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Chapter Thirty / 2013


Matty and Nacho came out to the living room only seconds after I'd fallen into my fake-sleep stance. I pretended to wake up, and put Nacho's leash on him and Matty scampered out into the cold morning air with me to walk him. While Nacho peed on the bushes, Matty followed me around with his hands shoved into the pocket of his jacket. "Hey Mr. Nick, I gotta question," he said about five minutes into our walk, "It's real important."

"Okay, shoot," I answered. I was glancing at Abbey's bedroom window, wondering what she was doing. Had she really gone back in to sleep? Nacho tugged and I took a couple side steps to accommodate him.

"Well it's like this," Matty said, "I just am wondering if you think I could maybe get a ride from you downtown so's I could get a job? I don't have a bike or nothin'. Do you think mom would mind? I bet I could be like the people on the skates at Sonic maybe."

I looked down at him. "What?"

"A job," he said, "I need the moneys."

"What do you need money for?" I asked.

Matty sighed and flapped his arms at his side like he was a penguin or something. "I need the moneys because I gotta get a good present for my mom for Christmas and I don't wanna make her no stupid popsicle stick picture frame like last year. I wanna buy her a real present, so I need the money."

"I don't think you're exactly old enough to get a job," I said, "There's like... laws and stuff."

Matty looked profoundly disappointed.

"It's okay, though, dude, I'll bring you shopping for your mom," I offered.

He lit up. "Really?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"When?"

"I dunno. Soon."

"Today?"

"Maybe this weekend."

He clapped his hands together excitedly. "That'll be really, really cool if we do that."

"Okay," I said, "We'll make sure we do that, then. I promise."

We finished walking Nacho, the headed back inside. Abbey was out of the bedroom and had folded my blanket and stacked it and my pillow on the back of the couch. The Christmas tree lights were on, glowing happily in the corner and the heater was running, cutting the chill out of the air in the room. She was cooking eggs at the stove in the kitchen, I could smell them and toast. I unhinged Nacho's leash and he bulleted down the hallway to Matty's room, where Matty had gone. I glanced down the hall, making sure Matty was out of ear shot, then sidled over to Abbey at the stove. "Hey," I said.

"Hey," she answered. She shook some pepper onto the frying pan where the eggs sizzled, then turned and pulled a ziplock bag of deli ham out of the fridge and started frying slices of ham, too.

"Can we talk about last night?" I asked.

She shrugged, "There's nothing really to talk about," she said. She grabbed the spatula and moved the eggs onto toast on three plates. Perfectly formed Sunny Side Ups. She slid ham onto the side and pushed one of the plates into my hands. "We had fun. It felt great. That's it." She smiled. I held the plate and she turned to the fridge. "Do you want cheese?" she asked.

"Uh yeah," I answered.

She put a slice on my plate. "There ya go." Then, "Matty! Breakfast!"

Nacho came running down the hallway into the kitchen, tail spinning in circles. Matty came running behind him, his sock feet thumping on the floor and skid across the wood-pattern tile that covered the floor under the table like he was in Risky Business. He crawled onto the table and Abbey put the plate in front of him.

I sat down, my mind kind of spinning over what she'd said. Fun? Felt great? That's it? Had she not turned to jello inside like I had? Was she not blown away? Cos I'd been blown away. I started mentally running over everything that I'd done. Had I messed up somewhere? Had I done something wrong? I'd done the appropriate amount of foreplay, right? Girls like foreplay... I'd hit all the spots, right? I'd taken my time. I'd even cuddled, for fucks sake.

Fun?

Felt great?

That's it?????

I looked up at her my fork kinda hanging in my hand limp wristed. She was cutting Matty's ham up in pieces. Nacho was scratching at my legs.

"Is your breakfast okay?" Abbey asked.

"Yeah," I answered, "It's fun."

Abbey looked at me weird.

"It feels great," I added.

She raised her eyebrow.

"That's it," I finished.

Abbey turned back to Matty. "How's yours?"

"Yummy," he answered, shoving a big bite of ham into his mouth.

I spent the entire time we were eating stressing over the words fun, great, and that's it. I mean, I've always gotten rave reviews. So it didn't make sense that she'd been so ho-hum about it. It was driving me crazy.




Abbey

I could see Nick was dying on the other side of the table. I knew that I'd really gotten under his skin. But I wasn't about to let him have the ball in his court, so to speak, by telling him the truth about what he'd done to me the night before. That was for me to know. The truth was, I'd spent seven years building up the experience I'd had with Nick in my mind. I'd come to the point that I'd decided there was no way in hell that anyone could live up to that memory. Especially not Nick himself. No way could anyone be as good as I remembered him.

I'd even managed to clear the expectations out of my head when he'd laid his hands on me. I'd decided not to compare his performance to my memory of him because it didn't seem fair. But it'd taken only moments for me to realize that there was no need to clear the expectations because Nick had blown them right off the god-damned planet.

When I'd gone back into my room that morning, I'd laid down on the bed and literally used every ounce of will in my body to keep from rushing out and pulling him back in there so I could do the dirtiest of dirty things to him over and over again.

I wanted to lock him up in my room and never let him out.

That'd be amazing.

"Mommy?"

I blinked out of the mini-fantasy I'd fallen into at the thought of Nick locked up in my room and re-focused on Matty. "Sorry," I said. "Yeah?"

"Mr. Nick was askin' you a question," he said.

I looked up at Nick. "Yeah?"

"I was thinkin' I could maybe bring Matty out this weekend? Like a guy's day? Would that be okay?" Nick winked at Matty, then turned back to me and smiled.

"Yeah, sure," I answered, "That sounds like fun."

Matty looked at Nick with wide, excited eyes.

Nick was still squirming with the words I'd said. I could practically read fun, great, that's it on his eyeballs like a ticker tape.

When we'd all finished eating, Nick followed me into the kitchen, came right up behind me and reached around me to put his dish in the sink, his face close to my ears. "Maybe tonight we can have some more fun," he whispered.

My mouth went dry at the thought of it.

In the other room, Matty started shouting for us to come look. Nick turned away, and I realized I'd held my breath when he'd come up behind me. It'd been a reflex. Nick came near and my breathing stopped.

Damn him and his powers.

I took a deep breath, trying to regain composure, and I followed him out to the living room to see Matty had discovered Jeraldo... who was playing cards with Iron Man and Hulk under the tree. "LOOK!" Matty was shrieking, "Hulk and Iron Man come to life at night, too!"

Nick's eyes were wide as he knelt next to Matty to look, "That's insane," he said. "Abbey, take a look at this, will ya? Isn't that fun? Great?"

The rest of the day pretty much went like that. Every time that Nick got a chance to use the words, he did. All. Damn. Day. Even when the night fell and we were playing a game of Clue and Matty started to nod off, laying on the carpet, hugging Nacho's little squirming body as Nick rolled the dice. "I think someone's falling asleep," I commented, nodding his way.

"But we're having fun," Nick said.

I stared at him.

Nick moved his game piece.

"I'm gonna put Matty to bed," I said.

I shook him awake enough that he could walk down the hallway and Nacho followed as I led Matty along after a sleepy goodnight to Nick. It took me maybe a grand total of ten minutes to get Matty down, and Nacho curled up at his pillow, and then I closed his bedroom door, my hands sweaty because I already knew what I was about to do.

I'd been waiting for it all day.

I marched to the living room.

Nick looked up. "Welcome back."

"Thank you," I replied. "He's asleep."

"Great," Nick said. He stared up at me.

"That's it," I said. "Get up." Nick got up slowly, his eyes locked with mine the entire time. I took a deep breath, trying to settle the nervousness that coursed through my body. I pointed down the hallway at my bedroom door. "Go to my room," I said in as stern a voice as I could.

A grin spread slowly across Nick's face -- a naughty-boy grin, like some kid that'd been caught doing something super mischievous. "I don't understand," he said, his voice husky, "Have I been bad?"

I nodded solemnly. "So... so bad."

He started down the hallway. Then he stopped and rushed back into the living room and he grabbed Jeraldo from under the tree and he tangled him into the wires of the blinds quickly. "There we go," he said, "Now... where were we? Oh yeah. I've been very bad and I was about to be... punished." He slunk by me, his eyes twinkling as he moved down the hallway to my bedroom.