Follow Me(28)

Or, I thought as I reached my gate, I don’t have to be alone. Cat might be my only real friend here, but she’s not actually my only friend.

? ? ?

FIVE MINUTES LATER, Nick was ducking through my front door, toothpaste-commercial smile gleaming.

“That was fast,” I observed.

“When the lady beckons,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat to me. “Actually, I was already in the neighborhood.”

“Lucky me,” I said, wrapping my arms around his torso and burying my face in his chest. I inhaled, filling my nostrils with the familiar scent of Nick’s musky, slightly spicy cologne and the faintest hint of beer. It was a combination that reminded me of simpler times—sitting on Nick’s lap at football games, cuddling in his bed on lazy Sunday mornings and watching DVR-ed SNL—and made me glad I had called him.

“I’ll show you lucky,” he said lowly as he captured my face in his hands and covered my mouth with his, ending all conversation.

? ? ?

LATER, NICK AND I lay side by side in bed on our phones. Nick was texting with his friends about some sports something or other, and I was composing an Instagram Story about the night, trying to figure out how to share the evening with my followers without revealing how it had ended in disaster—or how I had salvaged it by calling my ex-boyfriend.

“Oh, hey,” Nick said, looking up suddenly. “I just remembered. My mom wants to see you.”

“Your mom?” I asked, putting down my phone. “Why?”

“She always liked you,” he said with a shrug. “She knows you moved to town, and she thought you might come over for dinner sometime.”

“Oh,” I said noncommittally. The last thing I wanted to do was have dinner with Nick’s family, his mother especially. I’d met her a few times when Nick and I were dating, and the elegant but frosty woman had seemingly taken an uncomfortable shine to me. She’d run her hands through my hair, leaving it lightly smeared with her rose-scented hand cream and getting the strands caught on her rings, and begin talking about future holidays spent together. She’d thought our relationship was more serious than it was back then; I didn’t want to know what she thought about it now.

“I’m pretty busy with work right now,” I added, “but maybe sometime.”

Nick nodded and returned to his phone. Relieved I had dodged that bullet, I lifted my own phone and went back to work on my Stories. My heart twisted when I saw an image of Cat’s happy, hopeful face, and I sighed heavily.

“Something wrong?” Nick asked, glancing over at me. “Is this about my mom? Because, Audrey, you don’t have—”

“No, it’s just . . .” I started, then trailed off with a sigh. “Nick, do you think I’m a bad friend?”

“Babe, I’m in your bed,” he said, smirking lightly. “I think you’re the very best kind of friend.”

“I’m serious,” I said, lightly punching his arm. “My decades-long friendship with Izzy just completely disintegrated. And then there’s this thing with Cat—”

Nick interrupted me with a groan. “I can’t believe you’re friends with that girl. She’s so weird.”

“Don’t be mean. Anyway, you haven’t seen her in years. She’s changed a lot since college.”

“I’ll believe that once I see it. What’s this ‘thing’ that happened?”

“I went to trivia with her tonight—”

Nick laughed. “Is that why you’re always at trivia night? I’ve seen you post about it and wondered if you’d been taken hostage.” His voice turned slightly mocking. “It seemed a little off-brand for Audrey Miller.”

“You’re right, okay?” I said, pinching him playfully. “But I’ve been going for Cat. She has this crush on some guy on her trivia team, but . . . well, tonight he tried to kiss me.”

Nick’s golden eyebrows arched. “Did you kiss him back?”

“Of course not.”

“But what? Cat thinks you did?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think that Cat even knows he tried to kiss me.”

“So what’s the problem?”

I wrapped a lock of hair around my finger, pulling it tighter and tighter as I considered how to articulate what was bothering me. As the tip of my finger turned red, I said, “I guess the problem is that I don’t know why he tried to kiss me. Like, why did he think I would reciprocate? Did he think I had been flirting with him? Had I been flirting with him? Am I the kind of woman who flirts with her friend’s crush?”

“You think too much,” Nick said, gently unwinding the hair from my finger and twisting it around his instead. “He tried to kiss you because you’re hot. Full stop.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, tugging lightly on my hair. “But I don’t like the idea of other guys trying to put their filthy mouths on you.”

I laughed and pushed him away. “Oh, come off it, Nicky. I don’t belong to you.”

He growled low in his throat and rolled on top of me, pinning my hands down to the bed. “Tonight you do.”

? ? ?

“YOU’VE POSTED ABOUT this coffee shop so many times I feel like I’ve been here myself,” Nick joked as we joined the queue at Columbia Brews. “Are they paying you for all that publicity? Should I alert the FCC?”