Nick Page 8

  What a night.

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. On the counter are the two wine bottles we started with. The wine cupboard door is open so I look inside and see six more bottles of the same wine gone. I don’t know where they went, but from the fantastic memory loss, I know the contents were consumed by us.

  I spend the rest of the day trying to remember. At night I texted her to see if she was okay like I usually do, but she doesn’t text back until late in the night, probably hoping I’m asleep.

  She used to do that when we were younger. Either I’d do something and apologize, and she’d make me stew for hours wondering if she was still pissed at me. When I’d wake up, there’d be a message.

  Or, when it was her that did something wrong, she’d do the same sort of thing and text too late when I’d most likely be asleep so I wouldn’t call. It’s all weird Tania shit that I’ve had to decipher as the years have gone by.

  I may be in this haze of confusion on what to do next, but the one thing I’m sure about is I don’t want to apologize. I don’t.

  I’m not going to. I think this is one time or one thing where I need to man up and be the guy I was last night when I told her I wanted her.

  I’m going to man up and be the guy I was when I wrote that note.

  It was more than twelve years ago. I was ready to take the plunge to change our friendship.

  I wanted her to be my girl, and in the years that have passed, I haven’t felt any differently. No matter who I was with. It never faded, and my feelings never changed—even when I was with Louise.

  I still don’t know if Tania read that note, but it doesn’t matter.

  I know how I feel, and I still want her.

  That has to count for something.

  Unable to sleep all night, I get into work before the sun comes up and try to distract myself with work. We have another meeting with Brian on Friday.

  Getting to work at four in the morning beats lying in my bed worrying over Tania.

  Tony arrives at eight looking like he just came back from a longer vacation than the two-day Vegas spree.

  “Nick, this is the look of a guy who’s had a taste of heaven,” he says with a chuckle. I smile at him.

  I have to laugh. I’ve been to Vegas many times, and I wouldn’t describe it like that, but I guess it depends on what he got up to. Knowing Tony, he went to Sin City to get up to all manner of sin.

  “I’m glad you had a good time. What did you do?”

  “My friend, I believe the question is more what didn’t I do.” He grins and takes his seat at his desk across from me.

  I know he’s talking about gambling and maybe hitting the strip clubs. Years ago, I would take his answer to mean a sex marathon, but not since he’s been with Marie. He doesn’t call her his girlfriend, because the word means commitment, but he’s not sleeping around with anybody else.

  “How about you?” he asks. “Wedding go okay?”

  I rest back on my chair, wondering how to answer that question.

  “I…think something may have happened between Tania and me,” I

  confess. Instantly he perks up.

  “Something?” He raises his brows. “Nick, either you’re about to tell me something very strange or kinky as fuck. Please clarify which it is.”

  I want to say maybe both happened, but I think better of it. “We got wasted, and some stuff happened. I don’t remember, neither does she. Or, maybe she does and she’s not talking to me about it.”

  He bites the inside of his lip and goes quiet.

  “You sure she’s not talking to you or that maybe she’s shocked?”

  I sigh. “Tony, I don’t know which it is. It could be both.”

  “I’m brainstorming here. Maybe it’s because it’s too soon after Owen. You know they just had the breakup a few weeks ago. The timing could be off.”

  Fuck, I didn’t even consider that.

  Here I am thinking and planning. Expecting her to be, well, just expecting to have a chance at something when she’s still hurting.

  It’s just now that I’ve had a taste of her, I want more.

  “Oh shit. Fuck my life. I have the worse timing.”

  The door opens and Bradford comes in. He’s carrying a newspaper that looks like more tabloid shit.

  “Did you see this?”

  “Bradford, if it’s more stuff on Louise, I don’t want to know.” I put my hands up, stopping him.

  He sets the paper down on the table before me and my mouth drops when I look at the front page.

  There’s a picture of me with my shirt hanging off my shoulders and Tania with her legs wrapped around my waist. We’re kissing and I have her pressed up against the wall of somewhere.

  The headline reads:

  Playboy Nick is back on the scene with his latest catch

  * * *

  I stand up and glare at the paper like I want to attack it. Or attack the people who put the picture and the story there.

  “Jesus Christ.” I wince and blow out a sharp breath.

  That looks like we went to a bar or a fucking club. I don’t remember that at all.

  “Yeah. I agree. What the hell, Nick?” Bradford smirks then starts laughing. At least Tony can see that there’s nothing fucking funny about it.

  I try to calm down, but I know Tania’s going to flip on me worse than she already has when she sees this.

  She hates the media, and although she’s never really said, I know she couldn’t have liked my previous encounters with the tabloids. There was some pretty colorful stuff that was always in them when I was just starting out. People know I’m not a saint, and I got up to the same shit most players did.

  “Try to calm down,” Tony says.

  I look at him and open my mouth to say something, but I can’t think.

  Calm?

  There I was just seconds ago talking to him about Tania, and we both concluded that she wasn’t okay with what happened between us.

  He was just trying to make me feel better by telling me that it was too soon after Owen. I agree it was too soon, but the main part for me to focus on regarding our conversation is she wasn’t okay with it.

  Now this.

  She’s not going to be okay with this article.

  I look at the picture and think.

  My name is there. People can’t see our faces, though. A quick scan over the first few lines of the article refers to her as the mystery woman. I’ve never had pictures taken with her in public, so they don’t know who she is to me.

  Maybe I could still save this.

  If there’s only that picture and the article flows the same as I’m reading, it might be okay.

  The next page tells me it’s not. The next page has me reaching for my jacket and heading out the door.

  There are three pictures of us across the spread of the paper.

  One of me and her holding hands as we enter Pleasure, a sex club, the next of us kissing with her breasts so exposed they had to blur it out, and the next with her grabbing my crotch.

  All that, and I can’t remember shit.

  The papers will call her the mystery woman, but anyone who knows her will know it’s her.

  She’ll see it and hate it.

  Worst of all, it does everything I don’t want.

  It’s exactly as the headline says. It makes me look like a playboy with his latest catch.

  She’s not that to me.

  Tania

  I remember everything.

  It came to me when I woke this morning, hitting me like a blast of…what would I call that? What’s the right word?

  It felt like someone shoved a movie in my head and put it on fast forward so I could see everything but see it all happen quickly.

  But no more than all the crazy things I got up to with my best friend.

  I’m here at the hospital in deep, deep discussion with Mac and Celine over a patient that’s just come in. She’s considered one of our medium-risk patients, although
whatever is wrong with her is cause for her to be with us.

  We’re sitting in the meeting room, which is basically our office area where we huddle and throw ideas around. Mac likes to use this space so we can feel more comfortable in our thinking space.

  I should be focusing but I can’t. I just can’t. I’m looking at Mac giving the presentation brief of this girl who needs my undivided attention, but I can’t give it.

  I’m looking at the overhead projector and all I can see are memories of my night with Nick.

  It started when he got me away from Tom.

  No…roll back. It started with that girl coming up to him, asking if he was who he was. I was tipsy then and should have probably waited for him to come back.

  But no, it pissed me off that he went in the first place and it shouldn’t have because we aren’t a couple. He’s allowed to speak to women, and if he wanted to do a little more than that, I shouldn’t feel any type of way. That night I did.

  Why?

  Because I wanted him to be mine.

  No time for lies.

  It’s exactly what I said to Celine and him; I’m always looking for clones of him. So that’s what sent me to Tom. Tom, who I remember, asked me about football the day when we were all taking pictures because he too recognized Nick from the congregation. In the past, it seemed that all my brain needed to match a clone was the mention of sports or something along those lines. I’m not sure why because most guys who are athletes aren’t the types of guys I want.

  Something in my brain ticks it off as suitable in this construction of my clone.

  It sounds so ridiculous, and I actually can’t believe I told him that.

  I ended up with Tom and I was on a mission to get laid. I remembered Nick taking me away then back to his house, where I continued my plans I had for Tom, except that I was with the man I wanted to be with.

  There’s no point trying to make up stories and guess what happened to the condoms now. I remember full well that we used them all, and then there was one time that we didn’t, but I took care of that with my mouth.

  We had sex nine times. It wasn’t seven like the condoms I saw suggested. It was nine. I didn’t even know people could have sex that many times in one night, but we did.

  Twice at his house. Once in the back alley of a sex club because I didn’t know if I could have sex in public, then six times in the barn.

  We left the house when he realized he didn’t have any more condoms. Then I got the crazy idea to go get some. I’m on the pill but I liked watching him roll the condoms down his cock. His cock that I got real close and personal with.

  We called a taxi and headed into town. That was when we saw the sex club and thought it would be a good idea to go inside. On the regular, wild and liberal as I am, I would never be caught dead anywhere like that, and what we got up to inside the club was perhaps worse than what I would do on the regular. We ended up in the back alley, had sex there, and it was while I was sucking his cock that I remembered I wanted to see him put the condom on.

  We headed to the drug store after that, got some condoms, left his wallet inside there. Then we saw this pickup truck with some couples kissing in the back.

  Nick just took my hand and we got inside. They were heading to a party in Barrington Hills, which we went to, and that’s how we ended up in the barn. The party was there in the house but we snuck away and went to the barn where we had sex for the rest of the night, or rather, all the space of time before the sun came up.

  That’s what happened.

  I had sex nine times in one night with my best friend.

  This isn’t one of those stories you hear about where people think they’ve slept together and wake up remembering they didn’t.

  No, no. I for damn certain had to fan the flames of shit and send the shit up to the fan.

  Mac clears his throat and gazes at me.

  I blink to focus and see he’s looking at me like he asked a question, but I didn’t hear anything past the drumming of my heart and the ringing of my ears.

  I squint and look from him to the large screen ahead of him with the patient details. I was hoping to guess the question from what’s on the screen, but all that’s on there is a list of the blood work tests she’s done.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say? I was lost in thought from the presentation,” I stutter, and Mac narrows his eyes at me.

  He knows when I’m lying.

  He inclines his head to the side. I’ve always thought he looked like Sean Connery, like when he started to get older.

  He’s a lead consultant and head of our department, and the first thing he said to us this morning was to pay attention and look for anything that stands out.

  “I wanted to know what you thought as Kayla is only sixteen. You’ve started looking at childhood diseases; does anything jump out to you?” he asks me.

  That’s what I want to go into. Pediatric neurology. It’ll be one of my areas of specialty, like him. That’s why he’s asking me.

  Chad, Mac’s right-hand man, looks to me too. He’s probably more suited to answer the question because he’s just like Mac.

  I’m so embarrassed with the answer I have for him.

  “No,” I say.

  Celine even casts a glance at me out the corner of her eyes.

  “Nothing at all?” Mac folds his arms.

  I decide to push myself out on the limb and fluff around an answer.

  “Not yet. There’s not enough information. I think because she’s sixteen, it’s going to be difficult to narrow it down to something childhood-related because she’s already started puberty, but maybe there’s either a delay of something or something genetic.” God that was a good answer and thank fuck it seemed to save me.

  Mac pulls up a screen with an X-ray of Kayla’s leg, and I narrow my eyes. It shows I definitely wasn’t paying attention because I see something.

  “Mac, she’s here because she’s complaining of excruciating pain in her joints?” I ask.

  He nods. “Pain to the point where she’s been prescribed very high dosages of painkillers. We can’t keep giving them to her.”

  “Mac, look at the X-ray,” I go over to it and it looks like the bone structure of someone in their mid to late forties.

  “Something’s wrong with her bones,” I say, and now he looks at me with a mix of interest and curiosity. This is the reason why he hired me. I’m like him, but different.

  “Tell me what you see,” he says.

  “Ever so slightly, but look…the density doesn’t look like it should. The mass just isn’t there for someone of that age. The bone structure of anyone under thirty-five should have a thicker density. I think we should start by checking to see if it’s juvenile osteoporosis, or something more. The X-ray is showing something happening in her body that’s making her bones like this,” I explain and point to the areas of the bone structure I’m talking about. “I know it doesn’t look like anything much, and I could be wrong, but that’s my answer.”

  It is ever so slight and easily missed. I’d bet an X-ray in a few months to a year’s time would show that there would be more noticeable changes to the structure.

  Mac nods. “Impressive, and there I was thinking you weren’t listening.”

  I give him a sweet smile and return to my seat. I’m sure he knows I wasn’t listening but didn’t want to call me out on it any more than he had because I gave such a good prognosis.

  “Okay guys, you heard the lady,” Mac declares. “Let’s start testing for juvenile osteoporosis. I’ll get more blood tests done and get the labs to check over a wider range of illnesses.” He focuses on me and Celine. “I need you two to go over her records today and set up the meeting with her and her parents. Like always, go in with knowledge of all that we have. This girl has been on painkillers for far too long. I don’t want us to look incompetent, or like we’re trying to patch up a problem that’s clearly there. Any questions?”

  “No, I’m good,” I answer.r />
  “Me too,” Celine adds.

  “Great, meeting adjourned.”

  Mac gathers up his paperwork, and Chad stands to wait for him.

  The minute they leave, Celine reaches for my arm. “Why is your phone switched off?” she asks.

  I wince, taking note of the pensive stare she’s giving me, and know that I’m gonna have to tell her something. I don’t want to talk about what happened, but I need to. But not here.

  My phone was switched off for most of the day on Sunday after I left Nick’s place. I switched it on to send him a message last night then switched it back off. I did see a text from Celine asking if I’d gotten home from the wedding okay, which I feel bad for not answering. I hope that she’ll understand once I tell her what happened.

  “Do you want to grab coffee?” I ask. “Then we can come back here and look over the notes and records.”

  “Yes, that sounds like an SOS coffee.” She gives me a saucy grin.

  “It is.”

  Her eyes widen.

  “Let’s go.”

  Tania

  We head to the little coffeehouse in the hospital. I figure today we don’t have time for anything else.

  We have two priority patients now. Usually, we have one at a time, and Mac takes care of the others.

  I’m classifying Kayla as a high-risk patient, not medium like it said on her files. If I think of her that way, it’s better because then I’ll know how to allocate my time. It means I have to do more research and more digging. It’s times like this when I miss Abby.

  Celine’s amazing too and the most senior doctor of the three of us, but that’s kind of why I miss Abby. It’s because she’s the same as me. Celine, though, is like this super brain, and I worry I’ll say something stupid sometimes or that she’ll call me out on the fact that, just like Abby, I only do the research I need to.

  It must be effective or I guess I wouldn’t be here.

  We sit down with large cups of vanilla lattes and donuts. I need the extra sugar.

  “Right, spill it. I want to hear what the SOS meeting is about.” Celine chuckles. “I saw you heading out with Tom. You two looked cozy. Wish I could say the same for his brother. That man is an ass.”