Nothing to Lose (12 page)

“Do you know what he said?” she said. “Billy said I was the nicest, most considerate person he knew and that you're lucky to have me as a friend.”

“Uh-huh.” Either Billy had been experiencing a completely different Morgan from the rest of the world over the past ten or so years, or love really was blind.

We signed out at the security desk and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“So now that you're sprung, what are you going to do?” I said.

“Go home, take a nice long bubble bath, and crawl back into bed,” she said. “You?”

“Go back to Henri's, I guess.”

“What about Nick?”

“What about him?”

She looked at me. “You weren't kidding, were you? You two really had a fight.”

“A big one,” I said.

Morgan hooked an arm through mine. “Come on,” she said. “Let's go for coffee. You can tell me all about it.”

We were on our way to Morgan's favorite coffee shop when I heard someone call my name.

“Uh-oh,” Morgan said. “It's Barry.”

Barry Osler—life objective: millionaire by age thirty— was beefier than the burgers he served up in his restaurant and had a complexion that was oilier than his fry pit.

“Maybe he wants to ask you out again,” Morgan said.

“Let's pretend we didn't see him,” I said.

“Too late,” Morgan said.

Barry was scurrying toward us, his jacket flapping open over his fast-food uniform and his name badge—
Barry. Manager
.

“Robyn,” he said, beaming and breathless. “What a coincidence. I was thinking about you. I was going to call you.”

“I told you so,” Morgan whispered.

“Hi Barry,” I said. “How are you?”

Most people recognize that question for what it is—a polite but empty greeting. Barry was not one of those people. He shook his head and sighed. “That's exactly why I was going to call you. When I tell people that I'm a manager at a restaurant, they think, how hard could that be? But it's way harder than it looks.You know why?” He didn't pause to let me even attempt an answer.“It's true what they say—good help really
is
hard to find. Just last week, one of my employees stopped coming in for his shift. Just like that. When I called him to find out where he was, he said, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. I quit.' Like he wouldn't have let me know if I hadn't tracked him down. The same week I had to fire another guy. I can't tell you the trouble
he
caused. That's when I thought of you, Robyn. You'd be a great addition to my team. Christmas is just around the corner. Who couldn't use some extra money, am I right?”

Morgan nudged me. I elbowed her back—hard.

“Thanks for thinking of me,” I said. “But I'm pretty swamped with school right now.”

“Actually,” Morgan said, “I think Robyn's boyfriend works at your place. Isn't that what you told me, Robyn?”

Barry looked confused. “Boyfriend?” He stared at me as if he were my boyfriend—and he'd just discovered that I was cheating on him.

“Nick D'Angelo,” Morgan said, oh-so-sweetly. She was going to be sorry if Barry decided to make things hard for Nick. “He works for you, right?”

“That guy is your
boyfriend
?” Barry said. “I never thought you'd associate with someone like that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nick is the guy I fired last week—after some friends of his came in and busted up the place for the
second
time. I had to call the cops.” He seemed to enjoy breaking this particular bit of news. “That guy was nothing but trouble. Always giving me attitude. I hope he isn't expecting a reference from me, because he isn't going to get one.” He dug a business card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Any time you want a job, give me a call. I know you'd be a model employee.”

“So much for that romance,” Morgan said after he had left. “Barry won't bother you again, which I think makes us even. How come you didn't tell me that Nick got fired?” Morgan likes to think of herself as smart. As in straight As all the way. Proof that she's as smart as she thinks she is: all it took was a glance at the expression on my face before she said, “Ah.”

We went into the coffee shop and ordered lattes, even though I didn't want one anymore. I didn't want anything. Morgan insisted.

“It'll cheer you up,” she said. Lattes are her second-favorite pick-me-up, after shopping. While we sipped our coffee, Morgan said that she was sure Nick had been planning to tell me he'd been fired. She said he was probably embarrassed by what had happened. I wasn't so sure, and was about to say so when her phone rang. It was Billy. Morgan was perky by the time she hung up.

“Billy says he hopes you're feeling better,” she said.

“Actually, I'm feeling worse. But you can tell him thanks for asking.”

“They've finished sorting birds. Billy wants me to meet him. We're going over to his place. He wants to know if you want to come.”

I said no and tried not to notice how relieved she seemed. She wanted alone time with Billy. I understood. When Nick had called me last night, that was exactly what
I
had wanted. But that was then.

We finished our lattes—Morgan chugged hers down like water—and skipped off to meet Billy. I trudged back to Henri's place.

“Robyn, is that you?” Henri called when I unlocked the door and pushed it open. When I called back that it was, she said, “You've got company.”

I found Henri standing in the kitchen, pouring boiling water into a mug. Sitting at Henri's kitchen table, his cast resting on a pillow that Henri had put on one of the chairs, was Nick.

“H
ey, Robyn,” Nick said. He looked at me, searching for a sign that I wasn't still mad at him.

Henri put a steaming mug of tea in front of Nick and asked me if I'd like some. When I said no, thanks, she said, “Well, I'd better get back to work. I'll be upstairs if anyone needs me.”

Nick watched her go. “She's nice,” he said.

“I thought they wanted to keep you in the hospital overnight,” I said, unbuttoning my jacket.

“I guess they changed their minds,” he said.

“You guess? What did the doctor say when he discharged you?”

He just shrugged.

“You talked to the doctor before you left the hospital, right?”

“It's no big deal, Robyn,” he said. Terrific. He'd been lying to me all day. He'd been doing something that was probably illegal. He'd been hit by a car. And now he was deciding to play doctor. I stopped unbuttoning my coat and started buttoning it again. I grabbed my gloves and headed for the door.

“Hey,” Nick said. “Don't go.”

I heard him groan and turned to find him white-faced as he struggled onto his good foot. The chair he was clinging to for balance teetered. For a moment I thought it was going to topple over. But I didn't rush to help him.

“Did you talk to the doctor before you left the hospital?” I said again.

He grimaced. Maybe he was angry. He had to be in pain. But he didn't answer. I turned for the door again.

“Okay,” he said. “God, sometimes you act so much like your mom it's scary.”

“Are you trying to charm me, Nick? If you are, it's not working.”

“They didn't discharge me. I just sort of walked out.”

“Sort of?”

“Well, I hobbled. These crutches are murder.” He grinned. He
was
trying to charm me.

“Does your aunt know where you are? If she goes to the hospital to see you and you aren't there—”

“What's with you?” he said. “I called her, okay?”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing.”

“Right.” I tried to tell myself that I didn't care, but the truth was I was getting angrier and angrier.

“I left a message,” Nick said. “Give me a break, Robyn. I came all the way over here to see you.”

“What for? To tell me more lies?” Then it hit me. “You want the money,” I said. I went into the back bedroom, grabbed the thick envelope from where I had stashed it, marched back into the kitchen, and threw it at him.

“Hey!” Nick said, his own anger flashing. “You want to at least
try
to be nice to me? I got hit by a car, remember?”

“You told me you had the weekend off, Nick.”

I was giving him the perfect chance to do what Morgan had been so sure he would do—tell me the truth about losing his job. Instead, he looked down at the floor and didn't say a word.

“I spoke to Barry,” I said. “Barry, your boss.”

He looked up at me, surprised.

“What were you doing? Checking up on me?” he said.

“I ran into him. I know him, Nick. He goes to my school.”

“Yeah, well, he's a jerk.”

“He thinks just as highly of you,” I said. “He told me he fired you last week.”

“So what? It was a lousy job.”

“He said some of your friends trashed the place. Twice.”

“They weren't friends of mine.”

“Whatever.” I couldn't tell anymore whether he was lying or telling the truth. “You got fired and you didn't tell me.”

“You're not my mom, Robyn,” he said. He sounded as angry as I was. “You're not my youth worker, either. Since when do I have to tell you every detail of my life?”

“Since never, I guess.”

He winced as he tried to maneuver around the chair so that he could sit down again.This time the chair started to tip. I rushed forward to right it. Nick grabbed me around the waist for balance. We stood there for a moment, Nick clinging to me, me wanting to break free of him but feeling trapped by the heat of his body. I helped him sit down. His face shone with perspiration. He took a deep breath before lifting his injured foot back onto the pillow. The jagged scar across his face stood out against his pale skin, and for some reason that got to me. I felt sorry for him.

“Didn't they give you anything for pain?” I said.

“They were going to. But I left before the nurse came back.”

“You want me to see if Henri has anything?”

He started to shake his head, then drew in a sharp breath and closed his eyes, breathing hard through the pain.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

I went to find Henri, who gave me a bottle of medium-strength pain relievers from her medicine cabinet. Nick took two of them.Then he patted the seat of the chair next to his. I hesitated. Theoretically, I was still angry with him.

“Please?” he said. There were those purple eyes of his, begging me. What could I do? I sat down. “I didn't tell you about getting fired because I didn't want you to worry,” he said. “Besides, I thought if I could get another job first, it wouldn't be a big deal.”

“Because then you could tell me you quit the first job, right?”

Some color returned to his cheeks—the bright red of embarrassment.

“Something like that,” he said. “I'm sorry, okay?”

My mother used to say that the two things that drove her crazy about my father were when he didn't apologize, and when he did. (Actually, there were a lot more things about him that drove her crazy, which is why they got divorced.) When he was a cop, my dad worked long hours. He missed a lot of occasions that my mother thought he shouldn't have. Half the time, she said, he refused to apologize. “It's my job,” he'd say. “You want me to apologize because some piece of garbage decided to kill his girlfriend, and I had to go and find him? That's supposed to be my fault?” She hated when he did that—what could she say?

The rest of the time, he would say, “I apologize. I know that [fill-in-the-blank occasion] was important to you and I'm sorry I missed it.” She hated that because she knew he wasn't even remotely sorry that he had missed whatever it was; he was only sorry that she was upset, and that if he didn't apologize, she would go on and on about it. According to my mother, that didn't constitute a real apology. A real apology, she said, was when someone regretted what they had done, understood why it was wrong, and tried never to do it again, which, of course, my father never did.

I looked at Nick. I thought about how many times he had said sorry to me. I wondered what he was thinking when he said it.

“So what are you going to do?” I said.

“I don't know. They said at the hospital that I have to be on crutches for six weeks. My ankle's too busted up for a walking cast. Who's going to hire me when I can't even walk? What am I gonna do if I can't get a job?”

“You could talk to your aunt.”

He shook his head. “Talking to my aunt means begging Glen. Not a chance.”

“Then you'll have to talk to my dad. I know he doesn't care about the rent. And I could lend you some money for food and—”

“No way.” He sounded angry again. “I'm not asking your dad for anything. And I'm not taking money from you.”