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She told me to contact Mac, said he was looking for me.
We had started working together again.
After a stilted first meeting, he told me that he beenrock bottom, and had lost everything. He’d had a hard couple of years since dropping out of college, I’d heard tales of him travelling all over the world and working on different projects all over. Mac was brilliant, he’d always be able to find work. But he’d developed a liver problem from all the drinking and had spent years in and out of hospital. He was trying to get his life back on track, without the booze, but it was hard. He apologized for leaving and said if I gave him a shot, he would do his best. He knew about me having sold the game and having saved his share of the profits and he needed it now.
But we had more than that in common.
There was also his sister, Jade.
I’d gotten to know her when we were living together in college. She was a smaller version of Mac. Just as thin and reedy, with the same shock of black hair and electric blue eyes. She was captivating in her own way but also free spirited and independent. She’d studied photography and was trying to set up a career as a photographer. She frequently dropped by the apartment when we were still living together and she and Mac would go on benders, getting drunk and taking drugs, sometimes disappearing for days on end.
Their family background was murky and dysfunctional. Parents who were never around but always had piles of money in their accounts. For a while, I was fooled by the illusion of freedom, the image they liked to project as young people unfettered by parental expectation or societal demands. They could do whatever they wanted to. The problem was, they didn’t want to do anything.
By the time Jade found out she was pregnant and told me I was the father, Mac was off somewhere in France, getting into some underground art scene in Paris. She told me she wanted to get rid of the baby and join him and I convinced her to wait. I told her I’d take care of the child and she never had to see him or her if she didn’t want to. She signed her parental rights away and left for Europe. I didn’t hear from her again.
When Mac came back and we slowly picked up contact again, Jade’s name was never mentioned. I could see he wanted to tell me about her sometimes, but we never went there. He looked terrible and I figured it was the heroin he’d been doing. He said he was clean now, trying to get his life sorted. I offered him a temporary job, to help me finish the app we were working on. I told him he didn’t have to come into the office, or keep working hours if he didn’t want to. But he said he wanted to be a grown-up, to try. After a few days, I could see glimmers of the old Mac and I had high hopes he’d be able to fix the app.
Nikki came to cuddle with me on the couch, kissing my cheek and fussing over me as if I’d broken my leg, not sprained an ankle.
Then she said, “I hope all that running wasn’t for me?”
I protested, maybe a bit too much. “No! I thought we could go running together, but I wanted to work on my fitness first so I didn’t look like a total slob next to you.”
“I’ve had enough sports freaks, thank you very much,” Nikki said tenderly. “I love you just the way you are.”
It was as if she suddenly realized what she’d said. Her face went rigid with shock. “I meant, well, what I meant was….”
I leaned forward and kissed her as passionately as I was able to, with my foot propped up awkwardly on the cushion in front of me.
“I love you too,” I said, meaning every word.
Chapter 15
Nikki
When it comes to love, I’ve haven’t exactly had good role models.
To begin with, there were my parents, whose ideas of romance consisted of one date every year, on their wedding anniversary. They would go to a movie, of my dad’s choosing, and end up watching either a cop movie or a silly comedy during which my mother would fall asleep. The one time my father brought my mother flowers, was when there had been a burglary at a corner shop and the investigating officers brought all kinds of merchandise back to the station and my father picked up one bouquet of roses to bring to my mom in lieu of her birthday the next week.
I mean, really.
When I berated him about that, my brother had walked in and given me a talking to.
“Don’t tell me you believe all that Hollywood nonsense about true love and some Prince Charming to come and sweep you off your feet and off to the palace in the rosy clouds?!”
Sean laughed at me while my mom patted my back.
“There’s no time for that stuff, hon,” my mom said with a smile. “We have you guys and the house and our jobs, of course we love each other.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced, thought.
As for Sean, his idea of love was dating one blonde pin-up after another. These girls were usually around for a few weeks or months, but never more than that. As soon as they became too “demanding”, he would stop calling them and move on to someone else. When my other brother, Kevin, married his high school sweetheart, Jessica, I was delighted. She was lovely and we got on well. They also clearly loved each other. Kevin had proposed on one knee with a stunning diamond ring, exactly how the Romance Bible dictated it should be. Their wedding was a big one, with extended family coming from all over to attend. But Kevin, who by then had finished his basic training in the army, was sent off for a tour in Afghanistan and that was hard on the marriage. Only two years later, Jessica told me in tears that she couldn’t take it anymore and was leaving him.
I was devastated. Was love really this practical, transactional agreement between adults as I saw in my parents? My mom snapping at him to change a light bulb, him grunting and ignoring her. She would roll her eyes, then shrug and carrying on chopping onions.
When I told Will I loved him, I hadn’t meant that kind of love.
Of course not!
