Hold Me Today

by Maria Luis

  Did you hear how Mina Pappas snuck into his bed? the elderly women at church whispered the following Sunday. She’s so bad. Poor Nick, having to suffer through all that.

  He’d suffered the nightmare experience of bad, naughty Mina, and I lived and breathed the afterlife of seducing good, nice guy Nick.

  The damage was done, no matter what he or I said to anyone. And, boy, did Nick throw a fuss. Good, old Saint Nick, martyring himself to the fight of proving to all that I did nothing wrong. If he could have posted a bulletin that announced, WE DID NOT HAVE SEX, he would have. It wasn’t the first time (and certainly won’t be the last) that a woman felt the brunt of the fall.

  I don’t blame Nick, especially knowing how much it bothered him that no one paid him any mind. I don’t blame him, no, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the one get-out-of-jail-free card I’ve carried with me all these years.

  Except here I am, desperate for his help, and I can’t even bring myself to rake him over the coals and bring up the old hurt. His hurt at being left at the altar; my hurt at realizing that my youthful fascination for my best friend’s older brother would never amount to anything more. At the end of the day, I’m nothing but big talk. Nick could backstab me tomorrow and I’d never do anything to make him feel the same pain inflicted on me.

  That’s how friendships, how family should be, even if it’s a lesson not yet learned by all in the Pappas household.

  I let out one long exhale that rattles in my chest.

  Rock bottom, how we meet again.

  Instead of answering, Nick rouses his sleeping desktop with a shake of the mouse, then adjusts the monitor so I can see the screen too. Curiosity has me literally sitting on the edge of my seat as he opens a new internet tab and taps away on the keyboard.

  I wait, heart in my throat, for him to make the next move.

  Or at least clue me in to whatever it is he’s thinking.

  Like that’s ever going to happen.

  When the page finally loads, I find my voice. “TMZ, Nick?” I try not to laugh at the thought of him scouring celebrity tabloid sites late at night before bed. “I never would have pictured you as—holy crap.”

  I blink.

  Then blink again.

  Lift my butt clear off the chair and lean across the wide desk to grip the computer monitor and twist it so that I can get a better look.

  “Oh, my God, CT wasn’t high.”

  Yup, that right there is one-hundred percent Nick Stamos down on one knee. He’s dressed in the most godawful Hawaiian T-shirt I’ve ever seen, and the shorts he’s wearing aren’t much better. All he needs is a frat-boy visor on his head and he’d look like every other American tourist who used to crowd the Greek beaches in my family’s village.

  I feel a swift kick of something right in the gut when I fix my attention on the woman he’s kneeling before. She’s stunning. The sort of stunning I used to see, and stare at in awe, while bingeing America’s Next Top Model episodes.

  Back when the dream hadn’t taken form quite yet.

  But this girl . . . she looks as though she knows her place in the world.

  I envy her that.

  “CT?” says Nick in a tone that suggests it’s not the first time he’s asked.

  I don’t bother elaborating. Not when there’s more important matters to discuss, like, “Are you engaged?”

  “No.”

  I can’t look away from the very obvious proposal that’s going down in the picture TMZ uploaded. “She turned you down?” Emotion I’d rather not name blooms in my chest. Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask. I ask because, clearly, I’m a glutton for punishment. “Do you love her?”

  Silence.

  It steals into the room like an unwanted visitor and turns my skin to ice.

  “What do you think?”

  The words aren’t voiced in English, and it takes me a solid ten seconds to work through his flawless Greek and translate it all in my head. I jerk my gaze from the screen to Nick’s face. He looks as surly, as unapproachable, as always.

  I hate that it’s such a good look on him.

  “Ermione?”

  At his quiet, but adamant push for me to answer, I plop back down in my abandoned chair with a swallowed sigh. “You look about as thrilled as the time I stole your swimming trunks and replaced them with a flamingo-pink speedo.”

  He’d been sixteen to my fourteen, and I’m only a little ashamed to admit that that day, of all days, is when I learned the definition of a “dick print.” Thank you, horrible hotel Wi-Fi. Thank you, Google. Thank you, sixteen-year-old Nick who was already hung like a horse.

  The last bit of gratitude has me shifting in my seat and crossing my legs at my ankles.

  Nick chokes out a rough laugh. “It was a bikini bottom, not a speedo.”

  I give a little what-can-you-do shrug. “I’m resourceful, what can I say?”

  A mischievous smile curls his full lips. “Were they Effie’s?”

  It’s not hard to imagine him in that moment. Still growing, still half a foot taller than me, he’d barged out of his room in a pair of boxers, waving the bikini bottoms like a flag of truce. Or war, more likely. Then he’d demanded, in no uncertain terms, to know where his swimming trunks were.

  I’d bet that he didn’t have the balls to strip down to what essentially were tighty-whities.

  He proved that he did.

  In epic, hot-pink, dick-cupping fashion.

  Going forward after that, my dreams were a little more vibrant, a little fuller, if you get my drift.

  I lick my lips, then meet his inquisitive stare. “Mine,” I say just above a whisper, “trust me when I say how surprised I was to see that they fit you.”

  It’s a throw down, I know. One of my old, customary barbs just to get a rise out of him. Will Good Guy Nick take the Bait? TMZ missed out on an epic headliner, if I do say so myself, although perhaps not. Nick proves that he’s all mature adult and leaves me hanging.

  How disappointing.

  “Read the article title.”

  With a little grumble at his command, I nevertheless do what he says.

  Nick Stamos—Brokenhearted and Alone: How One Man found Himself Dumped Twice By Women He Loved.

  Uh oh.

  “Brynn?” I ask slowly. Had his ex spilled the beans about their almost-wedding?

  He doesn’t mistake my meaning. “Hell if I know. Effie got me on the show. She knows how . . . well, she knows how much I’ve been wanting to meet someone new.” With a single click, he closes out the tab and once again reaches for the scotch. He lifts it to his mouth, as though prepared to guzzle it all and blot out his troubles, but instead balances it on his thigh. “And she may have convinced me that I must not want love badly enough if I wasn’t willing to take a major risk.”

  “She convinced you?”

  Nick smiles sheepishly. “More like she sat me down for a come-to-Jesus moment and told me to stop being a pussy. There’s no better motivation to do something you’re hesitant about than having a younger sibling goad you into doing it.”

  For over twenty years, Effie and I have told each other everything. I was the first one to know about her being into women; she was the first and only person I told when I lost my virginity at the age of twenty to a guy in his early thirties.

  Secrets don’t exist between us . . . except, I guess, they do when it comes to Nick.

  I push aside the sting of hurt that’s not mine to feel. Her relationship with her brother has nothing to do with me, and it’s not as though Nick has been a well-versed topic of discussion for us, well, ever.

  Needing something to do with my hands, I fiddle with the empty coffee cup. “I didn’t realize you were having trouble with—” I cut myself off. Is it any of my business that he was failing in the L-O-V-E department? No, it’s not. Just like it’s not his business that I’ve watched every episode of The Bachelor from season one. And though I find it odd that Nick of all people went on a dating show, I can�
��t help but ask, “Did you meet Chris Harrison?”

  “Not even close,” he mutters, bouncing the scotch gently on his knee. “Calling Put A Ring On It—that’s the name—the budget-cut version of The Bachelor would be giving it too much credit. It was a shit show.” Nick grimaces, jaw clenching. “Not that it matters anymore.”

  “Then what does matter?” I gesture to the papers spread out across his desk. “You agree to fix up my salon, and I . . . what? Find you a new girl to date?” I gesture toward the computer. “Hire a hit man to kill off whoever wrote that article about you? I’m creative, as we both know, but I need to know what I’m working with here.”

  I say it flippantly but Nick’s response is anything but:

  “I need you to pretend to date me.”

  If I thought Mr. IOU had me suffering heart palpitations, then there’s no comparison to the way my lungs clamp tight and air comes slow and reedy through my nose now. Of all the times I’ve imagined him asking me out, I never once cooked up this particular scenario. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? I thought you said—”

  Nick has the good grace to look embarrassed. Maybe even a little flustered. The tips of his ears flush, and if it weren’t for his Mediterranean skin, I know they’d be fire-engine red. “Date me,” he mutters, voice low and rough, “I need you to date me.”

  Yup, that settles it. I’m dreaming.

  Or being pranked on the comeback season of Punk’d with Ashton Kutcher.

  Nick pushes his chair back like an animal on the prowl. “I need you.” He sets the scotch on the table, twists the cap back on to secure it tightly, and begins to pace the length of his office. It’s jampacked with random woodwork, most of which he steps around or nudges to the side with his boot. “Trust me, I never thought I’d say that either, but the truth is . . . the last thing I want is the press digging into my life. Even if I’ve got nothing to hide, that doesn’t mean I’m interested in having everything dissected.”

  This makes me snort out loud, and when Nick side-eyes me, I only shrug. “Nick, what are they gonna dissect? That time you ratted me out to our Greek school teacher that I was the one to steal her whiteboard markers? You confessed for me.” I jab my thumb to my chest.

  “She paid for them out of her own paycheck.”

  I roll my eyes at his justification. “Jesus, do you know how good you are? Saint Nick—the old nickname still rings true, doesn’t it?”

  Something in his expression tightens and he spins away before I can look too close.

  “I’m oh-for-two in the wedding bell department, Ermione.”

  “Third time’s always the charm. Don’t lose hope just yet. Pretty much every female will be begging for you to look their way soon.”

  His shrewd gaze finds me over his left shoulder. “I need a break from relationships.” He grumbles something under his breath and then says, louder, “I’m done with dating.”

  My mouth falls open, and I don’t have the good manners to clamp it shut when he blows out a breath of heavy frustration. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  Like what? Like he’s having a mid-life crisis at the age of thirty-two? Because that’s the vibe I’m getting right now. Good Guy Nick is trying to remove his gilded crown and I have no idea what to make of it.

  “You’ve never even had a one-night-stand,” I say, because someone needs to knock some common sense into him. Because, honestly, who is this man standing in front of me? With my gaze glued to his broad back, I go on, “There are two types of people in this world: people who have no qualms about jumping into the sack with a stranger, and those who need to know a person’s blood type, direct lineage, and whether or not they recycle their trash every week. You, Saint Nick, fall into the latter camp.”

  From the way his back muscles twitch under his T-shirt, I’ve got a feeling he doesn’t appreciate the comparison. Well, tough. It’s true. Nick is the relationship guy. The full-on-love type of guy. And to see him want something else is weird, mind-boggling, and, yes, more than a little uncomfortable for me, seeing as how I’ve known him for two decades and counting.

  I don’t like the idea of him breaking out of the box I’ve put him in—the pedestal he’s sat on for years—and, yes, I know that makes me sound hypocritical. But there’s something comforting in knowing that what I see is what I get with Nick, and this revelation is throwing all of that out of whack.

  Stiffly, Nick turns to face me, then rests the curve of his ass against a waist-high bookshelf. His arms cross over his chest and those gray eyes of his home in on me, unwavering in their intensity.

  “I didn’t say anything about a fling,” he grinds out, so low that I strain my ears to hear every word. “Savannah turned down Dom, which means I’m publicly single in a way I’ve never been before. It’d be one thing if she and I were together—at least that’s how I reasoned it when I agreed to the show. We’d be together. We’d be in love. Everything else would be nothing but background noise.”

  “But that’s not what went down.”

  “Exactly.” Nick nods sharply. “She voted me off, and that was fine too. Because then the focus was gonna be on her and Dom and their new engagement, and I was gonna get off with a pass to fade back into obscurity just the way I like it. No harm, no foul. Except that’s not on the table anymore. So, you want me to overhaul your salon for free—”

  “Free sounds so cheap,” I cut in, trying to infuse humor back in the conversation. “Pro bono sounds better. More professional.”

  Nick talks right over me. “And I want the chance to work in peace without magazines and single women hounding me left and right. It’s a win-win.”

  “What will Effie think?” Effie, who knows all about my stupid crush from yesteryear. Effie, who was right there with me when all the Greek mamas and grandmothers at church couldn’t keep my name out of the rumor mill for months. Even now, years later, they still whisper about that time Kyria Stamos found her grandson in bed with Bad Girl Mina Pappas. “What about your mom?”

  “They’ll know the truth,” he tells me simply. “They’d never believe we were dating anyway.”

  “Because we aggravate each other.” My voice is small, a sentence more than a question only because I deliberately keep every word succinct.

  Nick spares me a quick, searching glance. The onceover is done before I can savor it—no, not savor anything. Slowly, he shakes his head, and his wild curls fall across his forehead deliciously. “A girl like you would be bored by me, Ermione. And a guy like me . . . you’d burn me without thought.”

  You’d burn me without thought.

  Growing up, I was called dumb, stupid, slow. I know now that I had a severe case of undiagnosed dyslexia. It made learning hard, reading harder. But in my adult life, I’ve been called worse: reckless, bad, slut.

  I don’t sleep around, but when I do choose to let a man in my bed, it’s with the understanding that there’s nothing more to it than uncomplicated sex. One and done. I’ve always preferred to work toward my dreams of opening my own salon than be caught up in guy drama.

  You’d burn me without thought.

  I’m not so dumb that I can’t read between the lines: Nick thinks I’d hit it and quit it. Quit him. That I’d do to him what I’ve done to the other six men who have ever shared my bed.

  Six.

  Not sixteen or sixty or six-hundred.

  It takes every ounce of control not to let my voice shake when I finally gather the strength to speak. “I’ve never burned anyone.” Those aren’t the words I wanted to say, but they’re the words that come out regardless. “Just because you love being in a relationship doesn’t give you any right to judge how I live my life. Not everyone wants to settle down.”

  His head jerks back, full lips parting. “What the hell are you talking about?” The question comes in Greek, and it’s almost ironic to me that it’s his default language. When he’s excited. When he’s angry. And, apparently, when he’s completely flummoxed too.

  My sh
oulders hitch up. “You make it sound like I’m . . . flighty, like I jump from bed to bed.”

  Awareness enters his expression, turning his pewter eyes a deeper hue, the color of a stormy sky just before the winds wreak havoc. “Mina, I didn’t—” He cuts his hand through his hair, pulling at the curly strands. “That’s definitely not what I meant. I’m not judging you. Fuck, I’ve never judged you.”

  Nick plays favorites with Greek obscenities, and, at the very English four-letter curse, steam rolls off my back. “Thank you.” I pause. “So, we’d date in name only.”

  Nick’s nod is short and clipped. He meets my gaze, and I see hesitation lingering there. “You’re Effie’s best friend, Mina. You can tell me no and I’ll still work on your salon.” Again he spears a hand through his wild hair. “Gamóto,” he grunts, “I shouldn’t have even asked you. It’s crossing so many boundaries.”

  He’s a rule-follower. Nice guy, Saint Nick.

  And I’m reckless, at least according to all our family and friends.

  “I’ll do it.”

  His body snaps in my direction. “What?”

  Old crushes stay dead, right? I swallow, hard, and pray I’m not putting myself in the flames. “We have a deal. You work on my salon and I’ll . . . I’ll date you.” I try to crack a grin. “For the record, I wouldn’t sleep with you anyway. I don’t mess around with Greek guys.”

  Dark brows arch high. “Any reason for the aversion?”

  There are so many reasons, starting and ending with the fact that nothing else would bring my father more joy than a Greek son-in-law for his Greek daughter. So perfect, so completely nauseating. And what if he turned out to be just like your dad? Controlling, stifling. A shiver slithers down my spine.

  Instead of telling Nick the truth, I flash him a wide smile. “It all goes back to one teeny-tiny, pink bikini bottom.” When his jaw snaps closed, I saunter to the desk and grab all the papers I set out earlier. “There I was, a young, impressionable teenage girl, and I thought . . . Greek men are legendary in bed. That’s what everyone says, or, you know, at least Cosmo does. It has to be because they’re packing something extra-large down there.” I shove the manila folder in my bag, then hang the strap over my shoulder. The coffee cup I pick up and tuck close to my chest before moving toward the door. “Imagine my surprise when I caught sight of the reality after we all went swimming.”