Wrong Kiss: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance

by Lexi Aurora

  Chapter Ten

  Nick Oswald

  NICK HAD WOKEN UP THE morning after the unexpected dinner with a hangover the likes of which was difficult to shake. It was the kind he would typically have been pissed off about having to deal with, but this time was different. Every time his stomach had lurched uncomfortably, or his temples had throbbed, he had reminded himself where this hangover had come from. This one was born out of his friend's happiness, and that made it totally worth it. He didn't even care when the sickness had taken close to two days to shake, nor had he been righteously pissed off by the reminder that he was getting farther and farther from being a twenty-two-year-old kid every day. Every time he became disgruntled he just reminded himself that he had some planning to do. The morning after the celebration Abel had called and asked Nick to be his best man. Nick had accepted gladly. He wouldn't have admitted it if he'd been asked, but he would have been more than a little bit hurt if it hadn't been him to get the job. He wasn't sure that he was a worthy choice, but he was still happy to do it.

  There was only one hitch in the plan. Olivia. He would be the best man, her the maid of honor; it felt like there was nothing he could do to get away from her. He told himself those first couple of days that they still wouldn't need to have much of anything to do with each other, but over the next couple of weeks that had proven to be false. Caroline and Abel wanted a wedding where everything was done together, which meant Nick spent many hours in planning with Olivia. Everything from the joint bachelor-bachelorette party to the wedding and reception themselves, fell to the two of them to plan. Nick expected it to be atrocious. He was planning on it being bad, except that it turned out not to be, after all. It had turned out quite the opposite. Over the days of meetings, both imposed upon them by Abel and Caroline and suggested by Olivia herself, Nick had discovered that he kind of liked Olivia. No. Scratch that. He didn't kind of like her, just outright did. Not only that, but it was getting harder for him to stop himself thinking about the brief time they had spent locked in the pantry together. Being close to her was a trigger all on its own. The smell of her hair, the way she chewed on the corner of her bottom lip when she was thinking really hard about something. The more time he spent with her, the harder he found it not to reach out and touch her bare skin, just to see if it felt as smooth as he imagined. It got so that he couldn't go to sleep without dreaming about her. It was a problem that needed remedying, which was what had led him to his current distraction.

  “Hey! Are you listening to like, a word I’ve said? Cuz I think you’re like, totally not.”

  Nick glanced at Tricia, the leggy blonde model he'd taken to dinner and then back to his place. He'd gone out with the express intent of fucking somebody. He thought that was all it would take to get the ghost of Olivia out of his head. Only now that he had her in his place, he wasn't sure he wanted her there anymore. And he definitely wasn't enjoying this bullshit complaining about his listening skills. He wasn't with her to hear her stories. Listening to her go on and on about her macrobiotic diet, and seaweed wraps made him want to be a thousand miles away. It only made him think about how much more interesting Olivia was.

  “Um, hello?” she whined again, this time taking his face in her hands and forcing him to look at her head on, “Are you hearing me?”

  “Sure, baby,” he answered smoothly, pretending not to be annoyed by her decidedly un-Olivia scent, “I’m hearing you. I’m just a little bit distracted, that’s all.”

  "Yeah," she said in a haughty voice, "I can tell."

  “Don’t you want to know what I’m distracted by?”

  “Why would I want to know that?”

  “Have you considered that it might be you?”

  “Me? But that makes like, no sense. How could you be distracted by me? I’m the one who’s trying to talk to you.”

  “By thinking about what I’d like to be doing other than talking.”

  Tricia's eyes grew wide. Nick could imagine the wheels turning inside of her head. She was so far from bright it wasn't even funny, but he was in it now. He'd put it out there, and now that she understood what he was alluding to, she was game. The two of them were sitting on his expensive leather couch, and she practically leaped into his lap, straddling him happily. Her head dipped, and her mouth found his with an eagerness that was off-putting. His hands moved up onto her waist, but reluctantly. He could feel her ribs underneath his fingers, and he didn't like the way it felt. She was ready to go. She was ready to let him do whatever he wanted to her, and he knew it. It didn't take a genius. The ways she was rocking her hips, a blind man could have seen what she was ready to do. Which made it a hell of a lot weirder when he didn't want her even a tiny bit. Before he really believed he was going to do it, he was pulling his face away and lifting her off of him, positioning her back down on the couch. She was indignant, and immediately so. Pissed off like only a scorned woman could be.

  “What the hell is this? What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m sorry. Jesus...”

  "Tricia," she spat in a stony voice. It looked like she was shooting fiery daggers out of her eyes, but she was also already on her feet, so things were headed in the right direction. "My name is Tricia, you son of a bitch."

  "I know your name. I didn't forget your name, and I'm not trying to be a son of a bitch."

  “Sure,” she laughed scornfully, “right. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

  “I’m not saying you are. I’ve just got a headache, you know? And I just remembered I’ve got something to do early in the morning. It’s just not a good night for this.”

  "Sure, asshole. You've got a headache. You know women invented that excuse, right? Look, I don't know what your damage is, but I don't need this shit. There are plenty of men out there who'd love to fuck me. Something is wrong with you, not me."

  Tricia, whose name Nick was certain he would forget within the week despite his claims of not being a dick, stormed out of his house. For a long time, he sat stock still on his couch. He sat and thought about the model’s parting words. Because he thought there might be a little truth to it. He thought there might be something wrong with him, after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Olivia Young

  “SO, HOW ARE THINGS going, lady? Tell me the truth.”

  “What do you mean, tell you the truth? Don’t I always do that? I’m shocked that you feel the need to say that part at all. Shocked and offended, my friend.”

  Olivia spoke with a totally straight face. This was a specific talent of hers, the ability to bullshit with an infallible poker face. She considered it to be an essential weapon in any good lawyer’s arsenal. She managed to keep it until Caroline rolled her eyes dramatically, at which point Olivia couldn’t help but crack up. It was an eye roll she’d been seeing for what felt like all of her life. She felt the same burst of love she always felt for her best friend, something that had only grown deeper while the two of them shared this new happiness together.

  “Seriously,” Caroline prodded, poking her in the arm, “tell me how it’s going? Having to spend all of this time with Nick, I mean. I know how much you hate the guy.”

  “No, I don’t, actually.”

  "Um, what?"

  Olivia snorted in disbelief. Now there was no eye roll, but the look Olivia was getting was worse. It was pure scrutiny, and Olivia couldn't help blushing under the weight of it. She was well aware of how many times she'd made her dislike for Nick clear. She had no idea how she was supposed to explain going back on it now. She couldn't even really explain it to herself.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled, “I don’t know. We’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, that’s all.”

  “Have you now?” Caroline grinned, a twitching grin that played at the corner of her mouth and made Olivia feel even more squirmy.

  "Come off it; you know that we have. For your wedding, thank you very much."

  “And your opinion of him just did a one-eighty, did it? Im
agine that. I guess stranger things have happened.”

  "I didn't do a one-eighty, Caroline. Nothing so dramatic as that. All I'm saying is that he's not so bad as I used to think. And speaking of which, I need to be off. I'm supposed to meet him in like, a half hour, and he doesn't love it when I keep him waiting."

  "Sure," Caroline smirked again. Olivia could see that there were about a thousand things her friend wanted to say. She knew the look. She was only glad that she kept them to herself. Because, if pushed, Olivia would have been forced to admit that it wasn't precisely true, what she'd just said. It wasn't Nick who didn't like being kept waiting. It was her who didn't want to disappoint him, another thing she couldn't understand. She was looking forward to seeing him. So much so that she kissed Caroline on the cheek, said goodbye, and made her way hurriedly down to the bottom of the building and into a cab. She wished that she had time to stop by her place and freshen up before seeing him and then hated herself a little for caring. Which she didn't, she reminded herself. She didn't care at all, and she definitely didn't have any butterflies when she saw him sitting at the bar of the swanky restaurant he'd chosen for them to meet. Who cared if he was waiting for her and only her? She certainly didn't. When he looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with her, he smiled. It was a warm smile, and it made her insides melt a little, against her will. It seemed that, lately, there were a lot of things she felt when she was around Nick Oswald that weren't entirely within her control.

  “Hey there. Look at you.”

  “Look at me? There’s nothing special going on here.”

  “I don’t know,” he smiled again, his eyes moving up and down her body in a gesture she was sure was unconscious, “I think you look especially nice today. Here, have a seat. I ordered us a bottle of wine.”

  “Just to go over wedding details?”

  “Sure, why not? We might as well have some fun while we’re at it, right?”

  "Right," Olivia answered in as nonchalant a voice as she could manage. She was probably being an idiot, and she knew it, but that fluttery feeling was still in her, and it was growing. Her mind kept going back to the pantry, the feeling of him so close and yet completely off limits. It made her feel warm all over, and she shifted uncomfortably on her barstool. Nick watched her intently, his eyes full of an unreadable expression. The urge to ask him just what he thought he was looking at was strong and she bit her tongue to keep herself from saying anything. He poured her a liberal glass of red wine and looked pointedly at it, then at her.

  "Come on; you can pick it up. I didn't poison it, I swear."

  “I know that. I’m not an idiot, Nick.”

  “No, you certainly aren’t. I just want to propose a toast, if that’s alright.”

  “Sure,” she answered, flustered, “of course it is.”

  She lifted her glass and allowed him to clink it with his own, then took a deep sip. She shut her eyes, savoring the feel of the wine inside of her mouth. It was a nice wine, an expensive one, and exactly the kind of thing she liked to drink. When she opened her eyes, Nick was still looking at her. She smiled uncertainly, and he grinned at her.

  “I wanted to thank you, Olivia. I guess that’s what I meant by a toast. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without you.”

  “Ha! What, plan a wedding? I don’t see why not. I was under the impression that you’ve been moonlighting as a secret wedding planner by night. Kind of like the tooth fairy or something, but for adults trying to plan major events.”

  “Very funny. I’m serious. When Abel told me how quickly they wanted to have this thing go off, I–”

  “I know,” she laughed, sipping her wine again and starting to feel comfortable for the first time, “it’s insane. Who wants to pull a wedding off in six weeks? That’s totally bonkers.”

  “It is, that’s for sure. I have no disagreements there.”

  “So then tell me, why’d you do it?” Olivia was careful not to look at him while she asked the question. She hadn’t known she was going to go there. She didn’t have the right to ask him that kind of thing. She didn’t have the right to ask him private questions at all. That wasn’t supposed to be the way they related to each other. They weren’t really supposed to be relating to each other at all.

  "Why'd I do what?" Now it was him who wouldn't make eye contact, and unless she was very much mistaken, he was starting to blush a little.

  “I think you know what I mean. Why’d you pay the tab for this whole thing? A wedding is a big deal, money wise. It always is. I can only imagine how much more it costs when you’re organizing it at such short notice. Why did you offer to pay the whole tab?”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “That’s it? He’s your friend?”

  “Is that not enough?”

  “It’s just not much of an answer, that’s all. At least not for what I’m thinking is a very large sum of money.”

  “I don’t know that I can tell you.”

  “That’s fine,” Olivia said quickly. She didn’t mean for it to come off defensively but she had a feeling that was the way it sounded. She stared straight in front of her like her life depended on it. She felt beyond foolish that she’d asked in the first place and she had no desire to make it worse by showing that she cared about his answer. When Nick put his glass down and laid his hand on her knee, she sucked in her breath. The skin underneath his touch instantly began to tingle.

  “I don’t mean I don’t want to tell you. I mean I’m not sure how to. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about emotional shit. It’s hard for me to put it into words. What Abel means to me, I mean. It’s going to sound stupid.”

  “It won’t, I promise. Not to me.”

  "It's just that he's like a brother to me, you know? He always has been. I know people say that kind of thing all of the time, but for me, it's true. Sometimes I think he's the best part of me. Like, he's the thing that keeps me grounded when otherwise I'd have my head shoved so far up my own ass that I wouldn't ever be able to get it back out again."

  “Hey, you said it, not me.”

  “Thought you said it wasn’t going to sound stupid.”

  “It doesn’t,” Olivia said gently, “I’m sorry. Please, go on.”

  “He’s just done a lot for me. He’s always been there, and there’s nobody else in my life I can say that about. I want him to be happy. He’s got the dream, you know? People think that’s me, with the money and shit. It’s not. It’s him. He’s happy. Those two are so in love it’s not even funny. I want them to have a good start with all of that. Not all of us get to have it.”

  “So you don’t, then?”

  “Don’t?”

  “Don’t think you’re going to have it?”

  “I don’t know. When we’re little we all think we will, don’t we? I’m not so sure now. I don’t know that guys like me get that kind of ending.”

  “You shouldn’t say things like that. We all deserve happy endings, Nick. All of us. Even if we’ve done stupid things. Even if we’ve allowed stupid things to be done to us in return.”

  Olivia was horrified to find her eyes filling with tears. Speaking of stupid. She was the one being stupid now. It was crazy to think she could talk to a man like Nick about her past, her secrets. It was just that he seemed so vulnerable to her now. There was something in his eyes that made her think the two of them were different faces of the same coin.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. I don’t mean anything.”

  "I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. You mean something. I can see it in your eyes. You're upset. I'm not an idiot. I may not be the most sensitive guy in the world, but I'm not that dense."

  "I didn't say you were an idiot. It's just... I had some trouble back in the day, okay? I allowed some stupid things to happen to me and for a long time, I didn't do anything about it. I'm not sure that I would have, either. If it hadn't been for Caroline."

  “What did she–?”

  "I picked the
wrong kind of men, okay? Which is the understatement of the century, but it'll have to do. They were bad men. Men who liked to show how powerful they were with their fists. Caroline was the one who made me believe that I was worth more than that. It was when I put myself into my studies when I understood that I didn't need anybody but myself to be okay. She taught me how to be strong. I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of envious of you, actually."

  "Of me? What do you mean? Why would you be envious of me?" There was genuine shock in Nick's voice, and Olivia felt a stab of regret that he would be so surprised. Had she really been so awful to him all of this time? Awful enough for him to be so surprised that she would pay him a compliment?

  "Because you were the better friend here. You were the one who thought about doing all of this. I never–"

  “Don’t do that to yourself, okay?”

  “Don’t do what?” Olivia asked, clasping her glass tightly. She didn't like being told what to do. She liked less how delicate she felt with him now. She had worked very hard never to feel delicate again.

  “Don’t beat yourself up. You’re too hard on yourself. I never realized it before. I figured I was the only one you were that hard on.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she laughed, “I’m hard on everyone and everything. Most of all myself.”

  “I don’t think you need to be,” he answered softly, so quietly that she could hardly hear him above the din of the restaurant. The crowd had been picking up steadily while the two of them sat talking together. She hadn’t even noticed it until now. She had felt in her own world, just her and Nick, and nothing else mattered.