by Lexi Aurora
“What’s the matter, Nick? See something surprising?”
“Honestly?”
“Sure,” she laughed, her hair falling into her face in a manner he found undeniably sexy, “why not try honesty on for size?”
“Then yes, I see something surprising.”
“Care to share what it is?”
“You. You aren’t usually so pleasant with me.”
“No,” she mused, something about her striking him as somehow reckless and terribly seductive, “I suppose I’m not. If you get me a little refill, though, I might just keep right on with it. Stranger things have happened, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure I know the answer to that, but a refill is something I can definitely do. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“If I wanted to go somewhere I would get my own glass of wine. I’ll be right where you left me.”
Nick took her glass from her and then almost dropped it immediately when her fingers brushed up against his. He would have sworn that she had shocked him, that there was a genuine spark of electricity when his skin met hers. He looked at her face quickly to see if the feeling had registered with her as well but there was nothing there, no expression of acknowledgement.
“In my own head,” he muttered to himself, walking briskly past Caroline and Abel, who were cuddled up together on the couch like there was nobody else there with them at all. They both had empty glasses, too, but they were utterly forgotten beside plates of cheeses neither one of them had hardly touched. They were too much into each other to do a whole lot other than look at each other lovingly and exchange little kisses. It was the kind of show of affection Nick always looked at and felt somewhere between uncomfortable or sick over. Now, however, it was hard not to feel other things, too. He was happy for his friend, against his better judgement. The kind of happy Abel felt right now was something you couldn’t fake and if it was Caroline giving that to him, so be it. If they could be that into each other with hardly anything to drink, they must have really been in love. It was something he had never come close to experiencing himself.
And speaking of feeling it without the aid of a whole bunch of booze, now that he was in the kitchen and checking out the status of the bottles of wine that had been opened, Nick was starting to get a pretty good idea of where Olivia’s sudden attitude change was coming from. He had mixed feelings about it. As the night had run on and Olivia had started to get more and more friendly, Nick had gotten the impression that she might be genuinely flirting with him. She might have wanted to throw away her frigid, buttoned-up shtick for once and have some fun, hopefully of the dirty variety. Looking at the levels in the bottles, he knew that wasn’t the case. Olivia wasn’t hitting on him, at least not while she was of sound mind. She was drunk. She was drunk and probably pissed off to have to be there with him at all. He didn’t want to be, kind of hated himself for it actually, but he was a little bit disappointed.
“Where’s the glass of wine, mister?” Olivia called out with that same flirtatious tone. It still got him going but he knew now that it didn’t mean shit and that helped him to keep his head on his shoulders. He glanced at Abel and Caroline again, saw that neither one of them showed any signs of really recognizing that they still had guests in the apartment the two of them now shared, and set Olivia’s glass down on the countertop. He left it empty.
“You know what?” he called out to Olivia, using his best nonchalant voice, “I don’t know about that.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” She pouted, batting her eyelashes at him so that her big, blue eyes looked even more appealing, “I thought you said you would bring it to me.”
“I did, but I just realized how late it’s getting.”
“So? It’s Friday, right?”
“Sure, but some people still work on Saturdays. I know you know this. Also, I think Abel and Caroline might enjoy a little time alone.”
“No!” Caroline said dutifully, although everything about her body language towards Abel told a different story, “We don’t need you guys to go! You can stay as long as you like, both of you!”
“That’s very kind, Caroline, but we sort of interrupted something when we got here and we shouldn’t overstay our welcome. My buddy Abel there won’t forgive me anytime soon if I keep cock-blocking him like this.”
“Oh man,” Abel grinned easily, “you have such a way with words.”
“Fine,” Olivia answered sulkily, pulling herself up to a shaky standing position, “no more wine. I just need to get an Uber or something. I didn’t drive myself here.”
“Don’t bother with that. I’ll take you home.”
There was an odd silence after Nick made the offer in which he got the impression that everyone in the room was evaluating him, trying to suss out his motives for the offer. Under normal circumstances, they would have been right to. He was a dog and he had no problem admitting it. He had no interest in taking advantage of a girl so drunk when he was so close to sober, however, and something about the abrupt change in his assessment of her situation had spared him up further still. He just wanted to go home, and get back to what felt normal to him.
“Alright,” Olivia finally answered, shrugging her shoulders and shooting Caroline a look as she moved towards Nick, “if you’re offering. Just don’t try anything funny. I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Nick answered dryly. It was a comment that made a lot more sense coming from Olivia than her flirtation had, and he should have been happy about it. He wasn’t. The ride to her apartment, the address of which Olivia gave him grudgingly despite taking him up on his offer, did a little to make that better but only a little. Olivia was chattier than she had ever been with him, which he found amusing, but the things she said were brutal.
“You know what?” she asked pointedly, a slight slur creeping into her voice.
“No, probably not.”
“You’re kind of a dick.”
“Ha! You know, I’m not super surprised to hear you say that.”
“I mean, you’re hot,” she went on unhindered, almost as if she hadn’t heard him at all, “but you act like you really know it, which is gross.”
“Okay, duly noted.”
“And the way you treat women!” she shouted, “That’s gross, too! You treat women like they’re toys. I don’t think you would have a clue what to do with one that had some actual brain cells.”
He thought about asking her if she was offering to be his guinea pig but thought better of it. Instead, he kept his mouth shut, trying not to listen to her words with too much intensity. Olivia wasn’t the first woman to tell him what a jackass he was and Nick seriously doubted that she would be the last. Which didn’t explain why it got to him to hear her evaluation of him. He considered correcting her on some of her less than savory points but didn’t, and by the time he had her safely at her building she was fast asleep. He watched her for a moment, watched her peaceful breathing, and considered what to do. She had just made a point of telling him what a shitty dude he was while he was going to the trouble of helping her get safely home, which warranted him being the prick she thought he was, as far as he was concerned. He could easily shout at her that they were at her place and ask if she could kindly get the fuck out of his car. Instead, he sighed, put his car into park, and pulled her out of the car. As he carried her up the stairs with her keys jangling softly in one hand, he looked at her face, expecting her to wake up with each new step. She slept on and he let himself inside of her front door, praying to whomever was listening that nobody popped his or her head out of their door and saw him. The last thing he needed was an accusation of trying to take advantage of Olivia, who was too drunk to believe him if he said that wasn’t the way things had gone down. He was relieved when he had them both inside, relieved until he had her safely on her bed.
“Shit.”
The whispered word sounded flat in her bedroom, almost like it wasn’t a word at all. It had the sound
of a word being spoken in an apartment that either hadn’t been moved into yet or had recently been emptied of everything that made a place feel like home. Lonely. If he’d been asked to pick one word to describe the way Olivia’s apartment looked, it would have been lonely. He’d never thought of her in that light, had hardly looked at her in any light at all. Seeing it bothered him and without realizing that he was going to do it he bent forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Even when he was out of her place and safely in his own home, Nick couldn’t get that lonely feeling and the way it bothered him out of his head.
Chapter Five
Olivia Young
“GOD. OH MY God.”
Olivia knew that she was the source of the exclamation, but it hardly felt like it was truly her. At the moment, nothing around her felt exactly real. Her world was a series of painful movements, of undulating sounds the vibrations of which felt as if they might actually be hurting her. Something was hurting her, there was no denying that. Even before she opened her eyes she knew that something was wrong. For starters, her eyelids felt like they had been glued shut. Was it possible that somebody had broken into her apartment while she slept and covered them with concrete? Was that the kind of thing people did? Secondly, and this was much worse than the first, she was pretty sure she was dying. Yesterday she had received the best promotion ever and not a full twenty-four hours later she was dying. It was the ultimate proof that life wasn’t fair. She wasn’t dying, of course, but that didn’t make her misery feel any less unfair. It almost made it worse because the pain she was feeling now had been self-inflicted. She groaned and rubbed her eyes, attempting with limited success to free her lashes of the mascara that was gumming her eyes shut. Then she sat up slowly, timidly, waiting with dread to see just how bad of a day she was going to be having on this fine, brisk Saturday. For a moment she thought that it might not be as bad as she had initially thought but after an all-too-brief moment of adjustment her body first recognized and then rejected this new flow of blood. Her head started to pound and behind each eye it felt like somebody had inserted a long, unforgiving needle. She winced and put her head in her hands, then swallowed hard against the rising bile in the back of her throat. With her eyes shut tightly again, it felt like the floor underneath her sore feet was moving. It felt like she was on one of those slowly moving conveyor belts at Disney World, only this one was one she couldn’t climb off of once the rise was done.
“Oh man,” she groaned to herself, her usual cool, put-together exterior temporarily eradicated, “God, I hate being hungover.”
There was nobody in her apartment to talk to, of course, and talking to herself wasn’t making her feel any better. Quite to the contrary, actually. The sound of her voice rattling around her empty apartment made her acutely aware of the fact that nobody ever stepped foot inside of it but her. Hangovers were excellent conduits of self-pity and that was something she was indulging in full force on this miserable morning. Everything on her hurt. It felt like the follicles of her hair were crying out in pain and that wasn’t even possible, at least not when a person was feeling normal. Her body felt like a husk, completely depleted of all liquids and nutrients. All in all, she was a hot mess and although she had only been fully awake for a couple of minutes she already knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was in for a rough, rough day.
The only thing she could think of to make things just a fraction better was a shower. It was one of the only things that ever worked when she was feeling this gross. She knew it didn’t actually help rehydrate her body, in fact, she thought she had read somewhere that it did the opposite, but it made her feel better and at this point that was the only thing she was concerned with. She stripped down, tossing all of her clothes off to one side with a wrinkled nose, and hurried to her massive shower on wobbly legs. She turned the water on and sighed with relief. She stepped in and sighed even deeper, relishing the feel of the lukewarm water running over her in waves. It felt like it was doing more than cleansing her body. It felt like it was taking care of her insides, too. She never felt more of a mess than when she awoke, finding her clothes still on from the night before. It was something that didn’t happen to her all that often anymore, especially now that she spent most of her time devoted to work, work, and more work. Come to think of it, she wasn’t quite sure how she had wound up in her bed, fully clothed, to begin with. She could remember being at Caroline’s place and walking in on her and Abel almost having sex. She could remember that she had thought Nick was being particularly obnoxious and internally bemoaning the fact that she would almost definitely have to see more of him now that Abel and Caroline were officially cohabitating. A couple of bottles of wine were opened, the alcohol and celebration flowing, and–
“Oh! Oh no!”
It hit her all at once and for a minute she was almost certain she was going to pass out right there in the shower. She was so sure that she sat down right there on the tile floor, bending her knees and putting her head between them until the far away feeling began to fade a little. Normally she wasn’t a fan of having parts of her memories disappear completely, but she would have been more than happy for what was now coming back to her to have stayed gone. Vague, disjointed memories of him escorting her to his car came flooding back, memories of her talking incessantly about things that had to have sounded completely stupid to the oh-so clever Nick Oswald. The last thing she could remember was telling him several of the things she thought were wrong with him, after which everything in her mind went dark. That would have been a merciful thing, a blessing, except that the things she could remember made her dread what she might have done during the times when everything was mentally dark. What she was almost certain of was that Nick must have been the one to get her inside of her apartment. Because she couldn’t remember it at all she was sure she must have been out cold by that point, either that or so useless it didn’t make any difference. She had treated him terribly and she had done it with what she considered to be good reason. Even after all of that, he had taken care of her. There was some distant part of her mind that insisted that he had laid her out gently, maybe even kissed her on the forehead, but she rejected that idea immediately. It was too much. She couldn’t reconcile her idea of who he was with a man who would have done those things.
Even so, she knew she couldn’t let this go without saying something to him. Paying him a visit was the last thing she wanted to do, especially when she was feeling as gross as she did today, but she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she chose to do anything other than that. Her stomach continued to flip-flop uncomfortably as she hurried the rest of what had originally been meant as a restorative shower. She dressed quickly, methodically, then spent more time than she would care to have admitted peering into the mirror and getting every part of her makeup just right. After a quick search, she retrieved Nick’s address and set out grimly to do the only thing she really could do in a situation like this one.
OLIVIA FOUND NICK’S building easily. It was one of the classiest, most prominent high-rise apartment buildings in town. She rolled her eyes after parking outside of the massive structure. Of course he would choose to live in a place like this. It was the kind of place that all of the upwardly mobile, wealthy bachelor type people wanted to live. Olivia felt the bile rise up in her throat again at even the idea of having to go thank him for taking care of her but she was going to do it nonetheless. There was no way she was going to slink away in embarrassment, letting him have the upper hand every time the two of them were around each other for the foreseeable future. That, and she couldn’t get that forehead kiss out of her head. She was almost sure she had made it up because it made no sense for him to do something sweet like that, but she still couldn’t get it out of her head. The need to thank him was so overwhelming it felt like a compulsion and she wouldn’t be able to feel okay with herself again until she did so.
She spent the whole walk from her car to the front walk of the high-rise psyching herself up for t
he conversation that would take place between the two of them. She had always been the kind of person who needed to feel prepared for something before she did it and this conversation was no exception. In her head, she went through every possible scenario, from him being a perfect gentleman to being pissed off and telling her exactly what he thought about her. What she didn’t prepare for and what made her sick stomach feel all the more wounded, was to practically greet him coming out of the front door with a beautiful woman hanging on his arm. Nick and the model-thin blonde were laughing and the woman was leaning in to him suggestively. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if she hadn’t slept with him yet, it was definitely on the menu. Olivia stopped in her tracks. There was nowhere for her to go. It was too late for her to slink back to her car without being totally humiliated. Nick had clearly seen her. He was looking right at her, for Christ’s sake. There was nothing for her to do but stand her ground to meet him and hope to get this thing over with as quickly as humanly possible.
“Olivia!” Nick laughed, disentangling his arm from the blonde’s and stepping forward, “Gotta say, you’re the last person I expected to see here.”
“Yeah,” she answered slowly, her tongue feeling like it had turned to lead inside of her head, “it’s sort of a surprise to me, too.”
“Well, what can I do for you? I’m on my way out, but–”
“I can see that. If you need to go, please, don’t let me stop you.”
“No, no, that’s alright.” He turned to the blonde, kissed her firmly and with enough gusto that it made Olivia want to look at anything else on the planet but the two of them. He whispered something to her, probably something about how he wouldn’t be long with the crazy, sick-looking woman, and then headed towards Olivia. He took her by the arm instead, surprising her so much that she didn’t try to free herself, and led her several paces away from his waiting date.