“I need to go,” I said to Sheila. I grabbed my t-shirt from the pile of clothes by the couch, which is where we’d taken them off each other. I pulled it on, and then, in perhaps not the smoothest move, I picked up her dress and threw it at her.
Whatever. My world was rocked.
“You’re kicking me out?” she asked with equal parts outrage and pout.
“Not at all,” I said. Lied, really. “You can stay if you like, but I need to go. And I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“For a family emergency?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Pipes. At my folks’ house.” Oh, I was digging myself in deep with bullshit. I shoved my feet into my Timberlands and grabbed my keys from the counter. Sheila scowled at me and tugged her dress back over her head. She grabbed her shoes and purse from the floor. “You know, Samantha said you were like this.”
I didn’t give a shit what Samantha, the last woman I’d slept with, said about me. I’d been honest and up front the whole time with her, it was her own fault she hadn’t listened.
“She said you were in love with someone who wasn’t interested in you and you were a real dick to other women.”
“Sheila,” I said, holding open the door. “I’m not in love with anyone. I have never been in love with anyone, and truth is, I never will be. If that’s something you can’t understand, then we’re done here.”
She walked past me with a sniff. “The sex was awesome, but you got a real chip on your shoulder, you know that?”
“I’ve been told,” I said and closed the door behind us. She took her sweet time going down the stairs, and all I could think of was Nora, emotional, wrapping that Mini around a tree.
At the foot of the stairs Sheila stepped right to her car and I line-drived left to my truck.
I had my truck started and was backing up while she was still standing there. Flipping me the bird.
The single women of Calico Cove were going to have a field day with this. I probably wasn’t going to get laid for a year.
I sped through town to get to Nora. To make sure she was all right. To try and make surewewere all right. She was leaving for school in a few weeks and I hated the thought of her leaving town without us being solid.
The Mini was not in front of her house, so I kept driving. I went to all the coves. The band shell. I didn’t see her car anywhere and she was not answering my texts. When I called, it went right to voicemail.
“Swear to God, Nora,” I said. “If you got in a crash, I am going to kill you.”
I went back to her family’s house and parked in front. Where there was still no sign of her car.
Fuck.
Should I wake Roy? And tell him what? That his daughter came to my house, told me we were destined to be together, offered up her virginity, and when I turned her down, she drove off and now I couldn’t find her. Anywhere.
Roy would kill me. Then he would kill Nora. And then he’d kill me again.
But what else could I do? The idea of Nora being somewhere, hurt and scared, filled me with such nauseating fear that I could barely breathe.
I got out of the car, just as the headlights of a Mini Cooper came up the street. I sagged against the side of my truck, my head going light with relief.
She parked and got out with a bag of fast food. “Get lost, Nick,” she said, without looking at me.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re fine.”
“Great, thanks. Now fuck off.”
“Can we…maybe talk? You’re leaving for school soon and I don’t-”
“That’s right, Nick. I’m leaving for school and I’m going to go and have an amazing life. Also, I’m going to fuck a dozen guys who don’t think I’m no one.”
“I don’t think you’re no one-”
“You said I was no one,” she all but screamed. She all but breathed fire at me. I shut my mouth and tried to step closer. She held up her hand and I stopped on a dime. I’d never been scared of Nora before – this was a night of firsts, all the way around. “I am going to have a huge life. An exciting one. As different a life as I can have a million miles away from Calico Cove and you,” she spat as she walked up to the front door.
