Page 56 of Who's Playing You
“Now that some time has passed,what?” he implored me. “Oh,” he kind of hummed, as if he were disappointed. “Do you no longer want to do this?” Then he grew serious. “Did you find someone else?”
I quickly rectified that assumption, “Oh, no no, there isn’t another model. I just… Nicholas, you don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to feel… I don’t know, obligated, pressured or guilted into doing this for me. It’s quite… exposing.”
“I have nothing to hide from you,” he replied confidently. “I’d love to do this for you, with you. And experience this with you. So is that all this is right now? You’re just worried about me?”
“Well, yeah. I would hate for you to feel awkward or feel like I pressured you into something…”
“Scottie, I’m going to stop you right there,” and as he cut me off and said that, I quickly snapped my mouth closed because he said it with such finality. “First off, I don’t do anything that I don’t want to do. Second, I certainly don’t volunteer myself to do something I am not comfortable with doing.”
I let out a relieved breath. “Okay, well that’s good,” I hedged. “Is there a third?” I asked as I looked up at him through my lashes.
“Third,” he said in a quieter way, but almost growled it through clenched teeth as he took two steps closer to me, only to bend at his knees so he was more at eye level with me. “I’d happily do anything for you.” He let that sink in for a moment before he grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers and started towards the house. “Now let’s go, honey, we have a busy day ahead of us.”
“Your house is so beautiful, Nicholas. Like… wow! Your contractors did an incredible job renovating it. And I can’t believe this is all done,” I said in wonderment as I spun, taking in the room. “How in the world did they pull all of this off in such a short period of time? I mean, you don’t even have furniture,” I said teasingly, looking around the open concept kitchen and living room area.
“Oh, that… we don’t have to worry about the furniture quite yet, we’ve got time to find the perfect pieces. Right?”
“Oh, umm, sure. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of time,” I conceded, a little confused by his question that felt more like a statement.
And then it hit me.
He had not said that singularly. But he used a plural: we, not I.
And oh my God, I was yet again feeling like a fish out of water because was he spoken for? Did he have a partner? A wife?A husband?Who’swe? And if there was another person, what in the actualfuckwas I doing here?
If there was indeed a we, well then that put me squarely in the wrong. I was overstepping, knowingly or not - it didn’t matter.
I had been flirting back, hesitantly at first, but nonetheless, I had flirted! And unless I was so out of touch, he’d been flirting with me too. He called mehoneyfor Christ’s sake.
Then another thought hit me: what if he was just an overly open and affectionate person? One who held his friends’ hands, called them by a pet name. Oh my God I was spiraling and I had probably read this whole situation wrong, and now I was here -in a home he had just had renovated for him and a life partner, because who would renovate a house like this unless you were making a home here - a life! A life with another person.
He called me honey.
They say the first thing to go is the mind and I couldn’t trust mine anymore - obviously - because the level of wrong I was right now has hit new heights. And then a second thought hit me: was he trying to have an affair with me?
Oh hell to the no!
I needed to get the fuck out of here. Now.
“Hey, where’d you go right now and why do you look like Bambi?” Nicholas asked with such care and concern as his right hand held my hip so I looked right at him.
“Bambi?” I questioned, becausewhat? Nothing made sense right now.
“Yeah, Bambi, as in a deer - you look like a deer in headlights. What’s going on, honey?”
“You can’t call me that…” I breathed out on a whispered exhale, trying to scramble my brain to find us a way out of this.
He looked confused and his left hand brushed a lock of stray hair away from my face. “Why?” he asked with complete and utter confusion.
“That’s a term of endearment, and…”
“And you’re becoming dear to me, Scottie.” That shut me right up. What do you even say to that anyway? And what did that mean?
My brain stuttered. He just kept looking into my eyes. His grey eyes were mesmerizing and I was lost in their trance.
Finally, I whispered, “You said ‘we’...”
His eyes narrowed as if he were trying to figure out a puzzle. “We? I said we? What do you mean?”
