Boring Is The New Black

by Megan Bryce

  “At least a three and a half. Maybe a four.”

  They both smiled when Lisa gripped his face, tipping it to the light.

  “You’re an eight, if not a nine.”

  “Mom, I think you’re biased.”

  “I am not. Tell him, Mike.”

  “Maybe a five. In the right light.”

  Lisa glared at her husband, dropping Flynn’s face. “You’re a five.”

  Mike laughed. “So, come on. Tell us about this girl.”

  Flynn sighed and paused, staring at his fingers on the keyboard.

  “I like her. And she’s out of my league. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Well. Maybe she’s like your mom and thinks you’re a nine. She like you back?”

  “For a little while.”

  Lisa said, “What does that mean?”

  “It means our son is playing the field,” Mike said and sniffed with pride.

  Flynn snorted. “Yes. I’m an eight or a nine and instead of being played, am doing the playing.”

  Mike stopped smiling. “She’s just playing with you?”

  “I don’t know what she’s doing with me.”

  “Is she a player?”

  Flynn shook his head.

  “Then maybe she can see inside you, where you’re a ten.”

  “Aww.” Lisa smiled at her husband. “And that’s what bumps you from a five to a five and three-quarters.”

  Flynn didn’t know what Nicole was doing with him but she really wasn’t a player. Maybe she did see something inside him. She had said she thought he was Superman.

  Mike grabbed Lisa, pulling her onto his lap. “I’ll give you a five and three-quarters.”

  Flynn grimaced and said, “You want me to fix this computer or not?”

  “I’d rather kiss your mom.”

  “Okey-dokey. Going upstairs.”

  Lisa stayed on her husband’s lap, listening to the soft tread of her youngest son as he went up the stairs, and said, “It’s Nicole Bissette.”

  “What?!” Mike shook his head. “Nah. She’s not a ten.”

  “Your gauge is broken.”

  “Really? ‘Cause I would have said you were a ten.”

  “Aww.” She turned, putting her arms around his neck. “You can kiss me now.”

  “Only if you bump me up to a six.”

  She gripped his face between her hands. “You’re an eight, if not a nine. But if that gets out, I’ll be chasing other women away all day long and never have time to cook your dinner.”

  He thought about it, then nodded. “That works for me.”

  Seventeen

  Nicole went home, too.

  Not because she’d had the worst/best day of her life.

  Not because she’d cried her eyes out, her spirit twisting under the knife of ugly words. Not because Flynn had come in and made her laugh. Had held her and kissed her and made her feel like a goddess.

  Nicole laughed.

  A goddess.

  With Tootsie Roll colored eyes.

  She knew she wasn’t because the real goddess was laying on the sofa, the skin on her face raw, red, and chunky from her chemical peel.

  Nikita took one look at her daughter and said, “And why have you spent the day crying your eyes out? They’re all red and puffy.”

  Nicole sat stiffly in an armchair. “I wanted to know what people thought of the store.”

  Nikita sighed, closing her eyes. “You have skin as thin as tissue paper. Who cares what people think; it only matters what they do.”

  “What did you think of it?”

  And this is why she had come home. For the truth.

  No Gia to hold her, so she turned to Flynn.

  No Victoria for the truth, so she turned to her mother.

  “I think that you were sold out when I looked at it.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, well done, darling.”

  Nicole sat back in her chair, silent, and Nikita said, “The results are all that matter. Everything else is an opinion, and everyone has one.”

  Nicole whispered, “How do you not care?”

  Her mother’s mouth opened for a frozen, pain-filled chortle.

  “I do it with a massive ego. My opinion is the only opinion I care about. What did you think about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll never be free of other people’s opinion, Nicole, until you learn to listen, and trust, your own.”

  “It’s really hard to take your platitudes seriously when you’re lying here bleeding onto your sofa because you can’t stand the fact that you’re aging.”

  Nikita opened her eyes to glare at her daughter. “Then move the towel to where it needs to be, Nicole.”

  When the towel was moved, Nikita cleared her throat. “I needed a touchup. And that was my opinion after seeing photos of me at various shows this last week.” She gingerly patted the skin on her cheek and muttered, “Should have done it weeks before.”

  “Me, too. Not the face, the store. Should have had it up before the show. Should have had more product.”

  Nikita waved a hand. “In the past. You can’t know what you don’t know until you know it. And more importantly, unchangeable.” She smiled at her daughter with her eyes. “We’ll both do better next year.”

  “I don’t. . . I don’t think I’ll do another runway. I know now that I didn’t enjoy it.”

  “But darling, you have such flair! I should have put you in acting classes. Got you out of your own skin.”

  “Well, this has been lovely. I’ll leave now, before we both ruin it.”

  Nikita held her hands up in surrender, sighing out a deep breath.

  “Stay, at least until Nicolette gets home.”

  Nicole lifted her eyebrows. “And when will that be?”

  “Not long. It will surprise you to learn that she enjoys being at home.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me at all, when you don’t care that she has a boyfriend eight years older than she is. When you do nothing about the cocaine.”

  “It’s part of our world, Nicole.”

  “It’s not a good part.”

  Nikita shrugged. So Gallic, so dismissive.

  “Mother.”

  Nikita frowned at her. “Nicole. Really. You know I don’t like that word.”

  “That’s what you are, Nikita. A mother. To a seventeen-year-old girl who needs you to be one.”

  “When I was seventeen, I was on my own. And I had boyfriends who were eight years older. And I had the coke, too.”

  “And you turned out fine,” Nicole said sarcastically. “You had a child when you were eighteen! Is that what you want for her?”

  Nikita snorted softly, then flinched in pain. She sat up slowly, trying not to jar her face. “I don’t want anything for my Nicolette, I’ll let her want for herself. Just like I did for you.”

  “You let me? Oh yes, thank you for not being a mother to me. For not giving me a father. For letting me figure it all out on my own.”

  “You’re welcome,” her mother said, and Nicole’s throat burned with the effort it took not to scream at her.

  “My parents had my life all figured out for me and they were wrong.” Nikita held her arms up, indicating the loft. “Look what I have. Look what I’ve done for myself. Look where my want has taken me.

  “We don’t know where your want will take you yet, do we? That’s a gift, Nicole. We don’t know where Nicolette’s want will take her. Although I’m afraid that if I want Nicolette to move out, I’ll have to kick her out. Most likely when she’s forty. But I don’t mind her staying. My oldest daughter left when she was fourteen and never came back. It was too soon.”

  “I went to school.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself? You may have left properly, finding yourself an environment that felt like you hadn’t just ripped yourself away from your home, but you left just as surely as I did. You’re more like me than you want to admit.”

  Nikita raised
an eyebrow at the look of horror on her daughter’s face.

  “My drive. My ambition.” She waved her hand in the air. “Nicolette takes after her father. Happy to let the current take her where it will.”

  Nicole wouldn’t ask, because it didn’t matter. Not now, when she was twenty-seven.

  It was too late.

  So she didn’t know why she said, “Did he know about me? My father?”

  “Yes. But he was married, so that complicated things. He still is, surprisingly enough. I suppose some women are too much of a bitch to ever divorce. A man’s secrets, and all his money, would go with her when she left.” Nikita chuckled. “That’s probably why I never married. It would be for forever.”

  She studied Nicole’s pale face for a long minute. “Well? Are you going to ask me who? I always figured you would ask when you needed to know. Nicolette asked me when she was ten. But where angels fear to tread, there goes my Nicolette.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He obviously didn’t care enough about me to ever bother introducing himself.”

  “Well, he did set up a very nice trust fund for you. Sometimes it is all a parent can do.”

  That was a shock and Nicole sat there, knowing her mother had just given her the key to her father’s identity. She could just go look at the papers.

  She said, hesitantly, “Do I know him?”

  “Yes.”

  Nicole took in a deep breath and shook her head. She didn’t want to find out here, not with Nikita watching for her reaction.

  Nikita said, “I won’t tell you unless you ask. Sometimes it is all a parent can do.”

  Nicole snorted and stood. “All you can do is nothing? I’m shocked.”

  “I won’t tell and you won’t ask. Not like me at all, hmm?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Nikita adjusted the towel and lay back down. “Must be why we get along so well.”

  Nicole left, and she did not slam the door on the way out.

  Sometimes it was all a daughter could do.

  Eighteen

  Flynn was kicked back in his chair, his feet up on his metal desk, when Nicole flung open his closet door and ran in, shutting the door smoothly behind her.

  “What are–”

  She waved at him wildly to stop talking, taking two big steps to press her finger against his lips.

  “Shh. My mother is here.”

  Her father, too. Dammit, she should have never brought it up with Nikita.

  Shouldn’t have looked at the trust papers.

  Should have gone on, happily blissful, without ever knowing.

  Except she’d never been happily blissful.

  She’d never been happy.

  And she did know him, had known him since before she could even remember.

  It had been almost too much to hope that she’d be happy with who her father was but despite the fact that he was nearly twenty years older than her mother– oh yes, and married– she was happy.

  . . .happy-ish. Not unhappy, at least.

  Nicole looked at the finger still pressed to Flynn’s lips and whispered, “Sorry.”

  All morning she’d wondered what she’d say to him when she saw him again.

  After yesterday.

  She’d thought it would be awkward. She’d decided she would just avoid him all day.

  I mean, what do you say to a guy the day after you eat a mountain of candy, vomit, and then make out with him?

  But it had all been shoved under the panic of seeing and knowing her father. Of knowing that her whole life she could have known, if she’d only looked.

  Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to look.

  She could have asked Nikita at any time, and hadn’t.

  Flynn mumbled, “Not going to lie. I don’t hate this,” and Nicole’s panic receded. And the awkwardness just wasn’t there.

  She took her finger off his lips and he looked at her gaping shirt, at a peek of dark purple lace, and he gasped.

  Nicole tsked. “Terrible design. Not my own obviously.”

  Flynn swallowed. “I appreciate a poor design on the odd occasion.”

  “I can’t have it be said that I don’t pay my debts,” she said, and he stopped looking down her shirt long enough to laugh into her eyes.

  Her lips pressed together, and then she remembered where she was. In a windowless closet with Flynn, so she smiled back because no one could see her but him. She put her lips against his and wrapped her arms around his neck and said, “I don’t hate this either.”

  Off went her cardigan, and Nicole briefly understood why women wore shirts that gaped open.

  Sometimes you did want to show off your bra.

  And then her blouse disappeared, and Flynn’s tie was flung out carelessly behind her.

  He stood, hoisting her up onto his desk and then cupping dark purple lace gently. He stared at his hands, taking a deep breath.

  “You smell so good.”

  “It’s vanilla. Plain vanilla. That’s all that I am.”

  She pulled back, looking at him, hoping he would understand. She was just plain vanilla.

  He watched her for a long moment, then shook his head. “Just say it. Stop looking at me and just say whatever it is you’re thinking.”

  I’m just plain vanilla. Want me anyway.

  But he couldn’t read her mind, no one could, and she whispered, “Please.”

  His eyes widened and he said with reverence, “My lady. I am yours.”

  Nineteen

  Their feet were under the corner of Flynn’s desk, and his head was wedged in the opposite corner of the tiny room. Nicole’s head was tucked under his chin and her arm across his chest.

  Flynn couldn’t help it, he swore allegiance to the god of morning nookie with a lopsided grin on his face. “I will put gel in my hair every morning.”

  Nicole pushed up to look. “I didn’t even notice.”

  “Must have been subliminal.”

  She touched a crunchy lock. “Probably not. I was just distracted.”

  “Bad distracted or good distracted?”

  “Bad distracted. Then good distracted.”

  “That’s horribly honest of you,” he said but he remembered how she had begged him.

  She had begged him.

  Nicole smoothed a hand across his chest. “You weren’t any part of the bad distracted.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I’ll fix your hair for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She lay back down again, and Flynn let out a long, satisfied smile. That faltered a little when he noticed how close his head was to the door.

  “I really hope no one needs their phone fixed.”

  Nicole’s head rubbed against his chest as she looked at the door. “Is there a lock?”

  “There’s not usually a lock on the inside of a closet. I’m only vaguely worried that one day I’m going to get locked in from the outside.” He grinned. “I’ve got snacks in the bottom drawer just in case it happens.”

  “Snacks?”

  “I like to be prepared.”

  “We could probably take the lock off.”

  “Or put one on the inside? Might come in useful,” he said with naked boss in his arms.

  “I had a lock on the inside of my closet when I was growing up.”

  Flynn pondered that. “I’m trying to come up with a good reason why. You had an office when you were a kid?”

  Her breath puffed against his skin. “No. It was my hidey-hole. To keep me and my sister safe during parties.”

  Flynn didn’t know what to say to that but he could feel her heart thumping against him.

  He said softly, “Nikita must have thrown some real ragers, huh?”

  She shifted and his arms tightened reflexively. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  Nicole let out a quiet breath. “You can probably guess the kind of parties drugged-out supermodels throw. She was only eighteen when she had me. By the time
Colette was born, she’d outgrown them somewhat. She’s ragingly respectable now in comparison.”

  “Still scary.”

  He felt her smile. “Yes. But I had my sanctuary when I needed it.”

  Flynn lifted his head up, scanning his walls. “I can totally see sanctuary. Cozy. Cloistered. Tell me you had a lot of books in there with you.”

  “Mm, some. Lots of fashion magazines. And a TV.”

  He turned his head to stare at her in disbelief. “You had a TV in your closet?”

  “It wasn’t a small closet.”

  “Are you telling me your clothes closet growing up was bigger than my office closet is now?”

  She turned her head, calculating dimensions. “Umm. . . No, I’m not going to tell you that.”

  His head flopped back onto the floor and she squeezed him. “I already asked if you wanted a bigger office.”

  “I’m changing my answer.”

  “You can if you want but I’m liking this.”

  Flynn was liking it, too. A lot.

  And he liked it even more when she asked, “Can I stay with you in your small closet for a while?”

  Flynn’s heart started racing and he wondered if she could feel it.

  But then he remembered.

  “Nikita is probably still out there, huh?” He took a gulp of breath and went as falsetto as he could and opera-ed, “Sanctuary!”

  Nicole laughed against his side, bobbing against him so hard he thought she might break.

  Nothing wrong with the world when you’re lying on the floor naked with a laughing, naked, woman beside you.

  She sighed her breath out and when he glanced down at her, her smile was so wide and beautiful and heart stoppingly open, he just forgot. . .everything.

  Just watched her.

  He felt a tingle down by his toes but was still looking at Nicole so promptly forgot about it.

  She said, “You make me laugh.”

  “I try to make you laugh. Every once in a while I get you to break.”

  She laughed at him again. “Thank you for granting me sanctuary.”

  “Of course. I won’t even take it personally because it’s Nikita. But you’ve got to sing it.”

  “You could probably take it a little personally, but my father is here with her.” She shook her head at him. “And, nope.”