“I didn’t know you were back in town. Heard about your grandma. I’m sorry.” Mike Taylor, the guy who’d once bragged to Niko about kissing her, glanced at Alicia again and gave her a nod. “Where’s Ilya?”
“He’s on a dive trip,” she answered. “Jamaica.”
“Lucky bastard. Here we are freezing our tits off, and he gets to go to Jamaica?” Mike shook his head and, without asking, pulled out a chair and sat. “Niko, man, where’ve you been? What’ve you been up to?”
The positive side to this was that Mike clearly did not seem to think he was interrupting anything important, which meant he didn’t assume they were together as anything more than old friends. The bad thing was he was totally interrupting, and there wasn’t much Alicia could say about it. She shot Nikolai a pleading look, but he was leaning forward to hear something Mike was saying and didn’t see her.
In the next minute, she caught a wave from across the room from another high school friend, Tammy Peters. She was sitting with a bunch of her girlfriends. Alicia had seen them all around, of course—she and Tammy had been good friends a few years back, before Tammy had a baby and had sort of dropped everything in favor of being a stay-at-home mom. They still kept in touch, but since all the conversations had started revolving around baby stuff, the friendship had faltered.
“Be right back,” she said to Nikolai, and got up to say hi to the table of women clustered in the corner. Each of them had a copy of the same book, some battered and some pristine. Ah. Book club.
“Allie, hey! Hi! Grab a chair!” Tammy said.
“Oh, I can’t interrupt book club,” Alicia said. “Besides, I haven’t read the book.”
A woman sitting against the wall shook her pixie haircut so her long silver earrings swung. “You didn’t miss much.”
“Amy hated it,” Tammy said. “Most of us liked it. But what have you been up to? It’s been ages.”
Amy clearly had other concerns. “Is that Niko Stern over there with you and Mike?”
“Yeah.” She remembered Amy now. A year ahead of her in school. She and Jennilynn had been frenemies, both of them on the cheerleading squad.
“He grew up nice,” Amy said with a slide of her tongue along her teeth that made Alicia want to slap the smug right off her face.
“His grandma died, right? My sister-in-law works at Country View. She said she’d seen you there.” Tammy frowned. “Sorry. I know she was a nice lady. I met her once, that time at your house.”
Alicia glanced over her shoulder. Mike seemed to be regaling Nikolai with some complicated story that required a lot of hand gestures. Nikolai was listening, laughing even, but when he looked up and his eyes sought the room for her, the look on his face as his gaze settled on her sent a rush of warmth through her so fierce it made her sweat. This man, with one look, could make her shake.
“Sure you don’t want to sit? We have a space. We’re all done talking about the book.” Tammy grinned.
“I’m actually on my way to the ladies’ room,” Alicia said.
“Maybe next month you’d like to join us?” Tammy glanced around at the rest of the table, everyone else nodding with varying degrees of enthusiasm. “We’re going to read a classic. Anne of Green Gables.”
It was one of Alicia’s favorite childhood books. “Give me a call, okay? I’ll see.”
In the bathroom, she used the toilet, and at the sink while she was washing her hands, she wet a paper towel with cool water to press the back of her neck and her temples. February might be cold outside, but in here she was starting to sweat, and all because of that look he’d shot her.
It hadn’t been a sexy look, lusting and lingering. No, Nikolai’s look had been of . . . relief. As though he’d been worried she’d gotten up and left him, and when he found her there across the room, the sight of her had eased every fear he’d ever had.
“Not sure you can handle this,” Alicia mouthed to herself in the mirror. Small tendrils of her hair had escaped the high ponytail she wore, clinging to her damp skin. Her eyes were bright. Cheeks pink. She freshened her lipstick and was searching for the compact in her bag, so she could powder away some of the heat, when the restroom door opened.
Amy joined her at the sink, turning to lean on it as though they’d been besties for years. “Niko Stern, huh?”
“What about him?” Alicia snapped the compact closed and tucked it away in her bag. She looked in the mirror, carefully not looking at Amy, and touched the corners of her mouth to check her lipstick.
“He’s hot.”
Alicia slanted the other woman a look. “Okay?”
“Is he single?”
Alicia paused. “I . . .”
“Could you introduce us?” Amy turned to look in the mirror, using the tips of her fingers to feather her short cut along her cheeks and spike it over her forehead. She sucked in her cheeks to hollow them, then gave herself a slow, sassy smile.
Clearly, Amy thought a lot about herself.
“No, he’s not,” Alicia said.
Amy frowned. “Damn, really? Is he married?”
“No.”
Amy shrugged and found Alicia’s gaze in the reflection. “So . . . not that serious, then?”
“You’d have to ask him, I guess.” Alicia shouldered her bag and smoothed her skirt. The entire conversation was making her stomach hurt. She shot Amy a smile, though. “Maybe I’ll see you next month at book club.”
“Allie.” Amy’s voice caught her with a hand on the door handle. “Hey, I just wanted to say that . . . your sister was the one girl I looked up to at QHS.”
The words struck Allie like a slap, although she kept herself from reacting like she’d been struck. All these years later, and it was no easier to handle the condolences. Time should’ve made it softer, eased the edges of the hurt, but it hadn’t. If anything, it somehow seemed worse than when the pain had been fresh, because for people like Amy, they were only jogged into remembering Jennilynn when they saw Alicia, while she had to remember her sister in a dozen different ways every other day. Alicia felt her shoulders trying to slump, but she straightened them. She nodded, glancing over her shoulder.
“Thanks. That’s a nice thing to say.”
“It’s hard to believe she’s gone, I guess.”
“It’s been a long time,” Alicia said, with a yank on the door to emphasize the conversation was over, not caring if she came off as rude. Back at their table, she didn’t take a seat. “Can we go?”
Mike looked up with disappointed confusion, but Nikolai stood at once. “You okay?”
“Headache. Can we head out?”
“Sure, of course. Mike, buddy, it was good to see you.” Nikolai shook his hand but kept the exit moving toward the door, even as Mike tried to call after him. “Yeah, call me! We’ll get together!”
In the parking lot, around the corner from the front doors and big glass windows, he pushed Alicia gently against the wall and took her by the upper arms. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. It’s stupid. That girl, Amy . . .”