Beneath Him

by Kant, Komal

  After I’d organized everything on the kitchen table, I set out directing Madeline on what to do. After we emptied all the ingredients into a large, silver bowl, Madeline and I took turns mixing everything together.

  Once we’d poured the mixture into tiny cupcake patties and transferred tray into the oven, I set the timer for thirteen minutes while we started on the frosting. Frosting was the best part and I had different types of food coloring to make everything prettier.

  As Madeline and I sat at the kitchen table, tasting our beautiful frosting, and waiting for the timer to go off, the kitchen door swung open. When I glanced up to see who it was, my heart started up a cheerleading routine in my chest.

  It was Nick—sexy, confusing, obnoxious Nick—the bane of my existence. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him hanging around, being confusing and ruining my time with Madeline.

  “Hi, Nick!” There was excitement in Madeline’s voice as she hopped down from her seat and ran to greet him. It was completely different to the hesitation she had around him before.

  Baby steps.

  “Hey, Princess,” Nick said with a genuine smile that I wasn’t expecting, bending down to her level as she stopped short of him. “What are you doing?”

  Madeline scowled, and the resemblance between them was uncanny. I’d seen Nick make that face plenty of times. It was a lot cuter on Madeline, though.

  “It’s Faiwy Pwincess!” she corrected.

  Somewhere in between yesterday and today, she had decided that she didn’t want to be a regular princess. Apparently, regular princesses just didn’t cut it anymore.

  “Oh, gosh, I apologize, your Royal Fairy Princess Highness Madeline.” Nick bunched up his features, playing along. “What is that amazing smell, might I ask?”

  It was very hard to hide the smile that was threatening to spill across my face. This was a nice change for Nick. I wasn’t sure what had brought it about, but I hoped it was a sudden change in behavior that was here to stay.

  “We’re baking cupcakes!” she exclaimed, brightly.

  Right on cue, the kitchen timer went off with a ‘ping’ and Madeline squealed, deserting Nick and running over to the oven as I put on a pair of oven mitts.

  “Is it ready?” she asked in excitement, bouncing up and down as she watched me pull the tray of cupcakes out and place them on top of the kitchen bench.

  They were a nice golden color on the top and I could tell they would be nice and moist on the inside. I hated dry cupcakes and it was easy to overcook them. These appeared perfect though.

  “Almost,” I said, taking off the mitts and putting them aside. “They just need to cool a little before we decorate them.”

  “Do I get a cupcake?” Nick asked.

  Madeline’s eyes darted to me and she looked at me expectantly. “Can we give him a cupcake?” she asked in a loud whisper that Nick could clearly hear.

  “Hmm.” I tapped a finger to my chin in mock thought. “I guess we should, huh? Everyone else is getting one.”

  Madeline turned to Nick, nodding her head so that her golden curls bounced up and down. “Yes, you can have one.”

  “Only one?” Nick tilted his head to the side, an amused smile playing around his mouth.

  Madeline frowned, glancing back at me for prompting. I gestured two fingers at her, and she gave me a quick nod before turning back to Nick. “You can have two.”

  “That’s very generous of you, your Royal Fairy Princess Highness Madeline,” he said in a serious tone.

  Madeline giggled at that before her gaze wandered over to the cooling cupcakes. “Can I have one now, Sky? Pleeeeease?”

  I reached for one of the plastic plates I’d set aside for her. “How about two?” I said with a wink, putting them onto the plate and handing them to her. “Don’t forget to add the frosting. We can decorate the rest later when they’re not so warm, okay?”

  “Okay!” she said before skipping over to the kitchen table where the different colored frosting was organized into small bowls.

  With Madeline absorbed with the cupcakes and frosting, my attention turned to the elephant in the room. I didn’t mess around, especially when it came to a guy sleeping in my bed, and I wasn’t about to let this topic go.

  “Nick?” I asked, grabbing a cupcake from the tray and intending to use it as a way to get his attention.

  “Yeah?” he asked, shooting me a lazy gaze from where he stood at the edge of the table watching Madeline.

  Making sure Madeline was occupied, I walked over to him and handed him the cupcake before gesturing my head toward the fridge, hoping he would catch my drift.

  Understanding dawned in his eyes, and we both took the few short steps over to the fridge and out of earshot of Madeline.

  “What’s up?” He was leaning casually against the fridge, arms folded across his chest in a defensive position.

  “What are we doing?” I asked right away.

  Nick scrunched up his face and glanced around the kitchen. “Is this a trick question? I thought we were having cupcakes, but now I’m not sure.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes at him. I wasn’t sure if he was deflecting or if he actually didn’t know what I was referring to, so I tried again.

  “No, I mean you and me.” I gestured between us with a finger as though to elaborate my meaning. “What’s going on with us?”

  Nick’s expression fell and the center of his forehead pinched like he had a bad headache. “We’re living our lives.”

  Okay, now I definitely knew he was deflecting and it was not okay with me. Especially when I needed clarity. I needed some sort of logical explanation as to why I was letting Nick Ruggarson into my room every night, into my bed, and into my heart.

  Furthermore, I needed to know why he wanted to be in my bed every night.

  “Don’t give me that vague, philosophical crap,” I said, sounding more aggressive than I’d intended. Checking myself, I went on in a calmer tone, “You need to explain to me what’s going on with us. I’m not sure if we’re friends. We’re definitely not in a relationship, yet you climb into my bed every night. I need to know why.”

  Phew. That had been a huge pile of word vomit. I wondered if I’d made any sense. Basically, I’d just dumped a whole week’s worth of thoughts onto him. If he hadn’t been thinking about the situation before, there was no way he wasn’t now.

  Disturbingly enough, Nick’s expression didn’t change a whole lot. I noticed his jaw tighten and his fingers squeeze the cupcake a little too hard, but other than that nothing really gave away any inner conflict that he might be experiencing.

  As usual, complete poker face.

  “Maybe,” he said, his tone steady as he stared fixated at a spot just above my head, “the question you should be asking is why you let me climb into your bed every night.”

  My thoughts faltered.

  What the hell? What did this have to do with me?

  “Um, no, the problem is you.” I moved forward and jabbed him in the arm. “You’re the one who comes into my room and gets into bed with me. I want to know what that means.”

  He shrugged, his grip tightening on the poor cupcake as he pulled away from me. “Why does everything need to have a label? Why can’t it just be what it is?”

  “Because I’m not even sure what it is!” I cried, feeling exasperated.

  “Well, if it bothers you so much then lock your door.” His hold on the cupcake slackened and it bounced pathetically on the floor before rolling a little.

  I could tell, despite his cool demeanor, my words were getting to him. I was asking questions that he didn’t want to answer. Well, I wasn’t about to let him get away. He seemed to think running away solved his problems when all it did was make them worse.

  “Nick!” I hissed in a low tone, not wanting Madeline to notice anything was wrong. “Why would you give up having a random woman in your bed every night in exchange for getting nothing from me?”

  That was the burning question. I ne
eded to hear the truth. I needed to know why this was happening.

  Nick paused, and from the way his eyes were skating all over the place, I could tell that there was something he did want to say. He just wasn’t saying it.

  Finally, he exhaled, briefly meeting my stare. “Who says there’s nothing with you?”

  I felt like I’d been slammed in the chest. From how serious his tone was, I knew he wasn’t messing around with me.

  As I tried to get my bearings straight, Nick turned and walked straight out of the kitchen. I didn’t even bother stopping him or going after him. His words had left me feeling breathless.

  In some sort of weird way, what he’d said was more than enough without actually giving me a real answer. With his silence he’d acknowledged that he was well aware he was giving up sex with random women. He’d basically said he was getting something from me, although I had no idea what that could be.

  The kitchen door opened again, and I glanced up half-expecting to see Nick’s solid frame in the doorway.

  My stomach plummeted ten stories. It was the Evil Queen.

  It was like this day couldn’t get any worse, but I tried not to appear deflated at her entrance. Instead, I gave her the biggest smile I could muster. “Good morning, Chloe.”

  She didn’t respond. I wasn’t surprised.

  At my words, Madeline glanced over at the door excited from the new arrival. “Aunt Chloe, look! We’re making cupcakes.” There was pink and blue frosting all over her face that she was oblivious to.

  “That’s wonderful, dear,” she said absently, her laser beam gaze directed at me. “Can I have a minute of your time, Sky?”

  Great. It was nine in the morning. What could I have possibly done already to piss her off? With the devil woman you never really knew.

  “Um, sure,” I said, nodding for her to continue.

  “Outside,” she said, her lips set in a tight line.

  Oh, boy. That didn’t sound good. If the conversation was one she couldn’t have in front of Madeline then there was no way it was going to be a good one.

  I wracked my brain, trying to figure out if I’d unintentionally done something wrong. Mrs. Potts seemed happy with my progress, but maybe she was saying something different to the Ruggarsons behind my back.

  “Madeline, your aunt and I are just stepping outside for a moment,” I said, grabbing a napkin and swiping it across her face to clean up some of the frosting. “You keep an eye on those cupcakes for me, okay?”

  “Okay!” She turned back to her remaining cupcake, more concerned with covering it with frosting and colored sprinkles to sense the tension between Chloe and me.

  Chloe led the way, and once we were out of the kitchen, she stopped short right outside the door. “Was Nicholas just with you?” she demanded, not even giving me a second to prepare myself.

  My forehead creased in confusion at her question. “Um, yes.”

  Why did she need to take me out of Madeline’s range of hearing to ask me that? It didn’t really seem like a big deal.

  “I saw him leave the kitchen a moment ago,” she said, her mouth forming a tight line as she stared me down. The way she’d said that made it seem like she was accusing me of something.

  “Uh, yeah, because he was just with me.” I tried not to let the attitude drip into my voice, but this seemed like the most pointless conversation in the world. I’d just told her that Nick had been with me, yet she was interrogating me like I’d lied about it.

  “What was he doing with you?” Her blue eyes narrowed into slits. They weren’t the same shade of blue as Nick’s; they were paler, cooler, giving her a perpetual frosty appearance.

  Now I seriously felt like I was being interrogated for a heinous crime.

  “We were eating cupcakes with Madeline,” I answered, extremely confused.

  I conveniently left out the part where we’d been discussing why he slept in my bed. Well, I’d been discussing; Nick had been evading.

  “Cupcakes?” Chloe was staring at me as though I’d just told her I’d killed someone. Was she anti-dessert or something? “My son was helping you cook?”

  “Yeah, why? It made Madeline happy,” I said with a shrug. “We’ve done it before. Well, Nick and I have, anyway,” I added as an afterthought, thinking back to the night when he’d watched me make Shepherd’s pie.

  Chloe’s eyes grew so wide that I was worried her head would explode and rain diamonds everywhere. “You mean to say that this is not the first time my son has cooked with you?”

  “Um, yeah, I guess.” I glanced around awkwardly, trying to figure out where the emergency exit for this conversation was. Chloe was a snot-nosed witch, but this was verging into the bizarre territory.

  “And what do you do during these cooking sessions?” she demanded.

  What the frickin’ hell, woman?

  “We cook!” I shot her a look of disbelief. This woman was nuts.

  “Don’t you dare take that tone with me!” she snapped, her expression growing dark as she took a step toward me. “Oscar and Emily may be enamored by you, but I see you for what you really are. I don’t know what kind of spell you’ve cast over my son, but I am warning you right now; stay away from him.”

  The way Chloe was speaking to me sent slivers of rage shooting through my body. She might be my boss, but this woman had no right to say those things to me when I’d done nothing wrong.

  “Look, Chloe, I don’t know what you’re accusing me of, but I can assure you that I’m not casting any kind of spell over Nick. Madeline loves it when Nick spends-”

  “Let me make it clear to you then,” she said, cutting me off. “In the last few years many girls have tried to take advantage of Nick, all for the sake of money. They have sweet talked him, lied to him, and slept with him to try and win him over, and I will not have that happening again. You work for us, Sky, so remember your place.”

  Now I was shocked and hurt, along with completely pissed off. No one had ever implied what Chloe just had. It would make sense for her to say those things to me if she’d seen Nick sneak into my room in the middle of the night, but for some reason I had a feeling that that wasn’t what this was about. If she’d seen him doing that, she would’ve come out with it right away.

  “I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying I’m a gold digger?” I almost choked on the words, that’s how much this was affecting me.

  “I think we understand each other perfectly,” she said curtly. “I know the type of girl you are; from a low, middle class family. You warm the bed of wealthy men thinking that somehow it will boost your status. Well, I have a name for those kind of girls. I call them whores.”

  Chloe’s words were like multiple slaps across the face. Her words stung, especially because Nick and I did sleep together, just not in that way. Her accusation cut me deep, and I was at a loss for words.

  Every night Nick came to my bed, but we weren’t in a relationship. We weren’t even friends. We weren’t anything. But was I a whore just like Chloe had said because I let him sleep in my bed? Now I wasn’t even sure.

  Tears pricked at my eyes, and my throat was dry as I swallowed. I had to get away from here. I needed a moment to compose myself.

  “Mom!” Nick yelled from somewhere behind me.

  Great. Just what I needed to make this situation even worse. Passive aggressive Nick.

  “Excuse me,” I managed to say, pushing past Nick who was standing right behind me.

  I didn’t look him in the eye as I pulled open the kitchen door and scrambled back inside, away from the two people who knew how to make my insides bleed.

  Nick

  It made me so angry that my own mother could be so cruel.

  Seeing how devastated Sky was, how the tears had spilled down her face, made me want to beat the shit out of something.

  “Nicholas, dear, I was just-” my mother started in a silky smooth voice.

  “You were what?” I demanded, channeling all my anger towards her.
“Getting in the middle of my business?”

  “Nicholas-” she tried again, but I didn’t let her finish.

  “Stay the fuck out of my life, Mom! I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that!” Speaking to my mother was making me even angrier. I needed to calm the hell down.

  I focused on my breathing as I stared into my mother’s face, trying not to resent her for getting involved in my life.

  Mom looked close to tears as she took an unsteady breath. “I’m just trying to protect you. I’m trying to help you.”

  “You’re not helping.” My voice was low now, the adrenaline I’d felt moments earlier had disappeared. Now I just felt empty, the way I always felt. “You’re only making it worse and calling Sky a whore was out of line. She’s not like that and she has no idea what’s going on. Don’t bring her into all this bullshit.”

  “Then tell me what I can do to help you move on.” My mom’s eyes pooled with tears and I’m sure if the Botox hadn’t permanently frozen her forehead, it would be creased right now. I’m sure it was creasing in spirit.

  “Give up on me,” I said, turning away from her and walking away.

  I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I was done with my mother’s methods of trying to save me.

  All I wanted to do was give some sort of comfort to the girl who gave me hope. Sky didn’t realize what she did for me in the darkness of the night, but it was more than she could ever understand.

  I was slowly realizing I couldn’t always run away; Sky reminded me that. She reminded me that in order to live, I had to breathe first.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sky

  The pounding on my door wouldn’t stop.

  “Open this fucking door, Sky, or I will break it down, so help me God!”

  This was the first time Nick had ever vocalized so clearly his intent to be in my room. It was also the first time I felt so overwhelmed that I didn’t even want to open the stupid door. That door was a silent curse, blurring the boundaries of our relationship.