Nick met her during her prime, when he was a young corporate lawyer attending a party honoring one of his firm's biggest clients. "Have you met Delia?" the client had asked him in his precise French accent. "You simply must meet Delia!"
And he met Delia. How could he miss her? She was a strikingly beautiful woman, with the darkest, deepest-toned black skin he’d ever seen. He stood back and watched her; watched her tall, lithe body move like a panther throughout the room, knowing the power she commanded just by being who she was. The men fawned over her as if she was a fountain of cold water on a hot desert island. He watched her high cheek bones and puckered lips, her smoothing smile that seemed so innocent then, so beguiling, and he was hooked, too. He realized now that he wanted her because every other man wanted her. It was a challenge to him, a battle. And he won. It was later that night, when he could pick his moment. And instead of going up to her and flattering her with flowery words, he leaned toward her, whispered, "you're going home with me tonight,” and headed for the bar to refresh his drink. He never knew how she initially took his boldness, because it didn't matter. She went home with him that night.
That was fourteen years ago. He was young and so sure of himself that he never, not for a second, expected her to turn him down. And she had no intention of doing so because she was self-assured, too, and had been waiting all night, she later claimed, for him to make his move.
Now her self-assurance was as distant as her youth, where cover shots were the only kind she took, and where now shots with bottles of color gel, with age-defying beauty kits, with cereal boxes, were about as good as it was going to get for her.
"I should sue their pants off," she said combatively as she stomped to the window, her thin arms folding, her unquenchable anger unable to appreciate the sweeping view. "Oliver promised me the cover. He told me so last month when they gave me the pass. He said the next time would be my time again, that I would grace the cover. He promised me."
She sounded like a spoiled child to Nick. He suddenly had a great urge to get away.
But she kept complaining. "Now he's acting as if I'm a liar. As if he never. . ." She gave up and looked at Nick. "I could sue him, couldn’t I?"
Nick looked at her ready to tell her no, that such an idea was asinine, that it would be her word against a very powerful and highly regarded agent. But the look in her soft brown eyes stopped him cold. She looked so vulnerable to him, almost as innocent as she had that night fourteen years ago, and it wasn't reality she was after – but reassurance. "There'll be other jobs, babe," he said again.
She exhaled, as if she had been holding her breath, and nodded. "You're right," she said as if she knew it all along, her reality check causing her to want to get away, too. She went over to the chair and grabbed her purse. Nick stood and walked from behind his desk, ashamed of the fact that he was relieved she was leaving. He walked her to the door.
"Coming over tonight?" she turned and asked him, looking as if she was expecting-what? He never really knew with Delia. Sometimes she smothered him with her insecurities, as if he and he alone was her life source. Other times she kept her distance, as if he was the reason for every rejection, every heartache she ever had to endure. Their relationship was an open one, and Nick knew she kept it wide open, but he also knew that her dependence on him was growing, not diminishing.
"We'll see,” he said, which usually meant no, and they both knew it. She stared at him, stared, he sometimes felt, right through him. Then she smiled, the lines of age just cracking her beautiful, smooth skin. Then that look of desperation that showed only in her eyes, a look he'd seen so many times before, captured her. "Promise me, Nicky," she said.
"Promise you what?"
"You won't abandon me too.”
Nick’s heart dropped. “Why would I abandon you, Del?”
“Because I'm old."
Nick smiled, but it was an uneasy one, and it never reached his eyes. He took her in his arms, and he didn't know if it was to comfort her, or to hide his own fears. "Thirty-six isn't old, Del," he said.
"Promise me, Nicky!" she said again, desperately, pulling out of his embrace. "You've got to promise me."
"Stop being ridiculous, Delia, now I mean it. I'm older than you. Why would I abandon you?"
She stared at him. She knew him too well. "You aren't going to promise, are you?"
"I'm not going to play your absurd game, no I'm not. Now don’t let Oliver get to you like this, babe. You know how the modeling business can be. You're in one day, out the next, and right back in the next day."
"Like Caroline?" she asked so hopefully that Nick looked away from her.
"Exactly,” he said, unwilling to push the game too far.
Delia, however, had to push it. "They said she was washed-up, too, you know, and she appeared on the cover of Elle. How's that for being in again?"
"There ya' go."
"And I look way better than her."
Nick smiled. "Modesty is your middle name."
Delia laughed and kissed him on the cheek. She used to tell him that she loved him, she used to tell him repeatedly. Now she didn't even bother. "See you tonight," she said hastily, desperately, as she opened the door and hurried out before he could contradict her.
Simone immediately stood to her feet when the office door opened. Expecting to see Nick, she was surprised when a beautiful black woman stepped out first, a tall, thin woman in a bright white pantsuit with a lavender scarf around her thin neck and a lavender purse under her thin arm.
"Don’t work him too hard," she said to the secretary as she began leaving the office area.
"An impossible task if ever there was one," Irene replied, causing Delia to laugh a kind of exaggerated laugh that made Simone stare at her. When she looked at Simone, her smile was still there, but the warmth was gone.
"Hello," she said rather stiffly as she walked.
“Hi,” Simone replied and Nick, about to close his office door, realized only then that Simone was in the building. As soon as he saw her, standing there in her oversized jeans and jersey, her ridiculous backpack on her narrow shoulder, her long and thick, but unruly hair, a shiver of excitement washed over him. Compared to Delia she looked downright pitiful, Nick thought, but she also looked so very refreshing. He’d purposely avoided her, not because he wanted to. It took all he had not to track her down these past three months. But she was no second-stringer, she gave her all to whatever she was involved in - her long-time quest for her sister proved that - when the last thing he wanted was anybody’s “all.” But news had come from Georgia that left him no choice but to have his secretary call her in.
“This is Miss Rivers, Mr. Perry,” Irene said as if Simone needed an introduction. “She came late, but she came.”
Simone half-expected Nick to tell her to forget it, given that odd look on his face, but he didn’t dismiss her at all. On the contrary. He invited her in.
Simone clutched her backpack and nervously squeezed past him to get into his office. She remembered his smell, that wondrously clean, fresh scent, and just being in his presence again was unsettling. Three months ago she thought this man was the answer to her prayers, this big, gorgeous, perfect man, a man with a heart, she thought, as big as his wallet. But when he didn’t phone, when he didn’t come by, when he didn’t have the decency to even talk to her when she phoned him, she changed her perspective. Now she felt foolish for feeling that way about him, as she walked into his posh, massive, elegant office with a window as wide as a wall. He was just being a gentleman on the night of her birthday, she concluded, and why should it be his fault that she read way more into it than apparently was there.
“Have a seat,” he said in that authoritarian way of his, as he walked behind his desk, his dark suit as elegant as his surroundings, his wingtip shoes clapping down hard. Simone sat in the chair in front of the desk, a chair so large that her feet dangled. The leggy client who’d just left, she thought, would have no such problem.
&nb
sp; Nick sat behind his desk and stared at his small client. She looked even younger than he’d remembered her, and infinitely more vulnerable. “How have you been, Simone?” he asked her.
“Fine, and you?” she replied quickly, and Nick smiled, because he knew it was just an answer.
“Still working at that diner?”
“Yes.”
“Still the head waitress?”
“Yes. I’m still there.”
“What about your sister? Still with that obnoxious doctor boyfriend of hers?”
“Yes. Nothing’s changed.” Simone’s leg began shaking, as a nervousness began to overtake her. She wanted to hear the news. But Nick was easing into it.
“You were late today.”
“I got here as fast as I could. Ended up catching the wrong bus.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I did. Listen, Mr. Perry—”
“Nick.”
“Nick. Have you heard something?”
Nick began removing a file from a small stack of files. “Yes, I have,” he said hesitantly, which unnerved Simone even more. He opened the file. Simone sat erect. He looked at her. “In short, your request has been denied, Simone.”
The expression that came over Simone’s pretty face stopped Nick cold. He was expecting disappointment, maybe even a little anger, but he wasn’t expecting this. It was a look of surrender, of giving up, of finally facing a reality that had been suppressed for far too long. First Delia. Now Simone. He didn’t know if he could handle this.
“They turned me down,” she said, but not as a question, but as a statement. As a period to a sentence that had gone on way too long.
“It was probably a political decision, the tough calls usually are. There’s been a recent string of embarrassing foster care calamities and the states are reluctant now to take any chances. Giving custody of a sixteen-year-old to a twenty-three-year-old would be a chance they aren’t going to take.”
Simone nodded. And stood up. She looked so tired, so distraught that Nick wondered if she would be all right. He stood up, too. “I’m sorry, Simone.”
She nodded again, girted up her backpack, and, without looking back, without saying a word, left his office.
The knocking sounded like pounding by the time Simone had managed to slide out of bed and make her way to the front door. She was in a pair of shorts and a halter top, her strictly around the house attire, because she absolutely expected no company. Jules never came to visit her, and she’d already told Bellini that she wasn’t coming into work tonight. But somebody was banging on her door, and banging unrelentingly, as if whomever it was they weren’t taking silence for an answer.
It wasn’t until she peeped out of the peephole did she realize why. It wasn’t some neighbor asking to borrow sugar or coffee or some other household good, but Nick Perry standing on the other side of her door. At first she didn’t believe it, and had to look again. But there was no denying: Nick Perry was standing at her door. She, at first, thought about not opening it. What would a man who didn’t give her the time of day for months suddenly want, anyway? But it was that very question, the fact that he had to have wanted something to come all this way from his lofty perch across town, that caused her to open it.
Nick was about to bang again when he heard the latch unlock and the door was finally opened. And when he saw Simone, with her tear-stained eyes, he unbuttoned his suit coat, placed his hands on his hips, and exhaled. His instincts had been right and he was relieved that he had come.
“Hello,” Simone said when it appeared he wasn’t going to say anything, but just stare at her. “You were the last person I expected to see.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, the way she had said it in his office earlier that same day. He knew then as he knew now that she was a long way from fine.
“Are you busy? May I come in?”
“Come in?” she said, surprised that he would make such a request, but then she caught herself. “I’m sorry, sure, come on in,” she said, and stepped aside.
He walked into an apartment so small that it seemed to close in on him. From the low ceilings to the narrow rooms, it appeared as if it was space for one person and one person only. And so sparse, with only the bare necessities: sofa, chair, one table, one lamp, one small television set. All clean, all neat, all Simone.
“Have a seat,” she said and he made his way to the sofa. When he sat down, she sat in the chair opposite him, finding it odd to see him in her home, in her world, without being asked to be there. Did he have new news about Shay? Had the court’s decision been miraculously reversed? There was a time when Simone would have jumped at the thought, and hurriedly asked him outright, but that was before this afternoon. That was before she realized for the first time in her life that sometimes things did not work out and all of the pushing and begging and hoping amounted to nothing more than pushing, begging, hoping. If the courts did not consider a petition filed by a man like Nick Perry, she’d decided, who was she to ever think that they would consider one filed by her?
Jules and even Jeremy had warned her to let it go, with Jules all but begging her to go on with her life. But she wouldn’t listen. She had abandoned Shay once and she wasn’t about to do it again. The problem was, she realized after she left Nick’s office and rode the bus back home, abandonment wasn’t something that you get to do over. You abandon somebody once, you’ve abandoned them. Period. Once was enough. She’d abandoned Shay all those years ago and no matter what she did after that, no matter how much she hated herself for that decision she made in the heat of that tragic moment, she could never un-break that fragile glass. It was shattered. And always would be.
Nick looked at her and leaned forward. He was wearing a dark suit that contrasted his white skin, and the concern in his deep blue eyes was obvious. “I’m sorry about the decision,” he said. “I know what a different outcome would have meant to you.”
“It’s all right.”
“I know you was hoping for a different outcome.”
“That’s what I get for hoping,” she said in such an offhand way that Nick found himself staring at her. She sounded almost flip, as if she had not only given up, but was bitter that she had even tried.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice soft, caressing.
“Nothing’s the matter. It just didn’t work out, that’s all. It never works out. That’s just the way it is.”
“You’re surprising me, Simone. I’ve never known you to be a pessimist.”
“But you don’t exactly know me, now do you? I mean, you could have, on my birthday, but you didn’t bother, did you? Nobody bothers. Why should I?”
Nick didn’t know how to respond to that. He had felt her absence in his life, but he had no idea that she’d feel his so deeply. He clasped his hands together. “What you were trying to do for your sister was a noble gesture—”
“Noble? Me? Trying to get out of state custody the person who was in state custody to begin with because of me? And you call that being noble?”
Nick stared at her.
“I could have thought of something, you know?” she said, as if begging him to understand. “I could have distracted that social worker, could have coaxed her away from Shay, I could have thought of something. But I didn’t. I just ran. I wouldn’t even let Jules help her, that’s how noble I was. I was so afraid of being all alone in this world, without my sisters, that I had to make sure I held onto at least one of them. If I couldn’t have them both, I was going to have at least one of them.” The tears were beginning to pour freely from Simone’s big, green eyes and it took all Nick had not to go to her. But he didn’t move. She didn’t want his sympathy, nor his empathy. She wanted to be heard.
“I could have thought of something,” she said again. “Shay was looking around for me. She was only seven years old. Her mother was dead and she was looking around for me. I always took care of her, anyway. Ever since she was a baby, I always too
k care of her. Mama wasn’t a nurturing kind of person.” Pain pierced her voice. “She didn’t understand that babies needed to be held and to be loved and to be told over and over how valuable they are. I told Shay all those things. I took care of her. But when she needed me most, when she was looking for me, I wasn’t there. I was too afraid to help her. I was so afraid.”
She covered her face with her hands, as the shame of it washed over her, and Nick exhaled. “You were young yourself, Simone. How old were you?”
It took her a moment to compose herself, and then she removed her hands from her face. “Fourteen,” she said. “Mama had attempted suicide again, but only this time she meant it, and me and Jules were at home but Shay was supposed to be at the park. Only she wasn’t. We looked for her. Oh, how we searched for her! But we couldn’t find her. When we saw her again she was already with the social worker. We found her too late.”
“And you blame yourself?” Simone looked at Nick. He shook his head. “Honey, you can’t blame yourself for something that happened when you were fourteen years old. You was nothing but a child yourself.”
Tears came again, big, streaming tears, and Nick was undone. Before he could think about it, he opened his muscular arms wide and Simone, before she could think about it, ran to him and threw herself into them. He pulled her against him and held her tightly. She sobbed openly and uninhibitedly, so much so that Nick thought for a moment that there would be no end to her cries. He had no idea what she had been going through. He thought it was a simple explanation. A young woman who missed her kid sister. But the burden she was carrying made him angry. No child should have had to bare what Simone bore. And to think that she felt responsible for what her mother had done, nearly undid him. And he pulled her onto his lap. He held her so closely, so tightly, that he wasn’t at all sure if he could ever let her go.
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