Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
And now she’s kneeling on the bathroom floor, head on the toilet, sifting through the broken pieces of her memory of the night before. There is too much blank space for her liking – Nicki always prefers to act drunker than she feels, not the other way around. That’s not to say she wouldn’t have wound up in the exact same place at the end of the night – she just might have shown a little more dignity getting here.
As she’s lying there, she hears her cell phone ring in the next room. She moans and tries to lift her head. It’s not even noon, too early for any of her friends to be calling. Her mom is home with the girls, she must be calling to see when Nicki is coming back. For a moment, Nicki contemplates never going home, at least not for the day, staying at the motel instead, ordering pizza and drinking beer – ugh, no not beer, she thinks as her stomach heaves, chocolate milk, maybe – smoking a couple of joints, watching bad reality TV. Dallas can even stay if he wants, she wouldn’t mind the company. He isn’t a bad guy, really, didn’t deserve the shit she’d been giving him all these years about being a deadbeat with no ambition, about not shaving his beard or having no muscle tone or not committing to her sister. That last part is a no-brainer, the guy has cheater written right on his forehead, but it’s in that invisible ink that you need a black light to see. Nicki is the black light, that’s all. She is basically doing Finn a favour, even if Finn wouldn’t see it that way. Not that she would ever tell Finn about this. She’s not an idiot.
“Hello?” she hears Dallas say in the other room. She raises her head from the toilet.
“Hey,” she says, crawling to the door. “That’s my –”
“Finn? Hey, baby,” Dallas says. “I had a rough night out with the guys.”
Silence. Nicki sinks back against the doorframe. She can feel her heartbeat in every cell of her body, rocking her back and forth. Dallas is lying on his side in the bed, facing her, her phone pressed up against his ear. “You dumbass,” she says, dropping her head into her hand.
“What are you talking about?” Dallas says into the phone. “You called me.” He is sitting up now, his eyes darting around the room. He raises his eyebrows at Nicki. She just shakes her head. What? he mouths. “Finn, Finn, wait, what are you talking about?” He pauses, then pulls the phone away from his ear. “She hung up.”
“That’s my fucking phone, genius,” Nicki says.