“Okay, don’t do that,” I say quickly. “Don’t let her muddle you. You love him. You want to be with him. It’s a good thing that she likes him and it doesn’t mean that you have to re-think anything about him or your relationship.”
“Don’t you see how sick that is?” Sydney asks. “How fucked up? Everyone thinks we have this great mother-daughter relationship, when in reality, it’s nothing but a hall of mirrors.”
I want to bring up that my own relationship with my mother is just as messed up but I don’t want to make this a competition for who has the worst mother.
She is going through something serious right now and I want to acknowledge that.
I want to be here for her in every way that I haven’t been this whole time.
I don’t know what else to say so I just wrap my arms around her and hold her for a while.
“Think of it this way,” I mutter after a few minutes. “No matter how much your mom approves of James now, you know that she would never approve of your open relationship and your sex life.”
Sydney starts to laugh.
Thank God.
That’s exactly the effect that I was going for.
“It almost makes me want to tell her,” she says.
“Don’t. At least not now. You need to save that for a rainy day.”
“If even then,” she says after a moment when her smile goes away. “She’d hate him and she’d never let it go. We’d never get over it.”
I give her a nod.
She’s absolutely right.
If Hilary were to ever find out about their less than vanilla bedroom antics, she would do everything in her power to drive a wedge in between them.
No, it’s better to just imagine the look on her face if she were ever to find out rather than actually dealing with the repercussions.
“I’m sorry, I got so upset with you earlier,” Sydney says, turning her body toward me and sitting up higher on the bed. “She was just making all of these jokes about my body and how fat I was without really coming out and saying I was fat and it just made me feel…terrible.”
“Please, you don’t have to apologize. I haven’t been a good friend to you for a while. I’m so sorry that your mom is like that. You’re beautiful, you know that, right?”
She nods, but I am not convinced.
I put my finger under her chin and force her eyes to meet mine.
“You are amazing and beautiful and gorgeous. I don’t know why your mother says those things but you can’t let yourself believe them.”
A tear rolls off her cheek, but this one is a happy tear.
She wraps her arms around me and holds on tightly.
13
Nicholas
When we meet again…
I arrive at the bar early to get a drink before our meeting. These meetings never go well since I hate the sight and smell of him and have no idea how to extricate him from my life.
Well, that’s not exactly true, I say to myself taking a sip of the whiskey from the top shelf.
It’s dark and rich and makes me feel momentarily better about my situation.
There is one thing that I can do that would solve all of my problems.
I can disappear.
I did a bit of that in Hawaii but it wasn’t a valiant effort. I used my name.
I relied on old contacts to make new friends.
I relied on my reputation to do what I thought I needed.
But what if I didn’t?
What if I actually vanished?
Completely?
New name.
New identity.
New way of life.
People do it all the time. I have skills that will keep me afloat while I try to figure it all out and start a new life.
You wouldn’t believe how many people are officially living under new identities through the Witness Protection Program and how many thousands more are doing it unofficially.
I could be that statistic.
Starting a new life in a new place would solve all of my problems.
If I do it right, not the FBI, nor the police, nor anyone else in the government would be able to find me.
First of all, I haven’t murdered anyone and so far, the case they were trying to make against me for supposedly killing my old partner isn’t really a case at all.
Thus, they’d have a harder time getting my story onto America’s Most Wanted and other television programs that enlist the public’s help in looking for fugitives.
If I vanish and start a new life, I wouldn’t have to work for the FBI gathering evidence on Olive’s brother and I wouldn’t have to worry about the debt that the mob thinks I owe them.
No one would be able to find me.
There is only one hiccup in this proposition. Olive Kernes.
I haven’t told her I love her, but I do. More than anything. I want her to come with me, but I am afraid to ask.
I am afraid of her saying no.
I can’t tell her about my relationship with the FBI and I certainly can’t tell her about them wanting me to gather information about Owen.
So far, Owen can do no wrong in her eyes.
So far, Owen is a god and until that changes, she will take his side if she were to find out the truth about me.
The other option is to lie to her. I can tell her that I need to disappear because of the people who are after me.
They are threatening my life and the only way out is to not be here anymore and to not be Nicholas Crawford.
She cares about me and she would worry, but is that enough?
Her brother is in the exact same situation and he just got out of a coma that came as a result of someone actually trying to kill him.
She wouldn’t disappear on him.
She wouldn’t start a new life with me and leave him behind.
But what if there were another option?
That thought had never crossed my mind before, and even now, nursing the second glass of whiskey, it sends shivers through me.
I don’t like Owen and he hates me.
We don’t have a good history but that doesn’t mean that we can’t find common ground in order to preserve both of our hides.
How does that saying go again?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the solution to all of our problems?
Taking another sip, I run my fingers over the grain of the bartop.
There are thick impressions in it from years of wear, giving it character and the well-worn look of a place where many people sat and buried their problems at the bottom of a bottle.
More thoughts flood into my mind.
The results of the DNA test that prove the real identity of Olive’s mother are still sitting in a folder in my car’s glove compartment.
I was going to hand her all of the information about who she really is and wait for her to throw her arms around my neck and kiss me like she never kissed me before. But I never found the right time.
Perhaps, there is no right time.
“Sorry I’m late,” Art says, taking the seat next to me.
This is the first time he has ever apologized for this and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first time he has ever said he was sorry about anything.
“No worries,” I say. “Had a good drink to keep me company.”
“I’ll have what he’s having,” Art tells the bartender. “So, how are you doing, Nicholas?”