Bad Idea: The Complete Collection

by French, Nicole

  “Right,” Quinn says. “Showing up to jump into her bed. Half this shit is your fucking fault, FedEx! She was fine before you came around, and now you’re here, just like you always were, to fuck her and leave her!”

  “You know what?”

  Layla’s small voice behind me somehow breaks through the conversation. She hops in front of me, and instinctively, I wrap an arm around her waist from behind. I don’t want to admit it, but some of Quinn’s nasty words hit a little too close. Some of this is my fault. And I’ll carry that guilt for the rest of my life.

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Layla says to both of us. She presses gently on my chest, forcing my arm to unwind and let her free. “You’ve done enough fighting for me today.”

  I open my mouth to tell her that I’d fight for her any day, all day. That I’ll fight for her for the rest of my life if she’ll let me. But her face is defiant, and for some reason, it sparks a little pride. She needs this, to stand up for herself, to say what she has to say.

  So I step back, hands up. “Whatever you need, baby.”

  Layla turns to Quinn. “You don’t need to worry about me anymore either,” she says in a voice that’s a lot softer than I think she wants it to be. If it were any other day, she’d be shouting. But right now my girl is tired. Broken. She needs a rest.

  That Peter Pan fantasy starts to sound better and better.

  “What?” Quinn balks. “Of course I do. We all do, clearly. You need to get your shit together and—”

  “No,” Layla puts in again, her voice quivering. “I mean you don’t have to worry about me. You made that pretty fucking clear when Jamie and Shama walked into that room without you.” She shakes her head and pulls on the end of her ponytail. “I don’t blame you for what Giancarlo did or the choices I made with him. I really don’t. But, Quinn, you could have helped instead of pushing me away. You could have called my parents. Even just listened sometimes instead of telling me everything that I was doing wrong. In the last nine months, I have never felt more alone in my entire life, and a lot of that has to do with the way my best friend treated me.”

  Quinn stills. I smirk a little. She was spunky enough in the beginning, with her little threats to me. What’d she say? That she’d feed my balls to the pigeons if I ever hurt her girl? I thought at first that she was that friend, the one who was protective, who wouldn’t let her roommates come to any harm. But where the fuck was she when Layla was hanging around a guy like El Tango Shithead? Where was she when her friend was in danger? I’ve watched and heard enough to know that Quinn’s the other type of girl––the catty kind my sisters cycle through from time to time. Layla’s better off without her.

  Layla continues: “I learned today who my real friends are. Who will really be there for me when things get legitimately tough. Not tough the way we think of it, with tests and final papers and oh, my dad forgot to call me. But really, really fucking hard. Quinn, I’m sorry, but I just don’t have room in my life for people who can’t hack it. And I guess...that includes you.”

  Her hand reaches for me. It’s a slight movement, maybe six inches from her hip, but I see it. She needed space before, but now she’s ready to take it back. And I thread my fingers through hers and squeeze.

  I got you, baby. If there’s one thing I want her to know in all of this, it’s that. I got her back. Always.

  Quinn’s mouth falls open, reminding me again of a creepy doll. The old kind with the eyelids that open and close and the porcelain skin that cracks over time. She looks between us, at our joined hands, then shuts her mouth, her eyes glazed and angry.

  “You don’t want to be friends?” she asks finally. I don’t miss the way her voice quavers. “Fucking fine. I’m better off without your dead weight anyway.” She looks between us. “I’ll take the couch tonight. You two losers fucking deserve each other.”

  She spins out of the room and slams the door behind her, leaving Layla to fairly collapse into me.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpers into my chest. “That was hard.”

  I wrap my arms around her slim form, pulling her as close as I can. “It was the right thing to do. She’s a bitch.”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Not anymore.” I tip Layla’s head up. “Best friends don’t say that kind of shit to each other. She should have had your back. She didn’t. Case closed.”

  I kiss her, gently, if only because now I finally can again. She’s still, unmoving without a sound. Even with her red-rimmed eyes and banged-up face, she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

  Layla sniffs. “You should probably go, huh? It’s getting late.”

  I pause. “Do you want me to go?”

  She doesn’t have to answer. Her blue eyes, so uncertain, so conflicted, spell it out. I brush some loose hairs out of her face so I can see it clearly, then tip her chin so she has to look at me.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her solemnly. “I belong with you.” I nod at her bed. “Even if we do have to sleep in this tiny-ass bed of yours.”

  She giggles. It’s small and sweet, and I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been standing inches from her face. But it was there, and the sound of it lights something inside me I haven’t felt in a really long time, and something the day’s events had doused like gallons of water on a campfire. But there it flickers in her smile: hope.

  “Can we—can we turn out the light?” she asks quietly.

  “Sure, why?”

  “Because,” she says. “I’m tired of you looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m about to break.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Layla

  We listen to the sounds of Quinn bustling around the apartment, gathering her stuff before slamming the front door behind her when she leaves. I know her. She’ll be back later, after she goes to the gym, maybe studies at the library. She’ll have a bunch of backhanded apologies, and she’ll expect me to forgive her, just like always.

  Except this time, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’m not sure what the immediate future looks like right now—I honestly don’t have the strength to think about it—but I doubt it’s going to include Quinn.

  After the door shuts, Nico flips off the light, casting the room in sudden darkness lit only by the street lamps shining through the window blinds.

  I’m not sure what I’m doing. What I’m asking him to do. Two days ago I was staying with another man. Someone who was supposed to love me, who had convinced me that he was the only person in the world I could trust, right before taking that trust and shattering it—and me—completely.

  I’m still not sure what to do with that. What to do with my mangled body. I knew, of course, that these things happen. That women get caught up in all sorts of unhealthy relationships. That studies and facts and things like that say that it’s the people closest to you who often do the most damage. But it’s something totally different when it actually happens to you.

  The one thing I do know is that I want Nico here if he’s willing. From the second he burst into that room, at the front of the small cavalry of people still willing to help, it was like the earth shifted a little on its axis. Like it had been misaligned somehow and was put right. My body reached for him before my mind and my heart. It reaches for him now, despite all its pain.

  Slowly, ignoring the way the muscles in my neck and arms ache with fatigue, I remove my jeans and crawl into bed in my shirt and underwear. A statue cast in silvery-blue light, Nico watches. I curl against the wall, hugging a pillow to my chest while I look up at him.

  His face is blank, though the muscles of his neck are still corded in frustration. He was holding back with Quinn. This man has the urge to save others written into his DNA. How anyone could look at him and not see that is beyond me.

  I close my eyes. How lucky am I that he is what he is? That he came when he did? The numbness of the afternoon is finally wearing o
ff, and what replaces it are the cold chills of what might have happened if he hadn’t arrived when he did. The only cure I can think of is his warmth—his strong, solid warmth that will banish this feeling.

  “Please,” I say, glad the darkness hides the way my chin trembles. I extend a hand. “Come here, will you?”

  Nico swallows, blinks like he’s pulled out of some kind of trance, even though he’s been staring at me the entire time. “Um...I don’t have pajamas or anything.”

  The coldness spreads. “Nico?”

  He crouches down so we’re eye to eye. “Yeah, baby?”

  I bite my lip. He already said he was staying, but now I’m wondering if he was just being nice. “I just need you here, okay? Please?”

  Nico blinks, then shakes his head. “Fuck. Yeah. No, of course, baby.”

  I watch as he strips off his clothes hurriedly. He does so without pretense. It’s not a strip tease; he’s just taking off his pants and t-shirt so they don’t get wrinkled. But even in my wretched state, I can still appreciate the raw beauty of him. The rigid blocks of muscle that have somehow become even more chiseled since last year. The elegant lines of skin and sinew. The way his tattoos, over his right shoulder and the compass over his heart, ripple with his movements.

  He folds his clothes and puts them on my desk chair, then faces me, in just his underwear. He looks down at himself then back at me. “Shit...should I put my shirt back on?”

  I should probably say yes. I’m in my shirt too, and I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I had all of that pressed against me that way. But the chill persists, shaking me through. Having his warm body pressed against mine sounds like the best thing in the world. All afternoon, we haven’t stopped touching. But it was always small, almost platonic. Handholding. This won’t really be that different.

  So I pull back the covers and make room for him to slide into bed with me. He crawls over so his back is against the wall, then pulls me against him, my back to his front, my body fitting to his like the petals of a flower. I hum. We’ve been lost, floundering around apart, finding only after the damage has been done that it’s together that we’re found. Right here, with him. This is where I belong.

  His chest rumbles with contentment as his arms coil around me.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I’m not. Obviously I’m not, and I probably won’t be for a long time.

  “I’m okay,” I whisper into the darkness. Because what else should I say?

  I squirm around suddenly, twisting until I’m facing him instead of the open, empty void of the room. Him. That’s all I want. Him.

  His hands thread through my hair, pulling slightly when they find a tangle or two. Sometimes it hurts a little, but he always smooths it out, runs his fingers back over my scalp to allay any lingering pain. Almost automatically, his lips find my forehead, pressing that same tenderness into my skin. It’s a small movement, but it takes my breath away.

  I didn’t realize until today how badly I needed to feel a touch, physical or mental, that didn’t hurt. But more than that, I didn’t realize how badly I needed that touch to be his.

  My lips find his shoulder before I can stop them. Nico stiffens slightly. I press them to his neck.

  “Layla.” His deep voice thrums in the dark. “Sweetie, what are you doing?”

  I inhale, my nose buried in the hollow just over his clavicle. The hands in my hair tense, but I can feel the stirrings of something else stiffening lower down. I’m not sure what I feel about that.

  “You make me feel good,” is all I say to him.

  Nico pushes up on one elbow, cradles his head in his hand so he can look over me. He gazes through me, with eyes as black and deep as the night sky outside. He’s searching for something. What, I don’t know.

  “I do?” he asks me.

  Wordlessly, I nod. Please, I want to say. Please kiss me. But the words don’t come.

  Slowly, he leans down and places his lips right under my jaw, to that sensitive spot that used to make me squirm. My breath catches as he flickers his tongue just there. My heart speeds up a little, but in a way that’s good, not bad. This isn’t fear. It’s desire. It’s heat. The opposite of a chill.

  Then he closes his teeth around my earlobe and bites sharply, and I freeze.

  He stops immediately. “What’s wrong?”

  I close my eyes for a second. “That...please don’t...Nico, I just...I.”

  I can’t even get the words out. I’m not sure what they should even be. But his teeth—that tiny hint of pain—struck something deep within me, and something that I thought would be an escape from the horrors of this day suddenly bring it all rushing back, and then some.

  “I can’t,” I squeak. “Please...I...”

  The look on Nico’s face breaks my heart in two. “Did he...”

  His brow furrows without waiting for my answer, and he closes his eyes as if in pain too. He rolls his lips together—his beautiful, soft lips—and exhales forcefully through his nostrils while he rubs his head. He’s processing something. I wanted to forget him, but Giancarlo is in this room right now. I hate him for it. I hate him for all of it.

  Nico opens his eyes, suddenly full of direction.

  “Tell me what he did,” he prompts.

  I pause. “I—Nico, you don’t want to hear about that, do you?”

  He puffs out his cheeks and blows out another breath slowly. “No, not really. But I think I should.”

  I grimace. “Why?”

  “Because,” he says softly. “Why do you think I flew across the country the second you called? Your pain is mine, baby. So let me bear it with you.”

  I blink for a moment as his words seep in. The idea that I’m not alone in this. That maybe I really can talk about it with him.

  “He—he liked it rough,” I whisper finally, terrified of the reaction I might get here. Nico hasn’t exactly hidden his disdain for me being with someone else, even before that someone turned out to be an abusive asshole. “Sometimes that was okay. I...I didn’t want things sweet with him. I never did. Being with him was always like a punishment, you know? Did you ever feel like you needed something to hurt for it to feel good?”

  I close my eyes, working hard to keep my control. I’m terrified of what he might think of me for this. That he might say what a voice in my head also says sometimes. That whatever harshness Giancarlo dealt out, maybe there was a part of me that was asking for it. That felt like I deserved it.

  Nico chews on his lips again, clearly processing my words with varying amounts of anger and sadness. But in the end, he retains that direct, open expression.

  “Okay,” he says. “So tell me what he didn’t do, baby. Tell me that.”

  “He didn’t...” I pause. Tears are threatening now. “He didn’t kiss me.”

  Nico arches a black brow in surprise. “Seriously? He never kissed you at all?”

  I blush. I doubt he can see it—not with my technicolor face and the dark lighting. But I can feel the heat rising up my neck. “No, he kissed me. I just meant...he never kissed me like you.”

  Nico blinks. “Yeah?”

  The blush deepens. It’s hard not to look away. “Yeah.”

  Carefully, with movements scattered with micro pauses to check and check again that I’m actually all right, Nico shifts so that he’s lying between my legs. It’s not a lecherous move––just one that allows him to balance with his forearms on either side of my head so his hands can cup together at the crown of my head. We stare at each other. His black eyes glimmer with the glow of the city that sneaks into the room.

  Slowly, slowly, he leans down. And finally presses his lips to mine.

  “Like that?” he asks, his breath warm and heavy.

  I nod. “Like that.”

  So he does it again. And again. Slowly, slowly, my mouth opens to his. His tongue slips out to taste me again, to flicker with curiosity and want. I twist mine with it, finding again that delicate dance that always made m
e feel like I was floating two feet off the ground. Nico sucks lightly on my bottom lip, savors the top, licks and nibbles until a low moan emerges from my chest. My hands have somehow found their way into the hair at the back of his neck, and with a sudden yank, I pull him deeper, forcing his body to collapse over me. And this time, the hardness now pressing between my legs is unmistakable.

  “Shit,” Nico breathes in between the deep, long kisses that I’m driving now as much as him. “Fuck, Layla.”

  But when he thrusts his hips, something deep inside me stills again. My chest squeezes, and I freeze again. Nico pulls back, searching my face again, even though his lips are wet with our kisses.

  I shut my eyes. Fuck. What am I doing? I want this, even though I shouldn’t. I need this, but I can’t do anything about it. I’m so fucked up. Quinn is right. Maybe the best thing for Nico is to just leave me alone. My needs shouldn’t matter when they just screw everything up.

  “Look at me, baby.”

  So I do. Because even in this tortured state, I also know the truth: that I’d do just about anything right now because he wanted me to.

  “Did he make you come?” he asks.

  At first I’m not sure he actually asks me that out loud. But then he draws a finger over my cheek, plays with my lower lip for a moment, and asks it again. His lips are soft as he drifts kisses down my body, over my t-shirt, between my breasts, down to where the hem rises just above my underwear.

  I stare as his mouth hovers over the elastic band. “N-no?”

  It’s a question more than a statement. But it’s also true. The few times I did orgasm with Giancarlo, I had to do it myself. And more often than not, he would get too impatient waiting for me to find the focus to do it. I’ve been faking it. For months and months, I’ve been faking it.

  Nico props his chin on my stomach and gazes up at me with eyes full of love, free of judgment. “No?”

  “N-no. I just...I just couldn’t. Not really. Not with him.”