In the Nick of Time (51 page)

What is going on right now in that head of his?

The man may have had the entire state of New York snowed, but she
knew
him…she knew him like no other. She was the only person he let
fully
inside; she had a one on one with his inner workings. Oh yes, Nick was no longer a mystery in her eyes…

“You tried it!” Her lips trembled as she bubbled with tormented emotions, losing her resolve. She’d attempted to monitor her volume as she spilled forth with a sea of ravenous anger. “Stop playin’ me, damn it.” She seethed as she pointed in his face, making her intentions clear. He swallowed, turned away, jammed his hands in his pockets, then faced her again as if coming to a final decision. Whatever it was, this time, it had better be the truth.

“You
know
what’s wrong with me, Taryn.”

“Say it…”

“No! Just… just go on!” he spoke between gritted teeth, his face drawn tight, angry, blaming her and himself no doubt, too.

“Say it,” she repeated.

“I said, no!”

“Tell me,
now
!”

“I love you!” he screamed out, looking around as if surprised by his own voice. “I’m going to miss you…miss you
so
bad…” He lowered his tone, quieted and calmed a bit. “It hurts! Can we
not
do this, please? This goodbye bullshit! I
can’t
do this!” He spoke low, but his eyes and heart continued to scream at her.

Catching his hands in hers, she pulled him to her. He resisted a little, but love made him heed her. He accepted his fate and rested his head on her shoulder, squeezed her tight against him. She could barely breathe as he stole her soul, did things to it, tried to make it stay there with him, captive to his own needs. She wished it could…

“I love you and I’m going to miss you, too, baby. And know this…” She made the man look at her, eye to eye, heart to heart, as she held his chin in the palm of her hand. “The
minute
you graduate, Nick, and not a second later, I will be waiting for you. I can’t call you, it’s against the rules, and I can’t write you, either. But we
can
do this.”

Like we ever cared about the rules… but that’s beside the point. I won’t distract him. Me being gone could be pivotal, help him along the way. I refuse to mess that up for him.

“You’ve got two more months in here, and that’s it! You don’t
need
me to hold your hand anymore and I don’t need you to hold mine anymore, either. There’s no dependency here between us. It’s just pure, beautiful
want
! And
that’s
what makes this all the more beautiful.”

His eyes shimmered, wet, glossy like a puddle after a hard rain… He stormed inside, wouldn’t let anyone but her see the lightning. Didn’t he know the sun was coming? He held his head high, shook from her grip, as if reading her mind. He pressed his thumbs into the hollows of her cheeks as he stared down into her eyes, making her weak at the goddamn knees. His eyes reminded her of the sky right after a harsh downpour—gray-blue, serene, real, authentic, here and lasting
after
the typhoon… In his eyes danced consternation, peril, but most importantly, love.

Thick strands of lustrous dark hair fell forward, the locks more unruly than ever.

“
You
are the
most
stunning thing in my universe. The most
perfect
creation.” His voice cracked like ice under a warm stream of water. “I know that we are self-regulating and on our own passages in recovery and life… That sounds so damn textbook, like I’m reading from our workbooks! I don’t know… I just, I know we don’t need to hold each other’s hand anymore… That’s not it, baby, that’s not it at all. Matter of fact, that was
never
my problem. My issue, Taryn, is that my love for you is a brand new thing, something I’ve
never
felt before. It’s real, it’s solid, it gets new life each and every day, becomes stronger and stronger with or without my consent. I’ve
never
craved a person like I crave you!”

She blinked her damn tears away.

No, Taryn! You just stand here… Don’t you cry, don’t you dare cry!

“Your energy is off the fucking charts! It’s good, it’s genuine, it’s…amazing!
You’re
amazing!” His lips pursed as he swallowed a cursed tear trying to break free from the confines of the windows to his soul. “Can’t you see? You’re my best friend. I’m losing my best friend, goddamn it!” He took a deep breath, and so did she. Maybe they could breathe for one another when the air got too thick… when the world became too evil with negative congestion, too vile for pure oxygen to flow, and too condemning for love to take flight.

“But I’m
so
happy for my best friend, baby. I know she is going to start all over and make it so much better than before.” He brought her even closer, pushed his lips harshly into her own, uncaring who saw or what happened… and then, he released her. A damn tear wet her cheek; she told it not to, but it didn’t listen. “I’m going to do this. I’m
determined
to make it, to stay clean, to claim my life and make the most of it.” She could hear the candor in his words, the willpower. He meant business. “I would have done it regardless of meeting you.”

“I know. Why do you think I trust you so much, baby?”

“Yeah? But it would have been a
hell
of a lot harder and my gratitude to you is what makes me die a little inside right now.” His teeth clenched as another wave of pain encompassed him—it was written all over his face. He fought himself right before her, refused to let go completely. They both held a slippery grip on emotional outbursts, and she feared she was losing hers.

“’Cause I can
never
repay that shit! Never. I sure as hell can’t reimburse you for what you’ve given me; it’s a gift that keeps repeating itself even when I don’t deserve it. Take care of yourself…”

“…I will.” Another tear fell and then another. “I love you, Nick…”

“I
know
you do, and that’s more than enough. This isn’t goodbye, nope!” He smiled real wide as he walked backwards from her, his chin high and his voice full of hope and promise. “This is until
next
time.”

“…Until next time.”

“I’ll see you soon, baby. I’ll see the Love of my life,
very
soon.” He winked, turned on his heels, and threw up the peace sign as he walked away. Cool, calm, and collected…

He was a walking hurricane all right, true to himself, down to his tumultuous core.

She stood there by herself, watching him until he’d disappeared from sight. She understood that two months away from a lover was not the only issue; he’d explained himself quite well. For a person that has battled an internal war since they were a child, to finally find some semblance of positive relief and then have to relinquish it, even for five minutes, would be pure torture. It wasn’t only that she was leaving, but what she was leaving behind…

You’re going to make it, Nick. We’re going to make it. You think I’m a gift? You’re my blessing shining so bright. You don’t always see it but I do. You simply have no idea just how much of a star you are…

He swallowed yet
another acrimonious mouthful of hot coffee. It made the kind at the station taste like a wondrous, rare, hard to find, and highly sought after South American premium blend. He glanced down at his watch, figuring he’d overstayed his welcome in the library, anyway. People floated about, and he’d been online trying to touch and hold what had once been in his backyard, but now seemed a million miles away… the city.

Depravation chamber…

Sighing, Nick logged off the Internet and sat back in his seat. Reading about all the mayhem going on in the streets had a new spin on it, now. The days had continued to warm, slowly but surely, but the winter still gripped the city with an icy hug every now and again. Crime always went down during the chilly days and teeth-chattering nights, especially one as brutally cold as this one. However, it seemed, over the weekend, a pocket of insanity had burst like a rain cloud and shat all over the good people of New York. Criminals now must’ve been walking around with cordless space heaters and five layers of clothing, for they moved about as if it were a pleasant afternoon in July.

When he read about the various cases, he could no longer read them as a common citizen. He couldn’t simply nod and think, ‘What a shame.’ No, he first wanted to know if he knew any of the bastards involved, arrested any a time or two. Who was killed? Who was hunted? Who was gutted or gunned down and left to die? One story kept resurfacing, time and time again. Brownsville had gotten the attention of what appeared to be a serial child abductor. He read the damn headlines with growing concern. Old memories resurfaced of little girls going missing, never to be heard from again. He despised his new handicap.

What he hated the most, however, was how emotionally detached he’d become until entering treatment; for now, it seemed like he had no control over his feelings whatsoever. It had taken him a long time to train himself to that level, to look someone in the eye and tell them that their mother or child was dead, and not fall apart right then and there with the family. This new state was a drawback; truly it would do him no good.

He blamed this, amongst many other things, on Taryn…

He blamed her for falling in love with her, and her for falling in love with him…but it was a
good
sort of blame, and every time he thought of her, his lips curved into a grateful smile. She was forbidden to contact him, but she’d left him a little gift to get around that issue. He loved her sneaky ways…

She’d written out sixty-one little cards. He was to read one each day that she was away, as a way for them to communicate, to be closer to one another in her absence. Initially, when he saw the little basket filled with the handwritten notes, he figured they’d be cutesy little sayings, nothing to keep the coldness from within from spreading, and to extend heat in its stead. His assessment of the woman’s special delivery turned out to be completely wrong. The first note grabbed him out the gate…

That morning he rolled over on his small bed, almost fell out the lumpy thing. He reached into the small, green wicker basket, and pulled out a random note written on a piece of colorful paper. This one in particular was lavender, and trimmed in her hand-drawn doodles. When he unfolded it, her perfume wafted from the paper, making him swallow hard, and his dick constricted against his boxer shorts underneath his wrinkled, striped pajama pants. He read the damn thing, and a burn soon erupted in his chest like indigestion, the kind brought on by love on rewind…

The shit kept rolling into him…

Nick…today is a good day for me to tell you how wonderful you are. I think you’ll choose this note at the moment that you need it most. Right now as you read it, those lovely eyes of yours are moving across the paper, and you probably look mad. You always look mad when you read for some reason, regardless of your actual mood.

He smirked and continued to read…

Nick, you are not a failure. You are a winner. The problem isn’t that we fell. The problem is how we reacted once we realized we were down. Now that you’ve figured that out, how you rise is what determines who you really are and what you are made of.

Love,

Taryn

He read the last few sentences again and again, until they were etched in a secret, important space inside his mind, to have and to hold till life brought them close. Catching his nose with his index finger, he smiled sadly and nodded his head, understanding the realness, accuracy, and perfect timing of the woman’s declarations. He neatly placed the reviewed letter into a folder, not wishing to mix the one he’d already enjoyed with the others waiting to be read. Then, he got to his bare feet and opened his small, oak dresser drawer and removed a speckled black and white notebook from the top row. Making his way back over to his bed, he took hold of an ink pen, turned to the next available fresh page and began to jot down his thoughts…

Taro proudly showed me his thick scar where he’d been stabbed in the gut but survived. He was twelve, I was nine, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the diamond stud earring gleaming in his right ear. We’d sometimes tell people we were cousins, since he was half Italian and Puerto Rican, too. Only difference was, his Italian mother was a drunk, and his Puerto Rican father a drug dealer, but I still envied Taro, because at least he knew who they were; in particular, his pops. The first time I saw a guy do cocaine was when I visited his building one night. Taro took a butter knife and made lines in what I thought was sugar or baby powder. I was still kind of naïve, and couldn’t fathom my friend taking any hard stuff.

It never entered my mind what that stuff really was until he pressed his index finger against his nostril and snorted the white, powdery line up the other. Taro moved away a few months after he’d been stabbed, showed me that scar, and snorted that cocaine. His mother decided she wanted to move back to Pennsylvania, be closer to her family, and get him away from what she called, ‘trouble.’ I never saw him again. I hated her for taking him away from me.