Let it Snow, Chapter V

 Willow

I don’t fall asleep, but I’m pretty sure I’m having a waking nightmare.

Nick seems to become desperate for my attention, popping jokes at every curve, like things are just working out for him. I’ve said this before, but here it goes again: my misery amuses him—no wonder he’s in such a great mood. 

With his shit eating grin, a winner in every sense, with a whole damn cabin all for himself. Imagine that. Even when Isaac and I were together, and I was still entitled to my own bedroom, we were still under the same roof as all (and I mean all) my relatives during the holidays. Which meant exceedingly early mornings, bathroom lines and very little privacy, after all, Cat wants to use the mirror! And whose child is that, playing hide and seek in my closet?!

I’m having war flashbacks here.

Meanwhile, next to me, as if we had a physical barrier between our spirits, obliviously, my car companion whistles to a brightly christmassy Peter Jackson song along the radio.

He’s the worst. He’s still driving slower than my ever-so-blind grandma. Somehow, it doesn’t bother me as much as it did yesterday, how slow he is; what are they gonna do, relegate me again? Where to, the air mattress? In the basement?

I lower the window, in desperate need of some fresh air. Nick opens his mouth, as if to tease me some more, but he must sense that I’m really close to making Carl from Carl Rentals really pissed with my guts on the floor, because he lets it go.

“Well.” Nick says after a while. “I never liked Isaac.”

My hands go cold.

“Oh, really?”

He shakes his head. “Awful guy.”

“Thank you.”

“I always thought you made a great couple.”

I slap his arm. His laughter fills up the car, warm and powerful, and when I steal a theatrical indignation look at him, he’s smiling ahead at the road, which makes him very handsome and, yes, sexy, with that sharper right canine and boyish crinkles in the corners of his eyes. It almost convinces me to smile along.

“Shut up.”

He snorts another laugh, knowing he just popped another great joke.

“I’m just messing with you.” Nick says, humored. “It’s true, I never liked him, and yes, he was awful, but-”

I raise an eyebrow, “But?”

“He wasn’t right for you.”

He doesn’t know that. Well, maybe he does—through Lily, who seems as willing to talk about me with him as about him with me, apparently. The backstabbing, traitorous double agent of a friend.

I sink back into the seat, staring out the window, and think. Isaac was safe, practical, the kind of guy you'd want to build a family with—keyword, family. I was never head over heels for him, but I felt like we had our interests aligned and we fit well enough together. Sex was average-good, I can probably count in a single hand the amount of times he went down on me, and none of them felt particularly great. Although that shouldn't be a measuring criteria, right? Nick can give me triple orgasms with his tongue, and we don't even like each other, nor would we ever work out together.

Not that I'm considering it. I'm just comparing numbers here. Orgasms aren't everything.

Says the severely underfucked woman. Which is how I justify my lapse of judgment last night. And all the other nights, and often days, before that, Although back when it started, I wasn't underfucked at all. In fact, I was bursting with sexual energy—which is also how I justified it back then. 

It's a little hot in here, isn't it?

For the next several minutes, I sit there in silence, listening to the mind numbingly boring Christmas set on the radio. Involuntarily, my mind takes me back to the first time we ever did this. Nick wasn't always an oral sex master; he just kept getting better and better, with a learning curve so sudden you can only assume there's some sort of innate ability to it. That or loads of practice.

With those eyes and the boyish, piratesque grin, I'd bet on practice. Lots of it.

 The first time wasn't extraordinary, and in fact, I didn't come more than once—which is a very meager margin for Nick these days. 

Mom had dragged me with her to visit him in rehab. It was my first time seeing him after the accident, and for some reason, my hands were sweating so bad I'd already considered several escape routes, including jumping off the window. There was also a feeling of morbid curiosity, as well as, deep down, genuine concern. I was shaking so bad the receptionist offered me some water. I'd somehow assumed he was severely disfigured or something equally horrible, with tubes down his throat and barely conscious. The thought made me wanna bend over the next trashcan and let go of all my stomach fluids. 

And yet, when we walked inside that perfectly neat and surprisingly normal room, I found just plain old Nicholas Parker in there, with a barely visible scar descending down his temple. He was in a wheelchair, a much bigger and bulkier chair than the one he has now, but other than that, he seemed fine. So fine that I felt angry at everyone who'd scared me into thinking the absolute worst. There were no machines, no deformities, no missing limbs, no gnarly scars or blood or any of the things that were making me so sick to picture that I'd thought of every excuse in the world not to visit him the weeks prior with Lily or mom or Mrs. Parker. Nick kind of smiled at me when he saw me coming, and our decades-old animosity returned in a second.

"Aw, are those flowers for me?" He'd asked, the bastard, nodding at the vase of yellow roses I was so desperately clutching to my chest. "Thank you."

Mom stepped in, taking it from my hands and placing them by the window desk, where there were plenty of flowers already. No doubt a joint Parker & Decker effort. She bent down to give him a motherly kiss and stood back, urging me forward. That seemed to awake me from my stupor.

"I don't think that's–" I stuttered, trying to get away from it.

Still, out of sheer peer pressure, mom stood back and made me awkwardly bend down and hug him. He smelled of aftershave. I even made the horrible mistake of grazing my lips against his jaw in the resemblance of a kiss that seemed to please mom very much and grant me a quizzical, amused, look from Nick.

"See, it's not contagious." He'd whispered into my ear so that my mom didn't hear it.

Except that it couldn't be further from the truth; Nicholas had always been contagious.

Mom talked about the weather and commented on the beautiful day outside and that we should have a walk in the garden—and then quickly apologized as I turned around to face the wall and hold the laughing fit that ensued. Then she'd excused herself to, I believe, fetch some coffee for her nerves.

It had been even more awkward without her there.

"You're not looking half as bad as I'd thought." I said, to break the ice.

"Thank you?"

"I mean, as bad as always, but not… you know." I bit my tongue. 

“I know.”

Let there be silence. God, I still cringe thinking of that day.

"So you're…" I sat by the bed and nodded, staring at his legs. So still. "You don't feel—anything."

"Nope."

"How do you pee?"

Nick stared at me. "I haven't felt the need to yet, but I'll make sure to let you know once I do."

I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms. I really didn't want to be there.

"You don't feel your…" I stare at his lap. He was wearing gray sweatpants.

"No."

There was silence, and in retrospect, I can see that I was just too fucking nervous, standing there as he sat there, and I’m not usually a nervous kind of person. I didn’t know how to deal with that aside from… very, very poorly.

"Well, my condolences, I know how much you esteemed the noble warrior." 

"I never knew you spent so much time thinking about my noble warrior."

"It's not like we can do much about it now."

And that was the moment Nick moved closer, really close, and pushed me back into the bed and spread my legs. He gave me head in broad daylight in that rehab room. I don't know if it was the excitement, the surprise, the buildup tension, but I let him. 

"My mom–" I'd whimpered, pushing his head slightly away but not really.

"She'll take a while."

"How do you know that?"

He shook his head, going back to business. "She'll wait at least till her eyes aren't puffy anymore."

Later Lily would tell me that he had just broken things off with his girlfriend at the time. 

That was the first time. 

Back to present time, Nick brakes. I was only vaguely asleep, didn't even notice the moment we officially entered the town and the view changed from the endless snowy pine forest to the colorful town, brightly decorated for the holidays. We're parked right between the invisible line separating our lawns, where two almost identical houses sit and even the decoration blends together. Nick stares at me with his lips pressed.

"Well… good luck."

I sigh, heavily, and step out.

“God knows I’ll need it.”

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