Nick laughed and clapped, “That’s going to make you very popular with my friends…”
I flashed him a smile, “I’ve always been popular with your friends...”
“Yeah, I know…” he mumbled. “So… what about… you?”
“What about me?” I asked, reaching for my beer to finish it off.
“What’s going on with you? You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” He gave me a look and settled back further into the couch, ready to listen.
I sighed. Where did I even begin with this? “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” he said, then added, “but you can start with why the hell you’d stay with someone who hits you.”
I laughed a little, “I usually hit him back, and then we’re fine.”
“You what?”
“We fight, he takes a swing at me, I clock him, it’s over.” I told him, like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“You hit him back?” he repeated, still unable to grasp the concept.
“Yeah, I haven’t taken kickboxing all this time to stand around and take it… yesterday, though, I didn’t expect the knife thing… “ I sighed again. There was so much more to this story… the reason I was with Zack to begin with… I wasn’t going to go there right now.
“No, you don’t normally expect your… significant other… to pull a knife on you.” He said, moving to rearrange himself on the couch and make room for me as I looked for a place to lay down.
I got comfortable beside him, immediately feeling more intimate and likely to open up to him, like the proximity of our bodies re-established our connection and drew me out of myself. “The first time… I actually hit him first and he hit back… I think it was more of a reaction than anything, but it just started something… we fight and we smack each other around.”
He turned his head, still looking at me incredulously. “I don’t get it.”
I moved to be able to face him as I spoke. “He was… the polar opposite of everything… that I had before… you know?”
“Obviously,” he said, shaking his head. “Were you happy with him? Like, until this happened?”
“No. We fought a lot and I was tired of him… I wanted out, wanted him to leave…” I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity. “You know I did a lot of things that were just… dumb… he seemed, like, safe, you know? He was a “normal” guy, had a stable job… I thought he’d just be… different…”
“Sounds like he’s different alright.”
“I know, I know.”
“You can do better,” he told me, brushing his fingertips over my arm.
“I’ve DONE better…”
“Yep…”
“Everybody makes mistake, Mr. I-dated-Par…”
He didn’t even let me get the word out before he covered my mouth. I bit at his hand and he pulled it away, moving to poke me in the ribs. I shrieked and fell off the couch in my attempt to get away from him.
“Bastard!”
He smirked, “Sometimes.”
I crawled back onto the couch and flopped on top of him, laughing when he groaned. I turned my head to look at him, “Thanks for this…”
“You’re welcome… I wish you hadn’t waited so long… I’ve missed you,” he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
“Yeah, I’ve missed you, too…” I had missed him. I’d missed him since he’d left Tampa, since he’d left my everyday life.
After a moment of silence, he asked, “What now?”
“What do you mean, what now?”
“What are you going to do now? Just go back and hope he’s gone… or what?”
Huge sigh. “I have no idea… about anything…”
He looked at me, “You sound confused… that’s …not like you.”
I snorted. “Yeah, that’s just like me.”
“What happened?”
“Hell if I know.” I told him. “I was thinking on the way here from the airport… I have NO idea what I want anymore.”
“Again… what happened?”
“Life? I don’t know…” I said, shrugging. “I used to have everything under control, I though, but I don’t have a clue now.”
“You mean because of Zack?”
I sat up, and moved to the opposite end of the couch, so I could look at him while we talked. “He was just, like, the last thing. My job bores me to tears now, I’ve got a psycho boyfriend… this is my life? This is what I ended up with? Things used to be so good… and then… now… they’re not.”
“Change things,” he said, as if it were the simplest, most obvious solution.
“Yeah, let me get right on that.” I replied.
“Why not?”
“How??” I asked, in a voice that was way more shrill than I intended.
“Leave him. Get a new job. Move.”
“I’m okay with the first one… the second two… you got any ideas?”
“Sure… move out here,” he suggested.
“And take my place among the many rejects in the ‘City of Dreams’?” I shook my head. I couldn’t see myself out here. I still couldn’t see HIM out here or figure out why he’d want to stay … this wasn’t his city, wasn’t his kind of place. At least, I didn’t think it was. But what did I know anymore?
“What else are you going to do?” he asked. “People come out here all the time to pursue their dreams… or just have different… better… lives… Why couldn’t you?”
I just looked at him… because I had no idea what else to say.
~~~~
“I was serious last night, Summer.” Nick informed me over another nutritious breakfast- this time cool ranch Doritos and sweet tea.
“About what?” I asked, between crunchy bites.
“Moving out here.”
“Dude, I know where I came from… and I intend to go back, unlike some people…” I mumbled. “What the hell would I do out here?”
“I’m gonna have to leave in a couple months…someone needs to stay at the house…” he offered.
“What about your sisters?” I asked, having no clue what any of them were doing currently, and feeling really bad about it.
“They’ve all got their own stuff to do… they don’t want to hang out and house-sit.”
“But I do?” I questioned. What the hell would I do out here, all the time, in this house, alone? I like the shopping out here, yes, but I can’t exactly make a living out of it. And the beach is great, but I’ve got one of those at home.
“You got any better ideas?” he asked, raising an eyebrow in that patented Carter look.
“I’m going to go home, get him the hell out of my house and go back to work… and … figure things out from there. You’ve got plenty of friends who’d love to hold down your house for a while.” I said.
“Yeah, I do have plenty of friends who’d be more than willing to house-sit.. and I don’t trust any of them to do it.” he said, half-chuckling and half-serious.
“Now whose fault is that??” I chided.
“You didn’t seem to have many problems with my friends before…” he started.
“Once more, YOUR fault.” I reminded him.
“Watch as I change the subject, he says”, Nick said, laughing.
I laughed, “Alright, what now?”
“Think about it, okay?”
I nodded, I’d give him at least that much. “Yeah, I’ll think about it… but I gotta go home first, see what’s… left… there.”
“I know… but I DO like having you around, Winter…” he said, a playful smirk on his face.
“I guess it’s kinda nice being with you again, too, Dick.” I giggled. If he was bringing out the nicknames, so was I.
He broke into a wide grin, laughing.
Yeah, I missed him. I’d never NOT missed him, but being close to him and spending time with him had reminded me just how much.
~~~
Two days later, after being jaunted around various points in LA – a trip to Santa Monica Pier and a few games of basketball with some interesting characters in West Hollywood, a night out on the Strip, and more mysterious phone calls… I was headed back to the airport. This time, Nick was driving me, though, gabbing away about the girlfriend I hadn’t gotten to see (and whose name I still didn’t know, annoyingly… but I wasn’t going to ask, he’d tell me what he wanted me to know), as I inspected my still bruised face in the sun visor’s mirror. At least they’d sort of faded…some… so they were just that sickly greenish-purple instead of actually black and blue.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet her… I would like for you to… I’d like to know what you think of her…” he said, glancing at me as he slowed down in traffic.
“Yeah… I would have liked to… maybe another time…” I said.
“Another time soon?” he asked.
“Possibly…” I was being intentionally vague… I couldn’t say the thought of coming back hadn’t crossed my mind. I didn’t really know what exactly I was going back for… I mean… I had my house and my beloved car – oh god, if Zack fucked up my car, I’d kill him – and my job, which I honestly didn’t care about…
“Like I said, think about it…call me.” He pulled into the parking garage at the airport and went to get my (newly acquired) bags (of newly acquired clothes) from the trunk.
“You’re not just gonna dump my ass off?” I asked, ambling alongside him.
“That wouldn’t be very nice of me, would it?”
I shot him a glance, “What if someone sees us together?”
“Let’s give them a thrill and see what kind of story they can come up with now…” he said, knowing just as well as I did what would be splashed across the inside pages of the tabloids.
‘Living dangerously… I dig it.” I said, taking one of my bags from him and throwing it over my shoulder.
~~~
I waited for my plane to start boarding, sitting on a chair sideways, my legs draped over Nick’s lap. “Thanks for everything…”
“You’re welcome… you know I’ll always do anything I can for you,” he said, giving me a sweet smile.
I smiled back, no matter what happened, he’d never lose his touch at making my heart melt. “You gonna go see the girlfriend now?” I asked.
He nodded, “Yeah… I told her I’d see her tonight.”
“Explain what’s been going on?” I was curious what he’d been telling her the past few days, how honest he’d been.
“I told her a friend was in some trouble and was staying with me for a little while. That’s what happened, right?”
I smiled again, “Yeah, that’s what happened.” I heard my boarding call and got up, waiting for him to stand up. I leaned into him to hug him, taking one last deep breath to remember the way he smelled, the way his arms felt around me, and remember that there was at least one guy on the planet who was good to me. He kissed my temple and told me goodbye, as I grabbed my carry-on (one of his backpacks that had been around the world several times over, packed with the latest version of Gameboy, a personal dvd player and a few other goodies he’d told me I couldn’t travel without).
I headed off to the gate, sad that I was leaving him behind and totally dreading what I was going to find when I got off the plane at home. All of the worst-case scenarios spun through my head as I found my seat, sat through the safety lecture, and waited for the plane to taxi down the runway.
I looked out the window as we began climbing into the air, seeing the city disappearing below me and couldn’t help but think… maybe I should have just stayed in LA.