Chapter 4

When I woke up the next day, it was already 9:30 in the morning, and the sun was shining in my face. I was alone in bed but looking over to where Nikki had been I could almost see her face in the sweat-stained sheets. Memories of last night with Nikki surrounded me and I felt no regrets. If you have truly met your soul-mate for life most times you only get one shot at it. And if you blow it there's usually no going back leaving you to lurk in the darkness feeling like half your heart is missing. So when you've gotten it right ... really right ... then fight for all your worth to keep it. Some nights are special and it feels like caramel or melted chocolate, something delicious like that. It's just fucking magic! And for me that's what last night was and I intended to fight like hell.

I could hear the girls moving things around down stairs so I knew it was time to get up. I emptied my bladder, showered, shaved and then dressed in jeans, my comfortable sneakers, a tee-shirt with the words "I'm with dummy" and an arrow pointing upward toward my own head written across the front, I headed downstairs.

Both Natalie and Nicole greeted me at the bottom of the stairs with good morning kisses and hugs.

"You're a sleepy head daddy, "Nicole told me with a little smile. "Mommy Nat and me have been up for a long time all ready."

"Really?" I asked.

"Uh-huh," She answered. "But mommy told us to let you sleep because you worked really hard last night."

"She did?" I questioned.

"Uh-huh," Natalie chimed in. "But she wouldn't tell us what you worked on. Was it the treasure chest box for our toys you told us you were going to build?"

"No," I answered honestly smiling, and then said. "But I still plan on building that treasure chest. Just give me a little time okay?"

"Kay," they both said in unison.

"Where's mom?" I asked.

"In the kitchen I think. We were watching Pokemon on the living room TV." Nicole informed me.

Nicole having told me that they had been watching TV in the living room reminded me of the disk. I hoped it was still in the fireplace where I had tossed it. Heaven forbid if the girls happened to notice it and then put it in the DVD player out of curiosity. I quickly made my way into the living room, the television was playing and thankfully I discovered the disk was still where I had tossed it the night before. I snatched it up and then turned toward the kitchen.

"What's that?" Natalie asked looking at the disk in my hand. They had followed me into the living room and had planted themselves on the carpet in front to the television set where some cheesy, large eyed, yet colorful Japanese anime characters were throwing other smaller characters at each other on the screen.

"Just something I was going to throw away." I answered casually walking away.

"Oh." Natalie answered and then turned her attention to the TV.

I found Nikki in the kitchen wearing a loose blouse, shorts, white ankle socks, and sneakers. She looked good enough to eat.

She saw me, smiled, and then she noticed the disk in my hand.

She looked away for a moment, biting a little at her fingernail, a thing I'd never seen her do before, the pupils of her eyes dancing as she looked around the room. Then she said, "What now?"

I reached across the counter. I took her hand off the coffee cup as she set it down, and I held her hand tightly. I loved the smallness of it, the tenderness, the way the fingers curled around mine. Then releasing her hand I slipped the shears out of the cutlery block and used them to cut that damn disk in half and I said, "I was afraid the girls might find it."

Walking around the counter I dropped the two half's of disk into the trash and then I put my arm around Nikki and kissed her.

When I drew back she laughed in her own sweet way. Then she kissed me on the cheek, then on the mouth. In fact, she had me in a clinch, and I could feel her body all compact and soft at the same time and the softness of her hair and that luscious mouth and her eyelashes like miniature fans and her cheeks like peaches.

"Stop," I said. "I can feel you're not wearing a bra under that top and in those tight shorts if you keep it up we'll end up in bed again."

"After last night," she said with a little touch of sarcasm. "I had to wear tight shorts in order to hold myself together down there. You just about wore it out. I'll be walking funny for a week." She laughed. "But it sure was worth it."

I laughed with her and then said, "Coffee?"

"I'll get you a cup." She offered and then turning she retrieved a cup from the cabinet and then after fixing it the way I liked it she handed it to me.

A foreboding came over me, a premonition of disaster that seemed stronger than any dread I had known in the past. But if I was to save us, if I was to reach that decision I think both Nikki and I wanted, then I had to know and understand the whole thing. I couldn't ignore and fake it. I couldn't just put my arms around her and pretend.

"So," I said looking over the rim of my coffee cup after taking a sip. "No smoke and mirrors today?"

"No smoke and mirrors." She returned nodding her head. And she looked so confidently self-assured. So lovely.

"The girls should be busy watching television for a while let's go sit down at the table okay." I suggested.

"Okay," she smiled leading me to the dining room table.

Taking a seat across from her I started right out with the hard stuff, "Was Mike blackmailing you?"

"No." She responded shaking her head.

"Do you know what he used to blackmail your friend Megan with?"

She bit down on her lower lip momentarily before answering and then she finally said, "I am going to tell you everything. But you're going to have to swear to me that you'll never let anything I'm about to tell you get back to my mom ... ever. It would kill her."

"Hey! I'm not the one that..." I started. Thinking why should I be the one making any promises. But she cut me off by reaching out and touching my hand.

"Please honey." she whispered, her voice hoarse, struggling. "This is really important to me. Just promise me okay.

I caved in. "Okay. Okay I promise." I told her.

"Thank you." She said still whispering. Then in a stronger voice she said, "Mike was never blackmailing Megan. That was just something we made up to help keep the school from expelling us girls along with Mike and Eric. We even planted a folder in Mike and Eric's dorm room with some Polaroid pictures of Megan and Kathy naked doing each other. We knew the college would find the folder thereby making our story of blackmail more plausible. Anyway, when Megan told the campus authorities that Mike was using those pictures to blackmail her, as planned, we didn't get expelled but, also like planned, they did."

For a long time I sat thinking. There are stages to knowing, to absorbing. I was stunned trying to get my mind around what Nikki was telling me. "Megan and Kathy naked, getting it on?" I finally said.

"It's not as bad as it sounds." Nikki assured me. "Both Megan and Kathy swing both ways and they'd been doing each other off and on since their freshmen year. Even the campus authorities seeing pictures of them nude didn't seem to bother them very much."

"All this has got to be leading up to something right." I asked.

"It does." She assured me. "You know that mom and dad don't have a whole lot of money right."

I nodded.

"Well, it was about four months before I met you that my mom first told me that she had breast cancer. In a single moment, my life flashed in front of me, my plans for the future were called into question, and the happiness I had begun the day with was suddenly and completely overshadowed by those terrifying words my mother had spoken to me. She was only forty four years old. I was devastated.

"Anyway, surgical procedures are very costly, and the drugs used to treat breast cancer are not cheap and mom and dad didn't have a very good insurance policy or anything, and the policy they did have had a big deductible. So, Mom went through five months of chemo to shrink the tumor and dad still hadn't paid the deductable when the doctors started talking about a radical mastectomy. Mom was just distraught over the idea of losing her breast.

"Well, because of all the insurance shit and the deductible still hanging out there we couldn't get a second opinion, and the insurance company had already informed us that if mom did have to have the mastectomy they wouldn't cover any kind of reconstructive surgery.

"I surfed online for pictures of what a mastectomy looks like, and believe me it ain't pretty. I swore to myself that I would do anything I could to get mom a second opinion and possibly avoid the mastectomy, or if the operation did become necessary that she would get reconstructive surgery afterward.

"I told mom I was going to drop out of college and find work to help with finances. She became so sad and depressed begging me not to drop out of school because of her and then she explained that what little I could earn would hardly make a dent in what they already owed to all the doctors and the hospital."

A tear trickled down Nikki's cheek as she continued speaking, "I remember mom had kissed me then and told me how wonderfully supportive I'd been, making her laugh and showing her how mature and fabulous I was over the last few months, and it would kill her if she were the cause of destroying my future.