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Chapter Ninety
Point of View: Narrator


"Brian, seriously, just go over there and apologize. This moping around shit is driving me - and Baylee - completely mental."

Leighanne was staring at Brian imploringly, her eyes solid and her face stern. She looked like a mother in every sense of the word. He sighed. He didn't really want to go see Nick just yet. Brian hadn't meant to upset him. He’d felt like it was a legitimate question. It wasn't so much that Brian doubted Nick, or believed Leon’s claims, as much was that he’d just needed to hear the words from Nick that he hadn’t hit Krystal. Brian had needed that same vocal confirmation from him during the Paris Hitlon fiasco, too. He didn’t understand why this time it bothered Nick so damn much that he’d asked for a simple statement of denial.

Nick took it as an accusation when Brian had only been seeking the obvious answer.

His offense, however, made Brian wonder harder.

Which makes me a horrible best friend, he thought.

"Brian," Leighanne pleaded. He looked up at her. "He's your best friend, just go see him."

"I should really work on finding Desi first,” Brian counter-argued.

“Before making up with Nick?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

“Well if I find Desi then I’ll at least have a peace offering for him.”

Leighanne rolled her eyes. Boys were stupid and didn’t understand anything. Brian was irritating the crap out of her. How could he just stand by and watch Nick suffer without his best friend to talk to? How could he ignore how much Nick had to be hurting right now? Boys!“Whatever you feel is best, but I told you what I think you should do.”

With that, she left the office, where Brian had been sitting on the computer looking at a page where you could find a cell phone number by typing in a person’s name. He’d tested it with Nick’s name and come up with a phone number he’d had the year before.

When the door closed behind his wife, Brian resumed his attempts to find Desi’s cell phone number. Typing in “Desi Hernandez” got like fifteen hits, and none of them was a California area code. Brian gnawed the inside of his lip, wondering what the odds were of Desi living out of state. Quickly, he wrote down all the numbers and stared at the screen. Maybe it wasn’t registered as Desi Hernandez, Brian thought. He backed up the page and tried “Hernandez, D”.

Exactly thirty-two hits came up. Fifteen of those were the Desis he’d already written down, plus a Dina and a couple other D names. Three were just plain “D”. One of those was a California exchange.

Brian wrote that one down quickly and circled it twice.



AJ followed Kayla back inside Nick’s house and Nick quickly attached himself to Kayla, despite the glare the officer was giving him. He wrapped his arms around her arm and rested his chin on her shoulder. “I love you,” he said.

Kayla laughed, “I love you, too.”

Nick was all hunched over to be able to reach her shoulder. He stayed like that as the three of them walked into the living room.

“It’s been awhile,” AJ commented.

“Uh huh,” Nick said, still hanging off Kayla.

The cop cleared his throat.

Nick looked at him pleadingly, but he shook his head and Nick had to disengage from Kayla. He pouted and moved about two feet away on the sofa, hugging his knees to his chest and resting his chin on them, staring at Kayla.

She kept glancing at him.

AJ kept glancing at her.

A tension had filled the air.

“Why’re you here?” Nick asked, the tone in his voice a little sharper than it should’ve been, really.

AJ hesitated. “Well, I was thinking about like everything we’ve found out about this Desi character – Brian told me about him going to the jail to see Leon and –“

“Don’t talk to me about that prick,” Nick snapped, scowling.

“Leon?” AJ asked.

“No, Brian,” Nick responded.

AJ looked surprised, “Brian? Why Brian?”

“Because, he accused me of being abusive to Krystal,” Nick said, scowling harder.

AJ blinked.

“Like he asked if I hit her and shit,” Nick clarified.

AJ raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Nick demanded.

“Well…” AJ said cautiously, “Nick, you two weren’t exactly… stable.”

“Don’t start with me,” Nick said. “I never touched her.”

AJ shrugged, “Well you did punch a wall once.”

Kayla looked at Nick with wide eyes, “You punched a wall?” she asked.

Nick hesitated. Kayla’s eyes were wide. He took a deep breath, “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I dunno, we had a fight; it was stupid.”

Kayla was staring at him. Nick felt like he wanted to melt into the carpet and die. He looked at AJ. Better yet, Nick thought, AJ should melt into the carpet and die. He wondered if he tried hard enough if he could shoot lasers from his eyes, ala Clark Kent.

AJ, seeing how uncomfortable this portion of the conversation had made Nick, quickly routed it back to the original topic he’d come to discuss. “Well I was thinking, if he was Leon’s roommate and Leon went to jail, the apartment’s either gonna be Desi’s now or else Desi doesn’t have a home, right? So maybe we should check homeless shelters.”

“Brilliant,” Kayla said, nodding, “I’m sure he didn’t stay at Leon’s.”

Nick was frowning, staring at his knees.

“What’s wrong, Frack?” AJ asked.

“Nothing,” Nick mumbled. He ran his finger along the edge of the ankle band.

AJ sighed. He felt like shit. He’d lost his cool for a matter of minutes and made Nick’s already hellish existence suck even worse. He wondered what point he had of being Nick’s friend if all he was going to do was make Nick miserable. He looked at Kayla, who was still glowing with the idea that they might be onto something to find Desi. She is freaking beautiful, AJ admitted to himself, But not worth making Nick look like that.

“We should go check them now,” Kayla suggested.

“We?” Nick held his ankle up.

Kayla looked at AJ. “We could.”

AJ’s jaw tightened.

Nick closed his eyes. He felt like he was losing a game. When he was younger, he would’ve flipped the game board over in a frenzy so that if he couldn’t win, neither could the actual winner.

“Well, we could,” AJ said slowly.

“Go,” Nick said suddenly. He stood up.

AJ looked up at him, “What?”

“Go,” he repeated, and walked out of the room.

Kayla hesitated. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked, glancing at AJ. “Are you two okay?”

AJ sighed. “Who the hell knows?” he asked.

“So homeless shelters,” she said.

AJ paused. “You should go talk to Nick,” he said.

“He’ll be here when we get back,” Kayla said. “If we go check a couple shelters, that’ll give him time to cool down.”

AJ glanced at the door Nick had gone through. He hesitated, torn. Part of him wanted to go with Kayla, to spend time with her, get to know her, find out her story. The other part wanted to tell her to stay there and talk to Nick, to insist that she touch Nick’s leg instead of his own, as he’d just imagined she would while they were laughing in the truck if he told a joke. He took a deep breath, “Kayla, you should stay here with Nick.”

She shook her head, “I want to find Desi. I want to help make this be over for him so he can stop brooding. I don’t want him stuck in here anymore.” She hesitated. “I don’t want him to have to be alone anymore.”

“I can look for Desi,” AJ said.

“I want to help end this madness,” Kayla replied. She stood up, “Let’s go.”

Nick hurried away from the door where he’d been listening to them talking, and ducked around the corner just before the two of them came out of the living room. When he heard his front door close, Nick inched toward the window and peeked through a crack in the curtain at the driveway, where AJ was helping Kayla up into his stupid big compensating truck.

Nick bit his lips and backed away from the window, letting the curtain fall back into place and headed for the stairs.