Dealer. Maybe Big Charlie was a dealer. In the book were the names of people who owed him and he wants me to be the enforcer. She felt like Johnny. Aww heck naw!
“Johnny, you are far wiser than your nine years,” Patience told the boy as she ushered both kids back to their activity groups. What was in that book? She never got a chance to check. Once she returned to her office, Nick was calling.
“Hey,” he said low in the phone.
“Is everything okay? How is Big Charlie?”
“He’s weak, but he will live another day,” he said even lower.
Patience still had so much to get done before the night was over. “What about you, Nick. Are you okay?”
He was quiet. Patience used her words to gently cushion him, “It is okay to say that you aren’t.”
“I aren’t,” he mumbled.
She said the words before she completely thought about it, “What can I do to make it all better?” She swallowed the last word. “I can hear you grinning lasciviously through the phone.”
A light laugh. But it was tinged with something deeper. “Actually, what I need is to talk. Can I buy you dinner?”
“Talk?”
“Yes, and maybe you listen.”
“Okay. Where can I meet you?”
He named a little bistro close by the hospital. “Let’s say 6:30?”
“See you then,” she told him, wanting to say more, but this time Ernestine had come back and Johnny had been socked in the eye. Nick could hear her drop the phone. “Children, violence never solved anything. You both will be placed on restriction!”
The more Nick talked to her, the more he liked her. There was something special about Patience Nelson, something that resonated with him. He owed it to himself to find out more about her. Starting tonight, he would.
Stirring the coals...
As the day turned into evening, Patience realized she still never looked into the book Big Charlie have given her that morning. She would look at it tonight before her favorite show came on, but right now her tummy was rumbling and she needed sustenance. She arrived at the quaint bistro to find Nick already seated, sipping on a cup of warm apple cider. His eyes sparkled as he looked up when he saw her coming through the door, pre-warned that someone was entering by the jingling of the bell. Always the gentleman, Nick stood and helped her with her coat, draping it across the back seat of an extra chair. Before she could react or even speak, he pulled her into his arms and said, “Thank you for coming.” This motion was followed by a warm kiss to her nearly frozen cheek that seemed to warm her to her toes.
“You are so cold,” he told her as his hands rubbed at her arms and then her back, the thighs, powerful from bending and squatting every day, pressed against her own, sending her imagination into overdrive. It also didn’t help that he was very happy to see her.
“Happy to see me again, I feel,” she told him as she pulled away from being poked in the belly by his exuberance.
“Again, sorry about that,” he told her as he helped her to her seat. “It’s your fault, you know.”
Her eyes and mouth were wide. “How is your constant state of hardiness my fault?”
He winked at her. “You are just too damned sexy. It drives me insane. Then that light perfume you wear. It opens my nostrils and sends naughty thoughts down my belly into my happy zone.”
Her lips were twisted in disbelief. “Whatever. What did you want to talk about?”
Nick changed the subject with some reluctance. “I don’t know. I just have so much on me right now. I was thinking if I could just verbalize some of it, I wouldn’t feel like I was slowly suffocating.”
The expression on his face changed completely when he looked up at her. As if he had suddenly come to the startling conclusion that he had been honest and really shared his feelings with her. Nick had let down his wall. She would lower hers.
She touched his hand. “When I walked past the window and saw you sitting here next to the fireplace, sipping on what I imagined to be hot cider, I found myself thinking how nice it would be to have you...” Patience stopped talking.
Nick watched her over the rim of the cup.
She lowered her lashes, “... as someone to share the end of my day with....” Her hand reached out to touch his again and he drew back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean...”
“It’s okay. I just feel kind of naked around you,” he frowned as he spoke.
Patience would not let the opening pass. “Of course you had to wiggle nakedness into the conversation didn’t you?”
He stuck his tongue in the roof of his mouth. “I am not touching that one. I will not touch it.” And with that, the awkward moment was replaced.
“Talk to me, Nick,” she told him.
To the untrained eye, Nick and Patience looked like a couple sharing an evening meal. She, a bowl of beefy vegetable soup and he, a pork chop and a mound of creamy mashed potatoes.
“Would you like to share the end of your day with me? Or the start of it for that matter?” he asked her cautiously.
“Sometimes, it does get lonely. But I will never allow a few cold nights to make my decisions for me,” she smiled at him.
“At the end of all this, I may have to move in with you, just to have a roof over my head,” he laughed when he spoke the words but Patience knew he was serious.
The next 30 minutes were some of the most enlightening, educational and infuriating conversations she had ever had in her life. Over a second cup of cider for him and a shared humongous slice of carrot cake, they started a wonderful dance of words.
Nick explained that with the hospital bills, the business, and the cost of Big Charlie’s medication, he had fallen back into the hole. “The man spends every extra penny he has on toys. Do you know there are three sheds in our back yard? One with Christmas décor and the other two with Heaven knows what!”
He began a slow rant about the holiday season, the commercialization of Christmas and the stupidity of parents who play into the hype. Patience disagreed with him. “The problem with so many of our youth is that the ability to use their imaginations have been replaced with over-sexualized songs, violent video games, and growing up too fast. Christmas is the one time of year where a kid can act their age.”
“I think it is the adults who need to act their ages!”
“When was the last time you have had some fun Nick?”
“I am a responsible adult, I don’t have time for fun. I have a 70-year-old father who spent every dime he had being the great benefactor to every Pip in three counties,” he said with anger in his voice. “When he wasn’t giving to Pip, he was working as a pimp.”
Patience put her hand over his mouth. “Don’t try to silence me. The man serviced half of the single mothers in town. I have even had a few to try to pay me in trade or with pies....” He shuddered. “I work for cold hard cash. That is what pays the bills. And Big Charlie made a lot of them.”
“I understand your frustration, but he is very proud of what he accomplished with you,” she told him.
“Proud of what? That I kept silent when he cheated on my Mom. That I upheld the dude code and didn’t rat him out for being a sleaze bag?”
“That is not fair, Nick!”
“No, what is not fair is that he hired a nurse to take care of her, as he made his holiday rounds. She died in that house with only me and a stranger at her side while he was out spreading his Ho-Ho-Ho!”
Patience slammed her hand on the table. “You have no idea what transpires between a husband and a wife. It’s easy as a child to sit back and think you have all the answers. That you know right from wrong. And sometimes it is so much more complicated than that.”
Nick snarled his lip. “Listen to you, the great defender of relationships. When was the last time you had one?”
She pointed her finger at him as her face contorted. “When was the last time you had one, Big Surly?”
“Who are you calling surly? I am a realist. A man with a lot of
responsibilities and my father is dying. I have every goddamn right to be surly. He is going to leave me with a mound of debt and I don’t know whether to grieve that I am losing my dad or celebrate being rid of him.”
She was shocked. By the expression on his face, so was Nick. His hand covered his mouth. He exhaled slowly, “And that is the least of my concerns.”
“Oh, there is one larger than the mouthful of surliness you just flung at me?”
His gaze became more intense as his eyes met hers. “Yes. I am concerned that this the most open and honest conversation I have had with anyone in six years.” Nick licked his lips. “I am also so turned on right now, that if I stand up, I may snap my junk off on the side of this table.”
She too was breathing hard. She opened her sweater to again show him how happy her nipples were. “That was rather stimulating.”
“Where are your keys?” he asked her as he threw a few bills on the table and grabbed her coat, pulling her up from the chair.
“What are we doing? Where are we going?”
“To your car to make out like horny teens,” he told her as he grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the door.
The Darkening of the Day...
Patience fumbled with her car keys as she tried to open the door, but her nervousness made her drop them in the snow. Nick reached down to retrieve them at the same time, resulting in the two of them bumping their heads together. She put her hands on his chest. “This is insane, what are we doing?”
“I know what I’m doing. I am trying to get to second base. Open the door,” he said as he tried tugging the keys from her hand.
“You are upset. You are emotionally raw. We don’t want to rush into anything.” She tried to cool him down.
“Yes, I do. I want to rush in head first. I want to crash, burn and wallow in it. Open the door, let’s get inside,” he was still tugging at her keys.
“Stop it!”
He threw back his head and exhaled a white plume of foggy condensation from the vapor of his breath into the cold night air. “This isn’t fun. You said I needed to have some fun. The back seat of your Jeep can be fun for both of us. Open the door,” he said, his voice thick with his need.
The cold night air had taken her out of the intense moment and she was seeing things a bit clearer. He was raw and vulnerable. She was in need as well, but they were both trying to deal with an impending doom that neither of them wanted to face. “I... I...” she tried to say, but was silenced by his lips connecting to hers.
Her body was pressed against the car, but Nick’s frustration only grew because of the layers of clothing she wore. He could not feel her body next to his. She would be unable to feel the length and power of his need. But kissing her is okay, too.
Patience brought her arms around his waist as Nick’s thumb nudged her chin, pushing her mouth open as his tongue slipped inside to dance with hers. His mouth was warm and his lips soft, as they slanted over hers, pressing firmly asking her to respond. She did. Surprising herself with how much she was enjoying being in his arms, she kissed him back with everything she had. Her tongue playing with his as she tugged at his jacket, trying to bring him closer. A growl emitted from the back of his throat as he whispered her name, “Patience.”
She was unable to respond to his silent request because his phone began to buzz. “Terrible timing whoever you are,” he said as he retrieved the phone from his pocket. It was the hospital.
“Nick Pines,” he said when he answered. The color drained from his face. “I’m on my way.”
“Nick, is it Big Charlie?”
“Yes. Can you drive me over?”
“Sure, what’s wrong, is he okay?”
“No,” he told her as he ran around to the passenger side of the vehicle. “He just coded.”
Patience drove as fast as she could in the slushy streets, and arrived at the hospital front doors. “Park and come up, okay?”
She only nodded her agreement as he slammed the door and ran into the lighted entryway. She was still trying to catch her breath from the onslaught of emotions that came with Big Charlie coding, the kiss, and her body tingling with her need for Nick. “I don’t think I can handle this much excitement,” she spoke loudly to herself as she drove off the ramp into the parking lot as she parked under a street lamp and made her way inside the building.
Each step she took felt like her shoes were filled with lead.
Grudgingly, she pressed the elevator button and waited for the car to arrive. Be strong. Be strong. You know he is dying. He told you so this morning. Be strong. As she rounded the corner to his room, the nurses had stepped back and she saw Nick holding his father’s hand. Milky, distant eyes looked at her. “Come here, child,” Big Charlie beckoned her.
She ungloved her hand and placed the cold fingers inside his equally cold hand. But instead of holding it, he placed her hand inside Nick’s. “Be there for him, Patience. God is calling me home,” he told her as his breath caught. His other hand touched his son’s hair, pushing a loose tendril from his eyes. “I love you, Nicky,” he told his son as his eyes closed for the final time.
Nick’s face crumbled as the tears over took him. He collapsed on top of his father’s chest. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” he wailed. Three nurses turned and left the room, but Patience wiped away her tears and remained steadfastly at his side. After a few minutes, she released his hand and left the room to give Nick some time alone to say his goodbye.
She lied. Tonight was the coldest she had ever been in her life. Nick was in no shape to drive himself home. It was even worse when she had to drag him from Big Charlie’s hospital room. She didn’t think it would be healthy for him to see the nurses cover his face with sheet, nor roll his body out. Although she had never been to Big Charlie’s home, she knew where the old house was, and Nick had kept him in the same neighborhood, but a few blocks over in a slightly bigger house. It was easy to spot which one was theirs.
It was lit up like a Christmas Village. The front yard was covered in 8 animatronic reindeer that looked lifelike and responded by motion. She almost missed the ninth one with a lit up red nose. That was nothing in comparison to a 12-foot, completely decorated pine tree that was in the front yard, covered in custom ornaments that said Pine’s Plumbing on every bulb. “Wow, look at that,” she said, trying to tamp down the shock and awe of a real live scene from Christmas with the Griswolds.
“Well, Dad had this idea that if anyone stole one of the ornaments, it would be a reminder to call Pine’s for their plumbing needs,” he said as he marched up to the front door. If she thought the lawn was a sight for widened eyes, nothing prepared her for the living room of the house. The room looked as if Martha Stewart and a Christmas hoarder had a baby and decided to decorate this one room of the house. Every inch was covered in Yuletide cheer. Patience lost it. “What the hell happened in here?”
Nick plopped down in the big chair next to the cold fireplace. The moment his butt hit the chair, a toy train started around the Christmas tree and the tracks came straight to the chair. The engine chugged along as the middle freight car delivered to the chair a half empty bottle of scotch. At the same time the train started, a German cuckoo clock opened with a mini Hansel and Gretel, who came forth to say, “Welcome home, Santa.” Nick slammed his fist into the arm of the recliner which was the wrong thing to do. It activated everything else in the room. Including the Bing Crosby Christmas music. The bass-baritone filled the room with the famed rendition of White Christmas.
Nick threw his head back and stared up at the ceiling. He seemed defeated as his face contorted and more tears began to stream. “I so, so, so, hate fucking Christmas!” He cried harder. The tears were somewhere between total sadness and a mental breakdown as his arms hung over the side arms of the massive recliner.
He looked at her with wet, red and sad eyes, speaking in a soft, almost childlike voice. “Patience can I go home with you? I can’t stay here. I’ll sleep on the couch. Just get me out of th
is house.”
“Sure... sure... whatever you need,” was all she could muster. It was too much. It was all too much. She didn’t want to be in the house one second longer. It was unclear how Nick had been able to withstand the overwhelming red and green of it all.
Nick slowly stood up, dragged himself to his room and packed a gym bag with a day or two’s worth of clothes. “Thank you,” he mumbled as he climbed back into the passenger seat of her car.
Making Spirits Bright...
The ride across the small town did not take long as they pulled up in front of her home. Her house was the complete antithesis of what she had just left. In truth, she was feeling some kind of way, almost like a hardened trauma after leaving that house. As much as she loved Christmas, her windows only held one solar candle in each that illuminate at dusk. The mantle held a pine draping that gently scented the home and a standard six-foot tree. Each year, she would buy one new ornament to represent each child she placed in a home. This year, she only bought four. The orphanage was still full of children looking for nice parents and placements had been slow.
“This couch doesn’t look very comfortable, but I can make do for a night,” he said as he dropped his things on the floor.
“No need to sleep there. I have a guest bedroom. It’s down the hall on the left. I’ll get you some towels and a wash cloth so you can shower,” she replied. She turned on the fireplace and allowed the gas to slowly warm up the room. She hung her coat and headed to the kitchen to start the kettle. A nice hot toddy. Nick needed a shot of something strong and warm to settle him so he could rest. Who am I kidding? So do I.
Normally she would put on some holiday tunes but decided against it. However, they needed something soothing, so she turned on her Pandora radio and tuned into the jazz station. Out of habit, when she had a guest over she made a quick snack tray and brought it into the common room off the kitchen. She could hear the shower start and tried to focus on something other than the sexy naked man in it. He lost his father less than an hour ago. Focus.
Santa's Big Helper Page 4
