Page 67 of Big Nick Energy
‘I told Norman, you go and plant your things and I will build this. Actually, we have fresh ravioli we made this morning, I will get two pots you can take away,’ she says. ‘You help yourself, anything in the shop, it’s on me.’ I’ll assume she doesn’t mean the fifty-pound bottles of alcohol I can see perched on a wooden shelf behind me but I smile at the generosity of her spirit, the way she greets all her customers and puts a hand to a member of staff’s back to tell them she appreciates them. ‘I also get you the good cannoli with the pistachio. I get you a box, you can share with your family.’ The idea hits her eyes and lights them up. ‘My Nick likes them too. My boy is fussy about what he likes.’ Why does she smirk when she says that? ‘Go out back and hurry up that son of mine. He should be in his office,’ she says.
I nod as she scurries away. The office I remember. She points behind me to a door, swathes of holly on the frame, and I head on through. This time, I walk through the corridor slowly and carefully, mainly to dodge the parcels and boxes stacked up bythe walls but also to see the photos of this farm lined along them, their family, photos of Nick when he was an older teen with a floppy fringe and an unfortunate love for jorts, but lovely pictures too of Norman with his family, his wife, a look of real pride in his beaming face and stance. I stand there for a moment to see how he envelops his wife in every photo, in an embrace that makes her eyes light up.
As I get to Nick’s office, I notice the door slightly ajar and this is the thing, I shouldn’t look. I should turn away. But he’s the one who’s left his door open and is standing there in his underwear. Don’t look, Kay. Knock? Maybe close the door for him and wait patiently in the corridor, go look at those photos again. But instead, I watch through that crack of light in the door, almost frozen to the spot. Why is he in his pants? He raises an arm above his head, circling it to rub a shoulder and it’s almost unbearable as it makes his bicep curl, it lets me see the curve of his shoulder, the shape of his abs. My lips go dry from my mouth just being open, staring. You absolute terrible individual. Look away. But then he turns and I basically can see butt, perfectly rounded, the backs of his thighs, a back that I desperately want to trace my fingers down. I want to bite his buttocks. He pulls up a pair of red trousers over it. That’s Santa’s butt, Kay, what are you doing? I close my eyes and step backwards but as I do, I trip over what appears to be a sack in the hallway, stacked with parcels. Oh, shitbox. I see him turn to the doorframe as I scramble around on the floor, trying to put the parcels back and make it look as though I’ve not had peeks of him getting changed. I was just here, rearranging things. On the floor. He opens the door wider to see me there, crouching, looking up. Sweet Jesus. No. Santa. Urgh.
‘Hey,’ he says, rolling a white t-shirt over his torso. ‘Why are you on the floor?’
‘I’m clumsy,’ I say, not really knowing how to look at him. ‘I was early, your mum sent me through.’
‘You met my mother. Oh God…’ he says, his face filled with horror.
‘She’s lovely. She’s making us food.’
‘Of course she is,’ he says, rolling his eyes.
I pout for a moment to hear him put his wonderful mum down.You are lucky to have all that warmth and love in your life, it’s quite a thing.‘I’m sorry. If you’re still getting ready, I can wait.’ He shrugs his shoulders but urges me to come inside his office. I tentatively step in as he sits down at his chair and puts on his socks and boots. ‘It’s cold. You might need more than just a t-shirt.’
‘It’s fine. I will be going full Santa. I might stick warming pads in my pants too for good measure.’
I try not to laugh. Don’t think about his pants. His hot pants. I need to keep a distance here. I need to not go near him.
He reaches over to a hook on the wall to retrieve his fur-trimmed red cape. I will admit, I like the authenticity of it, the fact it’s thick and regal. But now I know what it’s covering up. God, why is this so confusing? He’s not an option. He’s the other Nick. And I’m suddenly disappointed that I’m not being honest to either of them, that this pseudo-deception is not me at all. It doesn’t feel kind. Maybe I just need to approach this with the clarity it deserves.
‘Did it look like it was going to snow? The weather forecast said snow?’ he asks me.
‘It’s frosty,’ I say, looking out of a small window. But as I do, I notice a box below the sill. It’s addressed to Nick but one of the flaps is up and I see a familiar picture, a book. I know that book. Because I wrote that book. That’s one of my bears. I turn to see him go into a cupboard to fetch something and I slip my hand into the box. That’s not just one book, that’s a whole box ofthem and I see another three boxes below that. Why? Why has he bought all these copies? Why would he do that?
‘Maybe I’ll put on some thermals under this suit?’ he says, opening a drawer.
I look down at the books and feel a tear rolling down my cheek. I wipe it away quickly and turn around. ‘Yep, I reckon that’s what Santa would do.’
‘I may need to get changed again then,’ he tells me.
‘That’s fine,’ I say.I don’t want to lick you anymore. I want to hug you tightly.I smile at him, probably holding the moment for a tad too long to be comfortable.
‘You may have to get out of here then?’ he says.
‘Oh yeah,’ I say. ‘I’ll go and check in on your mum and your cannoli?’
‘My cannoli?’
My words are stuck in my mouth, they have no idea what they’re saying or thinking. ‘Cannoli,’ I say, not before dashing out of the room, back out into the warm glow of the shop.
TWENTY-NINE
‘And so this is free?’ a woman asks me, sifting over the table at this village Christmas fair. She looks at me and Nick suspiciously, waiting for the catch. Does she have to give a donation? Throw a beanbag? Give us her email address and sign away her firstborn son? Thankfully, no.Please have some books, re-gift them, embrace the power of reading. Please.Because we wrapped a few hundred of these. I got paper cuts.
‘When you say used, how do you know if they’re sanitary?’ she asks. ‘Do you know where they’ve come from? Did you count the pages?’
‘I counted the pages,’ Nick says next to me. ‘Every book was hand wiped too.’
‘Because mites can live in books. I had a friend who caught nits from a book once.’ Nick and I stand there quietly, not reacting.That would mean your friend wears books on her head like hats.Nick pushes a book in her direction. ‘Well, given that it’s free…’ She takes one, putting it in her shopping bag. ‘Thank you.’
‘Merry Christmas,’ Nick says, and we watch her walk away to smell a few candles in the next stall. Today is a little bit different. I was told by one of my library patrons about this Christmas fairin her little village – an event where the village comes together to create a nativity scene in the town square, school choirs come out to sing and they have market stalls all down the main street. She offered me a stall space to give away my books so I took her up on the offer. It’s all wonderfully parochial from the lights to the hay bales and it’s lovely to smell all the food and mulled wine, to see people bundled up and enjoying the season. I look at the dark inky sky and the stars sit there in formation, almost held up by the cold.
As Nick organises the books on our stall, I glance at him, still not knowing what I witnessed back at his farm. For the life of me, I don’t know how to bring it up. I did some quick maths in the car and he’s bought at least two hundred copies of my books. I checked that on my phone. I don’t religiously check my sales and ratings anymore but I had seen that it had an immediate effect. Do I thank him? Do I tell him I know? Deep down, there’s a reason he’s done this, and it pains me that it’s more than him wanting to do a nice thing. It’s because there is more there than just friendship. On the way over, I was quiet, deep in thought, trying to unravel what it all meant. I say quiet, I was also stuffing three cannoli in my mouth. Nick’s mum is a bloody baking genius. The pistachio in the ricotta filling is worthy of a thousand chef’s kisses.
‘Do we really count the pages so they’re all accounted for?’ Nick asks, his breath fogging the air.
