Page 35 of The Tomorrows After You
A better man would have gone after her. A better man would have respected her input after all she’d done for me. But I wasn’t a better man. I was a tired man. And I was pissed.
I stormed back into the house where my brother and Nicolette were still giggling on the couch.
“Really?”I demanded, boring holes into Nicolette’s head. She narrowed her eyes at me.“I knew I was going to regret this and thank you very much for wreaking havoc on nightone!”
I roared and her momentary look of hurt made my chest ache. But she leaped to her feet and stalked toward me, her indignant expression spurring me on.
“You couldn’t have just beennice,could you?” I could feel my blood pressure rising and the vein in my neck throbbing, but Nicolette didn’t seem bothered by it, crossing her arms under her chest, which only pissed me off more. “From now on, I would appreciate it if you stayed clear of the house when she comes over.”
She was inches from my face, and I could feel her hot breath on my skin. Her chest heaved with anger and her milky neck was flushed with red blotches. After a beat, she took a step back, wounded and resigned.
“Right,”she nodded, and I thought I detected a crack in her voice. “There’s no place for a man-eating snake likemein the house.”
She threw me a final accusatory look. My chest sank, realizing she had overheard my conversation earlier that night. She slammed the sliding door shut.My resigned head fell back.
My focus drifted to Brennan who sat on the couch, watching everything unfold. A moment later he stood up and approached me.“I feel as though I need to tell you…”He leaned in and whispered,“that part was a bit mean.”
He, too, found his exit. And I was left alone to absorb the overwhelming silence of mydouble-wide.
The following morning, I awoke to the sound of angry clattering and objects banging from the screen room. What was going on now?
Wiping the pathetic grogginess from my eyes I pulled on sweatpants and stepped outside my dark hole of a bedroom. I caught flashes of Nicolette moving around the room and I leaned into her doorway. Brennan’s old mini fridge sat in the corner. Above it was a busted-up microwave from the storage pod. The side door swung open, and Nicolette stormed in, toting a rusty coffee maker, and placing it on top of the microwave.
“What are you doing?”I asked, masking my dread.
She whipped around, startled, and froze when she spotted me, taking in my groggy appearance, before narrowing her eyes and going back to adjusting the small appliances.
“I am outfitting this screen room with my own kitchen, so I don’t continue my reign of home-wrecking terror. Can’t wreck a home you don’t step a foot in, can you?”Her words were laced with hurt and my chest tightened.
Everything inside me wanted to stop her, wrap my arms around her shoulders, say I was sorry. Breathe in the lilac smell of her hair.
“Nicolette...”I began, but the words didn’t come.
How should I know what to say? People avoided me. No one spoke to me. I haven’t had to be conscious of someone else’s feelings in a long time. I certainly wasn’t used to explaining myself or apologizing and why had I invited this chaos into my life?
“Can you please stop?”I pleaded. But she was like the Tasmanian devil, swirling around the room.
I walked in and put my hands on her shoulders.“Stop, please?”God, her skin was smooth.Her eyes were tired and hurt and my stomach clenched knowing I had made them that way. My thumbs ached to draw circles on her upper arms, so I dropped my hands to my side.
“Why? I was always justtemporary, right? That’s what you said.”
I sighed and sat down at the small round card table in the corner of the lanai and put my head in my hands.
“I’m sorry,”I said, still gripping my face. When I looked up at her, she had stilled and watched me cautiously.“Look... Katie? For whateverreason, has been trying to help me…reintegrateinto the community. When I got back, no one would look at me, let alone speak to me. I... I owe her.” I half expected Nicolette to say something snarky, but she was quiet. She sat down on the bed and crossed her arms, listening to me. “She convinced people to see past my conviction and got me a job at the garage. She was the only person that would eventalkto me or look me in the eye like a real person.”
“That’s because these people suck.”I blinked away the chortle that threatened to bubble up my throat at her bluntness.“You know that, right? She’s not special, everyone else just sucks that bad.”
The chortle escaped. Her body relaxed, and she pulled those toned legs up, tucking them underneath her.
“Yeah,”I nodded.“They pretty much suck.”She was quiet for a long minute, avoiding my gaze. The angry tension settled into a softer kind of tension.“You know this room isn’t wired to handle that kind of electric, right?”I nodded toward her stack of appliances.
She snorted, defeated, and shook her head.“Brennan wasn’t even sure if they work,”she muttered at the ceiling, and I bit back my smile.“I need a ride to the hospital.”
I looked up at her, raising my eyebrows.
“That’s where I was going the other day when my car broke down.”She fiddled with her small toe.“I have to talk to someone there about Chimera and the lung study they did.”
I had the whole day off but the idea of spending it in such close proximity to her made me nervous. And excited.
