“Yes,” I said.
“Then maybe Nicole is good for you, too.”
We stared at each other for a moment, and I suddenly wasn’t as concerned about his potential ground rules as I had been a little while ago. I had no idea what he was going to demand, but at least it didn’t sound like it was going to include the words “Get the fuck away from my daughter before I blow your brains out.”
A few minutes of silence went by while I thought about what Sheriff Skye had said. I admitted that I cared about her, and he was quite right—I’d never given a shit about any of the other girls I had been with in the past. I honestly didn’t care if I ever saw any of them again. I didn’t want them dead or anything; I just didn’t even think about them at all.
Nicole was different; I thought about her all the fucking time. It was downright annoying, really. If I thought back to the day I first walked her around the entire school, I probably couldn’t come up with too many hours that had gone by when I didn’t think about her at least once.
My Rumple.
“All right, Thomas,” Sheriff Skye finally said as he ended our silence, “it’s time to go over the rules.”
He straightened his back up against the wall and looked me over.
“Okay,” I replied. I mean, what else could I really say? I tried to buckle down and mentally prepare myself. I even attempted to avoid thinking about what I was going to do if he out-and-out forbade me from being in her room or something, but that was even more difficult to imagine.
“When Nicole first told me about you coming over last night and ending up in her bed, my first reaction was you belonged on the damn couch. If you need a place to stay…well, I wouldn’t ever turn you out, but that place doesn’t mean my daughter’s bed.”
My eyes dropped to my feet, and I took a deep breath as I tried to imagine sleeping on their couch downstairs while Nicole was up in her room. I didn’t like it much, but he didn’t leave me hanging for too long, either.
“But I got the idea from her that wouldn’t work so well,” he continued. “So, you can stay in there with her, but the door stays open.”
My eyes went wide as I realized what he was saying. He was giving me permission to sleep with his daughter. Well, not sleep with her…but…damn. Just…damn. Okay, so having the door open wasn’t all that great, and it might be kind of weird, knowing her dad could look in and see me in there with her, but it was better than the alternative.
I looked up at him and nodded.
“I’m pretty good with that,” I said honestly.
“And no throwing rocks at the window, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “I don’t need you breaking glass or sneaking around. If it’s too late to knock, there’s a key outside. Nicole can either show you where it is, or you can call her to come let you in—I’ll leave that up to her.”
“Okay,” I said with a bit of a grin.
“And don’t you dare eat all of her cooking and leave none for me,” he added.
I laughed.
“Deal,” I replied.
“There’s one more thing,” the sheriff said, his expression turning serious. “And as far as I’m concerned, it’s the most important one.”
“What’s that?” I asked. My palms started to sweat a little, and I wiped my hands down my pants.
His eyes darkened as he looked at me over the smoke trails.
“Don’t you hurt her, son,” he said, his voice approaching deadly. “She’s been hurt enough.”
I nodded solemnly.
“I’m not saying I expect you to make sure she lives happily ever after. From personal experience, I know how relationships at your age can come and go. If you two go your separate ways, I know she’ll be upset for a while even if she’s the one to break it off. I wouldn’t hold that against you, but don’t you hurt her like that other kid did. Don’t you betray her trust. Don’t you use her for your own self-gain. You do something like that, and I don’t care who your father is, I won’t stand by and take it.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
I meant it.
“And for God’s sake, Thomas,” he added, “if you guys become more than whatever the hell you are now, don’t have sex with her when I’m in the house. That would just be…really, really awkward.”
I’m sure my eyes about bulged out of my head, and I might have eventually come up with some kind of response, but the sound of wheels on the gravel driveway out front caught our attention first.
“Sounds like the pizza is here,” Sheriff Skye said. He stood up and took a last drag off his cigarette just as the front door opened up.
“Dad? Is Thomas here?”
“Aw, shit!” Sheriff Skye jumped high enough to tap a ball over the top of a goal, smashed out the cigarette butt, grabbed all of the butts together, and shoved them underneath an upside down flowerpot off the side of the porch. I had the idea if Nicole found those cigarette butts, I’d be seeing that side of her again.
Was she going to notice? I looked him over quickly.
“The pack’s sticking out of your pocket,” I told Sheriff Skye.
He reached up and placed his hand over the left pocket of his shirt and covered the pack and his heart at the same time. He grabbed the pack out of his pocket, looked around frantically, and then threw the pack into the shrubs at the side of the house.
“Here's goes nothin',” he said as he opened the door with a plastered smile on his face. “Hey, Nicole!”
He waved frantically while still standing in the middle of the doorway. I just kind of hid behind him, not really understanding the dynamic between the two of them and not entirely sure I wanted to be there right at that moment.
“Hi, Dad,” she responded. She tilted her head to peer at me and then looked back to the sheriff.
“Hey there!” he called out. He actually waved while still standing in the middle of the doorway. “How’s Ron and Timmy?” He danced back and forth between one foot and the other, which made me realize I was doing the same thing. I stopped, and then his words hit me.
Ron and Timmy? Who the hell were they?
“Dad!” she snapped at him with narrowed eyes. He just kind of shrugged at her but stayed in the doorway. I wondered if she could already smell smoke on him.
Nicole took a few steps forward, and Sheriff Skye nearly backed up into me.
“What are you two up to?” Nicole asked.
“Nothing,” Sheriff Skye said. He finally walked through the door and skirted around her to sit back in the recliner. “Just some guy talk, ya know?”
“No, I do not know,” she replied. “What is that smell?”
“Um…smell?”
“Dad!” Nicole yelled. She shook a finger at him. “You said you quit!”
Well, that didn't take long.
“You know how much I hate that,” she went on, “and as soon as I'm away from the house? Seriously?”
“It was me,” I piped up, “not Sheriff Skye.”
They both looked at me, Nicole looking confused and Sheriff Skye just looking like he was trying to catch flies. I nodded my head frantically and even went as far as pointing to myself.
“You—” she started, but the Sheriff interrupted before she could continue.
“Oh no, son,” the Sheriff said as he shook his head quickly back and forth, “I can't let you do that.”
He looked back to Nicole.
“I know, I was supposed to have quit, but…”
“It was me!” I insisted. “I was a little stressed out, you know? I didn't know why you ran off so quick. I thought I might find you here, but you weren't and…”
I trailed off and shrugged, hoping that was as much of an explanation as she would require.
“I…had something I needed to do,” she stammered a bit. “But—”
“He's just covering for me.” Sheriff Skye jumped in again. “Really.”
“Am not,” I insisted. “It was me, Nicole—really.”
“Thomas, you don't have to?
??”
“I'm not!” I said.
“You are—”
Sheriff Skye and I looked at each other, and the absolutely flabbergasted expression on his face was just too much. I busted out laughing, and that set him off as well. Then I couldn't stop, and it was actually starting to hurt my side. I wrapped my arm around myself and bent over a little but still couldn't stop even though I kept saying “ow, ow, ow.”
Sheriff Skye put his hand over his mouth to stifle himself and ended up just spitting through his fingers.
“Oh my God, I cannot believe the two of you!” Nicole yelled. She looked at each of us in turn with her hands on her hips and a pretty evil-looking glare in her eyes.
We kept laughing.
“You know,” Nicole said, looking back to her father, “I came back, figuring I would make dinner for you, but you know what? You can just forget it now! Order a damn pizza or something!”
Nicole stomped up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door, leaving us staring at the stairs, our mouths open in awe.
“You gonna tell her we already ordered one?” I asked.
“Oh, hell no,” he replied. “I might cry when I eat it, just to make a point.”
“What point?” I asked.
“Not really sure,” he replied, “but it will probably make her feel vindicated.”
Shakespeare probably would have mentioned at this point that “the commons here in Kent are up in arms.” Somehow, I thought Sheriff Skye would have preferred a horde of angry villagers to the wrath of his daughter.
Now, would she also notice how quickly the pizza got delivered?
CHAPTER 14
OWN GOAL
“So then she comes out of the kitchen,” Sheriff Skye was saying through his chuckles, “and she has the gigantic hunk of Swiss cheese in her hands. I mean, it’s about as big as her head—and there are these little teeth marks all over it and a trail of cheese bits all over the floor…”
I laughed again, trying to keep from choking on my last bite of pizza. I took a big swig of Coke to wash it down and ended up with bubbles in my nose. The sheriff thought that was particularly funny, and we both started laughing hard again.
Nicole walked in the kitchen and glared at both of us, then glared at the almost empty box of pizza, and followed up with a good nasty look at the empty beer and Coke cans, stacked in an elaborate pyramid on the kitchen table. Without a word, she walked over to the refrigerator and started pulling things out. There was a green lumpy-looking thing and a yellowish-orange thing that might have been a fruit of some kind. She got busy chopping things up on a cutting board and basically ignoring the two of us.
“Hey, Rumple,” I said softly, hoping maybe a little Malone charm just might do the trick. I was rewarded with the daggers of hell out of her eyes instead. I tried smiling, but she wasn’t buying it. She slammed her hand down on the counter instead.
“Don’t call me that!”
“What are you so mad about?”
“What, the sneaking out for cigarettes and lying for each other isn’t good enough?”
“Well…it could be worse,” I offered.
“You better shut your mouth, son,” Sheriff Skye said under his breath, “or she’s going to remove something important to you.”
“You’re right,” Nicole said softly as she nodded to me. She smiled sweetly, and I glanced at the sheriff and gave him a little wink. It didn’t make me feel too secure, though, when he shook his head slowly and planted his face in the palm of his hand.
“Well, considering the budding ‘bromance’ you two seem to have going on,” Nicole sneered, “I guess I’m lucky I didn’t walk in on anything else!”
Sheriff Skye spit beer onto the pizza box, grabbed for it, and knocked the entire can pyramid onto the floor. Nicole turned on her heel and started gathering up whatever the hell she was making. Sheriff Skye looked at me and raised his eyebrows before nonchalantly taking another bite of pizza and another swig of beer. I had to bite down on my lip to keep from laughing again. I glanced over at my Rumple-kitten, but she obviously wasn’t going to look at us. I went back to my pizza, but things were pretty quiet except for the noise from a couple of cans that were still rolling around. Nicole finished making herself some elaborate salad or salsa or something like that, warmed up what looked to be fresh bread, put it all on a plate, and huffed at us on the way out of the kitchen.
We busted out laughing as soon as she was out of earshot.
“I have never heard that word before,” Sheriff Skye said, “but I don’t think I approve.”
I snickered.
“I should probably go talk to her or something, shouldn’t I?”
“At your own risk,” he replied. “Though I think it’s really me she’s pissed at.”
I took a deep breath to prepare myself, got up from the table, and made my way upstairs. Her door was closed, so I did a little more deep breathing preparation before I knocked.
“What?”
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Aw, come on, Rumple,” I said. She didn’t respond, so I started knocking again. She ignored me, so I started knocking to a beat, playing a little hip-hop rhythm on her bedroom door until she finally flung it open and glared at me again.
“You are so annoying,” she stated, but she left the door open as she went back inside and sat down at her computer desk.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Emailing my mom.”
“Oh.” I didn’t really have much else to add, so I fidgeted until she finished typing, sighed, and looked back at me. I tried to give her the most sincerely apologetic look I could conjure up. “I wasn’t trying to piss you off.”
Nicole’s eyes dropped down to her plate, and she pushed some of the fruity-looking bits around for a minute.
“I’m not mad at you,” she finally said.
“You aren’t?”
“Not really,” she said. She poked around at some of the green morsels on her plate. “It’s just been a rough day.”
“So why did you have to leave before practice was over?”
“I really don’t want to talk about that.”
“Oh.” I scratched at the back of my head. “Um…well, who are Ron and Timmy?”
“Really, Thomas,” she said as she looked back to me, “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Okay,” I replied though I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t okay at all. If anything, I wanted to know even more now. I guessed I would have to do my own digging. I continued to scratch my head a bit more and then looked back to see her wiping her cheek. “Hey…”
She shook her head and waved at me dismissively as I took a step toward her.
“Really, Nicole…I’m sorry…” I didn’t know what else to say. I hadn’t meant to piss her off or make her sad. What had I done? What was I supposed to do now? “I feel like I just tipped the ball into my own net. What did I do?”
“It’s not you,” she said as she wiped away more tears. She stood up and seemed to be getting ready to clear her tray away when she suddenly turned to me, wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and started crying.
I had no fucking idea what the game plan was. Was I supposed to make a move here, comfort her, like she had me? I didn’t even know what the hell was wrong.
My mind replayed everything that had happened since she got home—the smoking, the goofing off, the pizza—everything. I couldn’t come up with a particular thing that would actually make her cry. I thought back to school—she had been pissed that I had kind of arranged lunch, and given what Sheriff Skye had said, I guessed it made sense—she just wanted to make her own decisions. I was okay with that.
Would that make her cry?
I didn’t think so, but I really didn’t know.
After scouring my brain for any little tidbit to clue me in, I gave up and just put my arms around her. Her face was buried in my chest, and I just held her while she cried, wondering what the fuck I
did. After a few minutes, she wiped her face with the back of her hand and seemed to quiet down. I didn’t know what else to do, and she didn’t seem to be moving away, so I just kept my arms around her and waited. Eventually, she spoke again.
“Sometimes it just all gets to me, you know?” she said.
I had no idea what she meant, but I nodded anyway.
“I didn’t mean to take it out on you,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” I replied.
“It’s not,” she disagreed. “I shouldn’t do that to you. I am still pissed at Dad, but you were just covering for him. I have no idea why you were, but—”
“I wasn’t, really,” I admitted. “I did smoke one, too.”
Upon hearing that, she took a step back from me and looked up into my eyes.
“You were smoking?”
“Um…yeah?”
“Thomas, you’re an athlete…”
“Yeah, I know,” I said with a shrug. “I really don’t do it very much. I mean, almost never.”
The look in her eyes was…confusing…and heartbreaking. She looked like she was about to start crying again. There had to be more to this.
“Nicole, why does that piss you off so bad?”
She dropped her forehead against my chest again before she answered.
“The guy I dated in Minnesota smoked,” she said quietly. “It just…makes me think of him.”
Shit.
That was, in fact, about the last fucking thing in the world I wanted her to be thinking about. Ever. I definitely didn’t want her thinking about him when it came to me.
“Nicole?”
She sniffled again and didn’t look back at me. I took a step closer to her and wrapped one arm around her waist, bringing her close to me.
“Rumple?”
She finally looked up, and there was fire in her eyes again, but only for a second.
“I won’t do it anymore,” I told her. “Really, I never did it very much anyway. If it reminds you of…of him, then I won’t do it anymore. I swear.”
“You won’t?”