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Wrong.
Nic woke me up in the middle of the night, drunk as hell and wanting to talk, which was so unlike Nic I let him in my room. He didn’t talk though. He stood swaying on his feet and staring sometimes at me, sometimes at the wall. The look on his face was something between befuddled and terrified.
“What do you want?” I finally asked, irritated he woke me up for this.
He sat on my bed, looked at me with those damned eyes of his, and said quietly, “Don’t marry him.”
It made something in my chest ache. Something I hadn’t realized was there. I didn’t like it.
Then the asshole climbed into my bed, wrapped his arms around my plush cuddly unicorn Roxy, and passed out cold. When I tried to wake him, he grabbed my arm and tried to tug me into bed, murmuring at me to stop hitting him and go to sleep.
Yeah, no.
I had to go find my boyfriend/soon-to-be-fiancé, drag his drunk ass out of the basement, and set us up to sleep on different couches because I was pissed. My mood didn’t improve when Camden got sick in the night, and I begrudgingly let him on my couch so I could make sure he didn’t aspirate vomit in his sleep.
Timothy knows Nic ended up in my room and Camden and I slept on the couch, but I can’t bring myself to tell him what Nic said to me. He’ll read too much into it. I tell him Camden’s version.
“Nic shit-talked me. Told Camden all this bad stuff. That’s why he ended it.” I don’t know the specifics of their conversation, but lord knows Nic witnessed me at my lowest often enough. And whatever he said to Camden stuck.
“Or he broke up with you because he was a loser named after a city in New Jersey.” Timothy unhelpfully suggests.
My heartbreak over Camden, while acutely painful at the time, was misguided. He wasn’t worth it and I’m glad the relationship ended, even if the timing was shitty.
Because the next time I saw Nic, at Christmas five years ago, he announced his engagement to a beautiful lingerie model named Addison Kincaid, while I was an unwashed mess on my third day in a cow onesie, trying to find the end of my heartbreak in the one-two punch of sugar and booze.
Embarrassing enough, but Addison’s parents are big in the art scene out west. My mother, showing her around, pointed out one of my watercolors hanging in the great room. It was an orchid—the one that looks like a naked man—and I’d given it to my mother for her birthday. I’d worked damn hard on that painting. I thought it was quite good.
Addison glanced at it and rolled her perfect blue eyes. To my mother, she proclaimed it “nice” but to Nic, she’d called it simplistic, boring, and tacky. Overhearing that brought back every failed attempt I’d made at getting my art into galleries. All the rejections, all the comments that I had the technical skills but lacked a certain something they couldn’t articulate.
In a quiet tone, his arm tightening around her waist, Nic agreed with his fiancée, murmuring she was right. She was the expert.
Something inside broke. I couldn’t pick up a paintbrush without hearing her words and the words of hundreds of galleries, of the professors in my art program at college. I was mediocre at best and wasting my time.
I packed up all my paints and canvases, my easels and everything, stuffing it all into my Fuck It Closet, where unwanted things go to die.
I was good at painting. The problem—the reason I couldn’t get into galleries or appeal to someone like Addison—is that there’s nothing special about my art.
Just like my life. I’m not successful like Amanda, not fun like Timothy. I’m a short-tempered grudge-holding bitch who fears rejection and lives on spite. So yes, Nic is the asshole, and when he asked me to paint his stupid charity donation? I could’ve drowned the man in eggnog. The little slights and shit from our childhood don’t matter anymore, but this wound still bleeds.
Timothy’s watching me take my little spin down memory lane, waiting with a quiet patience he doesn’t possess. If this is Mina’s influence, she’s good for him.
“I want to give you a heads-up,” he says in a low voice, glancing toward the stairs. “Nic got you something nice for Christmas this year.”
I haven’t gotten him anything. I didn’t expect him after his Thanksgiving Day no-show. Traditionally we give each other mean-spirited gifts, the rest of the family shakes their collective heads at us, and the day goes on.
Maybe he’d appreciate a Soul Breaker clitoral stimulator in cerulean blue. I have an extra in my suitcase, still in the box. I could throw a note on it. ‘Nic, give this to the next Mrs. Fontana so she has something to do while you’re out screwing around.’
Except I’m not stupid. Nic wasn’t the one screwing around. It was Addison. It was always Addison. Nic was too oblivious to see that in her.
“I didn’t get anything for Nic,” I finally say, “since I didn’t know he’d be here.” Yet another thing Timothy didn’t tell me.
“Get him something nice. He’s had a shitty year. No more two-inch crocheted penis cozies, okay?”
“I worked hard on that.” I protest. I didn’t. I half-assed it while watching The Bachelor during my brief period of getting really into, then really out of, crocheting. One of the many hobbies I’ve abandoned over the years. Painting is the only thing I’ve ever truly loved, which explains why I stuck with it in the face of constant rejection. Until Nic and Addison, anyway.
“Fine.” Timothy waves it off. “Get him some nipple clamps, I don’t care. But I need you to do me a favor,” he says. The exaggerated wince on his face lets me know I’m not going to like this. “Can you organize something for the bachelorette party?”
“Timbo!”
