Nick woke up at ten to find the bed beside him cold and empty, and his nose tingling with a scent he couldn't quite place, yet seemed to sing to him. He rolled out of bed, scratching himself through his boxers as he dawdled into the hallway, his hair a mess, and stumbled downstairs half naked. Hell, he even had on one sock. He found himself in the kitchen after following his nostrils to the source and discovered a skillet with sizzling french toast on the range. The oven light glowed down on the thick slices like a beam of praise from Heaven and he inched closer, practically salivating. "Oh holy shit," he whispered, "I've passed on." He reached out a hand to pick a piece of the toast off.
"If you wait a second, I was about to fry up some meat to go with it."
Nick jumped back from the stove like he'd been shot in the ass. "Sorry!" he yelled, flinging his hands up in the air.
Rochelle laughed, "Jesus, Carter. Lauren's really got you pussy whipped, huh?"
Nick lowered his hands, "She ain't got me pussywhipped."
Rochelle smirked. "Do you want turkey bacon?"
"We only eat that on Sundays," Nick replied matter-of-a-factly.
Rochelle laughed. "But you aren't pussy whipped at all." She closed the fridge without taking out the turkey bacon and put a bottle of orange juice on the table.
Nick sat down, "Yeah well..." He turned pink around the ears. "Speaking of her, where is Lauren?"
"Doctor's appointment."
"Oh yeah." He'd forgotten she'd told him that's where she'd be today. He'd also forgotten he had to come up with something him and Rochelle could do together.
Rochelle put the french toast onto the plates she'd pulled out and put one in front of him, along with syrup. Nick quickly wolfed the thing down and she gave him seconds before sitting down across from him with her own plate of the french toast.
As they ate, Rochelle studied Nick. She watched the way the hair fell across his forehead and the rhythmic motion of his jaw as he chewed the toast intently. Nick had always been kind of stereotyped in their little group. He was the big, dumb one, the one that said the studpid punchlines they were all thinking, the one who whined and panicked and acted like a child more often than not. Yet here he was, different than all that.
The messages had completely altered Rochelle's vision of Nick. Instead of seeing him as she'd always seen him - like a blonde version of all the worst parts of AJ - she now saw the side of him that Lauren had always insisted was there. Suddenly it wasn't AJ's pesky little brother sitting there eating french toast, but a deep and intensely emotional man. A man who was going through an inner turmoil so dark and deep that he couldn't express it outwardly, but was screaming on the inside.
AJ had been the same way, she thought. Behind the glitz and glamour, behind those dark sunglasses, wild outfits, loud mouth comments, and video bombs there had been a soul bearing battle wounds, tortured for years and years on end for things that were not his fault, things that had broken his heart.
Having thought this, Rochelle felt suddenly closer to Nick, like she understood him better than she ever had before. She put down her fork. "Hey," she said, catching Nick's attention away from the french toast. He looked up at her, his blue eyes seemed a million miles deep as Rochelle looked back into them solemnly. "You're a good friend," she said sincerely, "Thank you for letting me stay with you guys."
Nick swallowed a particularly large bite that he'd just put into his mouth before she'd interrupted his eating. He stared silently back at Rochelle for a moment, clearly at a loss for words. In his mind, he was thinking how she should be anything but thankful to him after everything that had happened. He wondered if she knew about him eavesdropping, if this was her trying to make up for it, trying to erase it from him. She couldn't erase it, he thought. Knowing he had to respond to her, he finally let a grin spread across his face, and waved his hands over his plate, "With this breeakfast, you've paid your way," he replied.
"Oh is that all it takes? Some french toast?" Rochelle laughed.
Nick nodded. "It's like Lauren always says about me that the way to my heart's through my belly."
"Your belly, huh?" Rochelle asked, smirking at the childish word.
"Yes," Nick nodded. "What? You don't like my word? Would you prefer tummy? Bon-bon?"
"Bon-bon is ass, Nick," she responded, laughing.
"Nuh-uh!" Nick whined. "Says who?"
"Says Ricky Martin."
Nick grinned, "The final authority."
"Always."
Nick shoveled the last of the french toast into his mouth, chewed, and finished off his orange juice. There was silence between the two of them for a long moment. Then Nick sighed loudly, heavily.
"Troubles, bubbles?" Rochelle asked, an eyebrow raised.
Nick laughed, "Thanks to you I'm gonna have Ricky-fuckin-Martin stuck in my head all day."
Rochelle grinned.
They ended up at an arcade. Nick had almost taken out the entire gaming machine at the Whack-a-Mole, and Rochelle had won enough tickets at ski-ball to get herself an old slap bracelet and a necklace with a charm shaped like a duck that was full of bubbles. Nick had a ton of tickets, too, but he was persistently trying to earn enough to get Lauren a big stuffed dog that looked kind of like Nacho.
"I haven't been to an arcade in forever," Rochelle said as they walked through the various games, headed to one that Nick was confident he could earn the final 100 tickets he needed for the dog.
"It's like a kid version of Las Vegas," Nick laughed.
Rochelle had never thought about it that way, but it made sense. "Oh God, Las Vegas," she said, grinning, "I haven't been there in forever, either."
"AJ and I went last summer," Nick said absently.
"Nuh uh, when?" Rochelle looked up, "I don't remember that."
Nick bit his lip, "Welllllll..." he said slowly, "We didn't um... exactly... tell you... and... um... Lauren."
"What?"
Nick's cheeks flushed. "We told y'all we were going to go prep my place in Florida for the winter," he said, "But I actually hired a guy to do that and we took a week in Vegas, me and AJ."
"Why the hell did y'all lie to us?" Rochelle demanded.
Nick swallowed. "We uh... just wanted it to be a guys week, you know?"
"Did you see strippers?"
Nick stood there awkwardly, caught between a rock and a hard place. What the hell else do you do on a guys week? he wondered, how could she not have figured that out? Well kind of she had, she'd asked, but --- "Uh, a little."
Rochelle rolled her eyes.
"But he thought of you the whole time, I'm sure," Nick said quickly.
Rochelle couldn't help but bust out laughing. The look on Nick's face - something between pure panic and desperation - was too funny not to laugh at. She patted his arm. "Oh Nick, you're funny."
"Why am I funny?"
Rochelle smiled, "You just are."
"But why?" he whined.
She smirked and continued leading the way on through the arcade to the machines Nick was so certain he could win at. She wondered what other things he and AJ had conspired on over the years that nobody else knew about but those two. And it occurred to her yet again that Nick was struggling through a loss just as colossal as she was. She'd lost a partner in love, and Nick had lost a partner in crime.
