Got the Life (A Nicki Sosebee Novel) (11 page)

She came back into the kitchen.  “Do you want a glass of iced tea?”

“No, thanks,” Nicki managed, not wanting to tell her that she was grossed out by even thinking of consuming anything in her house
, especially after the animal cracker paste
.  God knows what the kids did to
anything there
.

Jillian
sat back down at the table and her voice dropped.  “
So,
Nicki, you’re still having one-night stands?  What’s up with that?”

“
Carlos
wasn’t a one-night stand.”

“Okay.  Let’s nitpick. 
A two-night stand is so much better.”

Nicki stammered.  “Well, yeah, it is.  You get to know each other better.”

“Oh, come on, Nicki.  You’re going to be thirty this year.  Shouldn’t you—”

“Jesus,
Jillian
, I did
not
come over here to get lectured.”

Jillian
sighed.  “Sorry.  I just worry about you.”

Nicki shrugged.  “Fine.”  She paused.  “I forgive you for that.  But I can’t forgive you bringing up my age.”

Jillian
laughed.  “You’re too much.
”  Her eyes darted to the living room to make sure the kids were properly enrapt, then turned back to Nicki.
 
“
So, anyway, tell me the rest of the story.”

Nicki took a deep breath.  “Well, crap.  I don’t know if I should now.”

“Ah, come on.  I worry about you, but I trust you.
  I just feel like it’s my duty as a responsible friend to let you know I care.”  Nicki stuck her tongue out at her.
 
“
Now where the heck is this going?”

“Well, the next day, Carlos left.  I didn’t think anything of it, figuring Sean the master
motorcycle mechanic
got
his bike
back on the road without a hitch
.  But later that day I went by his garage.  Do you remember that bike that was his pride and joy?”

“You mean the one he hardly dri
ve
s
but
i
s always customizing?”

“Yeah, that one.” 
Jillian
nodded.  “Well, when I went over there, I noticed it was gone.  So I asked him about it.  And get this…he told me he sold it to Carlos because Carlos was in a big…effing hurry to get out of here.”  Nicki saw
Jillian
was intent on her every word.  “But believe me when I tell you that was
so
not true.  He was enjoying the excuse to spend more time with me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”  She lowered her voice, even though she could hear SpongeBob’s giddy
staccato
laughter floating into the kitchen.  “We said goodbye after the first night, because he was going to leave
town.  I figured that was the end of it.  B
ut he made a point of telling me he wanted to get together again since he was stuck in
Winchester
.  I’m not saying it’s love
or anything even resembling it
, but we were…compatible, and he wanted to take advantage of that.”

“Okay.  So then what?”

“So Sean was lying to me about selling it to Carlos because Carlos was supposedly in a big effing hurry.  And so I grew a pair and confronted him about it.”

Jillian
leaned over the table, getting closer to Nicki.  “What did you say?”

“I said something like, ‘
No, Carlos didn’t want to leave. 
You
wanted Carlos to leave
’
.”

“Are you freaking kidding me?  So what did he say to that?”

“Oh, a bunch of bullshit.  Oh, sorry.” 
Jillian
waved halfheartedly toward the living room—obviously, the kids were engrossed with
SpongeBob
SquarePants
and wouldn’t notice Nicki’s outburst.  “He asked why I was hanging out with Carlos, saying that
Carlos
was a gang member.”

“Seriously?”

“I don’t know if it’s actually true or not, and it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, I think it does.  That could be dangerous.”

Nicki sighed.  “Carlos was really sweet.  And gentle.  And a gentleman.  If all gang members were like he was, the world would be a better place.”

Jillian
grinned and rolled her eyes.
  Her voice was
strained,
rising in pitch.
  She couldn’t stand it anymore.
  “So then what?”

“So I told Sean I didn’t believe he sold his bike because he was worried about me, because he knows I can take care of myself.”  Nicki paused for dramatic effect.  It worked. 
Jillian’s
eyebrows stood up and she was giving Nicki’s story the attention it deserved.
  Hell, she was practically ready to wring it out of Nicki.
  “And then he kissed me.”

“What?”

Nicki nodded.  “Yeah, full on, tongue and all, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and holy shit.  It was like eight friggin’ years just disappeared.”

“Holy crap.  Is he still with Kayla?”

“Yeah, and she walked in right after.
  Talk about timing.
  But before that, he
was saying, ‘That didn’t happen,
’
like he hadn’t just had his tongue in my mouth.
  And I said, ‘Yeah, it did.’  But Kayla showed up, so we couldn’t talk about it.  And that’s pretty much where I left it.”  She took a deep breath. 
“
So, expert of relationships, teller of the future, what do you think?  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”  She glanced at the clock on
Jillian’s
wall.  “And can you tell me in an hour or less, because
Napoli
awaits?”

Chapter Thirteen

NICKI SHOWERED WHEN
she got home.  She had to remove all the kid germs.  It was worse
than when she
’d
arrived
at
Jillian’s
, because she actually hugged and kissed
all three kids
before she came home
, and she left with a sticky film covering herself from head to toe. 
Th
ere was some weird grape stain on her shirt that
she was pretty sure
would never come out. 
Ick.
  Maybe Nathan should have hosed her down
when she left, kind of a decontamination chamber in the front yard,
instead of upon her arrival.

But she
got
what she
’d gone there for
.  She had her friend’s perspective on the whole Sean thing, and it was what she’d needed.  Nicki had actually started convincing herself that maybe she had a chance with Sean, but
Jillian
didn’t think so. 
Jillian
figured it was just because Nicki—one of Sean’s closest friends—was getting all kinds of attention from this good-looking swarthy man
right under Sean’s nose
, and it set off
hi
s
primeval
macho defenses.
  “It’s thousands of years of evolution, Nicki.  One alpha fights another for dominance over all the females.  It’s not that he cares about you that way, Nick.  It’s that he wants to be the rooster of us all.  You’re part of his brood and Carlos was sniffing around.”

So, it completely sucked, but she could live with it.

And it got her to thinking that maybe too Sean was still struggling with his whole do-I-or-don’t-I-move-in-with-Kayla dilemma, and maybe that kiss was his one last-ditch attempt at asserting his singleness.

Or he just wanted to fuck with her head.

Yeah, that was probably it.

So she spent the next twenty-four hours de-escalating the situation in her head, so that next time she saw him, she could be good old Nicki, friend extraordinaire.

Yeah, right.  Sunday afternoon, about two o’clock, Nicki pulled her car in front of her parents’ house.
  And in the end of the driveway sat Sean’s blue
Ford
truck.  She felt her body pump up with adrenaline to rise to the challenge, and that’s when she realized she was still nowhere near ready to deal with Sean.  But what was she gonna do?  Not see her one and only brother?  Didn’t think so.  She had to re-find that pair of balls she grew and strap ‘em on.  In front of the family, there was only one
way to handle it
:  get along
as best she could
and pretend things were peachy.  Ignore Sean as much as possible.
  Avoid eye contact when able.
  Deal with him the way he deserved later.  Even if she was just one of his fictional hens and there was only friendship there, they needed to talk about it.

Why did mom even invite him?  This was supposed to be a family thing.

But Sean was like family.  Nicki knew that.  Sean had been a part of Will’s life since Will’s age was in the single digits.  So
Will had
probably invited Sean himself.  So be it.
  It was what it was, and she had to deal with it.

So she walked up the sidewalk to mom and dad’s sunflower yellow house and rang the doorbell.  As usual, though, she didn’t wait for them to answer the door.  Instead, she popped in and yelled, “Just me,” then threw her purse on the bench in the entryway.

“Nini!”  Will came from the living room and hugged his sister.  When he’d learned to talk as a toddler, he’d said
Nicki
as
Nini
, and he’d never stopped calling her that.  Nicki liked it because no one else had that name for her, just Will.

Every time Will came home, Nicki was surprised at how tall he was.  He probably hadn’t grown in five years, but the visits were few and far between, and Nicki still thought of Will as her little brother.  Not so little, though.  He was a good six inches taller
than she was
.  “Baby brother!” 
His
dark brown
hair was trimmed but still longish, giving his hair a messy can’t-be-bothered-with-my-hair look that she was sure some girls loved.  He had cute dimples and dark brown eyes; his looks had hardly changed since he was seven.  He would always be her baby brother. 
She wrapped her arms around him.  “How the hell have you been, Mr. Smartypants?”

“Smartypants?  What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Would you prefer ‘smartest guy in the world’?”

He smiled.  “Ah.  You’ll nee
d to meet my buddy Lex sometime
.  Blows me away, man.”

“Please.  I can barely understand
you
half the time anymore.”  He locked her head in the crook of his elbow, then turned so they could start the journey into the other room.  “Mmm.  Smells good.  Mom outdid herself as always.”

“She put the roast on early.  It was already halfway done when I got up this morning.  She said that’s her secret to tender beef that falls apart
at the touch of the fork tines:
  Cook it to friggin’ death.
”

“Nice.
”  She breathed in the various smells wafting from the kitchen.
 
“
Nobody cooks like mom.”  They started walking, but Nicki wasn’t sure where Will planned to go.  To the left was the dining room, straight ahead was the kitchen, and to the right was the living room.  Nicki
,
as a preemptive strike
,
bore full forward to head to the kitchen.  Mom was sure to be there and Sean not.  Sean was no doubt talking to dad in the living room.
  She was not ready.

Will didn’t fight her lead.  “Hey, mom,” Nicki said, and hugged her mother.
  Carol Sosebee’s blonde hair was tucked up into not quite a bun but some elaborate updo that might have been appropriate at a formal occasion.  But it highlighted the length of her neck and the curvature of her jaw.  When her mother wore her hair up, Nicki could tell she was her mother’s daughter, even though she often joked that they must have adopted her.
  Even their light brown eyes looked nearly identical.

“Hi, honey.”
  She stepped back toward the stove.  “It’s been a couple of weeks, and I’d swear you’ve lost weight.”

Mom always said that.  She smiled.  “Not a pound, mom.  I swear.”  She was wearing a hemp-green baby doll tee that said “Save the Planet” and short white shorts with white flip-flops.  Maybe she needed to wear boy shirts stuffed with pillows and flared jeans.  Then maybe mom would stop pestering her about her weight.  Sheesh…if she’d really lost weight as often as mom thought she
did
, she’d
weigh
about twenty-three pounds by now.
  “So, what can I do to help?”