One Real Thing (12 page)

“He told me not to tell you, but…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,
what?
”

“I only found out through the rumor mill, myself. And then he quit answering my calls.”

Holly was going to fly back to New York and kill Rich. “Rich!”

“Caroline left him for his editor.” The words came out in a rush. “He didn’t want you to know. He said he’d tell you when he got things worked out. But then he quit answering my calls and no one’s been able to reach him and I found out he moved out of his apartment. The landlord doesn’t have a forwarding address for him either. The post office might, but…”

Holly was going to kill Caroline and her piece on the side while he was there too. “When?”

“Right about when you left,” Rich said in a very small voice. “Look, I was in Thailand on business, and I figured he’d tell you and…”

“I’ll call you when I get to New York.” Holly hung up and put the phone down with shaking hands. He trapped his fingers between his knees and closed his eyes. This wasn’t happening.

“Who’s going to New York?” The clatter of Julie’s heels on the patio cut into the haze of worry.

“I don’t like New York,” Danner said sleepily. “Let’s not go.” Holly could hear the creak of the chair as he sat up.

“Me, I’m going.” Holly stood and shoved his phone in the pocket of his jean shorts.

“You can’t go. I need you here.” Julie was at the top of the steps, hands on her hips. She didn’t look happy. “Look, I know you and Danner are the Impulse Twins, but you’re supposed to be the responsible one.”

“It’s an emergency. If you want to fire me, fine.” Holly twisted to get past her so he could get inside and pack.

“Wait, why are we firing Holly?” Danner was finally awake, shoving his sunglasses up and squinting. “I’m not firing him.”

“You didn’t hire him,” Julie pointed out. “Holly, stop.”

Holly had the screen door half open, but he slid it shut and turned around. He had no idea how he was still standing. He should be falling. There was nothing to hold him up anymore. Nick was missing. Holly’s mind kept churning up the worst-case scenarios.

And he’d left. He’d left Nick and Nick hadn’t told him and…Why? Holly wanted to hit something or cry.

“What going on?” Julie came over, holding out her hand. Holly stared at it a moment and then took it, but even that small delay felt like a betrayal. He had to go, he had to find Nick. Julie tugged him over to Danner and then shoved. Holly’s knees gave out, and he thunked onto the chair next to Danner.

“What’s wrong?” For all his jackass reputation, between him and Julie, Danner was the sentimental one. He slid his arm around Holly’s back, and his bristly cheek scuffed Holly’s sunburned shoulder. “You can’t fire Holly,” he said again. “He’s family. Can’t you see he’s upset?”

“I see it,” Julie said patiently. “I want to know why. I know what you get upset over. Running out of potato chips.”

“Nick is missing. My best friend.” Saying it aloud made everything worse; the words ripped at Holly’s throat on the way out. “He’s been hiding shit from me. When he quit calling, I just assumed he got busy.” Just assumed Nick had something better to do than talk to him. God, he was always assuming. Never asking, so he never had to hear an answer he couldn’t handle. “Now he’s just
gone.
” The bottom had fallen out of Holly’s world.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Julie said. “Isn’t he the one you say is just like me? His wife’s a bitch—from what I recall—but he seemed like he could manage himself. He’s a grown man, Holly.”

Julie didn’t understand. Without Caroline, Nick was alone. If even Rich couldn’t find him…

Nick’s father had killed himself after losing the family’s money—every fucking penny that wasn’t locked in Nick’s trust fund—playing fast and loose until a Ponzi scheme pulled the rug out from under him. Nick’s mother couldn’t take the fallout and went home to England. Everyone fucking left Nick, even Holly. God, how could he have walked away?

Nick was totally alone. It wouldn’t take much for him to end up like his father. Too proud to survive. Didn’t that kind of thing run in families? Holly knew it did. He should have known Nick was just as broken as he was—how else could they have fit together so well?

Julie’s voice stopped him. “Holly, we need you here.”

“I know.” Holly didn’t want to bail. The idea of losing the whole SAS family when he’d only just found it was horrible. But Nick had always been there for him. Nick had to come first. “But I have to find him.” Danner’s arm tightened around him.

“You can’t run off because he forgot to call.” Julie shook her head. “Holly, we have a dinner tomorrow night, and then we’re shooting a commercial series and viral video. You have all the plans for that. It was all your idea. We dropped a hundred grand into this whole promo setup, and there’s still so much more to do.”

Holly knew. They’d trusted him with so much money and…“I can do most of it remotely. We’ve got a great director and producer.” Julie shook her head again. She was right. No logic in the world was going to get him out of this one. “I know something’s really wrong. I
have
to go.
Please.
”

“Breathe, Holly.” Julie sighed. “Doesn’t his wife know where he is?”

“She’s not…She left him.” God, Holly felt sick saying it. Nick was so private, and he must have been so fucking ashamed and angry and lost. Holly didn’t have room to hate Caroline anymore; all he had left was wanting Nick back. “I love him, Jules.” Holly’s voice broke on the words. “Since…since always. I have to go. Even if you have to fire me.”

“Oh God.” Julie covered her face with her hands.

“We are totally not firing him,” Danner said firmly. “Julie, seriously.”

“No. We’re not. Goddamn it, Holly.” Julie kissed him on the forehead the way she did to Danner before she sent him out to compete. “Go pack. I’ll book your flight. Danner, call and see if you can get someone to come fill in.” She let him go and turned on her heel, heading inside. “God, why can I not pick men who do anything the easy way?”

“Don’t worry about her.” Danner hugged him again. “You’ll have a job when you get back. I promise. Even if I have to pay you behind her back.”

“What if he’s not okay?” The words pushed out of Holly’s tight throat. He wanted desperately for someone to have the answers. Usually Nick was the one with the answers.

“Then you’ll worry about it when you find out. All you have to do right now is find him.” Danner let go and struggled to get out of the chair without unseating Holly. “You can do that, right?”

“I know where he is.” As soon as the words were out of Holly’s mouth, he knew they were true. “I can find him.”

Danner offered Holly a hand. “Then go get him. And bring him back with you.”

And bring him…That idea had never occurred to him. He
could
bring Nick back. He had a job, now, an apartment, friends. Something to offer, at least until Nick was on his feet again.

Holly let Danner pull him up. “I will.”

The sound of a key in the lock startled Nick enough that he fell off the edge of the bed when he tried to get up and see what was happening. Was it the super? No, Nick had remembered to pay the rent on time this month. He’d written it on the calendar with a big red circle, and he’d crossed it out afterward.

On his ass on the floor, Nick stared at the door, but it didn’t open. He scrubbed his hands over his unshaven face, then pushed himself to his feet.
Damn it.
He stumbled over to the door and peered out the peephole.

Holly. Standing in the hall, sunglasses holding back his wild, long golden curls. Sunburned, a ruddy glow on his nose and cheeks, his mouth too full and red. He had his hands in his pockets, and he was staring down, waiting. Then he looked up at the peephole like he could see right through. His eyes were clear and blue.

Oh God.
Something in Nick’s chest twisted, clenched, and his gut churned. What was Holly doing here? He’d been doing so well, following all the rules. Had he crashed? Did he need help?

Holly didn’t look like he was in trouble, though. He looked good. So good. He looked beautiful, healthy and happy, just like he should. What was he doing here? Nick hadn’t checked the GPS log in weeks—he couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t look at how far away Holly was and remind himself he had no right to Holly anymore.

“Nick?” Holly knocked. “It’s Holly. You in there?” He frowned, looking worried.

Nick turned and slid down the wall, hiding his face against his knees.
Damn it all to hell.
He couldn’t do this, couldn’t talk to Holly. He’d screwed up so much, so badly, when he’d thought he was making all the right choices. Choices that had cost him all the things he’d really wanted to be doing with his life—writing. And Holly. God, Holly. He didn’t want to screw Holly up too.

“Please. May I come in?”

“Go away, Holly.” Holly would listen, would obey, wouldn’t he?

His only answer was silence. When Nick looked again, Holly was gone.

It wasn’t as much of a relief as he’d thought it would be.

He stared into the empty hall, empty like his life.

He’d chosen respectable journalism over the uncertain life of a fiction writer, sure that would keep him from ending up broke and broken like his father, but what had that given him? Nothing. And Caroline, she’d been the right partner, but his marriage to her had cost him his friendship with Holly—and any chance he might’ve had for anything more—and it had left him with nothing but the utter certainty that everything he’d worked so hard to achieve had been a waste.

Finally Nick did the only thing he could do: he went back to bed and closed his eyes. He didn’t know how long it had been when Holly’s voice, thin and tired, broke the silence.

“Nick? Can I come in now?”

“Why are you here?” Nick called without moving.

“Because you’re here.”

Nick made himself get out of bed. “You have a job, a life. You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I can do both. I got a lot done today. One of your neighbors has open Wi-Fi.”

“You’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be…” With Julie and Danner, being happy and alive and
Holly.
Not with Nick, who didn’t even have a life to live anymore. “What are you doing here?”

“Rich is an asshole, that’s what.”

“Fucking Rich,” Nick muttered. Somehow, he’d ended up halfway to the door. Nick didn’t want to go to the door.

Fucking Rich. Fucking Holly.
Nick went into the kitchen instead and found a pot of cold, overbrewed coffee.
Shit.
After pouring himself a cup and heating it in the microwave, he gave up. It was too hard to stand there and fight the way his heart was trying to crawl out of his chest and get to Holly. “You can come in.”

“Thank you.” A series of clicks and thuds signaled Holly opening the door, then closing and locking it again. Holly had a duffel bag and a backpack slung over one shoulder and his computer in his hand. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even look around. He took off his shoes and found a spot for his computer on the end table. Then he went over to the closet to unpack his things.

It took a moment for Nick to parse what was happening. Even once he realized Holly was unpacking, it didn’t make sense.

“What are you doing?”

“I like being able to find my things. It’s your fault.” It looked like Holly had brought enough clothes for at least a week, maybe more, though he was efficient about unpacking. “Don’t worry about me. Pretend I’m not here.”

Nick didn’t know what to else to do, so when the microwave binged, he got his coffee and sat in the nest he’d made on the bed. The sheets hadn’t been washed in weeks, but it didn’t matter. He just wanted to have his coffee and go back to sleep.

Holly ignored him. Disappeared into the bathroom. There was running water and scuffling and noises that filtered into Nick’s head eventually as “Holly cleaning up” noises. But he was so tired. He left his empty mug on the bed near the pillows and pulled up the covers to shut out the world. Even Holly.

***

The apartment was a disaster. The motel room in Hollywood might have been in worse shape, but it had been less cluttered. A great deal of the wreckage looked like random boxes, whatever Nick had brought from his old place and empty takeout containers. Looked like Nick had been living on pizza and Chinese food for weeks. Maybe months.

Holly could deal with all of that, but Nick…One step at a time. For now, Nick was hidden under a heap of blankets in the bed alcove. At least Holly knew where he was, and that was good enough.

The air in the apartment was stale, like the windows hadn’t been opened the entire time, and the scent of old sweat blended with the stench of even-older food. Holly left Nick to sleep and opened two floor-to-ceiling windows. The night air slunk in around his ankles.

That done, Holly turned his attention to the unopened mail scattered over the table. He had to figure out how bad things were, and Nick wasn’t in any shape to tell him. He sorted through the bills and found one for a storage locker. He put that aside and kept going. At one point Nick had been well enough to take care of some things. There were a few things that needed Nick’s personal attention, but it wasn’t as bad as Holly had feared. He could deal with most of this later.

Now it was time to clean. At least the apartment was small. Holly hadn’t slept since the plane, but this was more important. He needed to clean the kitchen, sort some of the junk, wash the floors, unearth the table, then sleep. Tomorrow, laundry and trying to get Nick to eat real food. There wasn’t a thing in the fridge.

Finally, in the small hours of the morning, the place was cleaned to Holly’s satisfaction. He changed from jeans to pajama pants and pulled on a warm Stone Age Sports hoodie. The couch was stacked with things for Nick to sort through, and he couldn’t just crawl in bed with Nick. It wasn’t the first time he’d slept on the floor. With a sigh, he curled up beside the bed. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep.

It felt like he’d just fallen asleep when something landed on him, jolting him awake before it pulled away. As he blinked against the bright midday sunshine, he saw Nick standing over him.

“Shit,” Nick muttered, rubbing at his face. “Sorry.” He shook his head and turned away, shuffling toward the bathroom.

Time to get up. Holly rolled to his feet and shook off the aches and pains. Months of life with Danner had made him able to put up with almost anything. Holly might have had
Director, Public Relations
on his résumé, but his real job was
keep Danner in one piece while Julie runs the business,
and Danner had ideas like “let’s go sleep on a three-foot-wide ledge halfway up the mountain” and “graffiti art on
sand dunes.
” If nothing else, Holly was never bored.

Danner wasn’t fooling around, though. His constant motion kept Stone Age Sports in spotlight. That, combined with the fact that Danner was a really good guy and knew sports and fashion better than anyone on the outside would guess, made for a lot of money.

Holly scrubbed the inside of the coffeemaker and set a pot to brew. He eyed the bed. Once he got the couch cleaned off, he’d make a bed for Nick there, then wash the linens from the tangled nest. Eventually, through fixing the rest of the mess, he’d find a way to fix Nick too.

By the time Nick emerged from the bathroom, the coffee was ready. He stared at the coffeemaker for a long moment, looking confused, and then shook his head and poured a cup. With a wary glance at Holly, he went back to bed and curled up against the pillows, blankets heaped around him, to drink his coffee.

Holly got some coffee for himself and then sat on the floor, his back to the bed, to drink it.

“The boxes on the couch need to go to the storage locker,” he said quietly. “If you give me the key, I’ll take them over and get them out of the way for now.”

There was silence for a long while, and then Nick said, “My keys are hanging in the hall closet. It’s the small silver one.”

“All right. I’ll take care of that, then. Can I get you anything while I’m out?” Holly looked over his shoulder at Nick.

“I’m fine.” That was obviously far from the truth.

“Okay.” Holly reached back to stroke Nick’s knee. “It’s good to see you.” He wanted to crawl up into bed and kiss Nick’s rough face and then hold him until Nick relaxed and really slept.

“I’m sorry Rich called you, or whatever he did.” Nick looked sorry. He looked miserable. “I didn’t want this to touch you.”

“Mm. No idea where I’ve heard that before.” Holly sighed and let his head fall back on the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’ve
just
gotten your life together. Why would I want to fuck that up?”

“My life.” Holly reached up again and found one of Nick’s feet under the covers. “You could never, ever fuck up my life. I’d live in a fucking box under an overpass and play the harmonica for spare change and I’d be fucking
happy
doing it if I got to keep my friends. All this time I thought you were okay and I could be happy. If I’d known for a minute that you were living like this, the nice apartment and the continent hopping would have been a living hell.”

“You’re making my point for me.” Nick drank his coffee, looking toward the windows. “It’s not that bad. I’m fine. I’m just…figuring things out.”

“What point is that? Is there some rule that says my life is better if you’re miserable? That you’re allowed to disappear now that you’ve ‘saved’ me? That I’m not allowed to put you first?” Holly tucked his mug under the bed so it wouldn’t get knocked over. “You can tell me to leave, and I will. But one of the things that makes me who I am is you, and that won’t change. I can’t pretend it’s not true. All the things that helped me get better only happened because of who you are to me. You can’t have only half of the equation.”

“Don’t. Just…don’t.” Nick stared down at his coffee as though, somehow, it held all the answers. “It was all wrong, all of it. I didn’t want you to be part of that.”

“What was all wrong?” Holly turned so he was kneeling, like he was praying. He understood why Nick had been so angry in L.A. That was how Nick dealt with things, and Holly wouldn’t have had it any other way. But seeing Nick sinking didn’t make Holly angry, just sad and scared and more in love with him than ever. Seeing Nick imperfect and fragile touched him so deeply, made him ashamed that he’d ever put so much stock in Nick’s perfection and quiet, impenetrable façade.

Nick scrubbed his free hand over his face and sighed. “I invested in the wrong things, molded my life around my family’s vision of how it should be, but I didn’t see what was happening around me. I don’t know. I can’t figure out when everything changed, or if it was always that way and I was too busy doing
the right thing
to notice none of it was right at all.”

“It wasn’t just you. You can’t control everything, Nick. You’re a good person who trusted people. You got played. It happens. You were and are right about a whole lot of stuff.” Holly leaned forward and kissed Nick’s bare foot. “You were right about me.”

“I was.” Nick offered a sad, wry smile. “Maybe that’s why she hated you so much, because you were the one
real
thing in my life.”

That sounded suspiciously like the truth. She’d disliked Holly from the first time they met—when she’d sauntered into Nick’s off-campus apartment to find Holly sprawled across him in bed. Nick’s completely rational explanation—they were talking, hanging out—hadn’t helped. The fact that they’d both been fully dressed hadn’t made a difference either.

That meeting had been all the evidence Holly needed to know Caroline didn’t give a damn about Nick, only about what other people might think. Caroline hadn’t taken any longer to work out that Holly didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, especially her. It had been downhill from there.

“Look, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Holly pressed his cheek to Nick’s cold foot, then kissed it again, finding the pale curve of the arch. “I mean it. Stop blaming yourself.”

“I’m…You don’t know that.” Nick shook his head. “There was so much…I don’t know.”

“I’m real, though, right?”

Nick looked at him for a long moment, long enough that Holly wasn’t sure what the answer was going to be. And then, finally, he said, “Yes. You’re real. Even if…I know I wasn’t wrong about that, about who you are.”

“Even if what?” Holly reached out, tentatively, to touch Nick’s hand.

“I don’t know,” Nick said, but he didn’t pull away, so Holly held on. “I don’t…I don’t know.”

“It’s okay.” How could they both do the same foolish thing, from such different places? “Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you be, now, but I’m not leaving. I’m going to take those boxes to the storage unit, and then I’m going to do some laundry. Is that okay?”

Nick watched Holly over the rim of his coffee cup. “Yeah. Yes, that’s okay.”

“Don’t worry about anything. I’m going to drop the boxes off, stop at the bodega for a few things, then get back here.” Holly snagged his mug as he stood. “Try to rest.”