Saint Nicholas (12 page)

“Nicky, oh honey, hello. Are you sitting down?”

I looked at the couch, and at Bacon who’d come and leaped onto the cushion next to me. He was purring away while I rubbed his belly. “Yup,” I said. “It’s all good.”

She immediately started sobbing and I thought this is it, Giorgio’s dead.

“It’s Sarah, honey. You remember her?”

The sound of her name caused my breath to hitch, and I immediately stopped touching Bacon and bolted upright just shy of jumping to my feet. My heart started pounding and I tried to tell mom that yes, of course I remembered her, but no words would come out.

Sarah. I hadn’t heard her name in nearly four years. God, did I remember her. I thought about her every single day, several times a day. She was the reason for my seclusion. The reason I was a recluse, and just hearing that one single word pass Ma’s lips made it feel like I was seventeen again and standing across from Ollie’s watching her as she looked at me.

“Nicky, are you there?” she asked.

I could picture her crying on the other end of the phone, possibly sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of Irish coffee sitting in front of her. She didn’t have to work anymore since Giorgio made enough money for the both of them, stocks or something, so she spent her time doing crafts and hitting the bottle, though not nearly as much as my father had.

“I’m here, Ma,” I said. It felt like I’d swallowed a sleeve of Ritz crackers. I desperately needed a drink of something, but I didn’t trust my legs. I was afraid that if I actually did get up I’d collapse to the floor. I had visions of myself in one of those Life Alert commercials.

Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

I wanted to believe the best. That maybe Sarah met some nice guy and had gotten hitched, and that’s why Mom was crying. She knew me better than I knew myself, and though we’d never talked about her after that day when I’d left her for the last time, Mom knew that she was still the girl who had my heart, and that it would be a long time—if ever—before I ever let another person as close to me as she’d been.

I wanted to believe the best, but mom told me the worst.

“I don’t—I’m not sure what to—I don’t know—”

“Spit it out,” I heard myself say.

“Oh Nicky, she’s dead.”

I dropped the phone and quickly followed it to the floor. In the distance I heard Ma asking me if I was okay, but honestly it felt like I was drowning and she was calling my name from above water. Bacon, totally freaked, peeled off for a safe corner of the apartment.

I couldn’t breathe. My vision blurred. Tears flowed freely and silently down my face as once again my entire relationship with Sarah flashed before my eyes, just like it’d done the day I left her. Every kiss, every breath, every hug—I felt it all in an emotional tightness that gripped my chest.

This is what dying feels like.

Dying. Death. Dead.

Sarah.

I released everything in a gut-wrenching sob that escaped my throat, causing Bacon to hiss. I reached for the phone with a hand as unsteady as the ocean, dropped it again, reached for it, placed it to my ear, and heard silence. Mom had hung up.

An hour later she showed up my apartment, and picked me up off the floor.

PART

THREE

Three Years

Later

SIXTEEN

-
Nicholas
-

1-Star. I think Nicholas Rossi must’ve had a stroke or something, because his Blake Steel books have been going downhill for the last couple of years. I’m done after this one. Complete nonsense. So disappointed.

2-Stars. Not even remotely good as the first two. The third was okay, but these last couple of books are horrendous. I don’t even know why I bother reading them.

1-Star. Rossi Sucks!!!

1-Star. Nope. Just nope. I don’t know who had the bright idea to make Blake do a complete 180 and turn him into an emotionless, selfish SOB, but it doesn’t suit him at all. These books used to have heart, now they’re just mindless drivel. Like an
Avengers
movie or something. So done with this series.

I hadn’t shaved in days and the apartment I was on the verge of losing looked like a hurricane had blown through it. Clothes everywhere, both clean and dirty; pizza boxes stacked up against the wall like a Jenga tower waiting to topple over. It was shameful.

With a heavy sigh I closed my laptop and swiveled around in my chair, running my hands down the side of my itchy, scruffy face. I hated that those reviews were right. Hated it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I’d tried with this latest book, I really did. I thought okay, time to move on and write the best book you can write, but obviously my best wasn’t good enough anymore.

“Nicky, you got any ice cream?” asked a voice from the bedroom.

Another sigh, followed by a wince. I stood up and went to the ice box, letting the cool air of the freezer wash over me for a moment like maybe it would snap some sense into me. It didn’t.

“No,” I shouted back. “Just…frozen peas.”

“Ugh,” came a dramatic reply.

I shuffled over, patting Bacon’s head on the way to the bedroom. He nipped at my fingers and meowed. “Eat some pizza,” I said.

I leaned against the open door and stared at Helena. She laid sprawled out on the bed with a novel in her hands. She adjusted her glasses and looked up at me. “You look like shit, you know that?

I nodded. “I know.”

She’d been at the apartment for three days, and there was no sign she’d be leaving anytime soon. I’d given up my bed for her, and Helena’s suitcase sat open on the floor with her toiletries, clothes, and books spilling out of it.

I scratched my balls and yawned.

“Gross,” she muttered.

“You can leave at anytime,” I said.

“Ma said a week.”

I rolled my eyes. Ma. I suspected she’d been the reason behind my sister’s visit.

My mind searched back to that day three years ago. The day I’d learned the only girl I’d ever cared about was gone. It hurt to think about her, but it hurt even more to forget.

I don’t mean to sound harsh
, Mom told me later that night,
but maybe now you’ll be able to move on with your life.

Move on? Shit, that’s what I’d been trying to do up until that point. My books were selling well, I was making some scratch, and I had a place of my own. More than I could say for some 23-year-olds. Life was okay back then, but now? At 26 I was losing it. In debt up to my eyeballs with back taxes and credit cards, writing crappy novels that I couldn’t give away because my heart just wasn’t in it anymore, only I didn’t know how to do anything else. I had no skills beyond the written word, and if I couldn’t do that, then what good was I? I’d never gone to college. All I’d ever done was write.

Helena popped up off the bed and gave me a hug. She’d grown up into a beautiful woman. Nineteen now, and taking a year off before she flew out west to attend USC School of Dramatic Arts. It was hard to believe she was the same girl I used to have tickle fights with on the couch.

“You stink, too,” she told me. “Why don’t you go take a shower.”

She went back and sat on the bed. My bed. The couch wasn’t nearly as comfortable.

Without saying anything I went to the bathroom, closed the door, and pulled Helena’s bra off the shower rod before turning the water to a nice, steady temperature of scalding hot. Once under the water, I stood there, my hands placed firmly on the wall, letting the stream gush over my hair and face. Straight away my brain started thinking about her again. Sarah. Morning, noon, and night she was all I thought about. Even when I was writing—or, trying to write—her face lurked behind the words like a shadow.

If only I’d done more. If only I’d never left her and stayed to help her kick the habit. Maybe things would have been different. Maybe, maybe, maybe. My life was a constant stream of maybes. Maybes and what ifs. What if I’d just been there? What if I’d told someone about her father?

Guilt was my only girlfriend now. Holding my hand everywhere I went. Following me around like a lost puppy day and night, waiting for me to feed it, which I always did so it’d stick around longer. I thought I deserved it. It was my cross to bear. Before, I at least knew she was somewhere out there. Alive and breathing and maybe even clean. Now she was nowhere, and everywhere. Haunting every waking moment, and cursing my dreams.

I was crying. I didn’t even know it until a sob escaped me and I sat down in the tub, letting the shower wash over me. I didn’t want Helena to hear me, even though I’m sure I kept her awake last night. I knew she meant well, Ma too, but I didn’t want her here. I just wanted my privacy. At least then the only person who’d hear me would be Sarah.

“Nicky, I gotta pee,” she knocked on the door, jolting me from my sorrow.

I stood up and turned off the water, wrapping a towel around my waist. I was done anyway. So done.

I opened the door and stood there, filling it. Dripping wet with red eyes that Helena ignored.

“Damn, bro. You looked jacked.” Her eyes perused my muscles, but not in a creepy sort of way.

Working out had been the only habit I’d stuck to all this time, and as a result I was built like a brick house. She felt my biceps and slapped me on the abs.

“Scoot, I gotta go.”

I moved out of the way and strolled into the living room, putting on a pair of week-old jeans and a t-shirt. Maybe later I’d get out for a walk. Head down to Cathy’s or something.

Maybe.

I didn’t, though. Instead I laid down on the couch and stared at my laptop from across the room until my lids felt heavy and I fell asleep, only to have nightmares about a girl who didn’t exist anymore.

* * *

Things didn’t get better after Helena left. They got worse, in fact. I thought I wanted to be alone, but having my sister around for that brief week only served to remind me how much I missed the ones I loved, which in turn made me think even more about Sarah.

From time to time it would hit me that she was really gone, and those days were the worst. I’d never gone to the funeral—hell, I’d never even bothered to look to see her obituary. I knew how she died. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was an overdose.

Jesus, if only I’d have stayed with her. The guilt was eating away at my soul day after day. Consuming me from the inside. Half the time I felt like I was going out of my mind. I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to live anymore, and on those days I’d sit on the couch just staring into the void, feeling my heart beat in the veins of my neck as they pulsed the blood through my body.

Mostly I tried to keep busy. Lifting weights, writing; they were the only things I knew, so I did them as frequently as possible, even if I didn’t feel I was good at them anymore.

I sat in front of the computer, pecking away at the keys while trying to string together coherent sentences that would form paragraphs that would form chapters, which would eventually lead me to the finish line of this latest book. It was a departure from my usual fare. No Blake Steel, no action. No nothing, really. I was just writing for the sake of writing. Usually I plotted things out, but as I’d come to discover, life is pretty plotless, so if I don’t know what’s coming next, maybe the reader won’t either.

For four hours I pecked, pecked, pecked, feeling no more ahead of myself than when I started. I got up and went to the kitchen, stumbling around dirty clothes and notebooks.
Man, I really need to clean
. Bacon was on top of the fridge so I reached up and offered him some scratches while grabbing a soda.

From the living room my computer pinged, and I remembered that I forgot to close my Facebook tab before writing. I don’t even know why I bothered to have it open. The only friends I had on there were Angie, Shakes, Ma, and a bunch of people I didn’t know who seemed to still like my books well enough and prodded me from time to time to write more.

Taking my soda back to the chair, I plunked down and surfed over to my Facebook tab. Sure enough, it was one of my readers with a question about the next Blake Steel book. I didn’t have the heart, or the courage, to tell him there wouldn’t be another book in that series for a while, so I just made something up. Writer’s are professional liars, after all.

Staring at my page for a while, I clicked on over to Angie’s profile. Her and Shakes had gotten married a couple of years ago, and though I didn’t see them much anymore or attend their wedding, we still kept in touch online, and every so often I’d get a note from them asking me how things were, how the writing was going—those sorts of things. Neither of them knew the kind of shape I was in and we never spoke about Sarah.

She looked happy. The pictures Angie posted all showed her and Shakes with smiles on their faces, traveling the world like two bohemians. Shakes, believe it or not, fell in to some money shortly after I moved to Brooklyn. He’d picked up one of those scratch tickets on a whim, the kind that give you X amount of dollars a week for life, and wouldn’t you know it, the son of a bitch won. Had his picture splashed in the paper and everything. They were expecting their first child in a little less than six months, and knowing them the kid would be born on some tropical island and given a name like Karma or Liberty, or some bullshit like that. They weren’t the same people I remembered, they were better.

Everyone had gotten better over the years. Christ, even ma had gotten married to Giorgio and moved from our crummy apartment in Hell’s Kitchen to a condo in Midtown. I hadn’t gone to that wedding, either.

Yet there I was, still stuck in the past clinging to memories of days gone by about a girl I’d never see again. I was the only one who hadn’t managed to move on, and I didn’t know if I ever would.

On a whim, I typed Sarah’s name into the search bar of Facebook. About a gazillion SARAH DANNIELS popped up and so I just started scrolling. I don’t know what I was looking for. Just killing time, really, until all the faces blended together to resemble hers. Her eyes. Her hair. If she were alive, what would she look like today? I tried to imagine it in my head, like she was here sitting on the couch behind me watching me write. Silently coaxing me along with her presence as if it were all the support I needed, because in a way it was. She was what I needed, more than anything.