Friends Without Benefits

“What would you like me to do with no clothes on?” His eyes searched mine, intense and intent.

Heat swelled within me, and I knew—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that he wasn’t asking, he was offering. I held my breath, knew that any response would likely result in us getting na**d on the counter.

Teetering on the precipice of ruin, I was sure he saw the silent answer to his offer. I was sure because it was plainly observable in my eyes, shallow breathing, parted lips, and the thundering of my heart. However, just as his fingers slipped under my shirt, brushed against my stomach, Rose’s voice sounded from just beyond the kitchen.

“Elizabeth it’s almost six and I think Angelica is awake enough for you to start.”

We quite literally jumped apart. I jumped up on the counter, sitting very awkwardly on the edge of the sink, and Nico jumped to the far side of the kitchen, back to his station by the apple fritter assembly line. I can’t say with certainty whether he managed to accomplish the task with one giant leap, but I do know one minute his knuckles were searing my skin and the next minute he was across the room, spooning apple goo into dough.

Rose shuffled in, still in her bathrobe, and meandered to the coffee pot. “I turned on another cartoon, just until the procedure is over. I think I’ll send her back to bed after.” Rose, either purposely ignoring the tension in the room with an impressive display of acting ability or completely blind to it, sleepily moved to the refrigerator and pulled out some cream.

Meanwhile, I endeavored to surreptitiously rein my rapid heart and raging hormones, pointedly stared at the counter across from me and count the number of spatulas in the utensil container. There were eight. Who would ever need eight spatulas?

I was not looking at Nico and his flawless olive skin. I wasn’t looking at the gracefulness of his movements, the way his back muscles bunched and flowed or the fact that he had the most perfect man-butt in the history of all time.

Period. End of story. Goodnight.

“Lizzybella, where is your coffee? Do you want cream?” Rose was suddenly standing in front of me, eyeing me with open concern.

I blinked at her dumbly then released the breath I’d been holding for maybe over a minute. Gingerly, my feet touched the ground as I slipped off the edge of the sink.

“I . . .” I released another breath; it was audibly shaky.

She glanced between Nico and me and muttered in Italian, “Chi ha l'amore nel petto, ha lo sprone nei fianchi[4].”

Nico’s shoulders tensed.

I frowned. “Pardon me?”

“Are you feeling well?” Rose pressed her hand to my forehead.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

Without turning around, Nico joined the conversation. “I was just asking her the same thing. She looks hot.” He stressed the T, and I was immediately frustrated by the calm in his voice and the double meaning of his words.

Freaking Nico!

“I’m fine,” I said and politely refused Rose’s offer of creamer. “I don’t take anything in my coffee.”

“Hmm. Nico takes his black too. I can’t drink it like that, I need it a little sweet.”

“Elizabeth is already sweet.” Nico mumbled, just loud enough for us to hear, and my chest constricted at his sweet sincerity. I wanted to evaporate and disappear. I hated that he did this to me.

“Yes she is. She is an angel.”

Rose’s agreement caused me to groan inwardly. The blood pumping in my veins felt anything but angelic. It felt downright sinful.

Anxious to leave my fan club, I ducked my head, darted around Rose, and said over my shoulder, “I better go get started.”

“What about your coffee?” Rose called after me.

“I’m perfectly awake!”

Nico caught my eye as I passed. Instead of a smug smile, his features were solemn, sober, and his eyes hot with intent and promise.

It stung me with an awareness that lingered, made me cognizant of where the worn cotton touched my skin, and was the reason I took a cold shower as soon as I returned to my apartment.

~*~

My palms were actually sweaty as I approached the penthouse for the 2:00 p.m. infusion. I needed to never be alone in the same room with Nico ever again. My skin was still on fire, and I was honestly worried what I would do if presented with any opportunity to maul him.

But when I entered he was nowhere in sight. Angelica was coloring, Rose was knitting, but Nico—Rose explained—was out with Quinn, Janie’s fiancé. This thought made me frown.

Quinn and Nico, roaming around Chicago together—no good could come of it.

Rose invited me to stay and knit, but I hastily declined. I administered the infusion, conducted Angelica’s daily exam, then rushed out of the penthouse, worried that I might run into Nico if I dawdled. Arriving back to my apartment, coming face-to-face with the silence of solitude, I immediately regretted not staying with Rose and Angelica.

So, I took a nap and, predictably, dreamt of Nico and his . . . apple fritters. I may or may not have been licking the sticky sugar and apple juice from his bare stomach to his collar bone and he may or may not have been bringing me to bliss while forcibly restraining me.

I awoke hot and sticky and with my legs, middle, and arms tangled in sheets—which explained the restraint by force portion of the dream—and decided I needed another cold shower.

I stumbled across Nico’s mixtape CD when I was getting dressed. Man scrawl stared at me from the inside of my underwear drawer where I’d, unthinkingly, placed it for safekeeping. At first I ignored it, pulled out some very white cotton underwear and a sports bra.

I dressed myself in yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt with a chemistry joke about methane inscribed on the front; crude chemistry jokes were my favorite, followed closely by Star Trek puns. I pulled my hair into a tight pony tail and attempted to busy myself—and hopefully center myself—with some yoga.

But thoughts of the CD in my underwear drawer, touching my underthings, kept me from focusing. After fifteen minutes of mental arm wrestling while trying and failing to do a firefly pose, I stomped over to the drawer, pulled out the CD, and pushed it into the player connected to our stereo.

I waited, breathing hard for no apparent reason, hands on my hips.

Freaking Nico.

The first notes of the first song startled me. A single cello followed by a group of violins played in abrupt unison—one over the other—and created a solid yet stunted rhythm. Then a woman’s voice, thick and rich and familiar, sang the opening words.

As the song unfolded, a heady modern bass beat resounded in the background. I recognized the song and the singer—“Where Do I Begin,” Shirley Bassey—and further recognized that it was a remix and that the remix was masterfully done; a solid, modern, edgy reimagining of an old standard.

I walked back to my exercise mat now feeling curious. Music, quality music, flowed over me, and I easily centered myself. I spent the next half hour doing yoga, holding poses somewhat longer than typical. I strained to listen to the words of the songs or held my breath in anticipation of what would come next.

Some songs I recognized, some I didn’t. They ran the gambit of decades and musical genres; I repeated a few—like The Cars’s “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend”—and I would have skipped a couple of them if I’d known the words ahead of time.

The most distressing—one of the songs that I’d never heard before—was a very low key, somewhat uncategorizable genre, pseudo rock song. It was about the last days of a person’s life from the perspective of the one left behind.

The line just before the chorus, and the chorus for that matter, caused a lump to form in my throat. The singer stated: Love is watching someone die which was then followed by a chanting: Whose going to watch you die?

It gave me chills, instantly made me think of Garrett and his last months; hospice coming to his house, sitting with him the week before he died, watching him sleep. Musically, the song was remarkable and beautiful, and I loved everything about it other than the words. I had no desire to hear it again.

There were a total of seventeen songs. I’d stopped my yoga poses for the last two and, instead, laid on the couch, just listening to the music. The last stanza of The Drifters’s “Save the Last Dance for Me” marked the end of the CD.

I didn’t get up. Instead I lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling, only the faint sounds of Chicago traffic marring the silence. Nico was right. The music he’d selected for the CD was good music. I missed good music.

I walked to the stereo and hit play again.

~*~

I listened to the CD over and over for the rest of the day—another attempt at yoga, doing laundry, bills, checking email, knitting two more newborn hats, then starting on Angelica’s sweater, eating Chinese takeout—but always skipped song number six, the one about being left behind.

When 9:45 p.m. rolled around I wandered up to Nico’s penthouse.

I felt strangely satisfied after spending the afternoon listening to good music, and I was excited to see Nico. I knocked on the door before I opened it with my key, hopped in, and bounced to the living room. All the hopping and bouncing—quite unlike me—betrayed my anticipation.

I heard noise coming from the kitchen so I called out, let anyone in the vicinity know I’d arrived, then crossed to the infusion chair to prep the space for Angelica.