Page 88 of Touch in the Dark

Nick finds a spot he’s happy with, spreads the blanket and helps me to sit before he joins me. He leans back on his elbows and watches the waves crashing ahead of us. I sit cross legged beside him.

“It’s beautiful here,” I say.

“Yeah, I found it one day while I was out hiking.”

“Liar,” I laugh and push him.

“I’m serious,” he says. “I hike. A lot. Ask anyone. It’s hard to do it in New York though.”

“There are places,” I say. “Just not in Manhattan.”

“Really? You’ll have to show me.”

“Sure,” I say without thinking and Nick smiles that blinding smile at me again.

It’s not that hot out but it’s pleasant enough. I wore capri pants and a peasant blouse, so everything is nice and light. Nick’s shirt is billowing slightly in the breeze. God damn him and those buttons. Does he even know that the top four fasten too?

“I guess I should finish that conversation I started before,” Nick sits up. He reaches beside him and grabs a handful of sand, then holds his hand up and lets the grains slip through his fingers. I watch him watching as the sand falls.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him he doesn’t have to, because I don’t like making anyone feel uncomfortable, but I need to hear this, so I keep my lips sealed.

“So, a few days ago, I was sorting things in Doris’s apartment. I want her to be safe when she gets home after she’s better,” he starts, and I nod in agreement. “While I was there, I found a few boxes in one of the spare rooms. I don’t usually go poking around but Doris is a neat freak, almost as bad as Archer, so it was weird for boxes to just be lying around. I went to tidy them up and saw a couple of photographs in one of the boxes, of my mom,” he looks out to the ocean again, his hand still picking up and releasing sand. “So, I started going through the other pictures in the box, there were a lot, especially of us guys when we were kids. Some of them were pretty funny actually. Anyway, I was just looking and came across a picture of my mom with a guy.”

I suck in my bottom lip to keep from saying anything. He glances over and nods.

“My mom and Doris never told me anything about my dad. They made it seem like he wasn’t worth our time. I had so many questions about him, mom was always patient with me, but told me we didn’t need him in our lives. When she got sick, I asked a few times, but it seemed to upset her, so I turned to Doris. She didn’t want to tell me either. Just said he never wanted anything to do with mom, he abandoned us, and he wasn’t worth thinking about, let alone talking about. She’s kept that stance my whole life. And, until recently, I’ve let it go.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, touching his arm.

“I’m not the only kid who went through something like that. And I had Doris, she raised me, took care of me, so you know, I just let it go.”

“You still have a right to know. As an adult, it’s your choice. I’m sorry but Doris was wrong to keep the information from you.”

“That’s what makes it harder. I respected what she wanted, and it was… Shit, I didn’t even realise it because it was so normal to just push any thoughts of him out of my head. But it was always there. In the dark parts of my mind. Who is he? Why did he leave us? What did he do that was so horrible and do I need to hunt him down and kick his ass? At one point, I even wondered if the guy even knew I existed, but my mom would never do that. She would have made sure whoever he was, no matter the situation, he knew he was going to be a dad.”

I draw my legs up and rest my chin on my knee, tilting my head to look at him.

“It’s no excuse for the way I’ve been over the years, with women,” he briefly looks at me, then back at the ocean. “I think being in this world hasn’t helped either. It’s safe to say this in front of you without you wanting to slap me, but doing what I do, women throw themselves at us and not in a good way. It’s more about what they get out of it than it being anything meaningful. When you have hundreds of women wanting you like that, eventually, it becomes normal for that to just be what it’s about. I’m not trying to sound like an asshole here. Jordan is the only one of us that actually took that to the extreme, but I won’t lie and say I didn’t do it too. We all did, especially when we were younger.”

“I’m not going to look at you any differently for that Nick, I get it.”

He slaps his hands together to get rid of the sand and rests his palms behind him, taking his weight as he leans back. He’s slightly behind me now, so I tilt my head further sideways on my knee so I can see him.

“Anyway, that stuff happened. So much so, when something good walked into my life, I couldn’t see it. Or I fucked it up,” he lifts his eyes and stares at me, everything that happened between us flashing through that look of regret. He maintains eye contact as he goes on. “Or I didn’t try hard enough, because I always had it in the back of my head that people don’t stay, or they want something from me and once they’ve got it, I’m no longer useful.”

I am shocked at the vulnerability on his face right now. Nick never comes across that way, he’s always so confident. My heart beats a little faster. He’s being honest with me, it’s what I have wanted for a long time.

“None of this excuses what I did, Elsa,” he says. “I let that girl come on to me. I remember her hanging around, all over us, trying to get with whoever she could. Jordan was with her friend. I didn’t pay her any attention because that was normal, you know, women are just always around us.” He pauses and looks at me, sitting up straight. “I sound like a dick.”

“No. Well, maybe a little, but I’ve been around you guys when you’re out and I know what some fans are like.” I lift my chin. I don’t add that he doesn’t have to let them follow him around.

“We were idiots that night,” Nick shakes his head. “Jordan was upset about missing the tour with us, and we were worried about him. None of this is an excuse,” he adds again. “Fuck, I can’t even get this right.”

“You’re doing okay,” I say. “Just keep going,” I shove his arm.

“There is no way to say this without coming off like a dick anyway. I didn’t even notice the chick was behind us. I’d had a lot to drink, we were giving Jordan shit about screwing things up with his arm. We didn’t have security with us and there were people following us. Archer at least had some sense about him and got us a car, which we were headed for when a bunch of people started running after us. We’ve been in situations like that before and it was insane.

“So, we’re running to this car, security from the club stop people chasing us and we get away to the car. This girl just comes out of nowhere, her arms go around me. Jordan is cheering and laughing, Archer has a girl and I just turned, and she started kissing me. And there are fucking paparazzi everywhere, like there always are. Then more people are running at us again, so we get into the car, and…”

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