“Fine,” said Tabitha, swallowing hard. “Fine, fine, fine. Stay here if you want.” She turned and walked out Nash’s apartment, slamming the door after her.
Ariel went to the door. “Mommy!” she wailed, opening the door.
Tabitha turned. She bit down on her lip.
“You have to give me goodbye kisses,” said Ariel.
Tabitha swept the little girl into a hug. Then she released her. “Sweetie, can you go into the living room there and play with your tablet for a minute? Mommy needs to talk to Daddy.”
“Then goodbye kisses?” said Ariel.
“Yeah,” said Tabitha. “Then goodbye kisses.”
Ariel scampered off.
Tabitha came closer to Nash and she spoke in a low voice. “I’m sorry. I’ve been acting immaturely about all this.”
“Um… okay,” said Nash. He was confused.
“When she called after me, I realized I was being an idiot. I’m her mother. She’s always going to need me. No one’s going to replace me.”
“Jesus, Tabitha, I was never trying to replace you—”
“No, I know that.” She rubbed her forehead. “Look, the only reason I got in touch with you was because Ariel wouldn’t stop talking about her daddy. She asked endless questions and she wanted to know where you were and why you never saw her and everything else.”
“Oh,” said Nash. Thank goodness Ariel had wanted to know him. Otherwise, he might have been oblivious forever.
“It hurt a little bit, though,” said Tabitha. “It hurt that I wasn’t enough for her. That she still felt this void, and that she wanted to know her father. I guess I’ve taken that hurt out on you.”
“Tabitha, I’m sure she didn’t mean anything like that.”
“No, of course she didn’t. Like I said, I’ve been an immature idiot.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.” Nash scratched the back of his head. “I appreciate you letting her come over.”
“She’s been so excited about this.”
“Yeah?” Nash couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah.” She smiled too. She took a deep breath. “So, okay, we’ll see how today goes. And we’ll talk, Nash. We’ll work something out. I know you want to see her more.”
“Are you serious? Really?”
“Really.”
“Thank you.” Nash wanted to give Tabitha a hug, but it didn’t seem appropriate.
“I’m going to be late for work. I need to go,” she said.
“Right, right,” said Nash.
She pointed into the living room. “I’ll just say goodbye to Ariel?”
“Of course,” said Nash.
Tabitha went in and gave Ariel goodbye kisses and then she was gone.
Ariel and Nash stood in the kitchen after she had left.
“So,” said Nash, “have you had breakfast yet?”
“No, Mommy said I would eat here,” said Ariel.
He grinned. “How about some oatmeal?”
Ariel grinned back. “Okay.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Zoe was sitting on the couch in Nash’s living room. “Do you have Ariel tomorrow?”
“No,” said Nash, sitting on the floor, huddled over his laptop. “No, I don’t know when she’s coming back over. Maybe next week.” It had been nearly three weeks that he and Zoe had been back at his place now. They’d been trying to track down Siobhan, but they weren’t having much luck.
“Okay, good,” said Zoe. “Because it’s such a pain to get up at the ass crack of dawn and sneak out—”
“You could be here, you know,” said Nash. “She’s a four-year-old. She’s not scary.”
“Maybe not to you,” said Zoe. She went back to the computer. “So, there’s this unsolved set of murders in Georgia I’m looking at. Could be Siobhan’s kind of thing.”
“Okay,” said Nash. Going through the unsolved cases wasn’t the greatest idea he’d ever had. In order to find Siobhan’s hit, they had to actually solve the case and figure out who the murderer was. They weren’t making a lot of headway. No progress at all in the last three weeks.“You got a list of suspects?”
“Not yet,” said Zoe. “I can work on that tonight. Do you want to help me, or do you have another case you’re looking at?”
“No, the thing I was looking at, I think that’s Alex Keegan, someone she already hit.”
“Damn it,” said Zoe. “All the effort for nothing.”
“Yeah, when I saw it was Idaho, I was like… when was I thinking about Idaho? I had forgotten that was on the invitation for that wedding.”
Zoe wrinkled up her nose. “Look, I hate to say this, Nash, but maybe this is all a waste of time.”
He laughed ruefully. “Honestly, I’ve been waiting for your I-told-you-so speech for a while now. I need to admit that I just have no freaking way of finding her.”
“I’m not trying to gloat,” said Zoe. “I want you to be able to finish the podcast. But I just think we’re stalling out here.”
“Yeah.” He sighed.
“Maybe I should go home.”
He sat up straight, shutting his laptop. “Wait, what? You’re quitting on me?”
“I’ll still be your intern,” she said. “Whenever you decide you’re actually going to get back to work on something, I’ll come back and help. But, you know, my own podcast kind of needs attention. There’s a convention I could be going to in a couple weeks, and—”
“Oh, fine.” He picked up his laptop and set it on his recliner. “Go. I get it.”
“I’ll come back,” she said again.
“You’re not going to leave tonight, are you?”
“No, I thought maybe in the morning.”
“Good,” he said. “Then let’s get drunk tonight.”
Zoe laughed. “What? Just like that?”
“I think, when you’re trying really hard at something and failing, it’s customary to drown one’s sorrows.”
She considered. “Okay, I guess so. I think I’ve heard that before.”
He started for the kitchen. “You like gin and tonics?”
“That’s an old lady drink,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” he said, as he left the living room and went to the freezer, which was where he kept his liquor.
“Are there any other options?”
“Vodka tonics,” he called back.
She laughed.
* * *
“I always think gin tastes like Christmas trees,” said Zoe, after nearly five gin and tonics. She was propped up on the couch, clutching her latest one, delivering this pronouncement with a very solemn expression on her face.
Nash was sitting on the floor again, his drink on the coffee table next to him. “What? How many Christmas trees have you tasted?”
“Well, none, obviously.” Zoe gave him a withering look.
“Then, how do you know what they taste like?”
“From the smell, of course,” said Zoe. “Because smell and taste are totally enmeshed, you know?” She took a prim sip of her drink.
Nash snorted. “Then maybe what you mean is that gin smells like Christmas trees.”
“No, no, gin doesn’t smell at all.”
“Oh, beg to differ,” said Nash. “I’ll go get you the bottle and let you smell it. It has a definite smell. Very distinctive. And we both reek of it right now.”
“Then we smell like Christmas!” Zoe threw her head back.
Nash laughed again. “I don’t think it smells like Christmas.”
She brought her head back down to meet his gaze, her movements exaggerated. “You don’t?”
“No,” he said. “It smells like summer to me. I always think of it as a summery drink.”
“Hmm,” she said, pressing her lips together.
He cocked his head. “Are you drunk?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was the intent, right? To get drunk? Well, mission accomplished for me. How about you?”
He laughed, taking ano
ther drink from his glass. “Yeah, I’m getting there. I think you’re a little further gone than me, though.”
“No way,” said Zoe. “We drank the same amount.”
“Yeah, but you know, you’re all tiny and whatever.”
“I’m not tiny. I’m totally grown up.” She furrowed her brow at him. “Why are you always acting like I’m a child?”
“I’m not,” he protested. He rested his chin in his hand and leaned forward. “Am I? Am I really doing that?”
“Kind of,” she said. “I am an adult, you know.”
“Technically, yeah,” he said. “But, I mean, you’re a young adult.”
“No, young adult is like the name for books that twelve-year-olds read.”
“Well, you’re young.”
“Young is a relative term,” she said. “You’re only saying I’m young, because I’m younger than you. But I’m not that much younger than you.”
“Yeah, okay, you are,” he said. “Eight years younger is a lot.”
“If I were really that much younger than you, you wouldn’t be getting drunk with me.”
He laughed. “Okay, I guess that’s kind of true. I consider us, you know, colleagues.”
“We’re peers,” she said.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Definitely. I have nothing but respect for you.”
“Good,” she said. “So, stop saying I’m tiny.”
He laughed again. “I thought women liked to be called tiny.”
“No,” said Zoe. “We don’t.”
“Maybe you don’t,” said Nash, “but I’ve spent enough time around women to know that it’s much better to focus on some part of their body and point out how tiny and pretty it is than to engage in any kind of conversation about her looks. At all.”
Zoe narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s kind of devious.”
He took a drink. “It totally works. Like, if I have a girlfriend, and she says, ‘Do these jeans make my ass look fat?’ I say, ‘All I want to focus on is how tiny and pretty your legs look’ or something. You have to sell it properly.”
“Okay,” said Zoe. “But you don’t have to do that with someone who’s not your girlfriend. Like, with a colleague, you could just be honest.”
He snickered. “Are you planning on asking me if your ass looks fat?”
“Well, I might need your opinion sometime, and I’d want to know the truth—”
“Everything about you is tiny and pretty, Zoe, please.” He slugged back more of the drink.
She sat up straight. “You think I’m pretty?”
He set down his glass. He was drunk, and there were muted alarm bells going off in the back of his head. “Sure,” he said.
They stared at each other.
The alarm bells got louder.
He broke their gaze. “Uh… you know, in an objective sort of way, I would say that you’re an attractive…” He picked his drink back up. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Because, you know,” said Zoe, “I think you’re pretty too.” She wrinkled up her nose. “I mean… for a guy. Whatever the guy word is.” She lifted a finger. “Handsome.”
Nash drained his glass. He raised his gaze to her, and he thought about how she really was very tiny, and very pretty. And very, very… young. He licked his lips. “I think we’re both too drunk. Maybe we should go to bed.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Okay.”
“Okay,” he said. He got up and held out a hand for her glass.
She held it close to her chest. “Are you saying that because you’re trying to be a gentleman or because you’re not actually attracted to me?” She cringed. “Sorry.” She peered up at him. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t drunk, but I am, and I think we should just be honest, because this will be awkward later no matter what, but it would better to clear the air than to try to have a conversation about it later. You know?”
He hesitated.
“Just say it,” she said. “I can handle it.”
“You’re very young,” he said. “I couldn’t… Give me your drink. You shouldn’t have any more.”
“I thought we already went through this young thing,” she said.
He tried to get her drink.
She snatched it away and then drained the whole thing in one long gulp.
“Jesus, Zoe,” he said.
She made a face. “Oh, fuck, I think that was too much.” She stumbled.
He caught her. He took the empty glass from her and set it on the coffee table.
She stayed leaning against him, blinking her eyes. “I think I do want to lie down now,” she murmured.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
She pushed away from him, stumbling and then righting herself. “I can do it myself.”
“Are you sure?” he said.
She nodded. She was heading toward the guest room.
“Don’t lie on your back, okay?” he said.
“I’m not an idiot,” she said. And then she disappeared into the guest room.
Nash sat down on the couch. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Getting drunk had probably not been a good idea. He should check on Zoe in a few minutes, make sure she wasn’t asleep on her back. She was pretty drunk, and he didn’t want her to vomit in her sleep and suffocate to death. Of course, he wasn’t sure if that really happened to anyone besides rock stars. Five gin and tonics wouldn’t make you that drunk, right? Even if you were as tiny as Zoe?
Man.
He suddenly felt acutely lonely. There was no way in hell that anything would have happened with Zoe tonight, regardless of how old she was. He did not make a practice of hooking up with drunk women, Tabitha being a notable exception. And look how that had turned out. Ariel was great, of course, but he had missed most of her life. If she hadn’t been conceived in a drunken hookup, things would have been different.
No, he didn’t go to bed with drunk women, because drunk women didn’t know what they wanted, and he wasn’t about to take advantage of that.
But it had been a long time since he’d talked to Madigan, and he thought of her now, of the way it felt to huddle close to her nude body in bed, of the way her lips felt against his own.
He fumbled for his cell phone, scrolled through his contacts, and selected her name. His finger hovered over the call button for a moment before he hit it.
He put the phone to his ear and listened to it ring.
“Oh my God, Nash, it’s two in the morning,” came Madigan’s voice over the phone.
“You sound pretty awake,” he said.
“That’s beside the point,” she said. “Are you drunk?”
“Are you?” he said.
“Why are you calling me?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. I, uh, I miss you.”
She was quiet.
“Mads?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that—”
“I’m trying to move on, Nash,” she said. “I’m really trying. It only makes it harder when you call me and stuff. Give it a few months, and maybe we can be friendly, you know?”
“Listen, Madigan.”
“I’m going to hang up,” she said. “Please don’t call me again.” Click.
He took the phone away from his ear. When Madigan had ended things, she said she was sorry. She said she knew it made her seem like a horrible person, but she had a vision of the way she wanted her life to go, and it wasn’t this way.
Madigan had dumped him because of Ariel.
She said that she’d always envisioned that she and her future husband would marry each other first, that neither would have the baggage of a previous marriage or any children with another woman.
“I can’t picture myself as a stepmother,” she told him.
He’d pointed out that they weren’t married.
“Yeah,” she said. “Thank God for that.”
It was a shitty thing to do, he t
hought. She was a bitch to leave him for that reason. She should have stayed with him and gotten to know Ariel and been part of it. She should have been there for him while he was wrestling with the fact that he had just become a father. But instead, she’d only thought of herself.
She was selfish.
He didn’t want to be with a woman like that anyway.
He regarded his empty glass and thought about making himself another gin and tonic. But instead, he got up and went to the door of the guest room.
He knocked softly on the door. No answer.
Carefully, he opened the door.
Zoe was sprawled out on the bed on her stomach, fully clothed and snoring. The lights were still on.
Nash flipped them off and picked up a blanket. He covered her up and then backed out of the room.
* * *
When Nash woke up, his head was pounding and he felt like death warmed over, but something had clicked into place while he was sleeping.
Siobhan.
She worked ahead.
That was the answer to everything.
He got out his phone and called Charity.
Charity didn’t answer. It went to voicemail instead.
Nash called her back. He paced in the living room, wearing his robe open over a white t-shirt and a pair of plaid boxers.
It went to voicemail again.
Undeterred, Nash kept dialing.
The fourth time, Charity finally picked up. “Listen, I think I made myself clear the last time that I saw you that I don’t want to have anything else to do with your damned podcast.”
“Hi Charity, it’s Nash Steven Wilt,” he said.
“I know you are. I recognized your phone number.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well, listen, I kind of need a favor.”
“Are you recording this?”
“No,” he said. “That’s not the favor.”
“I’m not doing anything,” said Charity. “I was finally starting to get over all of this, and now you—”
“The computer in Siobhan’s office, she uses that, right?”
“Listen, I—”
“Can you just go to that computer?”
“Oh, Jesus. How long is this going to take?”
“Five minutes,” he said. “Probably less. Just go to the computer, okay?”
The Feminine Touch Page 15
