Chapter Twelve
JORDAN
I arrived at Lucky’s ten minutes early, and I wasn’t at all surprised to find Nicole already there, seated at a booth in the back with a huge box next to her. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get this meeting over with.
The difference was that I wanted to get it over with because I wanted to look her in the eyes and explain my side of what happened. It wasn’t going to be easy. Nicole probably wanted to get it over with so she’d never have to see me again.
The thought of losing her forever made my heart clench again and pushed tears to my eyes. The bell above the door of Lucky’s tinkled when I entered, drawing Nicole’s eyes to me. Her shoulders heaved on a deep sigh, and she momentarily closed her eyes, as though she was praying for the strength to make it through the encounter.
My knees turned into jelly, causing my stride to falter as I crossed the trendy coffee shop where Nic and I had been getting our fix for years. How was it that in the space of twenty-four little hours, my best friend felt it necessary to pray for fortitude to survive a meeting with me.
Well, you did lose your virginity to her father, my subconscious said snarkily. I winced. This was all my fault, and I knew it. Nicole’s eyes opened, but she studiously ignored me as I made my way toward her.
In the past, there would’ve been a steaming mug of coffee waiting for me on the table in one of the brightly colored takeout cups that Lucky’s used. But it wasn’t the past. A single cup was clasped between Nicole’s palms. She hadn’t even chosen her usual pink or red. It was an ordinary white one.
My heart sank. I knew her well enough to know without a shadow of a doubt that it meant she was more upset than I could’ve imagined. I hated that I was the cause of it.
It wasn’t like I’d been expecting her to welcome me with open arms, but she looked at me like I was a stranger when I slid into the booth with her. In fact, it didn’t look like she saw me sitting there at all.
“Your stuff,” she said, nodding to the box next to her in that same flat tone from the night before. Her fingers closed around the keys that were lying in front of her.
She’s leaving, I realized. Just like that. She wasn’t planning on giving me the chance to explain anything. “Nicole?”
Her eyes snapped to mine, a hint of fire in them for just a second before it burnt out, and the stony expression was back. “What?”
“Will you please hear me out?” I begged, tears welling in my eyes.
Nicole scowled, a deep, ugly scowl that cut me to the bone, as did the disgust that shone bright and judgmentally in her eyes. “No.”
“Don’t do this, Nikki. Please don’t do this.” I caught her wrist when she made to stand up, circling it lightly between my thumb and index finger.
She looked down at my hand like I’d burned or shocked her, shaking herself free with a look of incredulity growing on her features.
“You’re asking me not to do this?” Her voice was practically a hiss. “Me? After what you’ve done? I’m the one who shouldn’t do this?”
“Nic, please—”
“Fuck!” she spat out. “Can both of you just stop with this Nicole, please bullshit. God, I can’t believe I have to spell this out for you. You. Fucked. My. Dad.”
She paused for a beat between each word, leaning forward in the booth and capturing my gaze with her furious one. “There are no amount of Nicole, pleases in the world that makes that okay. He’s forty-fucking-eight for fuck’s sake. It’s gross.”
“That’s not fair,” I told her, leaning forward myself by sliding my elbows over on the booth. “I mean, you have every right to be angry with us, but saying it’s gross because of his age, that’s a little hypocritical don’t you think?”
Nicole’s eyebrows shot up, and she crossed her arms defensively over her chest. “Seriously?”
“Yes, Nic. Seriously. You dated that guy, what was his name.” I searched my memory for a split second and snapped my fingers when it came to me. “Justin, just last year. He was fifty-six. That’s eight years older than your dad. I don’t remember the age difference being ‘gross’ then. In fact, I distinctly remember you telling me that silver foxes were the new boy toys. That expression, that’s gross, just in case you were wondering.”
Nicole rolled her eyes, her posture radiating anger and indignation with her muscles all locked. “That was different.”
“How is that different?” I arched an eyebrow at her and sat back in the booth. “That’s bullshit.”
“It’s not, because he might’ve been older, but he didn’t have any children,” Nicole whisper- yelled. Even so, the woman sitting at a table nearby shot us a puzzled glance before she went back to slamming on the keys of her laptop.
Thank god Lucky’s was nearly empty that day, because we were definitely causing a scene, and the fewer people around to witness my public humiliation, the better. But I still wasn’t letting Nicole go without a fight. Public humiliation or no.
“Yeah?” I asked. “What about Remy then? The guy you dated just after Justin. He had three children.”
Nicole scoffed. “Fine, it looks like I’m going to have to spell everything out for you today. Neither Justin nor Remy had children that I was friends with. Best friends. You know, the kind that you can trust to keep their hands off your fucking dad?”
“I get that, Nic. I do, really, but it just—”
“If you say ‘it just happened,’ I’m going to projectile vomit on to you. Things like that don’t just happen. You didn’t trip, and he didn’t happen to fall into you.” She grimaced when she said the words “into you,” and her skin paled like she was really going to puke, but she pressed forward. “And then you went ahead and lied to me about it. I asked you point blank that morning who the guy was that you were with.”
“I know that, but—”
“No, you wanted to talk, so I’m talking. I asked you straight up, remember? I even pointed out that you were with my dad that night, and you denied it. You lied to me. Christ, how could I have been so fucking stupid?”
“You weren’t—”
“No, you know what? You’re right. I wasn’t stupid to not see it coming. I was stupid for trusting you in the first place. I never thought you would do something like this to me. How could you?” She choked back a sob, then jumped up from the table and stormed out of the restaurant.
I didn’t know what was in the box she left behind, but it didn’t matter. If it was gone when I got back, then so be it. I rushed out of the cafe after her. “Nicole, wait!”
Damn, I’d forgotten how fast she was.
By the time I made it out the door, she was already at the corner. Bless the little red hand blinking at the crosswalk. Without it, I had no chance of catching up to her. Light rain had started to fall while we’d been inside, but I was born and bred in Seattle. A little rain didn’t scare me.
I took off down the sidewalk, hurrying to where Nicole was waiting to cross the street. Tears were streaming down both of our faces when I reached her.
“Leave me alone, Jordan,” she said, turning her back on me. “I can’t even look at you.”
The little red hand blinked into a white walking person, and Nicole started to run, but I caught her by the arm. “You can’t do this to me, Nic, and you can’t do this to your dad.”
She yanked free and turned to face me, a thunderstorm brewing behind her eyes. “Again, with this. I’m not doing anything to either of you. You’re the ones who’ve done this to me, and you won’t even stop pestering me for long enough to process it!”
“You asked me to come here today.”
“I know,” she said with a loud sob. “Because I thought it was better to get rid of your stuff as soon as possible. I thought I knew you, Jay. I really did, but—”
“I love him, Nicole.”
She froze. “What?”
“You heard me,” I told her, stunning myself with my confession as much as I seemed to have shocked her, but as soon as I said the words, I knew them to be true. “And I think he loves me, too.”
I marveled at that fact, because I knew that it was true, too, even if he hadn’t actually said the words. The way he’d been looking at me that morning, there had been pure love in those gorgeous green eyes.
Unfortunately, while I was basking in the glory of the revelation that I was well and truly in love for the first time in my life, Nicole’s expression had contorted into one so pained that it stopped my thoughts in their tracks.
“You’re my best friend. Or you were. You’re not supposed to be my fucking stepmother.”
Ugh, when she put it like that... “I’m sorry, okay. I never meant for this to happen, but it did. I can’t help how I feel about him, or how he feels about me, but you’re still my best friend. If you can’t support us, that’s not okay with me. I can’t lose you, Nic. And neither can he.”
“Maybe one of you should’ve thought about that before,” she retorted.
“Trust me, we did. Neither of us wanted it to be this way, but it is. We fell in love, and there’s no coming back from that.” In my hearts of hearts, I knew that no matter what happened, there would be no coming back from Brad. Not for me.
I also knew that I would never find another friendship like the one I had with Nicole. I didn’t want to live without her. She was my best friend. That friend I could call no matter what the time was, the one that I called with good news and bad, that I celebrated with and mourned with.
I was that person for her, too.
“Is this really what you want?” I asked her. “Do you really want to turn your back on both us?”
Nicole paused, then threw her arms out in exasperation. “Is it what I want? No, of course not. You haven’t given me much of a choice though, did you?”
“The choice is yours, and you know it. You can sit down with us, talk this through so we can all work this out, or you can write us off and never speak to us again. I truly hope that you don’t choose to shut us out, but either way, it’s up to you. We haven’t made any choices for you.”
“What do you want from me?” she huffed. “The two people that I trusted the most lied to me and betrayed me. How is the choice mine?”
“We did do both of those things. I’m not going to deny that, but it’s your choice how we go forward from here. I’m not asking or expecting you to forgive me today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. All I’m asking for is the chance to earn your forgiveness. Don’t give up on us, Nic. Please.”
Nicole sighed, poison green eyes searching mine. “What exactly is it that you are asking from me, then?”
“Come to your dad’s house tonight at seven, just to talk. Or to listen. Whatever you choose to do. But please just come?”
Her eyes narrowed onto mine, her chest rising and falling with sharp, angry breaths. “I’ll think about, but only if you let me walk away right now.”
She spun around and marched away from me without another word. I watched her disappear into the crowd, being swallowed up by the army of gray and black coats on the sidewalk.
I walked back to the cafe slowly to collect my things. My hair was dripping wet, and my clothes were soaked through from arguing in the rain, but that didn’t matter. Because despite the cold and the wet, there was hope blooming warm and wild in my stomach.
Maybe, just maybe, I’d gotten through to her. I was sure that I did.