He lets out a savage, animalistic roar and stomps back down the stairs again. I hear him banging doors and nearly yell at him not to bang the beautiful doors in my beautiful new house. “Let’s go!” he calls up after a few minutes. “We have to go get your car! What the fuck do you want for dinner?”
“I fucking want pizza!” I holler. I’ve wanted some since the son of a bitch got it delivered.
“Fine! I’ve got a fucking coupon for Benigno’s, anyway!”
“Great! I fucking love Benigno’s!”
We pile into his car as angrily as we can muster and don’t speak until we’re inside the pizza parlor. When a lady comes over to seat us, a different Naomi and a different Nicholas smile our in-front-of-other-people smiles and our tone is so calm it’s scary, but our insides are boiling.
When I’m in the bathroom, he orders me a Dr Pepper, which he knows is my favorite.
Before we leave, I wipe all the crumbs and used napkins from the table onto our plates and stack them, which I know he appreciates because he tries to be helpful to the busboys.
When we get back out to the car, we plot how to ruin each other’s lives.
I don’t know how Nicholas can expect me to take him seriously.
I mean.
It’s just.
A pop of laughter bursts in my mouth before I can swallow it.
I woke up to three strange men in my living room this morning and squawked, flailing to cover myself, but luckily a blanket had found its way over me while I was asleep on the couch and no one saw my bare legs in boy shorts. When I stood up, I kept the blanket wrapped around me and almost tripped over it, yelping when Nicholas gave me an unexpectedly playful swat on the bottom to get me moving.
“Hurry up!” he said cheerfully. “Got lots to do today!”
That was hours ago, and I still don’t know what mood I’m supposed to be in. Moving has been a real bitch, and I’m avoiding helping as much as I can. Lots of time has been spent hiding in the bathroom, pretending it takes ten minutes to change a tampon. After my third faked tampon run in an hour, I emerge to find that Nicholas has made a daring wardrobe change. When he sees the evil smile on my face, his expression gets prickly and defensive, but I can’t be held accountable here.
Nicholas is wearing this ridiculously baggy … I don’t even know what to call it. Coveralls? He’s head-to-toe khaki, which he must be loving, and his brand-new work boots probably weigh twenty pounds each. I think he’s going for hale, rough-hewn man of the wilderness, but instead he looks like a Ghostbuster.
The plaid hat with earflaps is back, even though he must be hot what with all the refrigerator lifting and shelf maneuvering and anything else I’m pretending I wouldn’t be any good at because I’m a fragile-boned female whose delicate knees buckle from carrying a box of tissues. If he wants to buy a house without my help, he can very well move everything into it without my help. I think he’s waiting for me to throw that in his face, which is why he bites his tongue whenever he sees me sitting down, doing nothing.
This new look is unnatural on Nicholas. He’s trying so hard to fight his own genes, bless him.
No matter what he wears to disguise it, Nicholas was bred to host balls at Pemberley. He’s got an aristocratic, pretty-boy face, all sharp angles and quiet allure with pale skin, delicately disheveled dark chocolate hair, and a widow’s peak. His gaze should be wicked to reflect the type of man lurking beneath, but instead it projects wide-eyed innocence, an inborn predatory trait to allow the wolf to roam among sheep undetected.
The architecture of his face is intriguing when he smiles: skin stretching over enviable cheekbones with hollows carved beneath, making him look like he’s perpetually sucking in his cheeks. It’s a pouty, prissy sort of beauty that screams drape me over a leather chaise to contemplate ennui. The idea of him strutting into a forest to chop firewood makes me choke. Rugged, this man is not.
“Are you Nicholas’s evil twin?” I ask. “Or are you the good one?”
He scowls.
“Seriously, why are you dressed like that?”
“Shh.” He glances at the doorway to the adjacent room where the movers are loading up the washer and dryer onto dolly carts. Their work boots are scuffed and dirty, whereas Nicholas’s gleaming kicks emit a fresh-from-the-box chemical odor. “Can you just be cool? God.”
“Nope. Are you trying to impress those guys or something?”
He changes the subject before the cool kids hear us. “Why do you keep running into the bathroom?”
I waffle between two disgusting possibilities, trying to decide which he’d find more repulsive. “Period stuff.”
He looks skeptical.
“Do you want details? If you prefer, I won’t flush next time and you can see for yourself what I’m doing in there.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“You. You’re what’s wrong with me.”
He stalks off and I’m feeling pretty great, I have to say. One of the movers clomps heavily my way and I rethink my strategy to slink off to a hidey-hole. The air is buzzing with testosterone, and I’m starved for a hit of it. Have I mentioned how excellent it is to have professional manly men come do physical labor right in front of you? Strapping men with sun damage and large, coarse hands and veiny forearms with hair. One’s got a tattoo on his leathery bicep of a pinup girl reclining on the hood of a convertible.
Supervising is a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. I stand in positions where their lifting, bending, and groaning is most advantageous, watching their muscles bulge and strain. Back muscles! Who knew there could be so many muscles in a person’s back? I do now. Forget Tinder; after Nicholas throws in the towel I’m going to hire a batch of movers and find my next boyfriend that way.
Nicholas has a nice body. It’s elegant and toned—the sort of body you could see mastering a piano as well as running across a rugby field. Currently, I’m not privileged enough to enjoy the benefits of his nice, elegant body, so men who were not previously my type are all hot to me now. I’m in a bad way. Boulder-size men with ZZ Top beards and face tattoos. Balding mad scientists. Count Chocula. The silhouette from Mad Men’s credits. If this drought goes on any longer I’ll be lusting after the featureless figure on men’s restroom signs.
I watch one of the men with a little too much interest and feel the heat of Nicholas’s glower. I clear my throat and excuse myself from the room.
Later, he tracks me down and throws dirty looks in my direction until I give in and sigh. “What?”
“Could you be a little less conspicuous, please? How would you feel if you saw me ogling other women?”
I assume he ogles other women on the daily. I know they ogle him.
“I wasn’t ogling anyone. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He rolls his eyes. “Please. I’ve never seen a human go so long without blinking.”
“I was … observing,” I say primly. “Don’t make something out of nothing. Anyway, no one could blame me even if I was looking, which I wasn’t. It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve gotten properly laid by someone who wants it.”
Nicholas’s mouth is a thin line. His stare is unwavering. I start to get a little apprehensive and break the silence with another “What?”