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I’d never admit it to her, but my whole life had changed when she’d come to live with her father.
I saw her less now that she went to boarding school during the week and only came home on the weekends. But she always found time to see me if I was around and wasn't working for my godfather.
Uncle Julian had made working for him sound like it was a summer internship. Like it was only temporary. But now that the time was coming for Nissa to head to sixth form next year for her final two years of secondary, I got the impression he was thinking something more permanent. Which I couldn’t do.
I’d agreed to work for him for a year, but I wanted to go to uni. I’d gotten in at my top choices and had deferred. But I didn’t want to work for my godfather for the rest of my life.
Then why did you say yes?
I knew the uncomfortable answer. Sure, Uncle Julian hadn’t really made it a choice. But the truth was, I stayed for her. Because of her.
She may have been my best mate, but she’d become so much more than that.
And when Julian finds out, he’s going to cut off your balls.
Which was why I was never going to tell a living soul. As part of this internship, most of my job was watching Nissa. On Fridays I would pick her up from campus and bring her home. If she wanted to see her mates, I was to drive her, survey her activities, watch her.
For the most part it was an easy gig. Except for her one mate Casey who always looked at me like I was a Christmas goose and she hadn't eaten in months. Nissa teased me mercilessly about it, prodding me about how I should just give in and ask Casey out because then maybe she wouldn’t have to hear about me nonstop.
I didn't though. Casey wasn't really my type.
Then who is your type?
That question played at the edges of my consciousness that I didn't dare touch. The rules hadn't needed to be spoken out loud. I understood them. My godfather understood them. Hell, even Nissa understood them. As soon as she went off to school, our relationship had instantly changed.
While we still talked and texted, it was a very big brother-little sister kind of thing and less emotional sharing. I certainly never divulged anything I was really thinking, and Nissa had stopped poking and prodding so much, almost as if she could tell that there was this line that we were sometimes crossing.
Besides, I was eighteen, and she was still sixteen. She and Mrs. Pembry were the only two people that I actually loved in the world, so I kept those niggling feelings to myself when I caught some of her schoolmates staring at her arse. That wasn't her shit to deal with; it was mine.
Some of my mates has started to notice her too, which made things awkward. A month ago, Bill Sykes came round the cottage. Nissa was home from school, and she popped by to say hello. The rest of the night, Bill wouldn't stop hitting on her. Finally, I had to tell him to back the fuck off with a reminder that she was only sixteen.
Nissa had been well ticked off with me, reminding me that at sixteen, by law she could shag whoever she wanted. Age of consent in the UK was sixteen but she knew nothing about blokes and was going to get herself in trouble.
I’d never been angry at Nissa. Not in any real way. Sure, she was a pain in the arse, and her constantly sunny disposition could really grate on the nerves, but I couldn’t ever stay mad at her.
But when she’d said she could shag anyone she wanted, the flash of fury in my blood had me wanting to throttle her and lock her up somewhere far away until she could see sense.
Blokes like Sykes were man-whores. As a mate he was all right, but with girls, they always ended up crying. And the eejit didn’t believe in condoms. He literally thought he didn’t need them.
There was no way I was letting someone like him anywhere near Nissa. Not ever.
Apparently, she hadn’t taken well to me telling her who she could and couldn’t go out with.
Thankfully, she’d left the Sykes thing alone, but now she was on a bloody date. She’d said yes to some twat from her school.
I’d wanted to separate his body from his spine. But Julian had said no. That the twat was from an influential family so killing him was ill advised.
Not that I would have left any evidence of his corpse.
But I’d been outvoted. And now she was on this bloody date… that I had to watch. She and Julian had an arrangement. There were to be no bodyguards in the car with her, so I was in the follow car. All night as I watched, that tosser had been leering at her. Frank Michelin. What the hell kind of name was that?
I still didn't understand why Nissa had said yes. She didn't even like the bloke. His lips were too big for his face, his eyes were too far apart, and he made a steady stream of that's what she said jokes. I never would understand why on earth she had said yes when he had asked her out… with me standing right there, mind you.
He'd strolled up, happy as you please to ignore me, and asked if she wanted to go out on Saturday. Nissa had gotten all flustered and fumbled her words. I was convinced she was looking for a kind way to say no, and I almost stepped in and did it for her. But then she'd said, “Yeah sure, why not?”
I had the quite irrational urge to pick him up and throw him a mile away. Why would she say yes to that goat?
And now I was being tortured by his fumbling at basic conversation. Yes, I had bugged her car. That was the safest route. And no, she didn't exactly know she was bugged.
