by Lia Lee
“A comment on the website,” she said. Nicole was a food blogger, not surprising, given the fine dining she’d grown up with. She was always ahead of the curve on what was new, just like her father.
“I saw you’re up to sixteen thousand subscribers,” Brad said proudly just as we started slowing in front of what looked like a hole-in-the-wall pub. The signage was new, though, so this must be it.
A wide smile spread on Nicole’s lips. “Yeah, as of last week. Wait until we launch the app!”
“App?” I asked, sliding out of the car first and taking in a deep gulp of fresh, Brad-free air.
If possible, Nicole’s smile grew even brighter. “Dad and I talked about it a little over the last few weeks. He’s going to help me develop an app for my blog. It’s going to be huge.”
“I said we’ll look into it,” Brad said. “Don’t go making any announcements yet.”
Yeah, like he was one to talk about making announcements right around now.
Nicole pursed her lips, and her eyes rolled skyward. “It’s just Jordan. We tell each other everything anyway.”
There was a hint of concern in Brad’s eyes as Nicole said it, but I caught his eye when Nicole loped toward the door of the restaurant and gave my head a little shake.
No, I haven’t told her.
He was the one going around, blabbing about it, while I had to deal with a fresh wave of guilt because I wasn’t telling Nicole everything anymore. Brad and I followed her inside silently, keeping more distance between us than might’ve been strictly necessary.
While the place looked like a hole in the wall from the outside, the inside was warm and decorated in bright colors. It was a Mexican restaurant and had the obligatory sombreros on the walls, but it also had quirky signs like “You bring the tequila, I’ll bring the bad decisions,” and “I didn’t text you, tequila did.”
I could immediately see why Nicole loved the place so much. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have too, but these were no ordinary circumstances.
We sat at a table in the corner, ordered soft-shell tacos, and relied on Nicole to keep the conversation ball rolling, which she did spectacularly.
Until she excused herself to the bathroom about halfway through lunch, leaving Brad and I sitting across from one another and completely alone for the first time since that morning. We were both quiet until she was out of earshot, then Brad turned to face me, his eyes burning into mine.
“Are you still pissed at me?”
One of his hands fell lightly to my knee, but I brushed it away. “Yes.”
Brad sighed deeply. “Great, we’re down to one-word answers. Talk to me, Jordan. Where’s your head at?”
I raised an eyebrow and gave him the darkest look I could muster. “Where do you think my head’s at? You fucking told Zach what was going on between us. How could you?”
“Would it make any difference if I told you that I was truly sorry, and that I won’t allow anyone else to find out?”
His head was bent slightly toward me, and I couldn’t help but lean just a little bit closer to him. “You better not, because the next person to find out could very well be Nicole, and—”
“What about Nicole?” she asked, suddenly right behind us.
My entire body turned ice cold, and all logical thought rushed from my mind. Brad leaned back in his seat, looking completely at ease. “Nothing Nicole needs to know about.”
Both of us glared at him, Nicole’s hands going to her hips. “I think that if it’s about me, I should know about it.”
Grabbing at the first excuse I could come up with, I blurted out the lie. “No, you don’t. It’s about your birthday.”
Her eyes narrowed, her fingers clenching into her hips. “My birthday isn’t for another six months. Neither of you plan surprise parties or anything else that far in advance. So, spit it out. What’s really going on here?”
As if she’d been struck with a revelation, her eyes narrowed until they were dark slits, and her gaze darted between the two of us, no doubt taking in the way that we were angled toward each other, heads close together. She sucked in a deep, pained breath. “Are you two sleeping together?”
I was struck absolutely dumb. Having seen her put together the pieces in her mind, I should’ve been prepared. I should’ve been able to come up with something, anything to say. But I couldn’t.
Apparently, neither could Brad. At first, anyway. As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, however, Nicole’s dangerously low voice cut him off. “Oh my god. You are. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She fixed each of us with eyes that were filled with such pain, such betrayal that it actually hurt me to look at her. And yet, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from hers.
Brad crossed his arms. “Nicole, just let us—”
“Let you what?” she spat out. “Let you explain how you’re fucking my best friend? You disgust me, both of you.”
Nicole turned on her heel and stormed off without a backward glance. I could do nothing but sit there, stunned as I realized that my worst nightmare had just come true. Slowly, I turned to Brad.
“And that’s why you shouldn’t have told anyone,” I said. “This is your fault. Do you realize that? If you hadn’t told Zach, we could’ve hid for longer, we could’ve—”
He reached for my hand, but I jerked it away. Running both hands through his hair, he gave me a look that I couldn’t decipher. “Maybe it’s for the best this way. She was going to find out anyway.”
“No. She wouldn’t have.” I pushed up, the legs of my chair scraping on the floor. “I’m taking the day off. Maybe tomorrow, too. I’ll text you to let you know.”
Then I spun on my heel and hurried out of the restaurant after my best friend, hoping to all hell that she was still around somewhere outside.
Chapter Nine
BRAD
Well, that went to shit pretty damn fast.
I was still seated at the table where the two women in my life had fled from, just moments ago.
I motioned for the check and dropped a fistful of bills on the table when it didn’t come fast enough. Wondering which one to go after first, a heavy sigh escaped from my lungs.
Nikki. I would always go after Nicole first. She would forgive me eventually. It’d been her and I against the world for twenty-one long, difficult years. That wasn’t changing now.
No matter how much I wanted to launch myself after Jordan and finish our conversation like the adults we were, that wasn’t happening until I spoke to Nicole.
The hurt in her eyes and the accusations she’d flung at me from her lips made my heart feel like it had a vice around it. I’d never been on the outs with her before, not like this. It wasn’t a wonderful feeling.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and called her. Nicole’s phone rang and went to voicemail. I called again, but this time, it didn’t even ring. It went straight to voicemail, like she’d turned her phone off. I rushed out of the restaurant, finding my driver Donald with a crease between his eyebrows. It was the most emotion I’d ever seen him show.
“Is everything all right, sir?” he asked.
“It’s fine.” I said. “Get me to Nikki’s apartment, and step on it.”
She wasn’t going to like what I had to say, but she was going to hear it all the same.
Or she would have if she was home. She wasn’t. Donald and I spent the next few hours searching for her, visiting all of her favorite haunts, but no one had seen her.
Fear clutched at my heart, even though I knew instinctively that she was fine. I couldn’t find her because she didn’t want to be found. It was as simple as that.
It didn’t ease the paralyzing sense of panic rising in me. Like every other father worth the title out there, the day that Nicole was born and they placed her in my arms, I swore an oath to protect her. I looked right down at the tiny, squishy pink human in my arms and promised her—and myself—that no harm would come to her. Ever.
If this shocki
ng news caused her to go out and do something she would regret, I would never forgive myself. But while Nikki was spirited and her wild streak ran a mile wide, she wasn’t stupid. She’d never done anything completely reckless.
Because Jordan tames her.
I swallowed past the first actual lump of fear I’d felt forming in my throat in forever. This was my baby girl and the only person I trusted to keep her in line, apart from me, was Jordan. And it was a safe bet Nicole was ignoring Jordan as solidly as she was me.
Donald glanced at me in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The heavy, full moon chased away the last of the clouds in the sky, and we still hadn’t found a trace of Nicole. Donald was getting worried, too.
“Let’s make a last pass at her apartment,” I said. “Maybe she’s gone back home by now.”
I sent up a silent prayer that she would be home. Anger, I could deal with. Even if she didn’t want to talk to me yet, I just needed to know that she was safe.
That was step one. I would figure out what came next after that.
To my great relief, the lights from Nicole’s apartment shone brightly as we pulled up to her building for the second time that day. I was out of the car before Donald had completed parallel parking it in an open spot across from Nicole’s place.
The street was quiet at this time of night, and I sprinted across it, nodding to the doorman of her building as I swept through. No one stopped me. I was on Nicole’s approved list of visitors, however much she might not have approved of me in that moment.
When Nicole told me she found a building that she loved, I was surprised to find that it was an older one. It was one of the first signs that she was growing up, although I hadn’t seen it that way at the time.
She’d chosen to forgo a trendy studio, which she could’ve easily afforded on the budget I’d given her, and opted for the space, security, and charm of a centrally located place, even if she worked from home. I took the carpeted stairs two at a time, heaving myself around corners on the brass handrail.
Knocking on her door, I wondered what waited for me when, or if, she let me in.
“Nicole, it’s me. We need to talk.”
“Go away!” she yelled from inside.
“Please Nic, just hear me out.” I wasn’t in the habit of begging, but if that was what it took, I wouldn’t be opposed to it, necessarily.
“No!”
“Open the door, baby girl.” I sighed, knowing the chances that she was going to do it were slim to none, but I had give it a try.
“If I open it, I’m going to punch you or something,” she warned, her voice shaky and thick with emotion. “So just go away.”
“Nic—”
“I said leave!” She thundered, borderline manically. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to speak to you. You’re a fucking pervert and a liar. Go away.”
Leaning with my forehead against the door, I took a few deep breaths to calm down before I responded. One of us had to remain calm, although hearing how upset she was, combined with the name calling, was stirring up a war of concern and rage inside that was threatening to overwhelm me.
“That’s not fair. Jordan’s an adult. She’s free to make her own decisions.” Maybe reason would work.
It didn’t.
“Yeah? I just wish she didn’t make such gross ones!” Her emphasis on the word “gross” made the pincers pinch around my heart.
I exhaled loudly, dragging my hands on the stubble growing on my jaw, relishing the slight burn of the scraping of blunt hairs on my palms. Anything to numb the emotions warring in me, even if was just the slight physical burn.
“Please, honey, can we not have this conversation through a closed door?”
She didn’t answer me immediately. Hesitation was good. Hesitation meant she was considering it. Close, but no cigar.
“We’re not having a conversation, Dad.”
Her voice was marginally calmer, hurt winning out over anger. The pincers pinched harder. I never wanted to be the cause of that note of agony in her voice.
“Fine then,” I told her. “I’ll talk, and you can just listen, okay?”
Silence.
A slightly rattled sigh shuddered its way out from my lungs as I tried to collect my thoughts. This was my one shot, and I suddenly had no fucking idea what to say. Shoving a hand into my hair and gripping tightly at the roots, I decided to simply wing it.
“Look, Nicole, Jordan and I never meant to hurt you. We didn’t plan this. It sounds like a shitty cliché, but it just happened. It shouldn’t have, and we both knew it, but it did. I would’ve broken it off if I didn’t have feelings for her, but I do, Nicole. I have real feelings for her.”
I gulped past my own surprise at my admission, but it was true. The looming darkness in my soul that had taken hold the second she’d run away from me in that restaurant was a testament to that. I was worried about Nicole, sure, but I knew that we would be fine eventually.
Jordan was a different story. If I lost her now, it would be like losing a limb that I never knew I had or needed until that very minute. The pincers squeezed so hard it hurt.
Fuck.
Nicole stayed quiet for a long minute, hopefully mulling over my words. Then she muttered softly, “Good for you. Still, just go, okay?”
This time, I listened to her. There was nothing more I could do here. I’d told her the truth, and she probably needed time to process. What I needed was Jordan. I suddenly needed her more than I needed my next breath of air.
With a last, soft double tap on Nicole’s door, I turned and made for the stairwell, taking them faster that I had coming up.
I shot out of Nicole’s building and back to the car, all in less than a minute. “Take me to Jordan’s, Donald.”
He didn’t question me or hesitate to do as I asked, bless him. There was no judgment in his eyes when he glanced at me in the rearview mirror. Then he stepped on the gas and hurried to Jordan’s as if he could feel how badly I needed to get there.
Blood pounded in my ears as the heavy weight of realization set in. For the first time in more than two decades, I actually had romantic feelings for a woman. The thought made me as queasy as it excited me.
Being with Jordan felt right, as fucking wrong as it might’ve been. I couldn’t help it.
Now all I had to do was convince her to forgive me. My stomach knotted with tension, but I pushed it away. I could fix this. Somehow, I had to fucking fix it.
Jordan’s five-story walk up loomed in front of me in no time. Throwing my head back to the stars blinking down at me, I breathed in the crisp night air, squared my shoulders, and headed up to my girl.
Fuck. My girl. I shook my head slowly from side to side at my possessive thoughts. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt such a fierce need to make someone mine. Well, I could. I just didn’t like thinking back to that time.
Where Nicole’s building was all old-world opulence, Jordan’s tiny home in the U district was simple and boasted potted flowers on her porch. I pounded on her door when I got to it, desperately hoping that she would open it.
“Jordan, open up. It’s me.”
“Hang on,” she called, her soft footfalls audible as she approached the door. When it swung open to reveal a distraught looking Jordan, dressed in a cotton t- shirt and sweats, with her bright blue eyes watery and red-rimmed and her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, it was all I could do to keep from sweeping her up into my arms and crushing her to my chest.
It was the anger that flashed in those devastated eyes that stopped me. “What do you want, Brad?”
“Can we talk, please?” I asked, my voice strained with emotion.
She regarded me for a long moment, then sighed and stepped back to let me in, the corners of her mouth turned down. “What’s left to talk about?”
“Everything,” I said.
Jordan shut the door behind us, leading me to her kitchen, and she busied herself with
making coffee, even though she hadn’t offered me any. She flipped on the kettle, and the sound of it boiling filled the silence. Then Jordan leaned with her hip against the counter and lifted her sad eyes to me.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “The way I see it, it’s all been said and done. We made a mistake, you told Zach about it, Nicole found out, and now, she won’t even talk to me. I’ve tried calling her a hundred times.”
“So did I. She doesn’t want to talk to me, either. Trust me. I tried.”
Jordan sighed, her shoulders slumped, and her voice cracked as she tried to hold back a sob. “What’re we going to do?”
I couldn’t stand it anymore, watching her fall apart and not providing any sort of comfort. Reaching for her, my hands planted on her hips, and I tugged her to me, wrapping my arms around her and holding on tight.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do about Nicole. But do you want to know what I do know?”
She nodded, her head buried in the crook of my neck. I needed to look into her eyes for this, so I loosened my grip a little and slid a finger under her chin to tilt her head to look up at me. Cupping her face in both of my hands, I stroked her cheekbones lightly with my thumbs. “I know that I like you, Jordan. A lot.”
Her eyes flew wide open, the disbelief in them lodged like an arrow in my heart. I needed her to believe me, to trust me.
“It’s true. There’s something between us. Do you feel it, too? Because if you do, we can get through this. We can weather the storm together. Nicole will come around eventually. She’ll just have to learn to accept it.”
Jordan sucked her lips between her teeth, staring at me dubiously. “I don’t know how I feel, Brad. I thought I did, but now… This is all just so confusing.”
She looked torn, and it burned me up inside to know that I was possibly standing on the precipice of losing her. I had to do something to remind her of what I knew to be true, all the way down to my bones. There was something undeniable between us.
So I threw my Hail Mary pass, reaching one hand around her neck so that it rested at its base, kept the other on her cheek and slanted my lips over hers, kissing her so hard that our teeth gnashed together. It was raw, powerful, and irrefutable evidence of exactly how deeply I felt for her.