Without Scars

by Jones, Ayla

  She stuck her last jump on one foot without any wobble and then bowed. “Okay, Charlie. I want to try something. Hold your arms up. You’re going to catch me. Don’t think too much about it.”

  “Wait… what?” I whispered. Nikki ran toward me and rocketed into the air. “Oh fuck.”

  “Oh God. Yeah, right,” she said, laughing as she touched down softly. “You think I’m insane?” She grinned. She spun away from me and her eyes seemed brighter, some secret joy kindling in her irises.

  “Hey…come here. You look so damn amazing tonight, Nik.”

  “Is that my ‘damn’ for today? Thank you. Dress is from 1975; the woman at the thrift shop told me. Seemed appropriate.” She threw her arms around my neck and mashed her lips to my cheek. It took all the effort in the world not to turn my head. But I couldn’t help imagining what she’d do if I kissed her. “I’m having such a great night. Camryn had a great day, too. My brother…is having an awesome time. I don’t care if I had to bribe him with this event to hang out with me. He’s here and he’s talking to me. That’s all that matters. Thank you.”

  I shrugged. “Any day I get you to smile like this is a good one.”

  “Well, today was perfect.”

  “Except for the part where you left the set…”

  She gasped, her face flushing. “And you’re going to laugh at me when I tell you why.”

  “It’s okay…some people can’t handle seeing a sex scene live. Trust me, Samira and I could barely handle it. You should’ve seen what happened when we closed the set for the nasty version.”

  Nikki gave me a defiant look—a smirk and squinted eyes. “You don’t know anything about me, Charlie, if you think I really can’t handle watching a guy about to go down on a girl.”

  Oh really? Whenever Nikki got that rough edge in her voice my dick got hard. Wait…harder. “Then why did you leave?”

  “Because you were that guy…” Her look fell. “I just…I realized if you ever got a girlfriend, that’s how things would be…” Her fingers curled into the back of my collar, her fingernails scraping my neck. “I’d be on the outside. I’d start being the third wheel.” She sighed and right before she pressed her face into my suit jacket, sadness washed over her face.

  “It would be the same for me. I’d have to see that, too,” I said. I saw the way men looked at her when we were out together. She could have her pick. I scowled over her shoulder, anger suddenly buzzing around my head, anxiety waiting in the wings. Nik and some other guy? Nah. I didn’t like that shit at all.

  We evolved into friendship right away, and we had never talked seriously about the possibility of being more, but it was getting harder and harder—pun fucking intended—to not think about having sex with her. And the fantasy of fucking Nikki was hot, but I was really starting to consider us in a major way. I wanted to protect her and take care of her, too. I wanted to be home for her. I wanted everything; that wasn’t friendship anymore.

  “Let’s make sure we never become the kind of people who stop hanging out because one of them gets involved with someone else.” She hugged me closer, shifting to her tiptoes.

  “Hey now, I was trying to leave some space between us this time,” I teased, kissing her temple. “Before you get scared again.”

  “You think I was scared earlier on set when you got hard…? Really?” She stepped back from me, the intensity of her stare making my heart pound faster. Her suppressed laughter was barely hidden behind a mischievous smile. “Spiders scare me. Roller coasters scare me. Random noises in the middle of the night scare me. You getting hard? Did not scare me. Not one bit.”

  “Can I be honest, then?”

  “Be honest.”

  I put my lips against her ear. “It was for you.”

  “You couldn’t possibly think I’m naïve enough to not know that…”

  Well, fuck.

  Her lips curved into a big smile when she pulled away from me. She didn’t break eye contact. Not even when the theater doors opened and the chaos of a hundred voices flooded the room. I was sweating—hot as summer asphalt under this suit. Muscles stiff. Dick like concrete.

  After Nikki put on her shoes, we climbed down off the stage. Samira signaled me, and I tried to shift into work mode. She and I had to give an introduction with our show’s history, talk about the series, and remember to enthusiastically name the important people at Hillington. But ignoring Nikki was no easy task. Her voice rang so loud in my head I couldn’t hear myself at all while Samira and I spoke.

  Eventually, I took my seat next to Nikki, and as anxious as I was to continue our earlier conversation, I decided to drop the topic for the rest of the night; this wasn’t really the place to have it. She switched gears, anyway, threatening to hold my eyelids open if I didn’t watch the episode. I thought tonight’s premiere was better than all of the episodes from last season combined, but I still didn’t know if it was what I wanted.

  With my brain on a pleasure cruise, I managed not to nitpick everything, and ignored every urge to walk out of the room. Finally, my last voiceover came through the speakers: “I couldn’t outrun the truth anymore. I couldn’t run, period. Sami Mitchell had become my prison.”

  The episode ended to a round of cheers. Someone on the balcony started a standing ovation, and then a disembodied voice called for a toast. The auditorium cleared slowly, and we spilled into the party area. Samira and I walked to the center of the room, and a flurry of wait staff hurried in with uncorked bottles of champagne. Samira hugged my arm, and we exchanged cautious smiles, but a strange rush of exhilaration and then calm struck me right then. I decided to relish the moment. See the tears in the crowd. Maybe we’d actually pulled this off. Maybe Samira and I were on the cusp of something great.

  And…Nikki.

  We still had to talk.

  But she excused herself without giving me a chance to stop her and didn’t return, so I had to wait until all the toasts ended before I went after her. I found her sitting on a sofa in the quiet lobby staring through the glass door entrance. “Hi, Mayhem…” I said and she smiled when she turned around, but it faded so quickly my chest tightened. Something was up. “Is this where you’ve been? You missed everything.” I walked over to her with a bottle and two champagne flutes.

  Holding her hands up, she said, “Oh, Charlie, I can’t drink any alcohol at all. Not even—”

  “It’s sparkling apple cider, you goof…” I showed her the label as I poured then gave her a glass. “What are you doing?”

  She aimed a sad look up at the ceiling. “Just thinking…I guess getting the job today hit me all at once when I watched you get accolades in there.”

  “Well, that’s why I came to find you. To toast to you. You deserve a little party, too…for your resilience. For not letting the end of SCB be the end of you,” I said and I lifted my glass, but she put hers down on the coffee table.

  I caught the pulse in her clenched jaw before she stood up and strode outside. She kept walking until she was on the edge of the street. I followed her out, not liking the flat tone I’d noticed in her voice. “You know why people read books and go to the movies, Charlie. At least we get to pretend for a couple hours that there’s some justice in the world. And that things work out for good people. People who aren’t me.” She stepped into the crosswalk, just past the cars parked at the curb, but the crosswalk signal hadn’t changed. An Escalade made a right directly in front of her and she jumped.

  Shit.

  “Nik, what the fuck are you doing?” I called out as my stomach tightened. “You can’t—”

  “If life were really fair, I would have third-degree burns. Or a punctured lung. Blindness. Some permanent injuries. Anything!” She moved a little farther into the street. Someone honked angrily. “I should’ve lost my leg or…or hit my head so hard I couldn’t remember how to dance. But maybe the universe will get it right this time. Because it hasn’t…”

  “Nikki, what the fuck!”

  “Seriousl
y, I’m invincible, Charlie...” She backed toward the other side of the road, and another car steadily honked as it went by. “See? Don’t worry. Maybe that’s my punishment. To causing suffering and never have it happen to me…” She trailed off when I ran to stand at her side. Nikki’s eyes rounded, terror cracking the methodical expression on her face. “Get out of the street, Charlie,” she demanded.

  “Nope.” My shoulder went back when she pushed me.

  “You’re making me care about you getting splattered all over the road. I only have room for my own self-destruction right now. I don’t want to be responsible for another person getting hurt.”

  “Then, stop.” I lifted her before she could fight me off and carried her back to the sidewalk. “This isn’t the way to fix what you’re feeling…what the fuck?”

  She sighed, looking defeated. “I know. I wasn’t trying to do…that. I’m just frustrated. I was just thinking about what it would really be like to have all of it taken away, you know? I wanted to know what that fear was like for them. Sometimes I think I should suffer, too. I thought I’d feel better about finally getting something amazing. But I’m only who I am right now because of what happened that night, Charlie. I had to hurt other people to heal. I think about all of it so much that I want to drink.” She stared at me pointedly, her voice rising. “Does that sound like someone you want to know? Because I want to drink so badly some days when I really think about what I did. I would black out happily. Other days I’m one minor incident away from just wanting to crawl back into bed and spending the rest of my life there. And I’m not a victim or a survivor. I’m not resilient. Or brave. Or strong. I am the perpetrator. I am the bad guy. And I don’t see anything victorious about overcoming the damage I caused.”

  “Go inside and drink your apple cider.” My voice came out strained, and maybe meaner than intended, but my fists were shaking. My anger was coming from helplessness. I couldn’t fix her pain. I couldn’t extract it and put every beautiful part of the universe there instead.

  But I would try.

  “Charlie, I—”

  “Come on…” I took her hand and pulled her back into the lobby. The bottle of cider and the glasses were right where I’d left them. “Drink it.” I folded her fingers around the glass. Nikki nodded slowly, keeping her eyes on me as she raised the rim to her lips.

  She’d told me that she’d walked away unscathed after the crash. But she had actually showed me scars that night we talked; the same ones she was revealing now, which were in places that almost never healed. I’d always thought that Nikki wasn’t guarded but I was wrong. Her armor was just harder to see. This was it. She exposed herself; she hid nothing. Dumping everything on you—fears, flaws, and pain—so she could take the blame and make it easier on you when you walked away. But also make it easier on her to not get attached if you weren’t going to stick around.

  This was survival.

  “Okay, I drank it,” she said in an uncertain tone. After picking up the bottle and my glass, I took her hand again, and we went back outside.

  “Hey, excuse me,” I said, yelling out to a couple walking by, “this is my best friend, and she just landed a job at SoBe. You know that burlesque place in South Beach? She’s part of it now. She’s spectacular. She’s a ballet dancer, too. Trained and all that shit. And when she dances, it’s like it’s just you and her in the room. It’s pretty cool. Please come see her dance. She won’t be wearing much.”

  Nikki snorted and doubled over. “Oh God, cider’s coming out of my nose…” Suddenly, she was hugging me but also backing me away from the guy and his girl. “Ignore him. He’s…he’s…”

  “The word is ‘awesome.’” I kissed her on the cheek. “But the judges would’ve accepted ‘amazing,’ and either of those with ‘fucking’ in front of it as well.”

  The woman approached us, curiosity beaming in her eyes. “But you got the job, though, right?” she asked.

  “I did,” Nikki said, laughing. “I did.”

  “Congrats. We’ve been there a few times. Maybe we’ll see you next time.”

  “I hope so. Thank you! Thank you so much!” Nikki called after them.

  “Excuse me, ladies!” I yelled to four women who had just jaywalked to our side of the street.

  “Oh my God, Charlie!” Nikki buried her laughter in her palm. “Don’t mind him,” she said, waving them off.

  I topped off our glasses with cider again and when we clinked them I said, “To you.”

  “To me.”

  “You are entitled to your happiness and your goals and aspirations. Nothing gets better if you don’t. If you feel like you have a long way to go to make up for driving drunk and hurting Camryn and your dad, I get that. If you feel like you still have something to prove to yourself because you’re not with So Cal Ballet anymore, I get that, too. But you lived in spandex for weeks so you could practice those damn routines whenever you got a chance—not that I’m complaining. You’re always so sore you climb stairs like my goddamn grandma. You earned a spot with that show, Nik. You earned it because you’re a great dancer. So, just stand here and plan to keep getting embarrassed because I’m telling people about you. All of Miami gets to be your tears in the crowd tonight.”

  Chapter Eight

  Nikki

  “You don’t have to come. I completely understand,” I told Lea after she sighed on the phone for the millionth time. “It’s going to be a crazy night and everywhere is going to be crowded.” I put the call on speaker and set my cell on the bathroom countertop. Applying my makeup for my first Sinners & Saints show required all my motor skills right now. I replayed the steps to tonight’s dance numbers in my head. Anxiety gripped me. I’d been experiencing it at varying levels all day. When I got this jumpy I also got parched for the one thing that always relaxed me. It was the first time I’d had a craving this intense in months.

  Lea groaned softly. “I want to be ready but—”

  “Goddammit!” I drew a crooked black line nowhere close to my lashes. “Sorry, continue.”

  “I didn’t even think I was going to make it through the How to Fuck up a Friendship viewing party. I just don’t know. I’m so terrible with people. Anyway, how have you been handling everything this week?”

  I had learned so much choreography I was pretty sure I had to unlearn a few other things to make it all fit. Like putting on eyeliner, apparently. “Talking to Judy.” She was my sponsor. “I called her three times. I’ve been coming home after two A.M. every night.” On top of my regular job and the musical. “Hopefully, it’ll all pay off tonight. And I don’t have to go to the after-party. We could go get burgers or go to the beach—”

  “No. Stop. It’s your big night. You need to bond with the other girls, and you’ve been playing it off all week how much you miss Charlie.” The eyeliner line I drew the second time was even worse at the mention of Charlie. “You want to see him, not babysit me all night.”

  “It wouldn’t be babysitting…” Charlie was on a college tour promoting How to Fuck up a Friendship. He’d miss the performance tonight because of the last tour date. But he was coming straight to the after-party at Sonar once he was back in Miami. We hadn’t spoken much. Our individual free time didn’t mesh well while he was away. Even my hectic schedule couldn’t trick me into believing I was too busy to be bothered by his absence, though.

  “You’d be worried about me the entire time.”

  “It wouldn’t be babysitting,” I repeated.

  “But it would be getting in the way of you hanging out with Charlie tonight. Have you talked about what happened at the viewing party? About how he’s dedicating boners to you?” It was for you. A chill ran up my back at the thought and I shivered. From thrill. From…lust. Those words were Body Wand material this week. But even before Charlie’s admissions or the way he’d performed his scene with Samira, I’d known he thought about me sexually. It was the way he touched me sometimes. And the way he looked at me. Like he wanted my clothes off
.

  Like he wanted me.

  And it turned me on so much. It was for you. I couldn’t shut the words out. No matter how many orgasms I had. I wanted Charlie to make me come. Okay, it was gross to be letting myself get so horny with my best friend on the other end of the phone.

  “Um, hello?”

  “I’m here.” I patted on gold glitter eye shadow.

  “You can’t hang out with me tonight because you’ve been miserable this week.” I miss you, Nik—that’s how Charlie had ended all our text conversations. But the voicemails were my favorite. “Fuck. I hate voicemail. Anyway, today was good. Samira’s boobs got a lot of cheers. Lots of people showed up. Wish you were here to see. Or I was there. Not that I’m not having fun. I just miss you. Samira says hi. Bye, Nik. Call me. I really miss you.” Heart, meet stomach. I’d only listened to the messages fifteen…million times. Misery? Ha! I was Edgar Allan Poe. What he was doing to my emotions was far worse than what was happening to my pussy.

  “Hello…” Lea said in a raised voice.

  “I’m here.”

  “Maybe it’s not love yet, but you’re into him as more than a friend.”

  “I am.” Fake or not, I’d been ready to beat the shit out of Samira, a happily married woman, whom I really liked, after watching them in that scene together. I was territorial...and irrational. But the bottom line was, friends didn’t orgasm to other friends. Well, maybe not the way I was, and I had been coming all week to Charlie.

  “And you’re thinking you want more…”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, this is going to be so great! He’s obviously crazy about you. He’s gonna build you a shrine of boners.” Lea giggled. “Okay, wait…only a serial killer would do that.”

  I burst out laughing. “Well, I did think he was one for about a minute or two. When was the last time I had someone in my life who was just so…Charlie?”

  “Um…fine as hell and into you? Always, Nikki.” But that was usually before the “I got drunk and almost killed people” convo.