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Chapter Twenty-Three


The next morning, Addison had a meeting with Hugh Walters about a record deal. She texted me telling me that Hugh had called her first thing and she was on her way to the label's office downtown. I wished her good luck.

I did dishes out of nerves, waiting to hear from her how the meeting went, but when my phone finally rang it wasn't Addison telling me about her meeting, it was Nick.

"I need your help," he said.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Just come over, please," he said, "And hurry."

I left the soapy water in the sink and drove to Nick's, half expecting the mansion to be on fire from the urgency of his voice, but as I pulled up in the driveway there didn't seem to be even a blade of grass out of place. I parked behind his Escalade and went to the door and knocked, but there wasn't a response. I knocked harder, rang the bell twice, knocked again.

Just let yourself in and come upstairs, he texted.

I pushed open the front door of the house and headed for the stairs, running up them, my heart pounding. What could possibly be wrong that he couldn't come down stairs to answer the door? I wondered. "Nick?" I shouted as my feet hit the top landing.

"Down here... to your right..." he called.

I rushed down the hallway, passing even more awards and gold records and what not for the Backstreet Boys, which hung all over the walls. At the very end, a door stood open, light pouring out across the carpet.

I turned into the room to find a clothing apocalypse. It looked like Old Navy after a 50% off sale around Christmas time. I blinked in surprise. Every surface was covered with clothing, and even as I stood in the door way another shirt went flying across the room as Nick grumbled from the closet.

"What in hell happened in here?" I asked, looking around.

"I can't find anything to wear to the party," Nick said from the closet.

I looked around. "If you're looking for clothes in the closet, you might want to look at the floor instead..." I joked.

"Those are the rejects," he said.

"Is there anything left in there?" I bent down and scooped up a couple things and started folding them.

Nick sighed, "Not a lot. I need something to wear to the party. I need to look good. I need to look... dashing..." He turned to look at me. "What're you doing?"

"Folding the clothes."

He waved his hand, "I have a maid. She'll get it."

"You're gonna just leave all your clothes all over the floor for her?" I asked, raising my eyebrow.

"She has a specific way of hanging my stuff," he explained.

I stared at him as I scooped up the next armful of clothes and continued folding them. "I'm sure she appreciates you throwing it all over the floor then."

"Aw c'mon, I pay her ridiculously well to do what she does," he said, "It's not like she's imported from Mexico and payed thirty-two cents an hour." He sighed as I kept folding clothes and grabbed an armful himself. "She's just gonna unfold them to hang them," he argued as he started folding clothes clumsily. They looked more like messy balls than anything.

"It's easier to hang clothes when they're folded," I said.

Nick grumbled the entire time we were collecting and folding his stuff. We finally had everything folded up in neat-ish piles on the bed (well mine was anyways, Nick's was a teetering, tottering mess of semi-folded clothes, but at least he'd done it) and he looked over at me, "Are you happy now?"

"Yes."

"Now can we go get some new clothes for me to wear at the party? I need your help."

"I'm not sure what help I'm going to be," I replied, "Addison's way better at stuff like this than I am. Half the time she tells me what to wear."

"You can just look at stuff I try on and tell me when I look good," he replied.

I caught myself before I said something stupid like you always look good outloud.

Nick drove to an outdoor shopping complex that I'd only been two a couple times to window shop. Everything sold there was brand name by designers that were so fabulous and so expensive that I couldn't even pronounce more than half of them. One had actual people modeling the clothes in their window instead of mannequins. Imagine owning a brand so expensive that you could afford to hire a team of actual models to do nothing but stand in your mirror and move around in your clothes?

It became rapidly apparent that as clueless as I am about clothes, Nick was twelve times worse. It was like shopping with a five year old who'd never dressed himself before - you know, the ones that come downstairs in galoshes with their underwear on the outside of their pants and their shirts on their heads. Nick kept holding up terrible shirts. "I thought you wanted to look dashing?" I said, as he held up a t-shirt with the lyrics to some song splashed across it in neon colors.

"I do," Nick replied. "I dunno how to look dashing, though. What does dashing even imply?"

"It implies class," I said. "Which that shirt," I waved my finger at it, "Has none of."

Nick dropped it onto the shelf he'd pulled it from unceremoniously. "Okay so show me dashing." I pulled him out of that store and down the street. "Where are we going?" he asked as he trotted along beside me.

"Dashing," I said, spotting what I was looking for and pulling him over, "Means a suit." He made a face as I pulled him into a store stocked with suits and ties and button up shirts. I pulled him through the racks. I pulled out a dark blue suitcoat and held it up to him. He stood there obligingly as I shook my head and put it back on the rack.

"Did you see how she sat up and took of her glasses yesterday?" Nick asked, "At the auditions? When I walked in? She looked happy to see me, don't you think?"

She'd looked nervous that he, Z, and Hugh were in the same room, that's what I thought, but I could tell this meant a lot to Nick, so I said, "Yeah, she did," instead of what I actually wanted to say.

Nick smiled. "That's why I need to look really, really good at the party," he said. "I know she's going to look ballistically amazing, you know, and I don't wanna be like all blah and plain and boring when she does..."

I held an oatmeal colored jacket up to his chest, then put it down. "If she really loves you, she won't care what you're wearing at the party," I said. I picked up a charcoal grey jacket and held it up to him.

"This one's soft," he said, running his hand over the fabric.

"Here," I handed it to him, "What size pants?" I looked at the pants that went with the jacket and he pointed out his size and I grabbed a pair. I led the way to a huge wall of pigeon hole displays of shirts in various bright hues and started matching the jacket up.

"Do you think she loves me, then?" Nick asked.

"What?"

"Cora, do you think she loves me? From what you've seen?" he looked at me with hope in his eyes.

"Hasn't she told you she loves you?" I asked, trying to weasle my way out of answering the question.

Nick shrugged, "I dunno. No, not really. I mean," he sighed. "I dunno. She's married, you know? Sometimes, I feel like I annoy her..." He paused. "She never sticks around after we have sex. She's always in such a rush, you know? She's afraid she's gonna get caught."

"Like a guy leaving a one night stand," I said, remembering how she'd treated him at the hotel the night we met.

Nick stared at me.

"I mean that's what you just described," I supplied.

"She's just worried Hugh will find out or something," he said, shaking his head.

"Yeah," I said. I grabbed a dark blue and black striped shirt and handed it to him. He stared down at it, and I could see the way he was looking at it that what I'd said was bothering him. Part of me wanted to backtrack, to take it back and make it bettter, but another part of me was glad that maybe he'd analyze my words and realize what he had with Cora was superficial. "You should go try those on," I suggested. "We'll see if you're dashing in them." I smiled.

He nodded and headed for the dressing room.

He took an inordinate amount of time in the dressing room. When he came out he had a determined look on his face that accented the suit in a way that made him look like he was James Bond or something. I clapped my hands as he walked down the length of the dressing area to show me how he looked, one hand in his pocket, the other tucked under the jacket at his chest. "Well?" he said, coming to a stop.

I smiled, "Dashing."

He laughed and shook his head, "You've got a real talent for making and breaking a guy, Miss. Samantha." A tenative smile spread across his face. "Maybe we should get a few outfits together," he suggested, "I plan on wooing Cora more than the once..." he paused.

I nodded.

He went back and changed and we went back through the racks. I selected a white suit and a brown suit and an assortment of shirts. A couple pairs of shoes, belts, and a package of dorky hand-kerchiefs that Nick insisted was part of the dashing look, and his credit card bill was docked more than two months of my rent cost and he didn't even bat an eye.

When we got outside, he paused on the sidewalk, staring up at the sun, squinting. I held his bags in my fist as we stood there. He took a deep breath, then looked at me. "I'm not just a one night stand kinda guy anymore," he said. He licked his lips, "I don't wanna just fuck anyone that crosses my path. I went through that, I've been in the seedy hotels and the bathroom stalls and backs of limousines." He paused, shook his head. "I'm done fucking around. I've grown up a lot. I want to love now."

I nodded.

He looked at me. "I really love Cora. I'm not just fucking her, it's not about the sex. There's something about her... She's beautiful to me, you know? Like her soul." He shrugged. "Maybe nobody else can see it, I don't know. But I see it."

"I believe you," I said.

"I just don't want you to think this is all about sex," he explained. "She's more than that to me."

"I know she is," I answered. I hesitated because I felt bad hurting him like this, but I knew it was something that he needed to hear. "But are you more than that to her?"