Her salary, down the drain.
Her benefits, down the drain.
Her
health insurance—
down the drain.
Nikki slid down the wall and sat on the cold, mass-produced tile, the photos still clutched in her hands.
Fired.
Without this job, she couldn’t pay her rent or clear her debt. She couldn’t feed herself. And she now couldn’t help her mother finance the new roof.
Fired. Not for
job
performance, but for a
bachelor party
performance.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but two things happened simultaneously after a block of time had gone by. One, Margaret emerged with a cardboard box containing stuff from her desk drawers, the roses, her purse and a mug she’d brought for coffee. And two, Adam came around the corner with a backpack hitched over his shoulder.
Margaret thumped the box down at her feet and said, “You cannot sit there. If you’re not gone in two minutes, I will call security to escort you from the building.” Then Mags caught sight of Adam. “And
you,
” she said, pointing a long, bony finger at him, “are a disgrace! You can forget about the Perez scholarship, young man.”
Adam opened and then closed his mouth as she stomped into the office. He looked at Nikki. “What the hell? Why are you sitting on the floor? What’s her problem? What’s going on?”
Nikki, now trembling uncontrollably, somehow managed to get to her feet. She threw the photos and the horrible paper banner at him. Then she grabbed her purse and the cup and kicked the box at him as hard as she could.
“Nikki! What— Oh,
Jesus.
Oh,
no…
Nikki,
wait!
”
Why wouldn’t her lungs work? She ran blindly anyway. Down the hallway and the stairs, past a startled woman at the door and the guy with the drink cart outside.
She gave a ragged gasp and a prayer for air, and opened her mouth simultaneously to scream. She didn’t know which she wanted to do first, but the air took precedence and the scream stayed silent. Nikki started to hyperventilate as Adam caught up to her and took her arm.
She shook him off, unable to speak to him even if she’d wanted to. She tried to process her necessities and impulses at the same time, but her brain wasn’t helping. Breathe, puke, scream, hit Adam, run, breathe, kill self, puke, kill Adam, breathe, scream…
Why, every time she let down her guard around him, did he let
her
down? What was this crazy repeat pattern of theirs? This was probably how her mom had ended up pregnant and alone—by letting someone get close whom she
knew
wasn’t right for her.
“Nikki,” he said, his voice insistent.
“No,” she said.
“Nikki—”
She finally sucked in some air. “Get away from me!”
“Breathe,” he told her, steering her to a bench. “Sit down and put your head between your knees. Breathe.”
“Do. Not. Touch. Me.”
“Fine,” he said. “Now
breathe!
”
She found herself following Dr. Burke’s orders. She bent forward, parallel with the ground, and sucked in air as she watched an ant scurry across the concrete sidewalk. The ant had more purpose than she did now. The ant probably got some kind of ant pay and benefits from his anthill. She moved her foot so he could get by more easily on whatever mission he’d been assigned.
“You okay?” Adam asked, his hand hovering over her back but afraid to touch her. She could see it out of the corner of her eye.
She shook her head.
“Did they fire you?”
She nodded.
“I had nothing to do with this.”
“Right.” She straightened and got to her feet.
“I didn’t. And I’m so sorry, Nikki—”
She just looked at him, and he fell silent. His expression was grim.
“I know who put these up—my friend Dev, who likes to play jokes on people. And I’m going to go beat the crap out of him.”
“Like I care. Is that going to pay my rent or clear my debt? Is that going to help finance my mom’s roof?”
“Nikki, I’ll fix this.”
The laughter out of her mouth didn’t even sound like her own. “Don’t bother. Just stay away from me, Adam. Keep the hell out of my life, what’s left of it.” Nikki got to her feet unsteadily and brushed off the back of her skirt.
“You blow hot,” she said. “You blow cold. One minute I’m a princess, the next I’m persona non grata. You make me into a crazy person. I don’t even recognize myself with you in my world! I’m not an emotional roller coaster. I’m not impulsive. I’ve always been practical…except when
you’re
around. I’ve become a disaster since I met you, and I’m not okay with that.”
He looked stricken.
She threw her purse over her shoulder and thought about hitting him over the head with the coffee mug, but couldn’t summon the energy. Besides, a little voice in the back of her head—not a crazy one, an all-too-sane one—told her that if she hadn’t been dumb enough to let Yvonne put her in that position and in those “clothes,” she wouldn’t be starring in skanky photos. She’d never have met Adam, or Dev for that matter.
The thought didn’t bring her any comfort.
“Nikki—”
She put one foot in front of the other and started walking away from the guy of her fantasies…who’d somehow become the guy of her nightmares. “
Goodbye,
Adam.”
19
ADAM CURSED UNTIL HE couldn’t think of any more curse words. Then he repeated them all until he ran out of breath, and growled them in different, more imaginative sequences as he drove his car straight to Devon’s fancy-ass white high-rise on Brickell in the heart of fashionable Miami.
Devon had unwisely given him an elevator code and a key about a year ago when Adam was staying with him and looking for his own apartment near the university. The same guy still worked at reception, and waved him in.
Up Adam went in the elevator, all the way to the twenty-first floor, with the crumpled photos and banner in his backpack. He got out of the elevator, removed them and headed for unit 2122. It was only 1:30 p.m., and Dev stayed at his bar until it closed around 4:00 a.m., so he’d still be asleep.
But not for long.
Adam unlocked the door and kicked it closed behind him. He stalked straight to the bedroom where he threw open the door and then pulled open the blinds.
Dev rolled over with a groggy moan. “Wha fah?”
Adam grabbed Dev by the neck and yanked him to a sitting position before plowing his fist into his jaw.
Naturally, Dev lay back down again, a little more quickly than he’d probably intended.
Adam stuffed one of the photos into his open mouth, and followed it with another one.
“Gah! Whah ra ooig?”
“What am I doing? I’m feeding you those friggin’ pictures you plastered outside the dean’s office, you asshole!”
Adam shoved another photo into Dev’s mouth, at which point Dev came awake enough to try to defend himself. He lurched forward, head-butting Adam in the gut and knocking him off the bed.
Adam rolled, found his feet again and launched himself back at Devon. He plowed into him with the full force of his body, rolled him onto his stomach and sat on him, wrenching one of his arms behind his back. “You jackass!” Adam yelled. “Did you even stop to think what the consequences of your little gag might be?”
Dev bellowed into the bedcovers and tried to buck him off. He failed.
“Did you?”
Another bellow.
“Do you realize that Nikki
works
in the friggin’ dean’s office? She got fired because of you. And I lost out on the Perez scholarship because of this stunt.”
Adam was afraid he’d kill Dev if he didn’t put some distance between them, so he gave him a final cuff on the back of the head and then propelled himself to the other side of the room.
Dev rolled over, gasped and coughed. Then he eloquently dropped an F-bomb.
“That’s it? That’s all you got?”
“I didn’t think—”
“How ’bout one hell of an apology, man?”
Dev struggled to a sitting position, rubbed at his jaw and actually managed to look remorseful. “Dude. I’m sor—”
“Don’t call me
dude,
you piece of shit.”
“Adam. I’m sorry. I had no clue.”
“Well, it’s about time you got one. Maybe even two or three.”
“I didn’t know Nikki worked there. How could I?”
Adam glared at him. “You’re going to make this up to her, and you’re going to make it up to me, too.”
Dev nodded. “Yeah, I will. How?”
Adam eyed him scathingly, from his stupid, product-laden hair to his flashy gold chain to his idiotic boxers with surfing pigs on them. “I’ll tell you exactly how. You, Dev, are a Photoshop expert.”
“Uh. I am?”
“Yes. As of this moment, you are. And you are going to accompany me to the dean’s office this afternoon, and you are going to explain to him exactly how you used Photoshop to put Nikki’s head onto a stripper’s body, and my head onto the guy’s.”
“O-kaay…”
Dev said dubiously.
“And then you are going to most humbly apologize to the dean, and say that you are the biggest wanker on the planet, and you are going to beg him on your knees for Nikki’s job back. Then you are going to beg him to put me back in the running for the Perez scholarship. Do you understand?”
Dev nodded.
Adam crossed the room and yanked open his closet doors.
“What are you doing, man?”
“You are going to wear a plain, white shirt. You are going to take off that gold chain. And you are not going to put that grease-crap in your hair. You will part it on the side like the preppiest kid ever to descend from the Mayflower families. You will not wear eight ounces of Latin-lover cologne. You will not wear that flashy, in-your-face Rolex—”
“Jeez. Do you want to tell me how to wipe my ass, too?”
“No. You will not be wiping your ass. You will be kissing the dean’s. Got it?”
“Sure,” Dev said glumly.
“And when we leave there and you’ve done your job with him, then we’re going to go to Nikki’s place and you can kiss hers, not that it will do me any good now.” Adam dropped his head into his hands.
Dev said nothing for a long moment. Then, “You care about her.”
Adam lifted his head and skewered his friend with a look.
“Oh, man, oh, man. I’ve really screwed up, haven’t I?”
“You
dick
head,” Adam said. And then he followed it with every other bad word he could think of.
Dev staggered to his feet and headed for the shower.
“Yes, I care about her,” Adam told him. “You degenerate pig.” He dropped his head into his hands. “And I should walk away now, because I can’t give her the time and attention that she deserves.” He groaned. “But I can’t walk away. There’s something about her, a grace or a…a…peace with herself that I don’t have. I tap into that. I relax around her. Like a cat in a pool of sunshine.”
“Dude,” Dev said, holding up a hand and looking faintly nauseated.
“And she bakes stuff that’s out of this world. My mom? She can burn water.”
“Next you’re going to tell me that Nikki feels like your heart’s true home,” Dev said, squinting at him.