the time we spend together.”

He laughed and said, “That’s the most disturbing part? I can’t tell if you just paid me a compliment or hit me with an insult.”

“It was both.” And then because I was possibly on the edge of an emotional breakdown, I slid my hand over five inches until my fingers brushed his knuckles. “But mostly it was a compliment.”

He dropped his hand from the stick shift and turned it palm up so that I could slide my hand over it. Then our fingers laced smoothly together, like they had been molded to fit so perfectly. A thrilling tingle shot up my arm.

“I have to admit, five years ago I never would have predicted this,” Nick said, eyes focused on the road. “I thought you couldn’t stand me.”

“I have to admit that back then, I couldn’t. Most of the time.” I pondered whether I should bring up an old memory. With Old Nick, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. He would’ve been embarrassed and brash. But he claimed that he was different now, so I said, “Do you remember that first Christmas you spent with my family?”

“The Christmas where Bob almost burned down the house?” He smiled at the memory. “How could I forget? ”

“Oh. I guess that was the same Christmas.” Remembering it made me smile, too. My step-father, Bob, had left discarded wrapping paper too close to the fire and it quickly became an incendiary. “That’s not the part I was referencing, though. You probably don’t remember it, but you and I had a conversation on the back porch.”

I could remember the moment like it was yesterday. Maybe that’s why it stung a little when he admitted that he didn’t remember it at all. “We had just finished dinner and Mom was being her typical crazy self. I decided I needed a break from the family fun and snuck out the backdoor. You were already there, in the process of getting high.”

At that, he laughed. “Sorry, but that was pretty much a description of every day for me back then.”

“I know.” It was part of the reason we had gotten off to such a bad start. I had been straight as an arrow in high school, never smoking pot or drinking. I never even missed curfew. Old Nick had been my antithesis in every way. “I was so annoyed that day that I didn’t even care that you were strung out. Anyway, I sat next to you on the step and you very quietly looked me over and then said, what did the asshole do ?”

I still don’t know how he had known. I had thought that I was hiding things so well, even my nosy mother hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong.

“More than one asshole did you wrong? I’m impressed, Little Elliot.” He had offered me his joint which I refused out of a habit. After a second to think about it, I reached over and took it. I had never even smoked a cigarette, so I didn’t know what I was doing but I took a long drag and just barely stopped myself from coughing up a lung.

“This morning I found out that my boyfriend has been telling the entire football team about a bunch of kinky shit that I supposedly did with him… and to him. None of it was true, but that has never mattered to stupid high school boys.” I took another drag and handed it back to him. “Now everyone thinks I’m a whore and the one time Small-Dick Andrew and I even tried to have sex, he couldn’t keep his shit together long enough to even put it in me.”

It was the most vulgar thing I had ever said to anyone. I should’ve been horrified by the words coming out of my mouth. Even more horrified that I was telling the story to one of my brother’s friends. But telling Nick actually felt like the most natural thing in the world.

He just laughed and shook his head. “You aren’t missing anything. Guys that age don’t know what they are doing anyway. You should find yourself an older guy, someone with experience.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s not like I’m going to have a lot of offers after this anyway.”

“Are you kidding? Do you even know teenage boys?” Nick took a last drag and stubbed out the joint on the concrete step. “Those perverted pricks will be throwing all kinds of insulting offers your way.”

“You don’t think very highly of your gender,” I observed, surprised. As far as I could tell, Nick was one of those perverted pricks.

“Look, I know I’m not a poster-child for my gender. I’m not the guy you take home to Mom and Dad. Well, except for your mom and dad.” He had smiled playfully at me and not for the first time, I understood his appeal. He had a wonderful smile. “But I don’t brag about the girls I sleep with, and I definitely don’t make up lies about the girls that are smart enough not to sleep with me.”

I couldn’t argue with that. While it was pretty obvious that Nick had his pick of women, he had never made any disparaging remarks about them in front of me.

“You implied that there was more than one asshole in your life. Small-Dick Andrew is one… who is the other one?”

“My dad.” The marijuana was having quite an effect on me. I never talked about my dad to anyone. “I was supposed to go to his place tomorrow to celebrate Christmas. I haven’t seen him in over nine months. But he decided today that he is too busy to see me for an hour.”

“He left us when I was six. Found some twenty-year-old and that was it. He never even fought Mom for custody or visits. We used to see him for a week in the summer and around major holidays. But once he had a baby with her, he just stopped wanting to see us at all.”

We were both quiet then, lost in our separate thoughts. Still feeling bold, I asked, “Why don’t you spend holidays with your dad? Doesn’t he want to see you?”

It seemed like he wasn’t going to answer me. His face grew very still as he stared out into the night. His jaw clenched and unclenched several times. “I haven’t seen my dad in over two years. After my mom died, it wasn’t like he was much of a dad anyway. He preferred spending time with his whiskey bottle over spending time with me. Sometimes he drank too much, and when that happened there was nothing I could do to make him happy.”

“Hit is putting it mildly. He beat me.” Nick’s voice was hollow and unfeeling. He turned to me with surprise in his eyes. “I’ve never told anyone that.”

“I guess this has been a therapy session for both of us.” I suddenly became aware of how cold it was outside. How had I failed to notice that? “It’s cold. We should probably go in.”

“Yeah.” Nick looked a little disappointed, but he stood and offered me his hand. I let him help me to my feet and was surprised when he didn’t let go right away. “Promise me you’ll never settle for an asshole. You should always demand more than that because you deserve so much more than that.”