“Where?”
“Out front. I remembered seeing him a couple times out there when I came home from work. I knew he didn’t live in the building, but I figured he was just hanging out with the others. So I assumed he was visiting somebody on my floor when I saw him up here. And he wasn’t acting menacing or anything. He was acting normal. He walked on by me, at least that was what I had thought he’d done, but as soon as I unlocked my door, he knocked me against it and forced his way inside. I fought him as best I could, but he was so big and strong.” She had to hesitate, as flashes of that horrific fight returned in her mind. Then she exhaled. “I prayed so hard. I just knew he was going to... I prayed. And God had mercy because those guys out front heard my screams and came running to see what was going on.”
Nick shook his head, unable to even pretend that her little story didn’t terrify him. And anger him. And make him feel completely responsible for not being more insistent whenever the subject of her neighborhood came up. She was always so adamant, always so certain that the war zone she was living in wasn’t so bad after all. Now they were here, shaken by what might have been, and he could barely contain his rage, his guilt. “Did they catch him?” he asked her.
“They tried, but he got away. He was able to hold them off with the knife.”
“Knife? What knife? He had a knife?”
Simone nodded. It was horrifying to her, too. “He apparently had it to my throat but I just didn’t. . . I was too shaken to realize it.”
Simone could feel Nick’s entire body tightened. He looked down at her. “That’s how your arm...?”
“No. He didn’t stab me or anything like that. I think I hit it against something when I was fighting him.”
Nick nodded. He should have felt relieved at least for that, but he didn’t. The idea of Simone, his Simone, fighting off some attacker was too much for him to even try and imagine. And the attacker had a knife, too? He knew the deal. A thug with a knife usually aimed to use it. Thank God he didn’t, Nick thought.
“The police are looking for him, though,” Simone said, as if that would comfort Nick. It didn’t. He ran his hand across his face and thought of the million reasons why he shouldn’t say what he was about to say. He thought about Delia. But he couldn’t help himself where Simone was concerned. Their relationship had blossomed into a friendship, a very close friendship, and he was just beginning to come to grips with the fact that he cared deeply for her. He looked at her. “Simone?” he said softly, and when she looked up at him with those troubled green eyes, it nearly did him in. His heart melted. And he pulled her closer.
“I’m all right, Nick,” she said, seeing his anguish. “I’ll be all right.”
“Remember what we talked about?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“What?” She said this somewhat irritably, not at all interested in playing any guessing games right now. Then the bulb flashed in her head. And she shook it. “Not that again.”
“Yes, that again. We’ve got to do something about this, Simone. Much as you might hate to admit it, this is one of the worse neighborhoods in the city you’re living in. There’s so much crime in this community, and now with that crack cocaine in full swing it’s gotten even worse. And you know it. Have you at least given thought about moving?”
“Of course I’ve thought about it,” she said. “I’m not blind. I know it’s rough around here now. Sometimes late at night, something like 2 and 3 in the morning, I can look out my window and see all of those rock stars just walking around like skeletons from the graveyard, looking for some kind of way to get money to feed that habit, and it’s scary, I ain’t gonna even lie. Yeah, it’s scary.” Then she paused. “That’s why I went to Jules,” she finally said.
This surprised Nick, and hurt him, too, because she never came to him. “You went to Jules?” he asked. “When?”
“A few weeks ago, after there was a drive-by shooting on this street.”
“A drive-by shooting? Why didn’t you tell me, Simone? We talked every week.”
“I know. I just didn’t . . .” In truth, she just didn’t want to bother him with her personal hang-ups. He, after all, had never even intimated about any kind of intimate relationship with her. Just a friendship was all he seemed to be after. And, in her book, you didn’t burden friends with problems that required too much to solve. You could lose them that way, she felt, and with Nick’s friendship, the closest she’d ever had, she wasn’t willing to risk that.
“So you called Jules,” he said, to keep her talking.
“Yes.”
“What did she say? Why didn’t she help you move out of here right away?”
“Because I didn’t ask her for that. I asked her to lend me enough money to help pay my tuition through cosmetology school. That’s always been my dream, to become a hair stylist and I figured I needed to get going with it. Once I got my license and got me a booth in somebody’s shop, I could move my own self up out of here and could pay her back, too.”
“So what happened? She wouldn’t do it?”
“She would do it. At least I think she would. But when she told me she first had to make sure it was okay with Jeremy, I just told her to forget it. I’d die before I gave him a say in my life.”
Nick hesitated. He knew he was about to tread on secret ground, but he had to know. “Why did you stab him, Simone?” he asked her.
Simone looked at him. “How did you know that I. . . How did you find that out?”
“I’m an officer of the court, Simone, I have my ways. But why did you do it? Did he try to hurt you or—”
“Hurt me? Jeremy? Like no way.” She exhaled, as if just the thought of Jeremy Druce even thinking about harming her was ridiculous. “But he hurt Jules. The night of her eighteenth birthday. I caught him. . . I caught them together, and I don’t know, I just thought it was really rude of Jeremy.”
Nick almost smiled. What a term of art. “Rude?” he said.
“Yeah. I mean, now it seems really stupid, but back then that’s how I felt. How rude of him to take advantage of Jules like that; to brand her as his woman before she had a chance to make up her own mind. You saw my sister. She’s beyond beautiful. She could have any man she wants. He never gave her a chance to have that choice.”
“And because of Jeremy Druce you didn’t take Jules money?”
“After I told her to forget it, she didn’t offer it, which was fine by me because I wasn’t about to take it. Not if it came with Jeremy’s blessing.”
“And your plan was to find you a better place after you got your career going.”
“After I graduated cosmetology school, that was the plan, yeah.”
“And you didn’t feel you could come to me?” He said this with a smile, although his eyes were still filled with hurt.
“Come to you? Nick do you realize how much money we’re talking about?”
“Does that matter?”
“Of course it matters! I’m not taking advantage of our friendship like that. Come on. It’s not like we’re down like that.”
Although she was smiling, Nick wasn’t even trying to. He leaned away from her and looked at her hard. He looked so serious that Simone had to wonder what was it that she had said that was so wrong. “We aren’t down like what, Simone?”
“Down like that. Like you owe me something. I’m just somebody you call on the phone late at night when you need to clear your head, or you meet for lunch just to have somebody different to meet for lunch with, and I know that. I understand the rules. I’d look like a pure fool asking you to lend me money or to help me get up out of here when I know good n’ well I don’t mean that to you. Not that.”
Nick removed his arm from around her and leaned forward. He pulled out a cigarette, a move Simone was becoming to realize as his normal reaction to stressful situations. Even on the telephone, when they’d start talking about some particularly bad case he was working on, he’d excuse himself and grab a
cigarette. Almost always. Now was no exception, as he pulled one out from that expensive gold case he carried them in, replaced the case in his coat pocket, and lit up.
At first he just sat there, leaned forward, taking slow drags on his smoke. Simone sat still and watched him, as his back tensed with each drag, as his muscular frame seemed ill-suited for all of this drama. Then he looked back at her. And she could tell that he was quietly furious. “What do I mean to you, Simone?” he asked her, his look dead serious.
Simone didn’t quite know what to say because she didn’t quite know what he wanted. Did he want the truth, or did he want her to tell him what he probably wanted to hear? “What do you mean to me?” she repeated, purposely cagey, which yielded no response from him, just a continual, hard stare.
“You mean a lot to me, Nick,” she said, opting for the truth. “You know that.” He continued staring at her. What more did he want her to say, she wondered. But his silence, as she suspected he had intended, kept her talking. “I value our friendship very much. When we have lunch together or talk on the phone, I really enjoy those times.” She was speaking in massive understatements, since being with or talking to Nick Perry was easily the highlight of most of her days. But she wasn’t about to tell him that.
“I enjoy your company too, Simone, and that’s why I don’t get it. You should know me well enough by now to know that asking me to help you out would not have been a big deal. We are down like that, you hear me? We have been down like that for quite some time now, and you should know that. We haven’t been hanging out as often as maybe either one of us would have liked because I haven’t had that kind of time, but you’ve certainly been on my mind.”
To put it mildly, he thought. She was always on his mind. Every single day she at least crossed his mind. Delia, by virtue of the years they’d been together, might have been his woman, but it was Simone who consumed his thoughts, and she often consumed them day in and day out. Sometimes he had to literally force himself not to go and see her, not to take their relationship any further than he’d already taken it. Over the phone was safe. Weekly lunch dates were convenient and about the only way he figured he could keep their relationship as close and as distant as he needed it to be. That was his plan, anyway, and it apparently had worked too well because not only did he not lead her on, but he had her thinking that she, Simone Rivers, his heart, meant so little to him.
“Will you accept my help?” he asked her point blank. It wasn’t that selfish sister of yours that you had phoned tonight, after all, he thought. But me. Now let me help you, he wanted to beg of her.
Simone exhaled. This was difficult for her. But Nick was right. After tonight, it was definitely necessary. “If you want to lend me the money to pay my tuition, I’ll accept it, yes. And pay you back with interest.”
Nick stared at her as if she had offended him further. “What?” she asked him.
“I’m not lending you anything, first of all. I will pay your tuition and books and supplies and whatever you may need for this cosmetology school. I will also pay for a decent apartment for you to live in while you’re going through school. If you must work, you can, but you’ll cut out all of these double and triple shifts at that diner, wearing yourself out for what? Your dream is to be a hair stylist, you told me so yourself. So that’s what you’re do. Become a hair stylist. And you need a car, too, Simone,” he said and before she could object, which she was definitely about to, he held up his hand. “That’s what friends do, Simone. Help each other out. And don’t worry, if I ever need a new ‘do, I’ll be the first to hit you up for a freebie.”
He said this with such an infectious smile that Simone had to smile, too, knowing good and well that he probably wouldn’t let her within a hundred yards of even thinking about touching his expensive hairdo. Maybe it was the night, she thought, and the trauma, but she knew she couldn’t turn him down. She needed to get out of here before her attacker came again, or tried something more daring, or before somebody else tried. She never dreamed it would be this way, where she would be obligated to another human being, but if it had to be anybody, anybody at all, she was grateful that it was Nick. But that something within her still fought against it. Just the idea of being beholden to someone else, even Nick, was the problem.
“Look, Nick, I really appreciate what you’re offering me, but I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. Yes, Simone, you can. And I really hope you will. You’ve been a helper all your life, doing for everybody else since you were a child. Now it’s your time to get a little help. Because I’ll be damned if I allow you to continue living in this war zone another night. Do we understand each other?”
Simone hesitated. She didn’t know if she liked this side of Nick. But then she smiled. He was the one, she decided. “Understood,” she said.
TWELVE
They stood at the airport like four foreigners awaiting the real citizen of their world. Jules was there, looking gorgeous, Simone thought, in her green suede pantsuit and matching hat. She seemed more anxious than everybody else, as she kept rubbing her hands and visibly exhaling, over and over again, as if this little reunion was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now. She and Simone both had been writing to Shay, thanks to Nick’s handy work, but it was the letters from Jules that got any response from Shay. Simone didn’t understand why, but Nick suspected that it had a lot to do with what Jules was probably telling her in those letters. She didn’t want her baby sister to ask too many questions about why she didn’t try to get her, Nick suspected. Simone, however, dismissed such talk, refusing to believe for a second that Jules, her Jules, would be that devious.
Speaking of devious, she thought, as she looked beside Jules. Jeremy was there, too, which infuriated her, and he stood so close to Jules that she found herself wondering where did Jules end and he began. She was stunned when Jules had told her that he would show up, especially since he was the main reason why they had to wait this long in the first place, but Nick had told her in the car coming over to forget Jeremy and concentrate on the matter at hand. So she did that, she did everything she possibly could to ignore his presence. She, instead, stayed close to Nick, who was also there, who took time out from his busy schedule to make sure he was right by her side. A fact that only endeared him all the more to Simone.
They were undisputed best friends now, closer than close. She allowed him to move her into a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, buy her a car, pay her way through school, and she even allowed him to put in a word for her with one of his friends, a friend who happened to own one of the most popular salons in town. Simone thought it was a joke when he took her to Matt Ray’s and showed Matt her license, as if that was going to impress a renowned stylist like him.
“Got your training from Miami-Dade, did you?” he asked her as if he was reciting the name of some prestigious private school.
“Yes, sir,” she had replied and that was all it took. Hired her on the spot. Simone looked at Nick and then looked back at Matt Ray.
“Are you sure?” she asked him and both he and Nick burst into laughter. He was sure because she was still there, with a booth that stayed busy, as she slowly but surely worked her way up from obscurity to becoming one of the most popular stylists in the entire salon, with the exception, of course, of Matt himself.
But what was even more remarkable to Simone was the way Nick would come by to pick her up or take her to lunch. He would always ask Matt how Simone was doing and Matt, in answering, would always refer to her as Nick’s lady. “Your lady is the cream, Nicky, the absolute star of this show, you hear me?” And Nick wouldn’t contradict him at all. None of that “she’s just a friend,” line at all. Which Simone appreciated because he certainly wasn’t just a friend in her eyes, either.
The only problem, as Simone saw it, was that, for all of the time that they spent together, Nick had never so much as intimated about marriage or even about taking their relationship to that next level. Whenever Simone tried to
bring it up, he would quickly change the subject, knowing that she wasn’t about to pursue it on those terms. But she knew it was only a matter of time. The moment of truth, as she privately referred to it, was bound to come soon, and Nick would finally have to stop his stalling and admit what even a blind man could see: that he and Simone were meant to be together.
Nick had reached that conclusion, too, a long time ago. Only it wasn’t that simple for him. Delia, he knew, had long since suspected that he was probably missed up with some woman, especially since he started spending less and less time with her, but she was too mixed up with her own affairs to question his. But he knew her well enough to know that just the thought that he could be falling for somebody else disturbed her. She even mentioned one night, when he told her that he couldn’t come over, that whomever the other woman was “she must be something else” to have his full attention that way, but she never pursued it any further than that. Probably because she knew like he knew that confronting a situation could change the old situation and Delia, he suspected, wasn’t ready by a long shot to change a thing. He doubted if she ever would be.
What he didn’t doubt, however, was Simone’s love for him. She had fallen hard, and seemingly every time he looked into her big, green eyes it showed even more. And that was the hardest part of all for Nick. Looking into her eyes. Because those eyes told the story. Those eyes made it clear that she was madly in love with a man she trusted with her very life, and she had not even considered the possibility that there could be someone else in his.
“She’s coming!” Jules said excitedly, causing both Nick and Simone to come back from their inner thoughts and look toward the gate. And when Simone saw her, saw this eighteen year old who couldn’t possibly be anybody but little Shay, moving slowly toward them with her carry-on bag, her pretty, cat eyes not changed one bit, her heart pounded against her chest. She literally had to lean against Nick to keep from toppling over. Nick, seeing this, took possession of her hand, and looked at her.
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