Nick Oswald

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NICK HAD WOKEN UP THE morning after the unexpected dinner with a hangover the likes of which was difficult to shake. It was the kind he would typically have been pissed off about having to deal with, but this time was different. Every time his stomach had lurched uncomfortably, or his temples had throbbed, he had reminded himself where this hangover had come from. This one was born out of his friend's happiness, and that made it totally worth it. He didn't even care when the sickness had taken close to two days to shake, nor had he been righteously pissed off by the reminder that he was getting farther and farther from being a twenty-two-year-old kid every day. Every time he became disgruntled he just reminded himself that he had some planning to do. The morning after the celebration Abel had called and asked Nick to be his best man. Nick had accepted gladly. He wouldn't have admitted it if he'd been asked, but he would have been more than a little bit hurt if it hadn't been him to get the job. He wasn't sure that he was a worthy choice, but he was still happy to do it.

There was only one hitch in the plan. Olivia. He would be the best man, her the maid of honor; it felt like there was nothing he could do to get away from her. He told himself those first couple of days that they still wouldn't need to have much of anything to do with each other, but over the next couple of weeks that had proven to be false. Caroline and Abel wanted a wedding where everything was done together, which meant Nick spent many hours in planning with Olivia. Everything from the joint bachelor-bachelorette party to the wedding and reception themselves, fell to the two of them to plan. Nick expected it to be atrocious. He was planning on it being bad, except that it turned out not to be, after all. It had turned out quite the opposite. Over the days of meetings, both imposed upon them by Abel and Caroline and suggested by Olivia herself, Nick had discovered that he kind of liked Olivia. No. Scratch that. He didn't kind of like her, just outright did. Not only that, but it was getting harder for him to stop himself thinking about the brief time they had spent locked in the pantry together. Being close to her was a trigger all on its own. The smell of her hair, the way she chewed on the corner of her bottom lip when she was thinking really hard about something. The more time he spent with her, the harder he found it not to reach out and touch her bare skin, just to see if it felt as smooth as he imagined. It got so that he couldn't go to sleep without dreaming about her. It was a problem that needed remedying, which was what had led him to his current distraction.

“Hey! Are you listening to like, a word I’ve said? Cuz I think you’re like, totally not.”

Nick glanced at Tricia, the leggy blonde model he'd taken to dinner and then back to his place. He'd gone out with the express intent of fucking somebody. He thought that was all it would take to get the ghost of Olivia out of his head. Only now that he had her in his place, he wasn't sure he wanted her there anymore. And he definitely wasn't enjoying this bullshit complaining about his listening skills. He wasn't with her to hear her stories. Listening to her go on and on about her macrobiotic diet, and seaweed wraps made him want to be a thousand miles away. It only made him think about how much more interesting Olivia was.

“Um, hello?” she whined again, this time taking his face in her hands and forcing him to look at her head on, “Are you hearing me?”

“Sure, baby,” he answered smoothly, pretending not to be annoyed by her decidedly un-Olivia scent, “I’m hearing you. I’m just a little bit distracted, that’s all.”

"Yeah," she said in a haughty voice, "I can tell."

“Don’t you want to know what I’m distracted by?”

“Why would I want to know that?”

“Have you considered that it might be you?”

“Me? But that makes like, no sense. How could you be distracted by me? I’m the one who’s trying to talk to you.”

“By thinking about what I’d like to be doing other than talking.”

Tricia's eyes grew wide. Nick could imagine the wheels turning inside of her head. She was so far from bright it wasn't even funny, but he was in it now. He'd put it out there, and now that she understood what he was alluding to, she was game. The two of them were sitting on his expensive leather couch, and she practically leaped into his lap, straddling him happily. Her head dipped, and her mouth found his with an eagerness that was off-putting. His hands moved up onto her waist, but reluctantly. He could feel her ribs underneath his fingers, and he didn't like the way it felt. She was ready to go. She was ready to let him do whatever he wanted to her, and he knew it. It didn't take a genius. The ways she was rocking her hips, a blind man could have seen what she was ready to do. Which made it a hell of a lot weirder when he didn't want her even a tiny bit. Before he really believed he was going to do it, he was pulling his face away and lifting her off of him, positioning her back down on the couch. She was indignant, and immediately so. Pissed off like only a scorned woman could be.

“What the hell is this? What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m sorry. Jesus...”

"Tricia," she spat in a stony voice. It looked like she was shooting fiery daggers out of her eyes, but she was also already on her feet, so things were headed in the right direction. "My name is Tricia, you son of a bitch."

"I know your name. I didn't forget your name, and I'm not trying to be a son of a bitch."

“Sure,” she laughed scornfully, “right. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

“I’m not saying you are. I’ve just got a headache, you know? And I just remembered I’ve got something to do early in the morning. It’s just not a good night for this.”

"Sure, asshole. You've got a headache. You know women invented that excuse, right? Look, I don't know what your damage is, but I don't need this shit. There are plenty of men out there who'd love to fuck me. Something is wrong with you, not me."

Tricia, whose name Nick was certain he would forget within the week despite his claims of not being a dick, stormed out of his house. For a long time, he sat stock still on his couch. He sat and thought about the model’s parting words. Because he thought there might be a little truth to it. He thought there might be something wrong with him, after all.