The Nicest Guy in America

by Angela Benson

  She agreed, but it wasn’t her decision. “I don’t know what Jim’s going to do. He said he liked the article, but he also said it lacked punch. In other words, it didn’t meet his criteria for sensationalism.”

  “From the short conversation I had with Jim, I get the feeling he thinks of you as a daughter. You’ll work through this.”

  Kim nodded. Jim’s calling her Kimmy and his nosing into her business were perfect examples of the paternal role he sometimes played with her. “Jim and I have disagreed in the past, but we’ve always been able to come to a compromise that was acceptable to both of us. I don’t think that’s going to happen this time.”

  “Why not?” Reggie asked, finishing off the last of his omelet.

  She cut off a slice of hers and placed it on his plate. “Because this time what he wants is too outrageous to even consider.”

  “What does he want?” He popped the omelet she’d given him into his mouth. “It can’t be that bad.”

  She put down her fork and captured his gaze. “Get this. He wants us to get engaged.”

  Reggie choked on his omelet and had to chase it down with juice. “Engaged?”

  “My reaction exactly.”

  He pointed his finger between himself and her. “You and me. Engaged?”

  Kim felt a prickle of annoyance at his incredulousness. Was being engaged to her so far-fetched an idea? “Not a real engagement. He wants us to pretend to be engaged so that he can have a media hook.”

  “You can’t be serious, Kim. He wants us to fake an engagement so he can get some publicity?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  Reggie shook his head. “Fake an engagement? How did the man come up with something so crazy?”

  Kim’s annoyance began to fade as Reggie’s reaction to Jim’s suggestion matched hers. “Jim’s always looking for an angle. This is exactly his kind of idea.”

  “You really think you’re going to lose your job?”

  She nodded. “It looks that way.”

  Reggie shook his head. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. As a matter of fact, I won’t let it come to that.”

  Again, his willingness to help pleased her. “And how are you going to prevent it, Old Wise One?”

  “Easy,” he said. “We’ll fake the engagement.”

  She stared at him, not believing he’d spoken those words. Did an engagement mean so little to him that he’d fake one on a whim? “You might, but I won’t.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Then quit your job and move in here with me.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Kim thought the conversation was going from bad to worse.

  He sat back in his chair. “Because if you don’t have a job, you won’t have money. You can live here rent free while you find another job.”

  The matter-of-fact way he solved her problem irked her. “So you’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

  “I’m just giving you some options, Kim,” he said, leaning forward and covering her hand with his. “I don’t see what you’re getting all upset about. If you don’t want to quit your job, let’s go ahead and fake the engagement. It’s no big deal.”

  She moved her hand. “It’s a big deal to me. An engagement is not something you fake. An engagement implies a commitment between two people. I won’t fake something so important.”

  “Fine,” he said, seeming to get angry. “Quit your job then. The offer is still open for you to stay here until you find another one.”

  She wondered why he was angry. She hadn’t done anything to him, while he had offended her royally. “Look, Reggie,” she said. “I’m not one of your charity cases. I’m used to taking care of myself and I don’t need you to bail me out.”

  “What are you talking about?” He placed both his hands face down on the table. “All I’m doing is trying to help and you’re making me out to be the bad guy.”

  Kim thought about the letters from the women who’d dumped him and the conversation she’d had with his mother. Then she finally realized what was going on, what was irritating her so much about this entire conversation. Reggie wasn’t responding to her specifically. He was doing what he’d do for any woman in need. He was acting on instinct, not out of love.

  “No, Reggie.” She got up out of her chair. “You’re not a bad guy. You’re a real nice guy.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, getting up too. “Then why are you yelling at me?”

  Kim tried to rein in her emotions. Reggie was just doing what he normally did, she told herself. But she didn’t want him to do the usual with her. She wanted things between them to be different. “I’m not yelling,” she said in a calm voice.

  “But you were,” he accused. “And I don’t even know what I did wrong.”

  She believed him. She could tell from the bewilderment in his eyes that he didn’t have a clue. She loved him, but he didn’t have a clue. “I know you don’t, Reggie,” she said sadly.

  He reached for her and she went willingly into his arms. “Tell me what I did wrong, Kim. I’d never do anything to hurt you. You have to know that.”

  She pulled back and looked up into the eyes of the man she loved. “I know.” She rubbed her hand down his cheek. “You’re a wonderful man, Reggie. And I can see how those women fell for you, but I can also see why they left you.”

  She felt him go rigid in her arms. “What?”

  “You can’t solve everybody’s problems, Reggie. Sometimes people have to fight their own battles.”

  He dropped his arms from around her and moved away. “So you’re walking away from me because I offered to help you? That makes no sense.”

  She gave him a sad smile. “I know it doesn’t make sense to you. You’re a nice guy and you’re doing what a nice guy does. You’re being nice.”

  “And what’s wrong with being a nice guy?”

  She shook her head and fought back tears. “Nothing, if being needed is enough. It’s not enough for me.”

  He laughed a harsh laugh that made her heart hurt. “I guess I was wrong again. I would have bet everything that you were different—that we were different.” He shook his head from side to side in frustration. “I don’t get what you women want.”

  She reached up and gave him a short kiss on his lips. “I know you don’t,” she said. “That’s the problem.” Then she turned and walked away from the man she knew she’d love the rest of her life.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Women,” Luther lamented two weeks later. “They’re nothing but trouble.”

  “You’re right about that, man,” Nate agreed. “Tell me, what is it they want from us?”

  Reggie sat among his friends as they chugged beer and cried the blues. Three eligible bachelors bemoaning the state of their most recent relationships. “I know you’re not asking me. It’s obvious I don’t have a clue. I thought Kim was different, but I guess in the end, women are all alike.”

  “No way,” Luther said. “They’re not all alike. Tam was different. You know, I could have fallen for that woman.”

  Nate chugged his beer. “You did fall for her, Luther. You were just too stupid to realize it.”

  Luther shot his friend a wild stare. “Maybe you’re right, man. But I wasn’t ready to get involved with a woman who had a kid. Hell, I’m still a kid myself.”

  “Now that’s a lie,” Nate said, barely able to put his words together. “You’re thirty-eight and you’re gonna be hard-pressed to find a woman—not a girl—who doesn’t already have kids. You’re the odd ball, man, not Tam.”

  Reggie agreed with Nate but he didn’t even feel like responding. Kim had thrown him for a loop when she’d rejected his suggestion that they go along with Jim’s plan to fake an engagement or his alternative that she quit her job and move in with him until she found another one. She’d turned him down flat on both offers. No discussion. Nothing. Just, no. And where had that left him? Alone. Again. “If I knew what they wanted, maybe I could adapt, but, so help me, God, I don’t have a
clue. I was good to Kim. Hell, I was even going to fake an engagement so she could keep a job.”

  “I can top that, man,” Nate said. “I told Leslie I loved her and you’d have thought I set off a rocket under her or something. She left that fast. I thought women were the ones who wanted commitment.”

  “Women don’t know what they want,” Reggie explained. “They think they want something until they get it and then they move on. Maybe women are the ones who like a challenge. And then once you fall for them, they lose interest.”

  “Yeah,” Luther said. “That’s what they do all right. They make you fall for them and then they leave. They like to see a brother balled up in knots.” He gulped down more beer. “Why couldn’t Tam give me a little time, man? Why did she have to tell me about her kid so soon?”

  Reggie didn’t know and said so. “Who knows, man? We could sit here forever trying to figure them out and we’d never come to a conclusion.”

  “Well,” Nate said, struggling to stand up. “I’m tired of trying to figure it out. I’m going home.”

  Reggie looked down at the beer bottles scattered around them and realized they’d been drinking for a while. “You’d better crash here, man. You don’t need to get in a car.”

  “Hey, I can drive,” Nate mumbled.

  “Drive yourself right into a ditch,” Luther said. “Sit your tired behind down.” He pushed his hand against Nate’s stomach and he fell back in his chair.

  “Maybe you have a point,” Nate said. “I think I will spend the night here.”

  “Good thinking,” Luther said. “You might be boring, but you definitely aren’t stupid.”

  Reggie looked at himself and at his friends. If they told anyone that they’d spent a Saturday night sitting in his den drinking themselves silly because of three women they’d known less than three months, no one would believe them. Yet here they were.

  Reggie took another swig of beer. And he’d thought Kim was different. He’d thought she was the one. That goes to show how much he knew. Not a damned thing.

  ~ ~ ~

  “So Jim didn’t fire you, after all,” Leslie said. “You should have known he wouldn’t.”

  “Well,” Kim said, curled up on her couch. “He had me going there for a while. When I told him there was nothing he could do to make me fake the engagement, he’d ordered me back here as though I’d said I was going to bomb Atlanta. I just knew he was giving me my walking papers.”

  Tam chuckled. “All that cheapskate wanted was a reason to get you out of Atlanta and off his expense report. He’s never going to let you go. He knows a good worker when he gets one.”

  Kim stared down in her cup. Tam was right. What she’d thought was going to lead to her getting fired had actually turned out to be a career boon. Not only had Jim not fired her, he’d actually given her a raise and a fancy new title. He’d even agreed to drop the His/Her column idea he’d had for her and Reggie and just go with her article, which had suddenly become good enough.

  “What do you say, Kim?” Leslie was asking.

  “I’m sorry,” Kim said. “What did you say?”

  “She said we need to celebrate your good fortune,” Tam explained. “Where do you want to go? Anywhere. We’re footing the bill.”

  Kim looked at her friends and knew she was lucky to have them. But she didn’t feel lucky right now. Right now, she felt empty. And she knew why. She missed Reggie. Missed him more than she’d ever missed anyone. More than she’d known she could miss anyone. While she’d been able to keep the sadness that hovered over her from consuming her, she didn’t know if she could endure an evening out on the town. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to tell her friends without getting into another long discussion.

  “You don’t want to go, do you?” Leslie observed. She turned to Tam. “I told you she didn’t want to go. She’s still thinking about him.”

  “Don’t talk about me as though I’m not here, Leslie,” Kim said.

  “You’re not here,” Tam interjected. “Your body’s here but your mind, your heart, is back in Atlanta. Why don’t you call the guy?”

  Because she couldn’t. What would she say? Hello, Reggie, I didn’t get fired after all. Would you like to start up again? No, she couldn’t do that. “There’s no point,” she said to her friends. “Long distance relationships rarely work.”

  “It’s your own fault, Kim,” Leslie said softly. “The guy asked you to get engaged and you turned him down.”

  “He didn’t ask her to get engaged, Leslie,” Tam corrected. “He offered to pretend to be engaged to her so she wouldn’t lose her job.”

  Leslie threw up her hands. “What’s the difference? The guy offered to be there for her and she turned him away. I don’t get it.” She turned to Kim. “What did you expect him to do after you told him you were going to lose your job? Would you have preferred he said, Sorry, can’t help you?”

  Kim had wanted Reggie to be outraged at Jim’s idea. She’d wanted him to resist the idea of making a mockery of their relationship. But, no, he’d gone and offered to help. To help. The same way he’d helped all the other women in his life.

  Dummy that she was, she’d wanted to believe Mrs. Stevens when she’d told her that she was different. Yes, she’d even resisted the thoughts that Reggie entered into the relationship with her in his helping mode. Kim wished now that Mrs. Stevens hadn’t bothered to tell her why she thought Reggie’s previous relationships had all failed.

  Kim didn’t want to be another one of Reggie’s causes. She wanted to be the woman in his life. She wanted to be his love. But he wanted to turn her and what they shared into a cause, no different than his previous relationships.

  Kim would have laughed out loud had not her friends been in the room. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she choose a man who only wanted to love her?

  “So,” Leslie asked her again. “What did you want him to say?”

  Kim lifted her shoulders. “Maybe I wanted him to tell me he loved me, Leslie. I wouldn’t run away from love, but I had to run away from pity.”

  Tam shook her head. “I think you’re wrong, Kim. It wasn’t about pity with Reggie. I saw the way he looked at you. And the way you looked at him. You loved him and he loved you.”

  Kim wanted so much for Tam to be right, but she knew her friend was wrong. Reggie had never pretended to love her. To want her, yes. To cherish her, yes, even that. But love? No. Those words had never crossed his lips. If they had, she’d still be in Atlanta. She loved Reggie Stevens and she had a feeling she always would.

  Chapter 22

  Kim had been gone for a month now but Reggie sat at the desk in his den this Saturday morning missing her as much as he’d missed her the first day she’d left him, if not more. He’d lost women before, but never before had he ached the way he ached since losing Kim. It was as if she had been a part of him and that part had been severed. He suspected he would feel the pain forever.

  Not a day went by that he didn’t consider calling her and asking again exactly what the hell had happened. But he refused to break on his own rule: Never go back. When it’s over, it’s over. A man had to have some pride.

  The ringing doorbell brought him out of his thoughts and he was glad for the interruption. When he opened the door and saw the UPS driver standing there, he was surprised since he hadn’t been expecting a package. When he saw the flat parcel was from Urban Style, he quickly signed for it and pulled a few bills out of his pocket for the driver. Then he closed the door, eager to see what Kim had sent him.

  Disappointment consumed him when he ripped open the envelope and found the yellow Post-it with a note from Jim. “Thought you might be interested in this,” the note said.

  Reggie pulled off the Post-it note and saw the galleys for the article Kim had written. “The Nicest Guy In America” read the heading in big, bold letters and under it was his name, Reggie Stevens.

  He leaned back against the wall of his foyer and read. “Sometimes women compl
ain about the lack of nice men,” the article began. “And many times I’ve been in that number. But,” the article continued, “that was before I met Reggie Stevens.”

  Reggie’s throat clogged up as he read the loving words Kim had written about him. There was no doubt in his mind as he read the article that her words were words of love, written from her heart to his.

  “As with everything and everybody, The Nice Guy has his downside, though it seems strange to call the manifestation of The Nice Guy’s primary trait a downside. Do you know what that downside is? Well, I’ll tell you. The Nice Guy’s downfall is that for him the old saying, “Actions speak louder than words,” doesn’t apply. Why? Because The Nice Guy is nice to everybody. Just because he’d go the distance for you doesn’t mean you’re the special one in his life. No, it simply means he’s responding to your need as any Nice Guy would.”

  As Reggie continued to read, he began to understand why Kim had left him. And he felt like a fool when he realized what she had really needed from him. She didn’t need help to keep her job or help keeping a roof over her head. No, what Kim needed had been much, much simpler. So simple in fact he’d totally missed it.

  He wiped at the tears that now filled his eyes and rushed to the den, to his desk and to his computer. He opened his word processor and typed the words he hoped would forever change his life: “Simple-minded Men and the Women They Love.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Kim was sitting at her desk on Monday morning when she received an express delivery. When she saw the Atlanta return address, her heart rate increased. Reggie, she thought immediately. It couldn’t be, she warned herself, afraid to build up her hopes only to have them dashed.

  “Calm down,” she said. “This is just a package.” Taking a deep breath, she ripped open the envelope and pulled out two typed pages. “Simple-minded Men and the Women They Love, an article by Reggie Stevens,” she read. As she continued to read, hope sprang in her chest and tears filled her eyes.

  “I’m the most simple-minded man of all,” the article read. “And I’m simple because I never told my woman how much I love her. Well, I’m correcting that grave mistake today. I LOVE YOU, MS. KIMBERLA WASHINGTON AND I ALWAYS WILL.”