by Megan Bryce
He opened his door and Nicole said, “Flynn.”
He sighed and hung his head. “Okay. Let’s go in.”
Flynn knocked loudly, then let himself in with his key and looked around the door. “Mom? Dad?”
“Oh, Flynn. Come in, what are you doing? Your dad’s down on his computer, keeps asking if you’re here yet. Mike! Flynn’s here!”
“Um, I brought someone to dinner.”
“Oh, good! Who is it, one of your friends? I’ll just make some extra toast, there’ll be plenty.”
Flynn opened the door the rest of the way to let Nicole in and said, “Nicole Bissette, this is my mom, Lisa Redmond.”
Lisa froze, a pile of laundry next to her on the living room couch and a half-folded undershirt on her lap.
She stared at Nicole. “Well, I. . .”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Redmond. I hope you don’t mind Flynn inviting me to dinner.” She held out the bottle of red wine she’d brought despite Flynn telling her it was unnecessary.
Lisa stared at the bottle. “Oh, I. . .”
Flynn said, “Speechless is better than I was expecting.”
Mike came up the basement stairs, saying, “I’m starving. I would have met you at the station,” and Lisa jumped to her feet.
“Flynn! You should have told me we were going to have company!” Lisa looked at the load of laundry on the couch. “I was just folding– I’m just going to move– Come in, come in!” She grabbed an armful of clothes, then looked at the bottle in Nicole’s hand still and lifted her chin.
“You can just put it right–”
“I’ll take it, Mom.”
“Okay. Wow, you’re as pretty in person as you are in People. Nicole Bissette. I wish you’d told me, Flynn!”
“I told him not to, Mrs. Redmond. It’s my fault.”
“Oh, no! And please, you can call me Lisa. Or Mrs. Redmond! Whatever makes you comfortable.” She laughed nervously. “Let me just go get rid of this.”
They all watched as she ran down the hallway, socks and underwear falling unheeded.
Flynn cleared his throat. “And this is my dad, Mike. This is Nicole.”
“The boss? Nice to meet you. Hungry?”
“Yes, thank–”
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Flynn looked up at the ceiling and away from the back bedrooms. “Told you.”
Nicole squeezed his arm. “She went into another room. It doesn’t count.”
Mike narrowed his eyes at her hand on Flynn’s arm, then clapped his hands together. “Well. Let’s eat.”
Lisa finally came out of the bedroom and served up toast and baked beans– actual homemade baked beans– and a generous helping of salad to a grateful Nicole.
And after a few stilted minutes, everyone forgot that she was famous.
Forgot that they didn’t know her, and knew everything about her, all at the same time.
Lisa said, “Well, I know about The Enquirer. You can’t believe everything you read,” and Mike snorted.
Nicole wiped her mouth. “You can’t believe any of it. Either the paper makes it up, or a celebrity’s publicist makes it up.”
Lisa said, “Not People?”
“Just stories. Official stories.”
“My faith in the world is destroyed.”
Nicole smiled with her eyes, and then she glanced at Flynn just sitting there knowing that whatever this was it was going to be over because his parents were wonderfully normal. She let the smile out at him, and then at Mike and Lisa.
Mike’s fork hit his plate and his eyes widened. “Wow,” he said and Lisa slapped his arm.
“I told you, she’s gorgeous.”
“You look just like–”
“Dad. Mom.” Flynn glared at them, squinting one eye at them in the universal sign of shut up.
Nicole said, “It’s okay.”
And even if it wasn’t okay, it was unchangeable.
Mike shook his head. “Sorry. I just didn’t realize.”
Lisa side-eyed him. “None of us wants to hear about how you had a crush on Nikita.”
“It wasn’t a crush. I just knew who she was, that’s all.”
Flynn put his hand on Nicole’s arm and said sincerely, “Might I offer you a syringe full of bleach?”
Nicole laughed and Mike said, “Yeah, I’m just going to–”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and Flynn yelled, “Dad!”
“Go to the kitchen! Jeez!”
Mike pushed his chair back, muttering about a glass of water, and Lisa jumped up to follow him.
“Sorry. So sorry. Mike!”
Flynn blew out a breath. “Now they’re going to whisper in the kitchen, thinking we can’t hear.”
Nicole put her chin in her hands, enjoying his embarrassment. Enjoying the whole normalness of the evening, of their family.
“It caught me off guard, Lisa.”
“Go out there and apologize! To Flynn, too. You embarrassed him.”
“Oh, I embarrassed him? I wasn’t the one squealing like a teenage girl meeting one of The Monkees.”
“The Monkees? Excuse me? Wait, you could hear me?! Why didn’t you tell me!”
Flynn said loudly, “We can hear you now.”
Silence greeted his announcement and Nicole giggled.
She said, “You were wrong.”
Flynn shook his head in defeat. “I don’t doubt it. What about?”
“It’s cute.”
“No!”
“They are.”
“No!”
She reached for his hand under the table. “Thank you for bringing me to meet your parents.”
“Well, not meet meet, just like, you know, to study them.”
“I know.”
“And it’s not over yet. You might still change your mind about the bleach.”
Mike came out of the kitchen in time to see Nicole laugh and he stopped in his tracks. “Dammit,” he said and whirled around and back into the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you warn me, Lisa?”
“That she looks like her mother? Pretty much it’s a thing everybody knows.”
“I don’t read People!”
“I know you don’t. You just look at the pictures.”
“I do no–
“Still can hear you.” Flynn sighed and said to no one in particular, “Could this night get any more embarrassing?”
Nicole squeezed his hand, still holding on to it under the table and still feeling very comfortable about it.
“You mean like if I saw that picture over there of you getting your Eagle Scout?”
He froze, his eyes round and his mouth puckered. He flicked his eyes to the wall.
“Dammit.”
Nicole let go of his hand and stood to go take a better look at a teenaged Flynn.
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen. I blame peer pressure.”
“It does account for a great deal of teenage misery. I like your glasses.”
He joined her, looking at the dark thick rims and saying, “I blame peer pressure for those, too.”
“I didn’t know about the glasses. Contacts?”
“Surgery.”
“Ah.” She fingered the frame. “But I already knew you were a boy scout. The snacks in your desk, in case you get locked in.”
He grimaced. “Be prepared. Can’t hide it, can I?”
Nicole smiled. “No. I don’t think we can hide who we are. Not for very long, at least.”
Lisa and Mike came out of the kitchen, still whispering, and Flynn said, “Some of us don’t even try.”
“So cute.”
She’d said it in all sincerity and Flynn just looked at her.
Then he turned and walked down the hallway and said, “Bleach, don’t fail me now.”
Twenty-Seven
Nicole was summoned home, and while she would have liked to send her mother a picture of a certain finger– o
r perhaps Nonna’s evil eye– she went.
“I hear you had a lovely dinner with the Gearys.”
“I did.”
“I’m glad. I am! You don’t have to look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you any kind of way.”
“Yes, you are. You’re looking at me like I kept you from half your family for half your life and you’re never going to forgive me.”
Since Nicole had been thinking that, had been thinking that very thing since her lovely dinner with the Gearys, she just continued to look at her mother.
Who sighed theatrically and said, “Well, are you going to tell me about it?”
“No. It sounds like you already heard.”
“Nicole, you are so very frustrating. Tell me what you thought about James. About Scott.”
“About Cornelia?”
Nikita waved her hand. “I know enough about her.”
That made Nicole’s lips twitched and she said grudgingly, “I thought James was comfortable. It was comfortable being around him.”
“You do know him. I didn’t keep you from him.”
“Mm-hm. Little bit different now, but I was surprised to find it still was comfortable.”
“Good, I’m glad. I am! Oh, for God’s sake–”
Nicole laughed and Nikita paused and stared at her daughter. She sat up a little in her chair.
“And Scott?”
Nicole stopped laughing. Her mother may or may not have kept her father from her– in fair moments, Nicole could acknowledge that perhaps it hadn’t been as isolated as she’d thought.
But Scott? Her brother?
She only knew him because they’d been in the same social circle, because he’d dated her best friend. She’d never spent any time with him, hadn’t even had an inkling he could exist.
Nikita murmured, “I didn’t realize that he would be so important to you.”
“You didn’t realize I would be upset at finding out I have a brother I know nothing about?”
“Half brother.”
“Like Colette is my half sister?”
“It’s different.”
“It is, isn’t it? Different because I got to grow up with her and I didn’t get to grow up with him.”
Nikita closed her eyes briefly. “Well.”
“Different because he almost married my best friend and I had no idea. You couldn’t have told me then?”
“I like to think I would have eventually,” Nikita said and Nicole laughed humorlessly.
“Right.”
“And then they broke up and there was no need. If I may say, she overreacted a touch.”
Nikita would think that. Maybe even Cornelia would think the same.
Nicole didn’t.
“She overreacted to being cheated on? Or, to thinking she had been cheated on?”
Nicole still wasn’t sure what she was supposed to think about it. Her loyalties were now divided and she couldn’t seem to summon the outrage she’d once felt on her friend’s behalf.
Nikita shifted in her seat. “You should ask him. He’s family now, yes?”
“Oh, I hate you.”
It came out cold and bitter and was answered the same way.
“Yes, but that is nothing new.”
And it wasn’t. Not new, so Nicole took a deep breath and blew it out as slowly and as silently as she could. She looked around the loft, knowing by the silence that Colette wasn’t here. Even asleep, her sister had presence.
“Where is my other half sibling so early on a Sunday morning?”
“Out with friends.”
At Nicole’s silence, at the knowledge that Colette wasn’t here on a Sunday morning only because she hadn’t come home yet, her mother sighed again.
“Judge, judge, judge. It must be so exhausting to be you.”
“Yes, incredibly exhausting to care. Incredibly exhausting to want to stop my seventeen-year-old sister from making mistakes that will change her life forever.”
“Speaking of mistakes, how is your little office romance going?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“There’s nothing more to say about it because I won’t try to control the future. And I can’t change the past. And you won’t forgive me. So let’s talk about. . . what’s his name?”
“No, thanks. And it’s not a mistake.”
“It is, just not yours. I assume he’s the one who’s mellowed you out enough to come visit? To laugh, even, and have a nice visit before we irritated each other into our usual bickering state.” Nikita picked up the mirror on the side table next to her and inspected her now half-healed face. “He must be good in bed. . .good in closet. . .he must know what he’s doing.”
Nicole stood up and her mother said softly to her mirror, “Be kind to him. It can’t last, and it never ends well for a man in love with a Bissette.”
“You would know.”
“Yes, I would.”
“And he’s not. In love with me.”
Nikita looked around the mirror, laughing, and then said, “Oh, you’re serious. Nicole, really. Don’t be stupid. Of course he’s in love with you.”
“No, he’s not. We both know this is just. . .”
Just some crazy craziness.
“Just a fling.”
Nikita said, “If I was the type of controlling mother you imagine you’d want, I would have something to say here.”
“Oh, finally I can be happy you aren’t.”
Nikita went back to her mirror. “Have your fling, darling. Please, let me know how it ends. It’s an indulgence, I know, but I always enjoy a good soap opera.”
Twenty-Eight
Flynn had his legs up on his desk again. Watching Captain America: The First Avenger this time because hey, he had to break it up sometimes. A guy couldn’t only watch The IT Crowd.
But he’d seen it before and it was late and his mind was wandering.
Thinking about the website.
He’d pushed and worked so hard and now it was up and running and checking on it was now part of the routine.
So strange how that could happen.
New and exciting becomes normal and ho-hum.
Then he was thinking about his family.
His mom kept calling him and leaving messages about how great Nicole was.
Flynn didn’t disagree, but it did reaffirm that taking her home to not meet the parents was a mistake.
His brother had called, which had surprised Flynn so much that he’d actually answered the phone instead of letting it go to voicemail.
“Mom thinks you’re dating Nicole Bissette.”
“Yeah, that was a mistake.”
“. . .are you dating Nicole Bissette?”
“No.”
He was sleeping with Nicole Bissette. There was a difference, big one, and probably his brother and his mother would keel over from shock if they found out.
His brother said, “Good. For a second there, I thought I might have to go back to church in case it was the end of the world.”
Might be fun to watch his brother keel over but Flynn said, “Har. Har.”
“Dad needs help with the computer again. Call him, will ya. I don’t have time.”
“I was just there. He didn’t mention it.”
“‘Course not. He was looking at your boss’s rack.”
Flynn said, “Great talking to you, bro,” and hung up on his brother’s laughter.
Should have let it go to voicemail, because next time Flynn saw his brother, he was going to have to knock his block off.
And now he was thinking about Nicole.
About how he sure was glad he wasn’t dating Nicole.
Was glad he didn’t have to get all ruffled when his brother was inappropriate about her.
Was glad he didn’t have to think too hard about his dad having a crush on her mother. . .
Yeah, didn’t need to think about that ever again, no matter what.
Was glad he didn’t have to
tell his mother that he was dating Nicole Bissette.
Glad, he said.
He stood up, rolling his shoulders and turning off Steve Rogers.
Flynn knew he shouldn’t have taken Nicole home. Knew that was all his family was ever going to talk about.
Working for Nicole Bissette was all they talked about when he first started but after he hardly ever even talked to her, it had died down.
Now he was talking to her, bringing her to dinner. . .
His mom had already told him to invite her over again– one of the seven messages she’d left for him since that night– and maybe if they were dating, he would have.
Maybe.
He’d have to sit his dad down and give him some ground rules.
His mom, too.
But they weren’t dating.
No, it was just some crazy craziness.
And it was.
Crazy. Craziness.
And, please, let him do the crazy craziness with her again.
But it was sad, too. Because it was almost normal.
Because like building a website overnight, it was exhilarating and new and exciting.
And then it was normal.
And then, you wanted more.
Flynn blew out his breath, deciding he needed to go home.
It was late and everyone had left already, even Nicole. She’d had somewhere to be and someone to meet and because they weren’t dating, he couldn’t ask.
Hell, maybe she was on a date. Maybe she’d had to leave early to get ready. Put on a slinky black dress that wouldn’t gape and red lipstick that wouldn’t smear.
Maybe she was out having dinner.
Not smiling at someone else.
And then suddenly yes smiling. Suddenly laughing at someone else.
Making someone else’s heart knock against his chest like it was trying to kill him in this perfect moment so that it could never become normal.
Flynn grabbed the doorknob tightly and twisted.
And twisted again.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said to the empty– locked– room.
Twenty-Nine
Nikita’s voice had echoed over and over in Nicole’s head until she’d picked up the phone and called her father.
You should ask him. He’s family now, yes?
Had asked James for her brother’s phone number and listened as his voice filled with pleasure, and Scott had answered his phone and agreed to meet her for dinner, sounding like he might enjoy the experience.