by Mary Whitney
“If you told me, I wouldn’t believe you anyway.”
“God, I wish you would,” he said before kissing me again.
It felt like we were both making up for lost time—not long into it, I was stroking his chest and arms, while he cradled my head with his other hand wandering to the lowest part of my back. I never knew that part of my body was an erogenous zone until I felt Adam’s hand softly stroking it. The kisses were hard then soft and then hard and then soft, and my heart was in every one of them. It felt like his was, too.
After half an hour, I was dizzy, though it had felt like no time at all. My only proof it had been a while was my racing heart, uneven breathing, and swollen lips. He looked like he was in the same shape.
“I don’t want to leave,” he said, holding me tighter.
I knew I needed to check the time because it was getting late. I glanced at my watch; I had to end the night. “I really should get in. I try not to abuse my privileges.”
He sighed. “I’m gone next week. My family’s going to San Francisco for this Thanksgiving holiday of yours.”
“Touring the States while you’re over here?”
“Something like that.”
“Then I’ll see you when you get back.” I was thinking that a week apart would be good. Maybe by then everything that had happened that night would sink in.
“Just let me walk you to your porch,” he said stroking my cheek.
We held hands walking to my door, and I wanted to pinch myself to make sure all of this was real. When we reached the porch, he kissed my cheek. “Look after yourself whilst I’m gone.”
“You too,” I whispered.
With a tousle of my hair, he turned and walked to his car. I closed the door behind me and rested my back against it. Going against my better judgment, throwing caution to the wind, and leaving my sanity behind, I was grinning.
Chapter 13
WAKING UP THE NEXT MORNING, I immediately smiled, though I probably had never stopped smiling from the night before. I felt the need to say it out loud as if to confirm the reason behind my happiness: “I kissed Adam Kincaid last night. More than once—like, a lot. Like, a lot a lot.”
Hearing it aloud still didn’t make it seem possible, but then I remembered his words to me: “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this.” My heart jolted, which caused a fit of snickering. Trying to smother some of my giddiness, I threw my pillow over my face, but that didn’t control my feet tapping the mattress in excitement.
Unfortunately, my private party was abruptly interrupted by an annoying knock on my door from Mom. I wasn’t about to kill my buzz any further by getting up to answer.
“Yes?”
“Good morning, Nicki. You were out late last night.”
“Just at Tom’s.” I rolled my eyes. I had privileges, but my actions were monitored closely.
“I need to do some errands, so I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Okay.” I smiled at the good news. The house would be empty.
In less than twenty minutes, I had Rachel and Lisa in the living room with me. Rachel giggled. “Well, look at Miss Happy Face. We haven’t seen that in a while. Well, maybe not since David was on the scene.”
“Give it up now, girl,” Lisa said with a smirk.
I was still grinning as I grabbed a pillow for emotional support. Was my mouth going to hurt after all this smiling? I quickly remembered that I needed information from them before I told them anything. “I need to know what you think first. What did people do when they saw me lying on him?”
Rachel looked unimpressed with the question. “All Tom said was ‘Finally,’ and I said, ‘Amen.’ We just kept watching the movie after that.”
“That is such BS, Rachel,” said Lisa, tossing a throw pillow at her. “We were trying not to laugh too loud. As for everybody else, well, most people just smiled or ignored it. Except for Lance…”
Lance. Bitchy, queeny, lovable Lance. The memory of David between my legs in Lance’s backyard came to mind. Uh oh. He was a problem. “So…what did Lance say?”
“Lance made a comment like, ‘It looks like Nicki has a thing for the entire Kincaid family,’” said Lisa. She waved her hand dismissively. “You know how he is.”
Rachel wrinkled her nose. “He said it kind of loud, but Adam just laughed it off. You were dead to the world.”
“Thank God.” I considered it for a moment and said, “All in all, it sounds like I made out okay, though.”
“Speaking of making out, how did that go?” asked Rachel.
“How do you know about that?” I sucked at playing dumb, so a giggle escaped, which annoyed Lisa.
She rolled her eyes. “Get real. Like you didn’t spend the rest of the night making out in his car.”
“Yeah.” They were my best friends, but for some reason I felt shy talking with them about Adam. Why was that?
“Come on,” she said more nicely. “You’ve been smiling since we got here, so I assume it was good.”
Rachel answered for me. “Of course it was good! Like Adam Kincaid is going to be a bad kisser.”
“She has a point.” I giggled.
“Too bad he’s away for a week,” Rachel said.
“Yeah, it sucks. Last night was fun.” I still had to ask the question, though. “So what do you think about it? Good or bad?”
“What?” Rachel sounded baffled. “Of course it’s good. He’s great. You’ve spent the entire semester like a lovesick cow. And the only person who is happier than the two of you is Tom. He’s felt like he’s been in the middle of this drama, so he’s very happy to have it over. He didn’t understand why things were so difficult for you two. Maybe it’s because things have always been so easy for us.”
That soured my mood a bit. “Well, nothing seems easy for me.”
Lisa’s face softened. “Oh, Nicki. This year has been really hard for you. It’s really nice to see you happy.”
She glanced at Rachel and took a deep breath. “Listen, Rachel didn’t want me to say anything, but I feel that I have to say something—as a friend.”
I stared at her, frightened. She flashed a look at Rachel, who scowled at her.
“What?” I gulped.
“Okay. Well, you know I’m judgmental.”
“That’s an understatement.” It had come out super dry, so I added, “But it is one of the reasons why we love you.”
First smiling at my response, Lisa then held up her hands as if to shield herself. “So, take this with a grain of salt. I worry that you’re only going to get hurt by him. I think his dick rules his mind, but all guys are that way, so…whatever. And I know you’re really into him, and I can understand why. He’s leaving, though. It may be fun right now, but I don’t think he will be good for you in the end.”
She might as well have spoken her last words in Russian because I didn’t understand them at all. It didn’t compute. Adam? Adam would be bad for me? After last night, that seemed impossible.
It took me a moment or two to respond to her. “Thanks. I know you mean well.”
“Oh, good. I’m happy to have that off my chest,” she said, placing a hand to her heart. “You should know that regardless of everything, I’m glad that you’re happy right now.”
“So am I.”
After they left, Mom came home, and she caught on almost immediately. “You’re unusually cheery today. What’s going on? Is there a new boy?”
Ugh. I didn’t want Mom involved until the last possible moment. Yet I also didn’t want her to be totally in the dark. Then she’d make too big a deal of it when she did meet him.
More than ever, I wished Lauren were here. She would’ve made the discussion light for all of us. I could hear her saying, “Aw, Mom, leave her alone. She’s got a crush.” Or she’d spill the beans all at once: “Mom, he is so cute, and he’s got an accent, and he’s even smart—well, at least smart enough for Nicki, maybe not for me.” Instead, it was just Mom and me in all of our awk
wardness.
“Someone new?” I shrugged. “Maybe. Not sure yet.”
Mom raised her eyebrows and turned away, but I caught her smiling. Oh well. It made me smile, too.
Just as Lauren and I always had, I spent Thanksgiving with Dad while Mom went on a beach vacation to Mexico with some friend. Dad always flew his mother in from Austin for the holiday. My Grandma Johnson was much older than my other grandparents. Even though she was warm and loving, she was kind of a mean old biddy. It made her pretty funny because she always said what she thought, which meant she said lots of rude and inappropriate things. Lauren had adored her.
She was also very, very Catholic and hated the fact that my parents had divorced. Any time it came up in a bad way or even when it was just mentioned without too many people around, Grandma would always say under her breath, “Never would have happened if Joseph were alive.” I bet she was right.
Grandpa Joe had been a very stern man who’d always had a hold on Dad, even when he was an adult—Dad was an only child and devoted to his father. But Grandpa Joe had died a few years before the divorce, after a long battle with cancer. Looking back, his death had seemed very natural to me because he’d been so old, and the cancer had just slowly taken everything away from him. I couldn’t really remember a time that he hadn’t had cancer. Grandma Johnson had never gotten over it, and I couldn’t tell if Dad had.
When Dad picked me up at the airport again, he gave me a clingier than usual hug. “I’m happy you’re back.”
“Me too,” I said with a smile. Amazingly, it felt like the truth.
When I saw Grandma Johnson, I noticed at once that she looked tinier than the last time I had seen her. She gave me a big hug and whispered, “You look too thin. I don’t care what the style is these days. Men like breasts.”
“Right. Got it.” It was hard not to be bitter, even though she was only stating facts. So I grumbled another fact. “But thanks to Mom, I don’t have a lot to work with.”
“It’s okay,” she said, patting my back. “I’ve been cooking.”
“Of course you have. I’m looking forward to it.”
Things were quiet in the house while the turkey roasted, so I decided to steal into Lauren’s room. It looked untouched since the last time I’d been there. Once again, it was so pretty with all the different shades of blue as the light hit the walls. And once again, my heart called out to her. I immediately teared up. I sat on the bed with my hands between my legs and whimpered.
I wanted to tell her how everything had changed—about how Mom had this new crazy side; how Dad seemed a little more interested in me; how even Michelle was now nice; and how I had kissed this boy who seemed like a dream, yet I was worried the other shoe was going to drop.
Was I sad that Lauren was dead purely for my own selfish need of a friend?
No. I missed Lauren as my sister and friend, but I missed her, too. Lauren had made my life better just because she was here. I gasped, and with a tear of my heart, I went to the place that I absolutely forbade myself to go. I started to wonder what life would be like if she were alive.
What would she be doing right now? What would we be doing? How many funny stories would she have made up about her teachers? What great grades would she have gotten? What boy would she be crushing on that she wouldn’t tell me about?
Then my questions went further. What would her future have been like? Where would she have gone to college? Would she have gotten married? Would she have had kids? Would our kids have played together?
When I imagined two wild little girls chasing each other—something that would never be—I really started to cry. Big, ugly crying. Because whether I was crying for me or for Lauren, she wasn’t there, and my life wasn’t going to turn out like it was supposed to. In a way, my life as I knew it was over. I was going to have to start a new one.
My blubbering only began to subside when my sleeves got so wet from my tears that I had to search for a tissue. I couldn’t find one in her room, and with tears still streaming down my face, I knew I needed to get the hell out of there or my crying jag wouldn’t stop. As I closed the door, I saw Grandma Johnson shuffling down the hallway. Only a blind person wouldn’t see that I’d been bawling. A grandmother would probably sense it once I opened the door.
She walked over, gave me a big hug, and I cried on her shoulder. “Grandma, when does it get better? When is it not so painful…so hard…all the time?”
“I suppose everyone is different,” she said, pulling away. I knew a friendly lecture was coming. “At times, your grandfather’s passing is as hard for me today as it was the day he died, but the pain isn’t as constant anymore. I can go days and even weeks of going along in my life with nothing. Then it can hit me out of the blue, and I feel the grief all over again. Other times, you know when a bad patch of pain is coming…birthdays, holidays…things like that. You can brace yourself.”
It still didn’t quite make sense, but I nodded, which instigated another hug from her. “Oh, Nicki, I wish I could tell you something different. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to find your way on this one without much help.”
“Yeah. That’s the one thing I’ve kinda figured out.”
Stroking my hair, she smiled and said, “The bright side is the wonderful memories are always there waiting for you, right beside your heart.”
Chapter 14
OF COURSE IT WAS MISTING as I walked to school on Monday morning. My hair was probably expanding in frizz with every step, and I knew I’d look frightening by the time I got there. The weather fit my gloomy mood. I was anxious after running through all the scenarios that could happen that morning.
What if Adam acted like nothing had happened? Very likely. Typical guy behavior. What if everything that Friday night with him had been just a dream? Unlikely. I wasn’t that psycho. What if he decided that it had been a mistake? Possibly. Guys could be fickle.
But none of those things happened. Before I got even near the lockers, Adam craned his neck to spot me and smiled. I waved, and my stomach started to tighten with nerves. When I was close enough, he reached out and grazed my forearm with his fingers. “It’s good to see you again.”
My heart jumped at his twinkling eyes, which seemed happy—so happy that I had to look away for a second. “Hi…It’s good to see you, too.”
Adam leaned against his locker as I started getting my books out. “Did you get tired of eating turkey?”
“A little. How was San Francisco?”
“Foggy and rainy. It felt like home.”
“Did it make you more homesick than usual?” Why did I ask a question that I didn’t want the answer to?
“No. I wouldn’t say I was homesick. And Christmas is coming.” He shifted his weight before saying what sounded like an admission. “We’re going home until after the New Year.”
“That will be nice.”
That’s not what I thought, though. England. His ex-girlfriend. Ouch. My soul sank along with my heart. I closed my locker door and glumly announced, “Time to get to class.” How did my happy day go south so quickly?
Adam suddenly looked a little forlorn, too, but then he smiled. With a wordless nod, he placed his hand on the small of my back. It felt like reassurance as he guided me into the classroom. Equally silent, I responded by leaning somewhat into his warmth; it felt like the right place to be. My body told me that the micro display of public affection was an extraordinary event—a visible, shared sign of something we both felt.
And that began a day of school for me unlike any other. We met at our lockers after every class and would talk and laugh. There would be some moments of awkward but electric silence. Occasionally, he would touch me with either a hand on my shoulder or my arm. At first, I avoided looking at him when it happened. Then before fourth period, he put his hand on my shoulder, and I stared at him. His eyes held mine, and his whole face turned into a naughty smile. I had no idea what he was thinking about, but I was sure I’d enjoy it. I spent most of
the day in hyper-anticipation about what might happen next.
Through drama class and lunch, Tom would look at me and grin. Finally, in the middle of lunch, I had to ask, “Tom, why are you smiling at me?”
“Because two of my good friends who haven’t smiled in quite a while are very happy today.”
My face must have been as red as the Chinese flag. My mouth opened up, but nothing came out.
“Don’t worry, Nicki,” said Rachel. “The entire school hasn’t figured it out yet—just a handful. The rest would know more if anyone listened to Lance.”
I smiled but squirmed in my seat. I never really thought about people gossiping about me. Why would they? Other than the accident, there wasn’t anything worth talking about. Oh, God. I could just hear the reactions of people like Brittany Taylor and Cici Arnold if they heard anything about Adam and me. I was spitefully happy.
After school, Adam asked, “Can I give you a lift home? It’s bucketing down.”
“Thanks,” I said, my stomach flipping with excitement.
When we stopped in front of my house, however, I frowned—it was the end of our day together.
“I’d invite you in, but my mom has a rule that she first has to meet the guys I bring into the house.”
“Has she rejected any?” He smirked as he said it. He had to know that he would pass any mother’s test.
“Not really.”
“What about your dad? Has he?”
“Well, because of where Dad lives, he really hasn’t met many of my guy friends. But when he does, he likes to remind them that he used to work in law enforcement. I’d say he was joking, but he’s kinda not.”
He got the picture. “Hmm. Something to look forward to. Maybe we should just stay here until the rain stops. Tell me about your holiday.”
“Nah, I want to hear about your trip first.”
After he told me about his travels, he got quiet and looked at me through his thick lashes. “I was a bit worried this morning that maybe you had changed your mind—that you thought last Friday night was a mistake.”
