Hey There, Delilah... (17 page)

I know I didn’t hear Calvin right. He did not just call Nick – Nico. He did not just ask Nick where he was on Saturday. The same day that Nico and I meet, the same day that Nico cancelled on me. I am staring at Nick when he slowly turns his head to look at me. The guilty look on his face answers my question. Nick is Nico, and he knows that I am LaLa. Sonofabitch!

“Whoa, what just happened?” Calvin asks, noticing the shift in the atmosphere.

“What did you just call him?” I practically growl.

“Uh…Nico? It’s his code name at my club
. You know, Club M,” Calvin says in confusion.

“Delilah…” Nick starts but I cut him off.

“You knew?” I ask, quickly getting to my feet.

“Not the whole time.  I swear!” he replies, wide-
eyed.

“Aw
, shit.” Calvin breathes and hangs his head as he realizes what just happened.

“That’s why you cancell
ed on me the past two Saturdays, isn’t it? You knew!” I snap angrily. “How did you find out?” I demand.

The pained look o
n Nick’s face did nothing to cool my rage. He betrayed my trust and I will never forgive him for this.

“It was your tattoo. I saw it on you when we m
et a few weeks ago at the club. Remember, I pointed at it?  Then at your apartment that following Monday when I stopped by, after we kissed,” Nick answers quietly.

“You knew all this time
and didn’t say anything to me?” I shriek.

“I didn’t know what to do, Delilah, I was confused!” Nick says almost pleadingly.

Suddenly, my earlier confession comes back and slaps me across the face. I gasp and cover my mouth with my hands. “I told you this morning that I was falling for…Nico, who is really… you, and you still couldn’t find the common decency to tell me,” I hiss.

“Delilah, please…I’m sorry,” Nick groans.

“No! I don’t want to hear your stupid apology! I trusted you! I gave myself to you for two months! I did things with you that I’ve never done with anyone! I told you things that only my best friend knows. How could you deceive me like this? How could you come in here every day for the past three weeks, knowing that I’m the one you have been sleeping with, knowing how hurt I have been from losing you, and still not fucking tell me?” I scream at him not caring who hears, my fists clenched at my sides.

Nick just stares at me, stunned. His eyes are wide and his mouth is parted, but he says nothing. I can feel the tears building
, but I will die before I cry in front of him about this. I turn around and grab my purse and sweater before turning back to Nick. He is still staring at me, but now his expression has changed to something close to defiance.

“
Tell me this. Why should I have told you? It’s not rocket science. You could have figured it out if you really wanted to,” Nick sneered. “The only thing hiding me was the mask across my eyes. You’re gonna tell me that you didn’t notice similarities between Nico and me?”

I gape at him. “Of course
, I noticed! I’m not blind! And don’t try to turn this around on me and act like it’s my fault! You knew
for sure,
had it confirmed,
and still didn’t tell me!”

Nick crosses his arms over his chest and stares down at me almost in boredom. What a fucking dickhead!
His arrogance is so infuriating that I am tempted to slap him across the face or stomp on his foot with my heel.

“You know what?
You are not the man I thought you were. I quit and LaLa says to tell you that she’s dumping your sorry ass,” I snap and shoulder past him as I start for the door.

Well, that got his attention
, and boy did he change his attitude pretty quickly. “No, Delilah! Wait!” he calls as he starts after me.    

“Save it, Nick. Or is it Nico?
I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” I mutter flippantly over my shoulder.

He
grabs my arm from behind and spins me around, his bright green eyes showing all of his pain and guilt. Good, he deserves to suffer.

“You can’t quit, Delilah.
I need you,” Nick whines, closing his eyes and lowers his head briefly in defeat.

I scoff. “Is that the reason you didn’t say anything? Is that why you want me to stay? Because you need your precious secretary? Well, you can go fuck yourself, you selfish bastard!” I say, tearing my arm out of his grasp and run for the door.

“What? No! That’s not what I meant! Shit! Delilah! That came out wrong!” Nick yells down the hall at my back.

I flip him the bird over my shoulder and shove the door open, praying to
God that he doesn’t follow because I can’t hold back these tears any more. I quickly race to the elevator and jab the button until the damn thing opens. I hit the button for the first floor, and then the button to close the doors. Just as the elevator doors close, I see Nick’s distraught face appear. I can hear him call my name through the doors. Nothing he can say or do at this point can fix this. I cup my hands over my ears to block out his voice. Finally, the elevator starts to move and my heart shatters into a million pieces as the tears finally fall.

♫♩♫♩♫♩
♫

I bang my head on the elevator doors a couple
of times. Idiot! Fuck, how could I have been so dumb? Did I really think she would never find out? I sigh heavily and push away from the elevator and start back toward my office.

“Nick? Nick, what happened?” Carmella asks in concern as I pass her desk.

“Delilah just quit,” I mutter.

“What? Why?” Carmella asks, stunned.

“Because I’m an asshole,” I reply before starting down the hall toward my office.

As I get closer, I can see that Calvin is waiting for me, his hands shoved into his pockets, a sad look on his face. I spread my arms out and give him an incredulous look.

“Dude! What the fuck did you have to go and call me Nico for? What happened to anonymity?” I bark at him.

Calvin lifts an eyebrow at me. “Man, how was I supposed to know that she didn’t know? I though
t you guys were doing some kind of secret role-playing shit.”

“Well, we weren’t
, and now you just went and screwed everything up. Thanks a lot, Cal,” I snap at my best friend.

“Whoa, hold t
he phone. I didn’t do this to you,
you
did this to you. You gotta own your shit! First you tried to turn it around on Delilah, and now you’re trying to turn it on me. How about you grow a pair and look at who really is to blame here. This is all on you, bro,” Calvin says calmly, even though I can see in his eyes that he is one pissed off motherfucker. And it takes a lot to tick Calvin off. Shit, I am a dick.  “I’ll give you some time to get your shit together before I give you a call,” he said evenly, turned, and headed down the hall toward the door.

I grind my teeth together as I watch Calvin leave. Damn him! Why does he always have to call me out on my shit? Can’t he just let me blame everyone but myself for once? I’m such an ass. I just lost the one woman that I’m pretty sure I’m in love with and pissed off my best friend, all in a matter of fifteen minutes.
Wow, great job douchebag!
I have to be the biggest jackass on this planet. How the hell am I supposed to fix this? I know Calvin will forgive me, but Delilah? I’m not so sure.

Chapter Ten

My hair smells and
I haven’t gotten out of bed in three days. That’s a lie, I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, but that was it. Lying here now, with my hair covering my face, I can smell it and it doesn’t smell good. My room is dark even though it’s the middle of the afternoon because I have all of the blinds closed. This is my pit of despair, and I never plan on coming out. But, of course, once again, shit doesn’t go my way. My bedroom door is thrown open, and an infuriated Charlotte Fisher is standing in the doorway, backlit by the light from the rest of my apartment.

“
What the hell is going on here?” she squawks.

I hiss at her like the vampire I’m trying to become and pull the covers up over my h
ead. I hear her stomp toward me. Knowing that she is going to try to rip them away, I tighten my hold and wait for the attack. Boom! She strikes – hard and fast – grabbing the covers and yanking them completely off me. She tosses them to the floor and plants her fists on her hips.

“Why are you holed away in your
bedroom, and why is your phone off?” Charlie asks in the tone she gets when she is determined to get an answer, no matter what.

“Go away,
I want to be alone,” I grumble and shove my head under my pillow.

“N
o way, Elvira, not gonna happen. You might as well tell me what’s going on.  Are you sick?” she asks.

“No,” I grunt from under my pillow.

“Dying?”

“I wish,” I mutter quietly, hoping it was too low to hear.

“I heard that!” Charlie snapped.

Dammit.

Charlie sits on the bed, making me roll slightly toward her. Her hand comes down to rest on my arm. “Whatever it is, LaLa, you know you can tell me,” she says softly.

“I know. I’m...
I just… it hurts,” I whisper brokenly, my other arm flung across my face.

“This has to do with Nico, then?”

“And Nick.”

“Nick? What does he have to do with it?” Charlie asks, confused.

I lift my head up so that the pillow falls away. I look at Charlie through my already teary eyes. “Nico is Nick, Nick is Nico!” I say sounding like Ace Ventura when he finds out that Finkle is Einhorn and Einhorn is Finkle.

“Shut the fuck up! Are you serious?” Charlie gasps and covers her mouth and nose with her hands.

I nod. “And he knew I was LaLa for weeks and never told me. I just talked to him that morning about Nico, telling him that I thought I was falling in love with him
, and he still didn’t say a word…” I blab out almost hysterically.

“How did you find out then?”

“His friend, Calvin. You know, the one that owns Club M? He came into the office on Monday and called Nick, Nico, in front of me,” I say, my lip curling up in disgust at just the thought of that bastard’s guilty face when Calvin spilled the beans.

“Wait, so you’ve been in here since Monday?” Charlie asks slowly.

I shrug sheepishly.

“LaLa! It’s Thursday!”
my best friend shrieks and jumps to her feet. “No wonder you fucking stink! Get up right now and get into the shower. Then we are going to get you something to eat…fucking men,” she snarls the last part as she leaves the room.

I sigh heavily as I pull myself up into a sitting position. I sit there for a moment before heaving myself out of the bed and into the bathroom. I swear I spent an hour in the shower just washing my hair. I’m feeling much better by the time I get out. I get dressed in
an old baggy t-shirt and sweatpants, and then shuffle out into the living room where I find Charlie looking through my take-out menus.

“What do you want to eat?” Charlie asks, looking up from the menus.

“Everything and lots of chocolate,” I mumble.

“How about pizza?”

The tears hit me hard and fast. I drop my face into my hands to try to muffle my uncontrollable sobs.

“What? What happened?
” Charlie asks frantically as she rushes over to me. “Did you stub your toe?”

“No, it’s just…it’s just
that the last time I had pizza… it was with Nick in his office,” I wail.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake
, Delilah!” Charlie says in exasperation. “You need to get over that piece of shit and stop having a pity party. You deserve better than him and you know it!”

I collect myself as
 best as I can and give Charlie a jerky nod. “Yeah, okay, you’re right.”

“
Okay, can I order the pizza now? What kind do you want?”

I wave a dismissive hand. “Whatever, I don’t care, just order something.”

“Ugh! I hate depressed LaLa!” Charlie huffs and pulls out her cell phone.

While Charlie orders food, I go into my kitchen and turn my phone back on.
It is sitting on the counter, shut off. The voicemail button shows that I have twenty messages. Most likely, more than half are from Charlie. I hope that Nick hasn’t called. I really can’t handle even hearing his voice right now. I go through the messages and I am right about most of them being from Charlie. A couple of them are from my dad, one from Carmella, and thankfully, none from Nick. Asshole. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting him to call, and I really don’t want him to, but if he did, it would at least tell me that he cares, even if it’s just a little bit. But there’s not even a text. Nothing.  Apparently, that’s what I mean to him. Nothing.  I should have known that he is a selfish fucking bastard.

After Charlie and I scarf down a whole pizza, we talk some more about what happened
. Charlie calls in a couple of favors to get me an interview at another law firm on Monday. It’s good to have a best friend who knows people.

“D
on’t worry, LaLa, you’re strong. You just have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and show that fuckhead that he can’t bring you down,” Charlie says firmly. “That’s the best revenge.  Well, that, and maybe an itty bitty rumor about his itty bitty man parts.”  She chuckles and winks at me.

There she goes again, always knowing the right thing to say to me. 
I take a deep breath and nod. “Yeah, you’re right… about the picking myself up part!” I sigh. I know she’s right, but it’s really hard to not be hurt and disappointed and betrayed. “I’m sure I’ll feel better as time goes on.”

“You will.”

“Thanks, Charlie. I love you.”

“Love you
, too, LaLa.” Charlie smiles and gives me a much-needed hug.

♫♩♫♩♫♩
♫