Cocktails & Dreams (26 page)

Jena pushed Nicholas toward the bathroom.

The hell with dinner.

“C
RAP
!” N
ICHOLAS
M
UTTERED
between clenched teeth as he stumbled over Conor’s backpack and banged into the coffee table for the millionth time since school started. He toyed with the idea of throwing the damn thing against Conor’s door, but a fight with him at three a.m. didn’t sound like the best use of the few hours of sleep he could snag before morning rounds.

He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the overflowing laundry hamper by the bathroom door. Yet another thing that had been left undone. Shaking his head and yawning, Nick turned and let out a strangled squawk when he saw a shape in the hall.

“Shut the hell up, Dickolas!” Conor growled in a low voice as he stepped into the light. “You’ll wake…whatever her name is…from statistics class.”

“Nice, Con. They don’t even have names now?” Nick whispered, stepping out of his slacks and dropping them into the hamper as well.

Conor stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. “Sure they do. I just don’t always immediately remember what they are.”

Nick swallowed back a laugh. “Whore. What are you doing out here?”

“I fell asleep on the couch studying for a damned Calculus test. Someone woke me up.” Conor shot Nick the evil eye.

“Because I tripped on your damned backpack again.” Nicholas scratched his head and rubbed his neck.

Conor had the grace to look abashed. “Sorry about that. I know you’ve reminded me a million times.” He leaned against the wall, studying Nick. “Nice hair. Now you look completely insane instead of partially cracked. Have you eaten?”

Searching his memory, Nicholas vaguely remembered a sandwich sometime that day. He shrugged and turned toward his room.

Conor was clearly not impressed. Gesturing toward the kitchen with his head, he herded Nicholas in that direction. “You gotta eat something. C’mon.”

Nick sank into a kitchen chair as Conor opened the fridge and pulled out a covered container. After dishing out a portion of something, he set it to warm in the microwave and leaned against the counter to wait for it to finish heating.

Nick felt his eyes closing and rested his head against the wall. The quiet clunk of the dish Conor set before him woke him up.

“Eat this,” Con ordered, sitting down across from Nick and rubbing his stubbly face with both hands before training his eyes on his friend again. “Can that guy really do this to you? Keep you until whenever he wants to let you go? You were supposed to have been off at midnight, right?”

Nicholas nodded wearily, digging into the baked ziti. He would have sworn he wasn’t hungry, but the first bite brought the beast in his belly alive with a roar. “Yep. I’m his bitch until the end of this rotation.” Nick got up and poured a glass of milk, swallowing down half of it before sitting back down to finish his food. “This is really good, Con. Mind if I have more?”

Taking the plate, Conor refilled it with a smaller portion, warming it and setting the plate in front of Nick again. Nicholas quickly dug into the food. “Have you ever considered going to Call? I mean, being that he and your dad are tight and all, maybe—”

Nick suddenly lost his appetite. He flashed Conor a warning glance. “Don’t even go there, Conor. I have never asked for favors based on my father, and I don’t intend to start now.” Nicholas pushed his plate away and finished the milk, standing to scrape the remains in the garbage and rinse the plate. When he turned, Conor was looking down at the table.

“Hey. Sorry for biting your head off. I’m a jerk.”

Conor smiled and nodded, rising from his chair and heading for his room.

“Thanks for feeding me,” Nick whispered.

Conor flapped his hand over his shoulder as he opened his own door. “Thank your girlfriend. Jena made dinner before she retreated to your room. Lucky SOB.”

Nick smiled at Conor, nodding.

Turning the doorknob as quietly as he could, Nicholas stepped into the room and shut the door. He slid between the sheets, feeling the sleep warmth radiating off of Jena’s body, and cursed himself for undressing before sitting in the cold kitchen to eat. Hoping he would warm quickly, he smoothed a strand of her hair that was resting on the pillow, and studied her sleeping face in the weak light coming in the window. It still felt like a tiny miracle that she would be warm and soft in his bed some nights when he came home. He never slept nearly as well on the nights she stayed at her apartment, no matter how tired he was.

Yawning, Nick turned on his side, away from Jena, so he wouldn’t be tempted to pull her close to his cool body. His eyes had drifted closed when he felt her arm twine around his waist and her hand rest on his chest.

“Mmmm…cold…” Jena murmured, and moved closer, resting her cheek on Nicholas’s back and twining her legs with his, molding her body around him. “Love you…” Nick could feel her soft exhalations against his skin, and counted them until he drifted off.

When the alarm went off at seven, he slapped at it at it until the noise finally died away with a groan.

“I think you just killed another one.” Jena’s mischievous voice came from next to him, and Nick opened one eye to see her lying on her side, head resting propped up on one hand while she gently combed through his hair with the other. “How many clocks is that since the term started?”

“Uhhh…” Nick tried to make the mental calculation. “Four? I think? Two the first couple of weeks of school and two in the last week. Did I really kill it?”

Jena laughed, shaking the clock. Nicholas could hear rattling. “Yep. I’m pretty sure it’s dead.”

“Crap.”

She kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll pick you up another one when I go to the store today. Do you need anything else? I noticed you’re almost out of toothpaste.” She drifted into thought for a minute while Nicholas considered what else he could have her pick up. “Hey,” Jena nudged him. “Why no dead clocks in the middle there?”

He shifted his eyes to the bureau and shrugged, moving to rise from the bed, but Jena put a hand on his chest to hold him down. She turned his face gently toward her. “Nicholas?”

“I didn’t sleep much,” he finally admitted.

Jena lowered her mouth onto his and kissed him gently but thoroughly. Nick reached up to run his hands over her back. The slow twist in his stomach reminded him that it had been a couple of days since he’d held her like this, and he groaned as she drew back, smiling.

“That was nice; let’s do it again,” he said, trying to pull her back down.

She laughed as she resisted. “Nope. No time this morning. You jump in the shower, and I’ll get some breakfast together.” She scooted over to the edge of the bed and slipped on a pair of shorts.

“Join me?” Nicholas lay still for a minute, head propped on his curled arm, enjoying the view of her tangled hair trailing below her bum as she arced backward in a stretch, remembering how cool and soft it felt against his thighs…Now he really wanted her in the shower.

“Nice try.” Jena quickly whipped her hair into a ponytail and headed for the door. “You would definitely be late then.” She stopped in the doorway without turning around. “We need to talk about what happened, Nicholas,” she said quietly, “no matter how much you don’t want to. Come eat as soon as you’re finished in the bathroom.” She continued out the door, and Nick heard her greet Conor.

Well, hell.

Glancing at the clock again, Nicholas realized he only had about twenty-five minutes to get ready before he had to head out. Dragging into the bathroom, he showered quickly, thinking about what Jena said. He knew she’d wanted to discuss what happened in those weeks when he didn’t sleep for quite a while, but there wasn’t anything on this earth that he wanted to do less than think about the empty days and nights without even the sound of her voice, unless it was to relive that hell.

How was he supposed to talk about how he felt that night when the numbness wore off? He vaguely remembered calling his parents, and his dad trying to explain what he’d said to Sofia’s dad, but at that point Nick was out of control and screaming at him to go fuck himself. After that bit of excess, Nick only remembered trying to hold what was left together as Conor hovered over him, face grim. He still hadn’t spoken to either of his parents, though they had tried phoning several times. Caller ID made avoiding them easy.

The next morning, as Nicholas surveyed the wreckage in his room without remembering how it happened, it seemed clear that he had to leave Jena alone. The sorrow in her voice the night before stabbed at his heart. The last thing her light needed was to be eclipsed by his darkness, he thought…and a part of him wondered if that was still true.

Shaking off the memories as he finished shaving and knotted his tie, Nick shrugged into his jacket and entered the kitchen. Conor looked up from his breakfast with a smile, shooting his eyes toward Jena as she hummed at the counter, folding eggs and cheese into a tortilla. Pouring a travel mug of coffee, she turned and her face lit with a slow smile when she saw Nick. She stretched to kiss his jaw before setting the plate on the table.

“If you start right this minute, you’ll have time to eat before you have to leave, so don’t talk,” she ordered, turning back to the counter to make her own breakfast burrito.

Nicholas obediently began to eat, watching her graceful movements as she quickly straightened up the kitchen and sat between him and Conor, drawing one foot up on the seat of the chair and exposing her long thigh. Nick reached out with one finger and traced it down from her knee to her hip. Jena smiled, glancing swiftly at Nick and blushing.

“You two are getting almost as sickening as Leisa and Travis.” Conor gagged as he rose and rinsed his plate. Shouldering his monster backpack, he looked at his tablemates, his smirk turning into a genuine smile. “Listen, I wondered if you guys have anything going next week. Sam’s dad gave her tickets to the Jimmy Buffett concert, and we wondered if you’d like to go with us.”

Nick looked at him with one eyebrow raised and nodded toward Conor’s firmly closed door.

Conor shrugged. “What can I say? I’m irresistible to women everywhere. She’ll eventually wake up and go home, right? So what do you say? Parrotheads? ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’? C’mon, live a little, Dorkolas. Who can’t use a little summer this late in the year?”

“That would be nice, Conor,” Jena replied. “I hate it when it starts to get cold.”

Conor laughed. “Cold? Someday you’ll have to visit Boston in January, dollface.
That’s
cold.” He turned to Nicholas, spreading his hands in a questioning gesture with his thumbs tucked under the straps of his backpack. “So?”

Nick ran over his schedule, realizing with a sinking heart that he was scheduled to work every day for weeks. Jena’s face held fleeting disappointment as she read his expression, but then she smiled. “That’s all right. Thanks for asking, Con.”

“No freaking way. You’re supposed to be on early shift for the next month, right? Should leave plenty of time to eat and get to the concert.” Conor sounded determined.

Nick sighed. “Maybe, if I didn’t have Dr. Dick riding my ass.”

Jena snorted into her coffee cup as Conor bellowed laughter. Nicholas ran over what he’d said again. “Shut up.”

Conor was still snickering as he headed to the door, shaking his head. “You two are beginning to share a brain. I’m glad it’s Jena’s—she’s funny.” Turning at the door, he looked at Jena. “You’re coming anyway. Don’t argue. Ask someone to come with you, if you’d like, but you’ll have your butt dancing in front of one of those seats if I have to drag you out your door. I owe you for all the deliciousness you’ve fed me the last few days.” He looked at his watch and grinned at Nick. “You’re going to be late, kid.”

“Crap.” Grabbing his cup, Nicholas jumped up and pulled Jena into a one-armed hug. “Tonight?”

She looked torn. “Well…I have to work on my paper, and all of my stuff is at home…” Nicholas tried to keep the disappointment off his face, but he knew she caught it. “How about you come over to my place tonight? I’ll make chicken enchiladas,” she wheedled. “And I promise that I’ll remind Trav that you might be coming in late.”

Nicholas kissed her on the forehead, trying not to sound as relieved as he felt. “Sounds good. Don’t forget about Travis, though. He almost took my head off with a bat last time.” Jena snickered and promised to remind him and to bring Nick’s clothes for the next day.

Dashing onto the floor where his group was participating in rounds at two minutes after eight, Nicholas tried to blend in at the back of the group.

No such luck.

“Glad you could make it, Cooper.” Kapos pointedly looked at his watch. “When you’re making a half mil a year, you can make people wait. Until then, don’t ever think you can get away with that crap.” He led the way to the next room as the other students smirked.

The rest of the day was a nightmare. Kapos seemed determined to drain every bit of life out of Nick before his peds rotation was up at the end of the week. Nick had been looking forward to the surgery rotation that would start next, though it would be rigorous, thinking that it might give him some common ground for discussion with his father during the six weeks of the rotation. Not that it was an issue now.

Kapos caught Nick in the lounge about four p.m., nodding off as he tried to catch up on charts before the next round of bed checks on his little patients.

“Finished with those?” The resident’s face was stern.

Nick shook his head briskly. “Almost. Ready to go?” He put the final mark on the last paper and stood up, straightening his tie and taking a gulp of cold coffee. He checked his coat pocket for the pig puppet he had found useful in making the little ones laugh.

Kapos studied Nick’s face closely and then smiled. “You’re learning, Cooper. No more arguing with me, no more moping around. I take it things are going better with the hottie?” He laughed as Nick shrugged noncommittally. “No personal life, either. God, you might become a doctor yet. Go home. You were here late last night, and it’s slow tonight.”

Nick hesitated, wanting so badly to believe he was really going home on time, but then he squared his shoulders. “Thanks, but I’m okay.” He stifled a yawn behind clenched teeth, and Kapos rolled his eyes.