Nick Oswald

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NICK WAS ON THE FENCE about Abel and Caroline’s news. Before Caroline had actually laid it out on the table what the two of them were so excited about, he’d been terrified they were going to say they were pregnant, and he was beyond relieved that it wasn’t that. The best way to have his friend bow out of his life for real was for Abel to have a kid. Moving in with a chick, though? That was a pretty close second. Abel was all grins for now, but he was one step closer to having his balls in a jar where Caroline could take control of them whenever she wanted to, whether Abel got that or not. He foresaw plenty of clandestine trips to the local bar while Abel tried to figure out what the fuck he’d gotten himself into, and he would be more than happy to remind his buddy how much easier life was when you weren’t being weighed down by a chick. For the time being, though, he was more than willing to celebrate with Abel and Caroline.

Hell, he was even willing to celebrate with Olivia. He was particularly interested in celebrating with Olivia, as a matter of fact. She’d consistently been a bitch to him over the past six months, but for reasons he couldn’t explain that was falling away for once. Even while he thought about it, looking at Olivia speculatively, she glanced at him and shot him what could only be described as a beautiful smile. He felt himself stir a little below the belt and wondered what kind of game she was trying to play. He couldn’t be one-hundred-percent sure, but he didn’t recall her ever smiling at him with anything other than straight up malice. It was unnerving, that smile, and after moments that felt like they were going on for centuries it got to be too much for him to handle silently.

“Excuse the question, Olivia, but what are you looking at?”

“I’m looking at you, silly,” Olivia giggled, her face slightly flushed in a way that made her look absolutely breathtaking, “I thought it was obvious. Isn’t that in a movie or something?”

“Isn’t what in a movie?” Nick laughed. He wasn’t sure he trusted this new and improved version of Olivia, this version where she was not only nice to him but flirtatious as well. He couldn’t understand it so he couldn’t trust it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like her this way. When she was being all stone cold she was a straight up bitch but when she was like this? She wasn’t half bad.

“That line! Some girl says ‘what are you looking at?’ and the guy says, ‘I’m looking at you, miss.’ Or something like that. I swear it’s in a movie. It’s like, the sexiest exchange ever.”

“Sexy?” Nick laughed again, totally floored that Olivia Young would ever be so crass as to talk about anything being sexy, “For real?”

“Totally for real,” she answered with no hesitation, her face flushing even more than it had been before, “I wouldn’t joke about something like that.”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

“I don’t see why you would be. I’m not made out of stone, you know.”

“No,” Nick responded quickly, “it doesn’t look like you are.”

Nick looked her thick, beautiful body up and down appreciatively, taking his time while he did so. He was sure her good feelings towards him, wherever they had come from, would fade straight back into obscurity right then and there. There were certainly some kinds of chicks who loved a guy running his eyes up and down their bodies. Nick knew that from personal experience. He had hooked more than a couple of women in bars without having to do a whole hell of a lot more than give the right look, leaving him with no bigger concern than to figure out how to get rid of them in the morning. Olivia, though, wasn’t that kind of chick. She had made that perfectly clear and she had done it every single chance she had been given. Him looking at her at all for any length of time was asking for trouble, but looking at her the way he was, letting his eyes stop and stay awhile on her most enticing parts, that was downright playing with fire. He held his breath, waiting to see what kind of pissed off retort she would lob at him now. Instead, she bit her lip, smiled again, and then dropped a little wink at him. He was so shocked he almost fell out of the chair he was casually tipping onto the back two legs, just the way his mother had always told him would land him on his ass if he wasn’t careful.

“What’s the matter, Nick? See something surprising?”

“Honestly?”

“Sure,” she laughed, her hair falling into her face in a manner he found undeniably sexy, “why not try honesty on for size?”

“Then yes, I see something surprising.”

“Care to share what it is?”

“You. You aren’t usually so pleasant with me.”

“No,” she mused, something about her striking him as somehow reckless and terribly seductive, “I suppose I’m not. If you get me a little refill, though, I might just keep right on with it. Stranger things have happened, don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure I know the answer to that, but a refill is something I can definitely do. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“If I wanted to go somewhere I would get my own glass of wine. I’ll be right where you left me.”

Nick took her glass from her and then almost dropped it immediately when her fingers brushed up against his. He would have sworn that she had shocked him, that there was a genuine spark of electricity when his skin met hers. He looked at her face quickly to see if the feeling had registered with her as well but there was nothing there, no expression of acknowledgement.

“In my own head,” he muttered to himself, walking briskly past Caroline and Abel, who were cuddled up together on the couch like there was nobody else there with them at all. They both had empty glasses, too, but they were utterly forgotten beside plates of cheeses neither one of them had hardly touched. They were too much into each other to do a whole lot other than look at each other lovingly and exchange little kisses. It was the kind of show of affection Nick always looked at and felt somewhere between uncomfortable or sick over. Now, however, it was hard not to feel other things, too. He was happy for his friend, against his better judgement. The kind of happy Abel felt right now was something you couldn’t fake and if it was Caroline giving that to him, so be it. If they could be that into each other with hardly anything to drink, they must have really been in love. It was something he had never come close to experiencing himself.

And speaking of feeling it without the aid of a whole bunch of booze, now that he was in the kitchen and checking out the status of the bottles of wine that had been opened, Nick was starting to get a pretty good idea of where Olivia’s sudden attitude change was coming from. He had mixed feelings about it. As the night had run on and Olivia had started to get more and more friendly, Nick had gotten the impression that she might be genuinely flirting with him. She might have wanted to throw away her frigid, buttoned-up shtick for once and have some fun, hopefully of the dirty variety. Looking at the levels in the bottles, he knew that wasn’t the case. Olivia wasn’t hitting on him, at least not while she was of sound mind. She was drunk. She was drunk and probably pissed off to have to be there with him at all. He didn’t want to be, kind of hated himself for it actually, but he was a little bit disappointed.

“Where’s the glass of wine, mister?” Olivia called out with that same flirtatious tone. It still got him going but he knew now that it didn’t mean shit and that helped him to keep his head on his shoulders. He glanced at Abel and Caroline again, saw that neither one of them showed any signs of really recognizing that they still had guests in the apartment the two of them now shared, and set Olivia’s glass down on the countertop. He left it empty.

“You know what?” he called out to Olivia, using his best nonchalant voice, “I don’t know about that.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” She pouted, batting her eyelashes at him so that her big, blue eyes looked even more appealing, “I thought you said you would bring it to me.”

“I did, but I just realized how late it’s getting.”

“So? It’s Friday, right?”

“Sure, but some people still work on Saturdays. I know you know this. Also, I think Abel and Caroline might enjoy a little time alone.”

“No!” Caroline said dutifully, although everything about her body language towards Abel told a different story, “We don’t need you guys to go! You can stay as long as you like, both of you!”

“That’s very kind, Caroline, but we sort of interrupted something when we got here and we shouldn’t overstay our welcome. My buddy Abel there won’t forgive me anytime soon if I keep cock-blocking him like this.”

“Oh man,” Abel grinned easily, “you have such a way with words.”

“Fine,” Olivia answered sulkily, pulling herself up to a shaky standing position, “no more wine. I just need to get an Uber or something. I didn’t drive myself here.”

“Don’t bother with that. I’ll take you home.”

There was an odd silence after Nick made the offer in which he got the impression that everyone in the room was evaluating him, trying to suss out his motives for the offer. Under normal circumstances, they would have been right to. He was a dog and he had no problem admitting it. He had no interest in taking advantage of a girl so drunk when he was so close to sober, however, and something about the abrupt change in his assessment of her situation had spared him up further still. He just wanted to go home, and get back to what felt normal to him.

“Alright,” Olivia finally answered, shrugging her shoulders and shooting Caroline a look as she moved towards Nick, “if you’re offering. Just don’t try anything funny. I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Nick answered dryly. It was a comment that made a lot more sense coming from Olivia than her flirtation had, and he should have been happy about it. He wasn’t. The ride to her apartment, the address of which Olivia gave him grudgingly despite taking him up on his offer, did a little to make that better but only a little. Olivia was chattier than she had ever been with him, which he found amusing, but the things she said were brutal.

“You know what?” she asked pointedly, a slight slur creeping into her voice.

“No, probably not.”

“You’re kind of a dick.”

“Ha! You know, I’m not super surprised to hear you say that.”

“I mean, you’re hot,” she went on unhindered, almost as if she hadn’t heard him at all, “but you act like you really know it, which is gross.”

“Okay, duly noted.”

“And the way you treat women!” she shouted, “That’s gross, too! You treat women like they’re toys. I don’t think you would have a clue what to do with one that had some actual brain cells.”

He thought about asking her if she was offering to be his guinea pig but thought better of it. Instead, he kept his mouth shut, trying not to listen to her words with too much intensity. Olivia wasn’t the first woman to tell him what a jackass he was and Nick seriously doubted that she would be the last. Which didn’t explain why it got to him to hear her evaluation of him. He considered correcting her on some of her less than savory points but didn’t, and by the time he had her safely at her building she was fast asleep. He watched her for a moment, watched her peaceful breathing, and considered what to do. She had just made a point of telling him what a shitty dude he was while he was going to the trouble of helping her get safely home, which warranted him being the prick she thought he was, as far as he was concerned. He could easily shout at her that they were at her place and ask if she could kindly get the fuck out of his car. Instead, he sighed, put his car into park, and pulled her out of the car. As he carried her up the stairs with her keys jangling softly in one hand, he looked at her face, expecting her to wake up with each new step. She slept on and he let himself inside of her front door, praying to whomever was listening that nobody popped his or her head out of their door and saw him. The last thing he needed was an accusation of trying to take advantage of Olivia, who was too drunk to believe him if he said that wasn’t the way things had gone down. He was relieved when he had them both inside, relieved until he had her safely on her bed.

“Shit.”

The whispered word sounded flat in her bedroom, almost like it wasn’t a word at all. It had the sound of a word being spoken in an apartment that either hadn’t been moved into yet or had recently been emptied of everything that made a place feel like home. Lonely. If he’d been asked to pick one word to describe the way Olivia’s apartment looked, it would have been lonely. He’d never thought of her in that light, had hardly looked at her in any light at all. Seeing it bothered him and without realizing that he was going to do it he bent forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Even when he was out of her place and safely in his own home, Nick couldn’t get that lonely feeling and the way it bothered him out of his head.