AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“A lot of people would look at this ugly-ass mansion and disagree.”
“I’ve got no one to make me want to be anything, or to do better, or to do anything at all. Allison—”
“Addison,” I correct, smothering my laugh under my hand.
Nic doesn’t notice he got her name wrong. “Addison had drive. So much drive…”
Is he talking about sex drives? I snatch the bottle and refill my glass to get the taste of that out of my mouth.
Nic sighs after a minute. “She wanted to be on the top.”
“Is this about sex? Because—”
“It’s not about sex,” he snaps. “I’m talking about careers. She made me want to be better at my job. When we first came to LA, your drive to get to your dreams made me want to make something of myself. I wanted more than waiting tables and shooting Target ads. I wanted to make it too.”
I wave my glass at his property. “You made it.”
“And I don’t care. I don’t give a shit about any of this. I don’t want it, and now, I’m all alone…why bother with any of it?”
“So don’t sign onto any more movies. Do whatever ones you can’t get out of, then do something else for a while.” This isn’t about that. He doesn’t want to be alone. He never has.
“I’ve never wanted to do anything else.”
“Pretty sure your bank account means you don’t have to.” Unlike me, he doesn’t need a job to keep him out of trouble. Nic could happily do nothing for the rest of his life.
He shrugs.
“You’ll figure it out.” I tap my fingers on my glass.
He sighs and we fall into silence for a minute, maybe two, before he pushes the whiskey bottle away. “You lost the job you love. I lost the woman I didn’t. Kind of funny how our lives are imploding.”
“Yeah—” I draw out, squinting into the dark. “I’m not laughing, are you?”
He glances at me, the corner of his mouth ticking up before the laugh escapes. Suddenly we’re both laughing and I’m not sure why, but it feels good, so I roll with it.
When we settle down, we eat pizza and talk about lighter things.
I still feel heavy when I head home.
If Mina moves across the country, I’m going with her, but I don’t want to leave Nic alone in LA. He’s not in a great place and without me, bad people can get to him. Namely, my cousin Ashley. She won’t be off filming shitty reality TV forever and she’s one step above a stalker and obsessed with Nic.
So I need to keep Mina here, for a little while at least. Maybe, it occurs to me as my rideshare pulls up to my house, I can do that and make sure she knows how much I love her with one move.
Chapter twenty-six
Mina
NicFontanaisadead man.
After a morning of sewing, I log onto my neglected Wild Things social media accounts, only to discover thousands of notifications and comments lamenting my website crashing.
In a cold sweat, I pull up my site.
One thousand new subscribers.
One. THOUSAND.
Thank god it crashed when it did, but the stupid technical glitch that allowed one thousand people to sign up for my autumn release means I now need to sew, embroider, package, and ship three thousand new pairs of underwear in four weeks. On top of the ones I still need to finish.
