Authors: Mallory Monroe
And she waited all morning at her desk.
She waited for Mo to give her a call of congratulations too.
She was hard on him for laying down Shepard’s death sentence at all, but he had already made it clear that he was a big boy and nobody needed to hold their punches or preface their attacks.
He didn’t call her the day after their passionate night, which concerned her, but she was certain he would call her today.
But he didn’t phone.
She called his office a couple of times, and left messages, but he didn’t return her calls.
Then she spent the afternoon angry at herself for wanting him to phone in the first place.
She spent all of her adult life as an independent woman, refusing to fall into that sickening love trap ever, and now she was wasting her entire day because some man wouldn’t phone her.
That was why, later that day when Helen was telling Andrea to forgive her cheating boyfriend and go back to him, Nikki could hold back no longer.
We women were insane with the crap we put up with, Nikki thought, as she listened to Helen’s lame advice.
“Listen to Helen if you want,” she said to Andrea.
Helen leaned back, folded her arms, and sucked her lips.
“Here we go,” she said.
Andrea, no stranger to Nikki’s tough stand on all things romantic, looked at her.
“I love him, Nikki,” she said.
“Ain’t that much love in this world,” Nikki replied.
“Don’t listen to her, Boo,” Helen said.
“You’ve got yourself a good man.
If you give him away, a hundred other women will be waiting in line to snatch him right up.”
“That’s the truth,” Cathy said.
She was another one of the older female disciples of Helen’s.
“Your man got a job,” Helen said to Andrea.
“And he’s handsome,” Cathy added.
“And he’s got a job,” Helen said again.
“And he has a sweet personality,” Cathy said.
“And he’s got a job,” Helen said once more and Andrea nodded her agreement.
And then she looked at Nikki.
“I love him,” she said.
“And Helen’s right.
I should give him another chance.
Everybody deserves a second chance.
You’re young, we aren’t.
But you disagree as usual, don’t you?”
Nikki looked at her, and she was determined to make her feelings clear, although they really didn’t have anything to do with her.
“A village is missing an idiot,” Nikki said bluntly, “if you give that cheating dog another chance!”
Andrea was stunned by her bluntness, and Helen and Cathy too.
The guys in the newsroom laughed.
Nikki grabbed her hobo bag and headed for the exit.
Air was what she needed.
Fresh air.
But, as she was leaving, Helen couldn’t resist talking just loud enough for her to hear.
“Yeah, a village is missing an idiot all right,” she said.
“
This
village.
Because the idiot just left!”
Nikki closed the door behind her as the laughter in the newsroom grew.
She stood out in the narrow hallway and tried not to cry.
She felt like an idiot, all right.
Not because of Helen or the others, but because she wanted Mo so badly.
She wanted to see his beautiful eyes and great smile.
She wanted to hear him laugh again and see his dimples light up his face.
She wanted to feel his touch against her bare skin again, and anticipate his sweet lips pressed into hers.
She wanted him.
And she was miserable and depressed and ready to do something desperate, like go straight to the courthouse and demand to see him.
And she hated herself for it.
This wasn’t her.
She’d never been desperate for a man a day in her life. But she was changing just like that.
Mo put his big dick in her one night, and already she was dick-whipped.
She was slipping fast.
Only her best friend and father confessor Lance, she felt, could put a brake to her slide.
So she went to him.
He was with a customer in the back of his popular art gallery, but he quickly excused himself and motioned for Nikki to follow him to his office.
When she walked in, he was leaning against the front edge of his desk.
She sat in the chair in front of him.
“Hi,” she said.
Lance was dressed impeccably as usual in a dark blue, double-breasted skintight suit and a matching ascot.
But he looked oddly bothered today.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked him.
“I can’t believe you, Nikki,” he said.
She looked at him.
“You can’t believe what?”
“I am so disappointed in you.”
Another one.
Get in line, she wanted to say.
“What did I do now?”
“I called you three times last night.
And you have Caller ID, girl, so I know you knew it was me.
Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
Because Mo didn’t give her a call at all after their wonderful night out and she didn’t want to discuss it, was what she should have told Lance.
“I was tired,” she told him instead.
“So you couldn’t pick up the phone and say you were tired?”
Fran, his manager, burst into his office carrying a small crate filled with what appeared to be some pencil sketches.
But she entered talking.
“We simply must do something about the ambiance of this place, Lanny, dear.” She plopped the crate on his desk.
“Every gallery I walk into is just bursting with kinetic synergy, artistic aroma everywhere, except here.
Our gallery has the aroma of a shoe store.
This will not do.”
Nikki looked at Lance.
How could he bear her?
“Stop being so rude, Frances,” Lance said.
“You see Nikki sitting here.”
“Hello, Nikki,” Fran said with no particular affinity.
“But about this aroma.”
“You’d better leave me alone if you know like I know,” Lance said, “or you and your aroma will be smelling real good unemployed.”
Fran glanced at Nikki, as if she was the one offending her, and then she grabbed back up her crate and walked out.
“How can you stand her?” Nikki asked.
“She’s a good worker.”
“She’s a basket case.”
“It’s hard to find good help, okay?
So you just leave Miss Thang alone, I know how to handle her.
Besides, she wasn’t the one who wouldn’t answer my phone calls.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I just wanted to know how the date went.”
Nikki didn’t respond to that, but that flustered look in her big eyes said it all.
Lance sighed.
Nikki worried him constantly.
His prayer had been for years that she would find herself a good, strong man who could handle a woman like her.
She had great strength in her convictions and in always seeking truth and doing what she felt was right.
But in the love department she was a mess.
An inexperienced, emotional wreck.
He had hoped that a well-established, take-no-prisoners, older man like Mo Ryan could be the answer to his prayers.
He certainly could handle Nikki and her strengths and weaknesses.
But now that didn’t seem to have worked out for her, either.
“All right,” he said, “what happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Yeah, right.
You’re Miss Truth.
Tell me the truth.
What happened, Nikki?”
She grabbed a handful of her long, curled hair, and slung it out of her face.
“He didn’t phone.
Not yesterday, not today, I haven’t heard a word from him.”
Lance stared at her.
“I see.
So you gave him some?”
Nikki looked at Lance.
He was right.
She couldn’t play games.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“And please don’t give me that shit about him not wanting the cow now because the milk’s run dry because I don’t want to hear it.”
“Child, please, what do you take me for?
I’m not one of those biddies at the Gazette.
It wasn’t like Mo Ryan was a stranger to you.
He’d already had that willy in your wonka one time before.”
Then he exhaled.
“But he hasn’t called you?”
“Nope.
And I called him.
Twice.
But he hasn’t returned either one of my calls.”
Lance looked at her.
“What do you think it is?”
“He’s just not that into me, isn’t that how they say it?” She said this with a smile, but Lance could see the pain.
She felt it, too, and her smile just as quickly dissipated.
“He’s into you,” Lance said.
“Believe that.
But maybe he’s upset.”
“Upset?” Nikki asked.
“What does he have to be upset about?”
Lance looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“No you didn’t ask me that.”
“What?”
“Maybe on this rare occasion I’m a little naive, but perhaps that horrifically negative story you wrote about him that just so happened to have appeared on the front page of The Gazette this very morning has something to do with his decision to keep his distance from you.
I don’t know.
What you think?”
He said this with that mirthful look on his face.
But Nikki wasn’t buying it.
“He didn’t phone me yesterday, either, before that story appeared.
He’s not upset.
He’s not that kind of man.”
Lance looked sidelong at her.
“Oh he’s not, is he?”
“He doesn’t care what other people think about him.”
“Baby, let me tell you something: those who claim they don’t care what people think, care most of all.”
Nikki closed her eyes and opened them quickly.
“Oh, Lance, what am I going to do?
I hate feeling like this.
I just hate it!”
Lance considered her for a moment.
“Well,” he said, “it’s about time you showed some life.”
She looked at him.
“Excuse you?”
Lance smiled.
“It’s love, Nikki.
That’s all.
And I keep telling you there’s nothing freakish or weird about it.
You’re twenty-five years old and this is the first time that you’ve been truly in love.”
“I’m not in love, okay?
I barely know the man and what I do know about him I don’t like.”
Lance smiled.
“My girl’s in love.”
“I am not in love, I have no interest in being in love, I am too strong a woman to allow some raggedy-ass man to have me all desperate and crazy.”