“Adam?” she called.
True to his word, he must have gone running. Nikki wrinkled her nose. A person who went running at—she glanced at the clock on his microwave oven—5:53 a.m., after partying until 2:00 a.m., qualified as a borderline alien. She made a mental note to check his skin for a green tinge and make sure his ears weren’t pointed when he returned.
Then she went back to bed.
She woke about forty minutes later when Adam came through the bedroom door, his hair and T-shirt sopping wet, smelling like a ripe foreign cheese. “Still asleep, huh?” he panted.
Why did she suddenly feel like a fat garden slug? “Yeah, like most people early on a Saturday morning,” she said, trying her best to keep any acid out of her voice.
Adam stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt and neatly shot it, basketball-style, into the dirty-clothes basket in the far corner of his room. “Carpe diem,” he said, winked and headed for the shower.
Nikki stared after him. “Carpe my left butt cheek,” she muttered, and pulled the covers up over her face to block out the light. She wondered if he had any ibuprofen for her aching head, but then decided that she was too lazy to get it even if he did. She rolled over and stuffed her head under the pillow.
All too soon, she could hear him pulling open drawers with far too much energy, getting dressed and then banging around in the kitchen. This morning-person thing of his was an
extremely
unattractive habit.
She was snoozing again, dreaming that she’d dropped a sleeping pill into his nightcap, when a clunk sounded on the bedside table next to her head.
“I thought you might like some coffee,” Adam’s voice boomed.
She opened her eyes and squinted at the mug that stood in front of her. “Um. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
He stood there for a moment, looming over her and clearly expecting her to pop out of his bed like a jack-in-the-box.
She didn’t.
“Well,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. “I’ll, uh, just be in the other room, okay?”
She nodded.
“There’s shampoo and stuff in the shower if you want to clean up.”
No offense, but my head hurts and I’m tired and for the moment, I’m totally happy just being lazy and dirty.
But Nikki didn’t say it aloud. “Okay,” she mumbled.
Adam evidently gave up, because the next time she opened her eyes he was gone and the coffee he’d brought her was cold. She staggered with it into the kitchen and stuck it in the microwave to heat it through.
Adam—or a stone facsimile of Adam—sat on the couch with his head bent over another monster textbook.
“Hi,” she said.
The statue grunted and made a note on a legal pad.
“I slept well, thanks.” She took a sip of the now-warm-again coffee. “You?”
“Uh-huh. Gimme a second, okay?”
“Sure.” Nikki took another sip of stale coffee.
The second turned into a minute, and then another. Finally she wandered into the living room and sat in the chair opposite Adam while he continued to read and make notes. She was aware of being an attractive blonde, naked under his shirt, but she felt like an old, stained potholder forgotten next to the stove.
Well. This was fun. “What are you studying?” Nikki asked.
“Just gimme a second,” Adam said for the second time, without looking up at her.
Nikki drained her coffee and disappeared to take a shower, all without him seeming to register her presence. She washed the traces of him off her body, sore from last night, and wondered if she’d imagined the tenderness and care he’d shown.
She told herself to grow up—he was a busy medical student and clearly had a lot to do. She told herself it wasn’t personal, that his focus had just shifted from fun to work.
But the fact was that it
felt
personal.
She got out of the shower, wrapped herself in a towel and went in search of the dress she’d worn last night. It lay discarded in front of Adam’s door, looking as hungover and moody as she was.
Deliberately, she dropped the towel so that she stood naked, four yards from Adam. But even nudity failed to get his attention. So she sighed and pulled on the dress, feeling very much like Cinderella after the ball.
Adam was oblivious, still engrossed in his book, so she cleared her throat.
He looked up, glanced at his watch and asked, “Ready?”
“Sure.” So much for a leisurely, loving breakfast with the newspaper and maybe some bagels.
Nikki picked up her purse and shoes. She followed him out the door, feeling dismissed.
She kept her eyes closed during the drive because pretending to be sleepy was better than being forced to make conversation with Adam, whose head was so clearly somewhere else.
When they pulled up outside her apartment, she summoned a smile and said, “Thank you, Adam. I had a great time.” She hesitated, then leaned over and kissed his cheek before she got out of the car.
“I did, too,” he said.
An awkward pause ensued.
“Really, it was fantastic. I’ll call you, okay?”
He didn’t mention when. Later today? Next month? A year from now?
“Okay.” She slid out of the car and gave him a little wave before she walked to the stairs that led to the second level of her complex.
He waved back and drove away.
As she climbed the stairs, Nikki told herself to put it all out of her mind. But it was hard. Somewhere, somehow, there had been a psychological shift between them, and she’d gone from object of desire to object of…good riddance? Maybe that was too strong a term. Maybe Adam was just dog-tired and overworked and she was imagining things.
But the sudden closeness they’d shared followed by the sudden distance this morning made no sense to her. She didn’t know what to think.
You know he’s wrong for you,
she told herself.
So why worry about it?
A girl like her, who had grown up without a father, needed more from a guy than this hot-and-cold treatment. She needed a guy who would be both emotionally and physically present in her life.
So she’d pull up her big-girl panties—once she had some panties back on—and get over Adam Burke.
ON MONDAY MORNING, as Nikki stood making photocopies at work, an older man opened the door from the hallway, peering around a large vase of pink roses.
“Looking for a Miss Nikki Fine,” he mumbled.
“Oh. That’s me.”
The scent of the flowers wafted across the room, a sweet, grassy-woodsy scent that masked the normal vinyl, industrial-carpet and metallic file-cabinet smell.
“Then these are for you, ma’am.” He set them on her desk and produced a paper. “If you’ll sign right here to show you received them.”
She scribbled her signature, her heartbeat coming faster. They were from Adam. She knew it.
So what? she asked herself.
Dear Nikki,
Thank you for the most romantic evening of my life.
XOXO, Adam.
Her heart rolled over like a dog for a belly scratch and thumped its tail.
See? You’re an idiot. He was tired yesterday morning and had to study.
Then she wanted to strangle herself.
You’re moving on, remember?
Flowers don’t change the facts.
But clearly, her heart didn’t want to move on.
Feeling crazy, she kissed the tiny card and tucked it into her bra—unfortunately just as Margaret came in.
“Good morning, Margaret. How was your weekend?” asked Nikki, as she blushed and straightened her sweater.
Margaret raised her eyebrows, then glared at the roses as if they’d spat on her. “Fine,” she said. “Who are those for?”
“Me.”
Margaret managed to look even more offended, and directed a suspicious glance at Nikki, as if to ask her how she’d earned them. Then she turned her beady black eyes to the flowers again. Surprisingly, they didn’t wither and blacken. “How nice,” was all Mags could dredge up to say.
Nikki was glad that she didn’t ask who they were from. She’d have had to lie because of the whole fraternization-with-students issue.
Fraternize? Oh, no. Not her. She was the model employee. She certainly had not woken up naked in a student’s bed on the weekend. Huh-uh. Who could suspect such a thing?
Maggie Mae stomped off to terrorize someone else, and Nikki heaved a sigh of relief. She fingered the card from Adam, smiled, and dialed his number on her cell phone to thank him. No answer. Well, he was probably in class and she’d try again later.
Nikki worked until lunchtime and then tried again as she headed out for a salad. She left a message this time. “Adam, it’s Nikki. Thank you so much for the gorgeous roses. Call me or stop by after one, okay? Bye.”
One small Greek salad with extra feta consumed, Nikki headed back to work. As she turned down the hall that led to the dean’s office, she saw Trammel himself standing with Margaret at the big bulletin board where students posted fliers for group activities, ads for roommates and announcements.
His normally pleasant face looked thunderous, and as she approached he shook his head in disgust. He started to turn toward the office and then caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye.
“You,” he said, “are fired. Pack your things.”
The words hit her like a brick in the face.
“Wh-what?”
He gestured at the bulletin board and then looked her up and down. He shook his head again. Then he turned on his heel, stalked to the office door and wrenched it open, slamming it shut behind him.
While Nikki stood there with her mouth open, knees shaking, he opened the door and stuck his head out again. “Margaret, please clean those up and get rid of them.” The door slammed for a second time.
“What is going on?” Nikki’s voice trembled as she asked the question. Then she forced her feet forward and took a look at the bulletin board. Her own image was everywhere—and
not
clad in conservative business attire. Horrified, she stopped breathing.
“I think you can answer that question better than we can,” Margaret snapped, pulling thumbtacked photographs off the board. She thrust a couple of them at Nikki and kept at it.
Nikki looked down at the pictures.
They were of her and Adam.
On the night of the bachelor party.
He was on the floor, clutching his nose and staring up in bemusement. She had bent forward over him, and the shot was all cleavage. Fearsome amounts of it.
The next shot had been taken from a salacious angle behind her as she straddled him, asking if he was okay. It left very little to the imagination.
Blood rushed to Nikki’s face, pulsing so hard that it felt as if it were boiling. Panic and horror knocked her in the stomach. How had these gotten here?
Margaret slapped more photos into her hands, and they didn’t get any better. Who had taken them?
One more photo, of a bare-bottomed, thong-clad Nikki leaving with Adam, was the icing on her giant pink slip. And the last thing Mags threw at her was a long, bannerlike strip of paper emblazoned with the words:
WHAT’S UP, DOC? Is that a tongue depressor in his pocket or is Adam Burke just happy to see this babe?
Nikki’s legs threatened to give way, and she clutched at the wall behind her. She couldn’t decide whether to throw up or to kill herself.
Months. Months of applications and office-skills tests and rounding up recommendation letters…months of waiting and cheerful follow-up phone calls to say she was so enthused about the job and really wanted it, please not to forget her…all down the drain.