Author's note: Thank you UntilNeverDawns and all of you guys following and favouriting. It makes me write faster. Actually I'm having a blast writing this story. Hope you're having as much fun as I do. You could always tell me, you know... ;-)
Nina sat there staring out of the window, watching as the rain poured down on the city. She was nursing a bottle of beer. The apartment was completely silent. The TV was off, her i Phone on mute. From the kitchen she heard the quiet, but persistent hum of the refrigerator.
She was in trouble, in big trouble. She had realized her predicament only minutes ago and she was still reeling from the shock. During the last couple of days she had been distracted more and more often, her thoughts had strayed and wandered off whenever she didn't pay attention. They had always taken one single direction. It became a little tiresome having to admonish herself continuously to focus. At first she had thought it was some weird fixation, some stupid obsession over a fond memory. Imagine her surprise when she had finally put two and two together and come to realize she was about to develop a honest to God crush on him. That stupid Irishman, with his stupid smiles and his stupid sense of humor!
She drank from the bottle, trying not only to swallow down the cold liquid, but also her frustration. There was no denying it. If she took back a step and rationally analyzed her own behavior with however much rationality she still possessed, her predicament became quite clear to her. Her heart did a little joyful jump every time he sent a message and it started beating rather fast whenever he gave her a quick call to say 'hello' or tell her how his day was. Nina shook her head. This was unacceptable and definitely the last thing she needed right now.
Perhaps it wouldn't have happened if she had stopped living like a hermit or a cloistered sister at some point and concentrated on something other than her job from time to time. She needed to nip this in the butt and do something about it before this went any further.
With a sigh she grabbed her cellphone and dialed her parent's number. "Mom? Hi!" she said a little to brightly at the beginning of the call, realizing too late that that was already enough to make her mother's oversensitive spidey sense tingle.
"Anything wrong, honey?" came the immediate question from the other end of the line. Her mom's ability to sense her distress was simply uncanny.
"No, I'm fine," she lied ineptly, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Mom? Do you remember how you wanted to introduce me to your neighbor? The young single doctor who moved in last month?"
"Yes...," she could hear the eagerness in her mom's voice and under normal circumstances she would have dreaded it, this time, however, it left her unfazed.
"How about I come over to your house this weekend and you introduce me to him?"
"Are you serious, sweetie?" her mother asked, unable to believe her daughter had willingly suggested to do something she had fought tooth and claw to avoid in the last couple of weeks.
"Dead serious, Mom," Nina confirmed.
They proceed to make plans for the coming weekend and Nina finally ended the call with the profound feeling of actually having accomplished something. It was Thursday evening already and ere she knew it, the weekend rolled by and she was slowly driving down her parent's street. The part of Hartford they lived in gave off the surreal vibe of perfection with its white picket fences and freshly mowed lawns. It made Nina sometimes wonder how she had managed to survive passing her entire childhood here without turning into a Stepford wife.
She parked behind her dad's station-wagon and got out of her car. The sound of her car door closing alerted her parents to her presence. Her dad stormed out of the house to help her with her bag. As always her mother and father seemed to be competing over who would reach her first. This time he had won and he threw her a triumphant grin as he approached, crossing the green lawn in huge energetic strides. He took the duffel bag out of her hands, pulling her into a bone crushing hug. Despite his advancing years he was still in quite a good shape, probably because he had been a sports fanatic all his life. Every morning precisely at 8 he went for a jog, come what may. Rain, snow, heat? The weather didn't seem to faze him.
Her mother was standing outside the door waiting for her. "What have you done to your hair?" she exclaimed instead of a greeting. After the mandatory welcome hug, she ruffled her daughter's short platinum blonde hair. Much to Nina's dismay one might add, because she messed it up in the process.
Before Nina could roll her eyes or start to protest, her father decided to interfere to de-escalate the situation. "Well, I like it. Makes you look like Charlize Theron, Nini," he said from behind her with a grin.
He was the only one except for her brother who was allowed to call her that. Her brother Tim, being four years her junior, had had trouble pronouncing her name as a little toddler and had dubbed her Nini. That nickname had stuck. No matter if she was eight or thirty, to her father and younger brother she would always be Nini. She turned around to smile at him. "Charlize Theron? I wish. Maybe back when she won her Oscar for Monster..."
Her father laughed and even her mother chuckled softly. Crisis avoided. They entered the house together.
A pleasant smell was coming from the kitchen and let Nina's mouth water. "What are you cooking, Mom? Smells really good." Quite inevitably the Rock's catch phrase popped in her head and she stuffed it back into her subconscious were it belonged. Now was not the time.
"Pork roast. You want to head up and freshen up a bit before Donald comes over in an hour?" Her mother told her with a smile.
"His name is Donald?" Nina asked incredulously, ignoring her mom's question. "As in Donald Duck?" Instead of heading upstairs where her room and the bathroom were located, she started walking to the kitchen. After two hours on the road with the air conditioning running all the time, she was rather thirsty.
She opened the fridge, hesitating to grab one of the bottles of beer her father stored in there. "Dad, is it okay if I grab one of your beers?" she called out, raising her voice.
The answer came from right next to her and startled her a bit. "Sure."
Nina jumped a little, but also had to chuckle despite herself. She reached for one of cold glass bottles. "You want one as well?" she asked.
"Yeah, why not?" he agreed and she pulled a second bottle from the fridge. In the meantime her father had already produced two glasses and coasters from the kitchen cupboard. Her mother didn't like it when they drank their beer straight from the bottle, so for the sake of peace they humored her.
As she was leaning against the kitchen counter, Nina took in the various pots and pans emitting steam and bubbling sounds for the first time. "Oh my God! Mom, are you sure you don't need my help?" she asked, stepping away from the counter, ready to jump into action.
"No, it's okay, honey," her mom told her stirring the sauce inside a pot next to her with the patience and calm of a saint.
"Okaaay," Nina replied, her tone of voice giving away her skepticism. "Mom? How long have you been busy fixing dinner anyway?"
Her father gave her a little toast with his bottle and quickly muttered something like "Here it comes," with a look of resignation on his face.
"3 hours."
"3 hours?! Oh, Mom!" Nina exclaimed, unable to believe her ears. "All of this over a guy named Donald?" She went over to her and laid her arms around her shoulders, hugging her from behind. "You really shouldn't have... I mean I appreciate it, but what if we don't click? Don't get your hopes up too high, okay?"
Her mother gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. Nina finally released her from the hug, but let her left hand rest on her shoulder.
"Don't be such a pessimist, Nina. Have you ever stopped to think what will happen if you do click?" she asked, looking at her daughter from over her shoulder.
Nina shrugged. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there..."
"Will you at least change into another top? I don't think he'll enjoy looking at your faded Metallica shirt from ten years ago all night. And neither will I, on that note."
"Okay, Mom," she agreed with the mandatory eye roll. Despite being officially an adult, as soon as she came home again, the old child-parent-dynamic set in between her and her mother.
Half an hour later the door bell rang and she was finally introduced to Donald Reynolds, or Donnie as he liked to call himself. Her parents quickly invented some excuses to be off and leave the two of them alone. So there they were now, standing awkwardly in the hall trying to make conversation. Donnie was handsome from an objective point of view. His skin was slightly tanned, his teeth were pearly white, he was after all a dentist, he was tall and well-built. But unfortunately they were off to a bad start immediately.
"So what do you do for a living?" Donnie asked eventually.
"I'm a writer for the WWE," she answered.
"The WWE?" Heavens, she really needed to explain to him what the WWE was?
"As in World Wrestling Entertaining," she explained patiently.
"Wrestling? Really? How did a girl as beautiful and apparently smart as you end up in a job like that?"
For some reason the question that was originally meant as a compliment upset her. True, when she had first applied for a position with the WWE, it had been because she needed a job to pay the rent. Before that she had written for a daily soap and the job had frustrated her endlessly, so she had eventually quit. After that she had hit a dry spell. Her new job had saved her ass. Eventually it had given her new purpose. It was fun and apart from one notable exception, the people she worked with were mostly nice. So yes, she took offense at the question.
"Sorry, to disappoint, but I do kind of like my job. And contrary to common belief, people working in that industry are actually mostly intelligent and well-mannered."
He smiled. His smile was sort of practiced and artificial and didn't quite reach his eyes. Also it had a somewhat condescending vibe to it. Inevitably her thoughts drifted off to Stephen. Stephen whose smiles were genuine and infectious and always managed to cheer her up.
He ripped her out of those thoughts with his next words. She didn't know whether to be glad about it or angry. "I didn't mean to upset you. I was just surprised. Your Mom told me you were a lecturer at university for a while..."
She smiled thinly. "That was a past life. The job didn't really suit me." She decided she had had enough of standing around in the hall and motioned him to follow her to the dining room.
"I sense an interesting story there," he said, probably expecting her to tell him more. But he was wrong about that. It was not a story she told to any random stranger, because it was far too personal.
"Not much to tell." Nina just shrugged her shoulders and forced a smile on her face. When her dad made an impromptu appearance inside the dining room, she was more than glad. Conversation with Donald was difficult. It got easier though when someone else was around.
"Would you like something to drink?" her dad asked Donald. "We've got white wine, beer, soft drinks..."
"White wine," Donald replied with a smile and her father left the room again to get the wine. They were alone again. Unbeknownst to him, Donald had already made another mistake in her book. He had taken the wine instead of the soft drink or the beer. It occurred to her, as she was mentally deducting another point from Donald's likeability scale, that she was perhaps being a little bit too hard on the guy. After all this was perhaps her one and only chance to not succumb to the temptation of falling for a certain Irish guy that she had told herself was off-limits.
Her eyes fell on the table that was not only set rather accurately, but also decorated with flowers. Her mom needed to get a hobby other than trying to set her up with wealthy, good-looking, cultured guys. She let out a long suffering sigh. "I don't know about you, but I'm almost afraid to sit down at that table. Everything looks like it has come straight out of a decorating magazine. I can remember how scared my friends were to touch anything around here when I was little. Far too sterile, not a trace of dust."
"It just shows your mother is a perfectionist. I can't find anything wrong with that."
She gave him a long appraising look. "I get how one can strive for perfection, but we all should cut ourselves a little slack from time to time. No one's perfect. We're all flawed and mess up. That's just life."
He raised an eyebrow. Apparently he was fascinated with her, because there was a small smile spreading on his face. "What a pleasant surprise this conversation's turning out to be. From interior decoration to philosophy."
"Philosophy?" her father asked, catching the last word of Donnie's sentence as he came back in through the door. They sat down around the table. Her father poured the drinks. Wine for Donnie and her mother and beer for her and her dad. He was all sneaky about drinking beer at such a beautifully laid table and Nina couldn't help but find it funny. He had filled their glasses back at the kitchen, so nobody would be any the wiser whether there was a soft drink in them or anything else.
Soon dinner was served and they started eating. Her mother ever so subtly tried to point out to them how many things they had in common. Donnie liked English literature. Nina liked it too. Donnie had attended the same university as her. How strange they had never met. Donnie loved London and what a coincidence, so did Nina.
After a while Nina, however had had enough of her mother's helpfulness and decided to take control of the conversation herself.
"So Donnie, what do you do in your free time?" she asked curiously. He reminded her of a Ken doll. He was all perfect. Didn't he ever do anything to unwind?
"I try to keep in shape. I enjoy the opera, the theater."
Nina wrinkled her nose.
"Anything wrong with that?" She could feel, not only Donnie's eye on her face, but also her mother's. They both seemed rather skeptical and tense, whereas her father appeared to be rather amused by the turn this conversation had taken.
"No, absolutely nothing. Once ever six months I get the urge to see a play as well and sometimes when I get bored with rock music, I listen to opera. We're totally on the same page here," her mother smiled approvingly, but her face fell upon her daughter's next words, "But don't you ever have any fun?"
"Fun?" he asked as if the concept was completely alien to him.
"Yes, have a blast, do something stupid... I don't know. Don't you ever do anything just because it makes you happy?"
Donnie leaned towards her, resting his forearms on the table. He spoke his next words with careful deliberation. "Happiness is a very difficult concept. And once you are an adult, how much of anything does really make you happy?" He gave her a meaningful look.
"Well, does your job make you happy?" she asked, digging deeper.
"It makes me happy in so far as it pays the bills and grants me to live a worry free life."
She looked at him for a while and then shook her head. This wouldn't do. No, it simply wouldn't. With her head shake she was not only rejecting the opinion he had just voiced, but also him. He was too up-tight for her and he was arrogant. Maybe that last evaluation was a little harsh, considering she had known him for roughly two hours, but there was something about him that didn't quite agree with her. There was no instant connection. They were two puzzle pieces that wouldn't fit.
She risked a peek at her cellphone she had not allowed herself to look at in hours for fear of further nurturing her little crush on Stephen. Part of the reason why she felt attracted to him was his humor. And the second thing she would never admit to publicly. The company of different people always had a different effect on her. In her father's presence she felt, for example, calmer and more able to act rationally, because he provided her with a certain stability. It was what he brought out of her. With Stephen around, she experienced a sense of security, of being accepted for who she was and most importantly of being liked because of who she was. It was rare you met someone like that. Most of the time life throws people at you that you need to adapt yourself to, in order to get along with them. With him that wasn't necessary. They simply clicked, would have been the easier, less convoluted way of putting it.
Her cellphone didn't disappoint her. Sure enough there was a message from him. "Will you excuse me for a second?" she asked Donald and her parents.
"Of course," he answered, thinking like the rest of the people present, that she needed to go to the bathroom.
Nina quickly left the room and ran upstairs. For a brief moment she took refuge inside her childhood room, leaning against its closed door. Her eyes took inventory of her surroundings that were familiar, but also by now odd to her. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to really look at this room. And now she did with the eyes of a stranger. Posters of various rock bands adorned the walls. There was a Mister Spock bobble head figure standing on her desk sort of forlornly. Science fiction and fantasy novels as well as comic books filled her book shelf... Testaments of her nerdiness. She sighed and lowered her eyes to the screen of her cellphone.
"Are you okay?" his message read.
"No," she typed back rather quickly. "My mom set me up on a date... It's horrible. Someone save me, please!"
She waited, but there was no immediate reply from him. Perhaps he was busy. She shook her head at her own idiocy and headed back down.
Stuart Bennett and Stephen Farrelly were sitting next to each other on a bench in the backstage area, sporting identical scowls.
Chris stopped in front of them. He inclined his head a little to regard the two men more closely. They were indeed wearing matching frowns on their faces.
While Stuart came across as rather sulky most of the time, he was in reality easy to get a long with. That particular piece of information often came as a shocking surprise to most people who didn't know him, because they often mistook his silence for hostility, whereas he was just being silent without having any negative intentions.
The fact that Stephen was sulking, however, was somewhat alarming. The Irishman usually displayed two moods: normal and pissed off. Sulky had not been part of his repertoire so far. Apparently he wanted to expand it. Considering the foul mood he was in, the rest of the world would probably be thankful if he didn't.
"What's up with you guys?" Chris asked.
Stuart looked at Stephen as if he expected him to answer, but the Irishman didn't show any inclination to respond. Chris' question remained unanswered, so he sat down between the two men.
"Hey, Stu, what's up with him?" Chris inquired, looking at the Brit with his eyebrows raised. His facial expression was an open invitation to start talking and Stuart was more than happy to oblige. He figured an ill-humored Irishman made for an unfocused Irishman. Being unfocused was a rather dangerous thing in their line of work. He rather not see anybody hurt.
"Her mum set her up on a date," the Brit explained with an added eye roll.
Chris didn't even have to ask who that mysterious 'she' was. Ever since they had embarked on their tour around Europe, Stephen had spent an unhealthy amount of time on his cellphone, mostly exchanging texts and emails with one particular person: Nina.
"Ooooooh! So that's what this is about...," Chris smirked.
For the first time since his arrival he managed to attract Stephen's attention and that wasn't a good thing because the Irishman was profoundly irritated. The angry sparkle in Stephen's eyes would have silenced a lesser man, but not so Chris.
"Man, that's bad. No wonder he's in a killer mood," Chris observed shrewdly. He chose to address Stuart instead of Stephen, because it seemed a safer alternative.
"Actually, it's not that bad. She gave to understand that it wasn't going too well..."
"What?!" Chris looked incredulously between the two men. "So why is he sulking?"
Stuart shrugged his shoulders. The insightfulness of his next words came as a deep shock to both Stephen and Chris. "I figure it has to be a combination of two things." He actually counted off those two things on his finger. "Number one: He's just realized he's head over heels for her. Number two: He's somewhat jealous of that other bloke."
The irritated Irishman next to them let out a string of curses, only half of them intelligible, since his anger made him slip into Gaelic inadvertently.
"Erm...," Chris coughed. "That seems to sum it up nicely." Perhaps they had underestimated the taciturn Brit before. Stuart's insightful evaluation of the situation was worthy of a psych major or a couples' therapist. He seemed to be a lot more observant than everyone gave him credit for.
"Thought so too," Stuart answered. Apparently he was satisfied with Chris' praise because there was one of those rare smirks on his face.
"Would you two eejits quit talking like I wasn't there?" Stephen hissed at them, for the first time acknowledging their presence verbally.
"Ooooh, so you're actually talking to us then?" Chris asked with a healthy dose of irony in his voice. "Have you already sent her a reply?"
Stephen's tough facade finally crumbled. As he ran his hands over his face, his profound helplessness in the face of this situation became apparent. "No. Hell if I know what to tell her..."
"Mostly things like 'go out with me' work," Chris suggested.
"I can't just write that," Stephen replied, the frustration in his voice clearly audible.
Stuart just let out a long suffering sigh before he crossed his arms over his chest.
"Anything you want to say, fella?" Stephen fixed him with a disapproving glance that left Stuart unimpressed.
"Yeah, mate. Bloody grow a pair and text her back...," Stuart grumbled.
"Oh, really? You wanna repeat that?" Stephen scooted closer to Stuart which almost left Chris sandwiched between the two of them.
"Hey, buddy! That's close enough or do you wanna cuddle up to me? I'm not into that shit!" Chris exclaimed, physically pushing Stephen away. "Besides I think you've got better things to do right now than pick a fight with Stu. He's right. Text her back before she decides she likes that other guy after all..."
"All right! All right!" Stephen yelled a bit too loudly. "Will you bloody quit nagging?" He pulled out his cellphone from his pocket and for a second it looked like his anger would actually give him the energy to compose a response to Nina immediately, but the pulsating cursor of the texting app quickly humbled him and let his anger vanish. Worse yet, it was soon replaced by despair.
As he was staring down at his cellphone, he suddenly felt a hot breath fan against his shoulder and looked up in bewilderment. Stuart had scooted up to him to see what he was writing to Nina. And where the hell had Jericho gone? He soon spotted him standing to his right. He was leaning against the wall casually, exuding a vibe of arrogance and cockiness as he stole curious glances at the display of Stephen's cellphone.
"What the hell's gotten into you fellas? Have you suddenly turned into a bunch of bloody school girls?" Stephen glared at each of his friends.
Chris was about to open his mouth, doubtlessly with the intention of making another smart-ass comment, but Stuart effectively undermined all his attempts of wittiness with his next words.
"Shut your pie hole and start writing, Farrelly!"
Stephen and Chris stared at the Brit in shock. What followed next had both of them so dumbfounded that they would need several minutes to work through what had happened. Stuart had had enough of Stephen's indecisiveness. He ripped the cellphone out of Irishman's hand with a sound of disgust and quickly compose a text of his own.
It took him about 30 seconds to finish it and after he was done he threw back the cellphone to a completely gobsmacked Stephen with the words "Cheers, mate! Send me an invite to the wedding, will ya?"
Stephen's eyes flitted over the display of the cellphone with something akin to panic. "Stuart here: Just spent the better part of two hours with one sulking Irishmen. Go out with him when he gets back. He's got it bad for you," the message read.
His eyes grew large. He got up from his seat, about to roar an insult at Stuart, who regarded him with the unnerving calm of a Tibetan monk. Just seconds before he could unleash his temper on Stuart and possibly brogue-kick him all the way down the hallway, his cellphone let out a loud chirp.
His eyes landed on the display immediately. He smiled. He barely registered Stuart's cocky "I told you so", because he was too busy staring at her text.
It consisted of two letters and was rather monosyllabic compared to the massive amount of words she usually used to express herself. "OK," it read.
"Wow! What just happened here? Has Stuart just actually fixed you up with her?!" Chris asked incredulously.
"Aye, it would appear that's what's just happened." Stephen held out his cellphone to his friend to make his point. Chris let out a loud curse, unable to believe his eyes. Stuart stood up in the meantime and excused himself with the words "And that's how it's done, gentlemen".
She couldn't believe she had actually just agreed to go on a date with him. Whatever had happened being rational about this? This wasn't rational! This was a completely succumbing to temptation. She groaned and banged the back of her head against the headboard of her bed. Shit! Shit! Shit!
Another text arrived and she prayed it wasn't from him. If it was, it would probably give her a mild cardiac event. God seemed to be in a merciful mood tonight, because it was from Stuart. He sure was rather talkative today. Another sign of the coming apocalypse.
"Thank me later. He's been smiling like a school girl ever since he's read your text. You're on your own now. My matchmaking days are over."
In fact she hesitated to thank him just yet. What if this turned out as big as a disaster as she feared? What if they completely messed up their friendship and their work relationship? What if... she was too exhausted to further pursue that line of thought. Argh!
"OK," she wrote, becoming aware as she typed it that that apparently was her go-to word when she was in a panic. "Will try to remember that, Stuart. ;-) I'm impressed. You're a man of many talents."
The part in which Stuart had mentioned that Stephen was happy about her response only struck her now. Somehow she shied away from interpreting too much into that. Still it was a nice thought.
She picked up her phone once more. Her fingers hovered for a second over the display, then she finally started typing.
"Wow! So I guess we're going on a date then..." she wrote.
"Second thoughts?" his answer was immediate.
The question had her thinking. She finally shook her head. "No, very nervous, but no."
":-) Of course. You always are. Lay off the coffee until I'm back." She could just see him smile before her mind's eye as she read his words.
"Oh, Gee! Thanks, Steve. Brilliant advise. I can just see that cheeky grin of yours."
"That one?" He sent her a picture that showed him smiling and winking at her. In the background she could see some transport boxes and brick walls. He was backstage of one of those arenas they were touring. If she remembered correctly they were in Italy right now.
"Exactly that one," she smiled when she typed those words. After a brief moment of hesitation she added: "Looking good." She didn't give herself any time to feel self-conscious about that compliment and pressed the 'send-button' immediately.
"Thanks. How come you never send me any pictures?"
She chewed her lips thinking of an answer. "Because my life's pretty uneventful, I guess."
"For some reason I don't believe that's true...," came the immediate reply.
"It is, but if you want pictures, you'll get pictures." She got out of bed and opened her window. Outside was quiet suburbia. Directly underneath her window there was a tree, the neighbors had gone to bed, all the houses were dark. The starry sky was sparkling above the peaceful scenery. The street was illuminated by a couple of street lights and their soft glow. She took a deep breath. The air was cool and smelled like rain. She held up her cellphone and took a photo of the familiar view.
"Nighttime in suburbia," she commented the picture. "You can't see the white picket fence from that angle. ;-)"
"Lovely."
"Going back to sleep now."
"Back? Did I wake you?"
She smiled for once knowing precisely what to write. "Don't worry. Some things are worth waking up for."
