Nico Page 10

  Anyway, I’m going to do this right. I’ll get to “know her”. Hang on, her front door is opening. I’ll let you know what happens…

  N-

  “Nico?”

  “Yep,” I quickly answered, secured my journal under the seat cushion, and flew down the ten steps to the little path in front of her cottage.

  “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?” She was in a different blanket now, a quilt which looked to be handcrafted… probably her own doing.

  I grinned. “I would love to come in for a cup of coffee.”

  Lark closed the door behind us. In the short time we’d been apart, she’d managed to make a pot of coffee and build a roaring fire, which felt fucking beautiful, and, I assumed, puke her guts up.

  “How do you take it,” she asked.

  “With milk or cream, whatever you have.”

  “No sugar?”

  “I’m almost forty. I have to watch what I eat now.” I smiled.

  “Did you just say you’re almost forty?”

  “Yeah. How old are you?” I asked.

  Her eyes went wide in shock. “I can’t believe you just asked me that!” She was amused more than anything else, and, I think, just enjoyed giving me a hard time.

  “You’re not old.” I stated.

  “But I’m a woman.” She smiled, “You asked a woman her age.”

  “Lark,” I walked over to her very inviting-looking couch and sat down. “Maybe I’m wrong about you, but you seem pretty approachable, and hang-ups like age and all that bullshit don’t really seem your style. Am I wrong about that?”

  “No.” She opened cupboards to reveal mismatched mugs and plates. “I was being a bitch,” she admitted without turning around.

  I got up and went to help her. I could see she wasn’t quite herself yet. “Why don’t you sit down; I can get this. I’m pretty good in a kitchen.”

  She nodded and went to curl up on her couch and stare at the fire.

  As I opened the cupboards again to make sure what I had seen was true, I noticed that nothing matched: plates, cups, cutlery… not one thing was part of a set.

  “Uh, did you hit the thrift stores before you moved in?” I held up a mug that said World’s Best Grandma, and another one that was bright yellow and said Sharp’s Snail Bait Fun Run 1988.

  She smiled, trying not to laugh. “My ex.”

  “Oh,” was all I said and waited for her to tell me more. I sat across from her and brought two spoons, a small pitcher of creamer, and a bowl of sugar, since I forgot to ask how she took it; it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “Thanks.” She took the hot, black coffee and ignored the companion ingredients. “My ex. Shane. He was kind of ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ about having everything match. And it had to be top quality stuff. I bought these great wine glasses from Crate and Barrel, and he told me to take them back. I kept them along with some other stuff I knew he wouldn’t approve of, but I loved. It was like my secret dirty stash of substandard awesomeness.” Her brown eyes rose up from those thick lashes and smiled at me. “So, my wine glasses match, but everything else was my own personal ‘Fuck you’ to him until I decide what style I want.”

  She was funny, too. Another thing I was learning about Lark Andrews.

  “Do you like Billy Joel?” she asked.

  “I do,” I said, taking that first sip. “Wow! That is strong fuckin’ coffee.”

  “I don’t sleep much at night. Iit’s when I tend to work. We actually keep similar hours.” The stereo was on low, Allentown just audible.

  “What do you do all night?” I knew she sewed those flower things, but I didn’t know if she had another job doing phone sex or something. She had this kind of husky voice I only now noticed. That day in the studio, her voice seemed small and light. It wasn’t. She had that voice you wanted whispering in your ear while your dick was buried in her, and her lips; those full lips wrapped around your…

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked curiously with a tiny grin.

  “Huh?” I said, as I tried to snap the fuck out of my new fantasy.

  “You just had sex face.” She grinned wider.

  “No, I didn’t,” I answered defensively. What was I, twelve?

  “Whatever you say. Anyway, I’m working on the cuffs for your mom, but I also started a website. So now I’m making cuffs and matching headpieces and veils. I have to make them, photograph them, put together sample packs with fabric and ribbon swatches so the customer can match colors… I’m kind of busy. But the daytime, I like to be outside. Sometimes I go hike in the canyon, sometimes I walk on the beach, poke around the tide pools… just depends. But after what happened a couple of months ago, I try not to go after the sun starts to set.”

  Everything in me went on edge. After what happened?

  “What the fuck happened, Lark? Did someone try to hurt you?” My voice came out a lot more aggressively than I had intended.

  “What? No, no, nothing like that.” She started to laugh. “You should see your face, Nico. You just morphed from sex-face to I’m-gonna-kill-something face in like zero to sixty.” She set her cup down and reached out for my hand. “You okay?”

  Fuck, if she only knew. Last week I got a new ‘bird’. I had been trying to think of a term for my clients, the women I helped. Every time I tried to come up with something, it never seemed to have the meaning it needed. It was only for me, this word, but it needed to represent them—their struggle, their pain.

  I had been researching my heritage and the little I knew about my family from my pop. He mentioned his pop was a “split feather.” There had been a government program to try to integrate Native American kids into society. The problem was, more often than not, they lost their identity and their heritage. They were called “split feathers” or “lost birds”. Since the day I’d read the term, I began to call my women, “birds’.

  It had been quiet for so long. Then this woman came in, twenty-eight, said she knew about me through a friend of hers, but didn’t say who. She was walking to her car after work, a waitress at this diner in Mission Viejo. It was late though. A man grabbed her, pushed her against her car, held something to her neck, she didn’t even know what, raped her twice before another man showed and had a turn. All of Orange County was on edge since there had been two other incidents involving two men. The other women managed to get away, but this girl, Rosaria… she wasn’t so lucky.

  “Nico?” Lark’s voice thankfully took me from that memory.

  “No, but I will be,” I answered honestly. “So, what happened?” I sounded like a dick, but she seemed to understand it was because I couldn’t just shut that reaction down.

  “Well, I walked up that steep, steep hill… where the new development is? I parked my car at the bottom thinking it would be great exercise.” Then she teased me. “Because I’m thirty-eight, I need to exercise…”

  I cracked a smile.

  “Ah, mission accomplished. You have nice teeth. Anyway, I wanted to watch the sunset from there and I was having a pretty bad day.”

  “Like today?” I asked.

  “Worse than today. So I walked back to the car, and I could hear something behind me. My entire body was like one big goose bump and I was shit scared, but I knew it wasn’t a person. I thought maybe it was a coyote—you know, they’re always eating people’s cats—so, I took out my keys and walked to the car, not running, not wanting to startle or piss off whatever this thing was. I got in, the entire time trying not to make any sound, and locked the doors. My heart was beating so fast, Nico. I looked out the front window and the passenger window and didn’t see anything, so I put the keys in the ignition, but saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see the face of a mountain lion, right at my window. Its tail was whipping back and forth, and it opened its mouth like it was going to hiss. I started to cry.” She laughed. “And then, I’m not afraid to admit to you, I totally peed my pants. I was that scared, I peed my fucking pants.”
Her laugh was contagious, and it definitely brought me out of my mood.

  “I’m sorry, Lark. I’m not laughing at you, I swear.”

  “No, it’s funny. It is, and it’s nice to see you smile. You always seem kind of moody.” Yeah, not the first time I’d heard that.

  “I have a lot on my mind. But I’m much better than I used to be.” I sipped my warm coffee.

  “What changed?” she asked.

  I held the cup, running my thumb over the rim, “I can’t—”

  “Can’t or won’t?” Her face became sad again as she tucked her feet closer to her body.

  I noticed the squares on her quilt then, one had a cactus, another had a palm tree, another had a baby, and another had a teddy bear.

  “Did you make your quilt?” I attempted to change the subject.

  “No way. I’m not telling you anything else, Nico. I don’t work like that. I’ll tell you almost anything, but it’s a sharing kind of deal. You share, I share. I like you. You have kick-ass taste in music. You sleep around a lot or you did before that awful woman came along, so that doesn’t exactly make me want to jump into bed with you… actually.” She looked straight ahead as if she was mulling it over. “Yeah, it does. I haven’t had a good fuck in a long, long time.”

  I almost choked on my coffee. “Excuse me?

  “Oh, please, like you’re shocked. I’m serious; it’s your turn to share.” She smirked.

  She stared at me, waiting for me to respond, but something happened, and she sat up suddenly. “Coffee was a bad idea.”

  “Do you want me to get you some water?” I asked.

  She held her hand over her mouth, threw the quilt off, exposing a black tank top, no bra, yoga pants, and ran to the bathroom. She made it just in time, but not quick enough to avoid the ends of her long hair in the process. I followed her in and opened the cupboard large enough for towels—none of them matched—and rinsed a wash cloth in warm water. I sat on the floor behind her while she heaved into the toilet.

  When she took a break, she said, “Oh my God… how embarrassing! You don’t have to stay, Nico. I’ll be fine.” She spat into the bowl and waited for the next wave.

  I took the cup next to the sink, filled it with water, and handed it to her. “Drink this so you have something to throw-up instead of coffee. I speak from experience.”

  I gathered all her hair and braided it, took a hair band from my wrist—a habit I didn’t think I would ever lose—and wrapped it around the bottom.

  She wiped her face with the offered washcloth. I rinsed it and gave it back to her while she leaned against the nearby tub.

  “You’re a good guy, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that question.” And I didn’t. I was trying to be a better man, but that didn’t mean I was.

  “An asshole wouldn’t do what you’re doing. An asshole would wait for me to stop puking then have sex with me.”

  “I’m trying to find the balance between asshole and good-guy.” That was the truth.

  “Hang on.” She turned around and wretched back into the toilet again. She was starting to dry heave.

  “You need to drink some more water.” I held the cup to her mouth and pretty much forced her to drink.

  “You have a really strong stomach. Even my cousin couldn’t do this, and she and I have held each other’s hair a lot.”

  “My mom had cancer about four years ago. Chemo is pretty hardcore. You get used to it.”

  She lifted her head, rested her cheek on the toilet seat, and looked at me, her eyes full of sympathy. I was pretty sure she was done being sick, for now at least. I flushed and took the three thickest towels I could find, laid one over my lap, one under her hips, and the third I laid over her after I pulled her onto my lap. I knew she was close to passing out.

  “Do you want me to help you rinse your hair? Then I can move you to the couch where you’ll be more comfortable? And warmer?” I raised one brow and looked down at her.

  “Can you be bothered? I don’t think I’m gonna be much help.”

  “You just sit there and look pretty.”

  She smiled with her eyes closed. Poor thing, I’d never really dealt with a drunk chick. Not like this. When they were this far gone, I put them in a cab. Jesus, my life was different now. The bathroom wasn’t all that big. Mine was much bigger, but so was my place. Hers was a small one-bedroom cottage with a huge closet. Since they were so close to each other, I filled the sink with warm water, and sat her on the toilet.

  “I have to pee,” she said.

  “Okay.” I looked away casually and lifted her up just enough to pull her yoga pants down. She was going commando tonight, God bless her. I handed her a wad of paper and when she moved her hand between her legs… well, the sight of her light brown, neatly trimmed pubic hair gave me a raging erection. When she was finished, I continued to untie the end of the braid and rinsed her hair, she could wash it tomorrow when she was feeling up to it.

  Suddenly, the top of my waistband was tugged down and her lips were on my dick. It happened so fast, I almost dropped her head on the side of the counter.

  “Ah!” I hissed out. But that quickly changed into a moan because it felt so fucking unbelievably good. “What are you doing, babe?”

  Her lips popped off the end of my dick, and I looked down to see she hadn’t pulled up her pants yet. Both her hands grabbed my hips while I took the weight of her head and gripped the top of the braid as she pushed her mouth down almost my entire length.

  “Unbelievable,” I said, my head falling back. Then reality hit me. I pulled back, fuckin’ almost killed me, but I had to stop her. “No, babe. Not like this.”

  Her shoulders slumped as she said, “Just go, Nico.” I pulled her pants up, moved her out of the doorway so I could pick her up and carry her to the couch.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded as I set her on the couch.

  I arranged the quilt and another thick, knitted throw around us, “It’s warmer here.”

  I laid flat behind her, her head in the crook of my arm, her body pressed against mine, and a large towel on the floor just in case she felt the need to puke again. Her damp hair soaked through my sweatshirt and tee underneath, but I ignored it. I pulled her into me, not remembering a single time in my life when I had ever felt like this next to a woman… except for one.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, fighting sleep.

  “Because I like you,” I said gruffly into her hair.

  “You just rejected me. Again.” Her voice was sad, like she was on the verge of tears.

  “Lark…” What was I supposed to say? I went with honest. “I haven’t held a woman in my arms… ever.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, and for the record, I didn’t reject you. Let’s call it taking a rain-check.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  I felt her breath catch and knew she was crying. Then it was all clear. I didn’t know what had happened to warrant her bad-day-drink-fest. Whatever it was, she was feeling it.

  “Do you want to elaborate on that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if I’m… ready. For anyone, not you, anyone.”

  “Are you still in love with him, Lark?” There was really no point if she was. I had just worked it out. Just my fuckin’ luck; I find a woman that feels great, fits with me great, I can have easy conversation with, and takes my fuckin’ breath away… but I swooped in, more like barged in to her life. She wanted me to knock that day and she wanted to suck my dick not two minutes ago. But that didn’t mean she wanted anything else from me. A few years ago… hell, a few months ago, I would’ve had no problem just letting her blow me or give her a fuck. I didn’t want that anymore.

  She sunk closer to me. “Chances are, tomorrow, you’ll wake up and wonder why you bothered to come keep me company.” I was contemplating what to say in response when she continued. “The story is, Nico, I was engaged. For six years, I had this whole other lif
e. I had a big ring and even made my own dress in secret because I wanted it to be a surprise for the man I loved. And now it’s in my closet with some pretty wine glasses. But he didn’t love me. I don’t even think he liked me. He just found someone that complimented him better. I was nothing more to him than an accessory.”

  I brushed her bare arm with my fingers. She should have been freezing in that little tank top, but I was grateful to touch her skin.

  “I used to be fun. Me and Dee, my cousin, the two of us…” She stopped talking for a while. “I lost myself for him, and I don’t know how to get her back. I wasted the years when I should have found someone that wanted me for me, wanted to marry me, have a family with me… someone who made me feel… balanced.”

  Everything stopped for me when she said that.

  Her brown eyes were swollen with a combination of exhaustion and regret as she took my hand and laced her fingers with mine. I put my lips to her cheek, kissed her softly, and stared right back. There were no words, and as I watched her drift to sleep, I kissed her forehead and assured, “I’m gonna help you find her, Lark.”

  “Who?” she asked sleepily.

  “That girl you lost… I saw her tonight, I’m sure of it. I’d like to spend some time with her.”

  “She’d like to spend some time with you, too.”

  I listened to her breathe, watched her body relax tucked into mine, and fuck if I wasn’t reminded of Dish. But I’d tell her all about Lark Andrews asleep in my arms tomorrow.

  Chapter 10

  Dear Dish –

  She wants to take things slow.

  I’ve never done slow. I’ve never done “this” whatever “this” is.

  I just know it’s right.

  I’m not going to fuck it up.

  N

  Over the next few weeks, Lark and I became inseparable. We walked to my favorite café together a few days a week, went out to lunch, I held the door open for her, and carried her groceries from the truck to her cottage. She cooked for me when I was working and brought a plate down to the shop, and each one had a note folded and taped to the top.