Cocktails & Dreams (4 page)

The memory of how his eyes has twinkled with laughter that night, and how it felt to be held close to him could still make her smile. By the same token, Jena never forgave herself for turning down Nick’s offer to walk her back to her dorm in favor of babysitting a hellaciously drunk Leisa, who wouldn’t dream of leaving the party at the crack of midnight. He’d stroked the side of Jena’s face with one finger and walked off into the swirling snow with a smile and a wave.

Leisa’s voice brought Jena back to the present. “…and the dumb shit just let him walk away. Never saw him again. Wasted opportunity, sugar, especially since he specifically asked Diane to invite you to the party.”

Jena’s head whipped around. “He did what? No, he didn’t. Leisa, you’re just making that up!”

Leisa shook her head. “Jena, think about it. How many freshmen were at that party? I’ll tell you how many. Two. You and me. Nicholas asked Diane to ask you.”

“What? How? Where did you hear that?”

“From Diane, of course. She was in my pottery class, and we got talking one day.”

Huh.
Jena’s mind went blank.
Huh.

Leisa looked concerned. “Are you okay, sweetie? I thought it was obvious. He watched you all the time, even though you refused to look at him. I went to practices just to enjoy the drama of him watching you, all of the other girls watching him watching you and giving you death glares, and you watching no one. Highlight of my day back then, actually.”

Travis chimed in, apparently tired of Leisa’s attention being focused on Jena. “I can’t believe you rowed, too, Leisa. I can’t see a sweet thang like you carrying those big boats.”

Leisa batted her eyes. “Oh, I didn’t row. I was the coxswain.” She emphasized the first syllable of the word to make it sound dirty. “I measured the stroke.” She ran her hand lightly up Travis’s thigh. To Jena’s amazement, he blushed.

“Oh, good God, Travis! You can’t work at UC Davis and not have heard those terms before. Get a grip.” Jena was still reeling from Leisa’s information, but not so far gone that she couldn’t give her roomie a rash of shit.

“I just never heard them quite that way, Jen. Say, do you have a place to stay, Leisa?”

“Y
OU
D
O
R
EALIZE
T
HERE
A
RE
G
YMS
in California, don’t you, Conor?”

After chucking his fourth load of free weights into the U-Haul, Nicholas’s arms and back were a mess. Moving cross-country with Conor was proving to be an experience. Between the ridiculous weights that seemed to make no difference to Conor’s lean frame, his flat screen, and all the other miscellaneous shit he claimed he couldn’t do without, Nick was limited to about one quarter of the truck for his things. Con claimed that some of the stuff was for both of them, and some of it certainly was, but Nick thought most of it was extraneous crap. The only thing saving Conor from a beat down was the nervous look in his blue eyes whenever he talked about moving. Nicholas felt like he had to cut the guy some slack. It took a lot of guts for Con to decide to go to college at all, and to go so far from his comfort zone was a big thing.

“Ooh! Is his widdle bitty awms sore? Does him want to cawy the couch piwows?” Conor asked, heaving yet another massive load of crap into the truck.

“Hey, asshat! Where the hell am I supposed to put my stuff? You took the whole damn truck!” Nick bellowed. Maybe he didn’t feel so sorry for Conor after all. At the rate Con was going, there’d be nothing left in Boston to miss but his mom, and Nick wasn’t so sure she wasn’t crouched in one of the boxes. Mrs. Grady was not taking her son’s move well.

“Piss and moan, piss and moan,” Conor muttered, climbing into the back of the truck and shifting things until Nick miraculously had some room for his things. Some.

Two hours later, Nicholas was butt-tired, and he and Conor were as ready as they would ever be to start out the next morning. A quick goodbye meal with the parental units, and Nick collapsed in his sleeping bag on the floor of his empty apartment. Although moving around the country was not unfamiliar to him, his last move had been made under such stress that he hardly remembered how long it was going to take to drive to the West Coast. Leaving Oregon the way he had in college, terrified that his dad would die before he got home, wasn’t exactly conducive to remembering the length of the trip. It was all a horrific blur.

Recollecting that time shook Nick up so badly that he had a hard time sleeping, even though his ass was dragging. He found his mind drifting once again to the woman he privately called “the Angel.” It annoyed the shit out of him that he still remembered so little about her. Still no face. Still no name. Nick’s body recall, however, was sterling.

Turning over restlessly, he dropped into restless dreams of his Angel acting not at all angelic.

A loud crash startled Nicholas awake.

“Wake the fuck up, Dickolas! Holy Mother of God! I swear, if I have to comb the entire states of Oregon and California, I will find that fucking girl so I can get some goddamned sleep.” Conor loomed in the doorway of Nick’s room, glaring. “You make as much noise as a chick. What the hell were you dreaming about?”

Blinking in the sudden brightness from the overhead light, Nicholas cursed. “Sex, Conor. I was dreaming of the hot, wet screw I enjoyed on the couch at the hotel. The first of four enjoyed in various locations around the suite. Need any more details?”

Conor stared at Nick for a minute, scratching at his bare chest. Then he shuddered, shaking his head. “That’s just nasty. I ate breakfast on that couch a couple of hours later.” He wandered back toward his room, pulling his boxers out of his crack and muttering about public and private areas. As he reached the door, he called back, “And thank you
so
much for bringing that night up. Now I’ve got fucking on my mind. I’ll never get back to sleep now.” He slammed the door of the bathroom, and Nick heard the shower go on as Conor shouted, “
Shit,
that’s cold! Screw you, Nicholas.”

“No thanks, Con,” Nick muttered. “It just wouldn’t be the same.” He closed his eyes again, savoring the fantasy of pulling a silken handful of the Angel’s hair over her shoulder and gently releasing it so he could watch it spill around her round white breast…

“Conor! Hurry the hell up!”

As they slowed to a stop in front of a nice apartment building in Davis, Nicholas climbed out of the truck with relief. Three solid days of Conor’s beloved eighties hair metal bands and Nicholas was almost out of his mind. Conor was still singing Bon Jovi as he stepped out of the U-Haul’s cab and stretched with his hands behind his neck.

“If you have to torture me with songs from childhood, Con, you could have at least gone for the grunge era. That shit you’re singing sucks. Sincerely.”

“Whatever, dork. Like I care what you think,” Conor retorted lackadaisically. He looked around. “So, whose place is this? Pretty fancy.”

“Guy I knew at UO—Rich Scheller.” Nicholas slanted a smile. “Sort of a tool, but he volunteered his guest room until we can get into our apartment tomorrow. He and I rowed together.”

Conor grinned. “Oh. Right. Instead of playing a real sport.”

Nicholas ignored Conor’s asshattery and rang the doorbell. The door swung open before the bell stopped sounding.

“Nicky Cooper!”

Nick winced as a bald blob descended on him with the one armed “bro-hug” combined with a sweaty-palmed back slap. He heard Conor snicker behind him as his most hated nickname was paired with his most hated action. Nick would be hearing about this later, he was sure.
Dick.

Stepping back as soon as he politely could, Nicholas smiled tightly. “Hey, Rich. Thanks for letting us crash here until morning.” He turned to indicate the idiot. “This is my friend, Conor Grady.”

Rich shot Conor a measuring glance, then stuck out his hand. “Conor. Any friend of Nicky’s, and all that shit.”

Conor took the extended hand and shook it briefly. Nick saw him surreptitiously wipe his palm on his leg a second later and fought the urge to do the same. The rest of the evening was similarly painful, and Rich’s long-winded bragging became increasingly more annoying until Nick sent a silent Conor a look of apology, wishing he’d ponied up the cash for a hotel.

Settling his bulk more firmly in the center of his couch after ignoring Nick’s eighth polite glance at his watch, Rich took a pull on his Beck’s and asked, “So, did you ever hear anything from that freshman girl we tussled over? What the hell was her name?”

Nick smiled, thinking of the girl who had caught his eye by ignoring him. At least the conversation was finally getting a little more interesting. “Jena Baker. No, the last time I saw her was the night I had to go back to Boston. You?”

“Nah. Not after the end of that year. We had a little ‘misunderstanding.’” Rich grinned, his piggy eyes almost disappearing in folds of flesh. “Did you ever hit that, bud? Tasty, tasty stuff.”

Nick felt a brighter flash of annoyance at Rich’s obvious lie. “
You
slept with her? Bullshit. She couldn’t stand you. No offense,
bud.”

Rich shrugged. “Source of the misunderstanding. After you left, I figured she was fair game.” He looked offended as he said, “Do you know she wouldn’t give me the fucking time of day? Captain of the team, and she shut me down at a party with the whole team in the other room. Couldn’t be allowed to happen, bro. So I fixed it.” He grinned, tossing more peanuts in his maw.

Rich was starting to irritate Nicholas. A lot. “What happened?”

“Maybe I let on that things ended different than they actually did.” Rich cawed laughter. “The girls were such bitches to her, and the rest of the guys were impressed. Jena was so quiet, they never thought it would happen. Made for a fun rest of the year.”

“That was a shitty thing to do.” Nick was pissed. He’d definitely decided too soon that the convo was getting better. “Jena was a nice girl.”

Rich shrugged, sending ripples across his pudge. “Whatever.”

Enough of Captain Cupcake. Nick rose to his feet, and Conor followed with a relieved smile. “Well, I think we’d better hit the hay, Rich. Big day tomorrow. Thanks again for the room.” He and Conor said polite good-nights before heading into the room they’d been offered and shutting the door.

Conor had been quiet through the evening’s conversation, but commented as he was settling into his sleeping bag. “Nice guy, Nick.”

Nicholas snorted. “Fuckhead is more like it, Con. Sorry.” Resting his head on his arm as he lay down, Nick frowned. “Man, I can’t believe he did that to her! What a tool.”

Conor sounded intrigued. “So, who was this girl? You sounded more interested in her than you have anyone in a long time. Well, except for the mystery girl.”

“Jena? She was a girl on our team that I sort of had a thing for.” Nick smiled, remembering Jena’s green eyes and perpetual smile. Not to mention her hot body.

“So?” Conor’s voice broke into Nicholas’s thoughts. “
Did
you hit that?”

“Nah. I tried a couple of times, but she wasn’t as into me as I was into her, I guess.”

Conor snorted laughter. “A girl that can resist Pretty Boy? I like her already, man.”

“Yeah. I did, too.” Nicholas sighed, hoping for a night of dreamless sleep.

He didn’t get it. The mystery girl left him alone, but Jena replaced her. Nick dreamed of the last time he’d seen her, at that crazy party at Diane’s house. Same place, the talking and the dancing, but this time Jena let him walk her home and he got to see the body he’d been rubbing up against all night and fantasizing about for months. He got to run his hands over the smooth muscles of her back and behind, over the soft skin of her neck. Nick finally got to feel her mouth and hear her whisper his name…

And then the alarm rang. Shit.

The rest of the day was a blur of movement as Nick and Conor hastily left Jabba’s house and made their way to their new apartment to begin moving in. Of course, Conor expected Nick’s help in moving his enormous pile of crap into the house. Nick grudgingly acquiesced, and was overjoyed to find that Mrs. Grady had indeed been left behind, even if nothing else was.

Late that afternoon, all that was left to move was Conor’s huge flat screen. He had wrapped it gently in quilts and surrounded it with pillows at the very back of the truck.

“Jesus Christ, Conor,” Nick groaned as they rounded the corner of the second flight of stairs, arms shaking as he tried to hold up his end. “How much does this thing weigh?”

Conor shrugged, trying to keep the television balanced as they struggled up the stairs. “Maybe we should have taken Pudding Boy up on his offer to help,” he grunted between clenched teeth.

“
Hell
no! We’d have been stuck with him all day.”

They paused as the horror of that thought overwhelmed them, and then continued the slow, torturous climb to their third floor apartment.

Conor had already installed the crap to hang the TV on the wall above the small faux fireplace, so they were soon straining their arms to get it situated properly. Conor had his side attached securely when Nick felt the legs of the chair he was standing on start to slide out from under him.

“Conor!” Nick bellowed, thinking his best friend would try to help him as the chair slowly tipped backward.

No fucking way.

Shouting, “Oh, shit!” Conor slammed his shoulder into Nicholas’s gut as he caught the tilting edge of the TV to keep it from falling.

The chair flew backward, and as he fell, Nick tried to catch himself with an outflung arm. Big mistake. He felt a white hot flare of pain in his right shoulder as his full body weight landed on the arm that was twisted behind him to stop his fall.

“Son of a bitch!”
Nicholas thought he was going to throw up from the pain.

“Oh, shit, Nick. I’m so sorry!” Conor’s worried face loomed over Nicholas. He gently checked the shoulder out, each touch making Nick want to scream. “What do you want me to do, man? I think it’s dislocated, but I’m not the EMT.”

Nicholas reached over and felt it gingerly. “Yeah, it’s dislocated. I need you to pull my arm out firmly, Con, and guide the ball back in the socket. I’ll probably yell, because it’s gonna hurt like a bastard, so don’t worry about it, okay?”

Conor nodded, eyes grim. Nick took a deep breath and signaled Conor to begin.

“Holymotherfuckingbitchcocksuckingshit!”
Nick yelled as he felt the ball slip back into the socket and the pain lessen, but not as much as it should have. He breathed deeply, staring up at the ceiling to keep the tears in his eyes. “Conor, I need you to call my dad. This should feel a lot better, but it doesn’t. Tell him what happened and then give me the phone.”

Of course, Nick’s dad wanted to fly out right away, worried that his son’s medical career was over before it started, but Nick convinced him to wait until they knew if there was a reason for him to change his schedule. Eventually, Dr. Cooper agreed and made a call to a good friend and colleague of his at the university hospital to set up an appointment right away. Luckily, Dr. Call was on his free day and was willing to go into his office to check Nicholas out.

“Thank you for doing this, Dr. Call,” Nicholas said as the doctor was unlocking the door of his office, where he’d had Conor and Nicholas meet him.