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“I love you,” he said, strong and sure. “I love you,” he repeated. And then he was kissing her again. Their limbs and breaths tangled in the sheets. Urgency gave way to appreciation, and desperation turned to reverence.
And the last small drop of doubt in Nikki’s mind disappeared forever.
* * *
ANDRÉ
The second week was a little more difficult for both of them.
He was very focused on making sure he was prepared for the upcoming semester, and she was hitting a wall with the recording process.
Apparently, creatives couldn’t just turn it off and turn it back on again.
And when he’d suggested that as a joke, she’d stopped speaking to him for a full ten minutes.
Ten minutes in which he tried very hard not to find her reaction to his stupid joke hilarious.
He didn’t hear from her at all on Friday.
Which wasn’t unusual, sometimes she texted him late when she was on her way over. But when he went to bed that night and she’d only replied with a heart emoji, he knew something was wrong.
He couldn’t sleep. Instead, he kept checking his phone every fifteen minutes.
He called her and it rang and rang.
Finally, he got out of bed, got dressed, and drove to Avondale.
Maybe she was exhausted and had gone home.
But he would still sleep better knowing she was okay.
He drove past her house, all the lights were off. Her car was parked in the street, but that wasn’t unusual since she walked to work.
The similarities of what he was doing now, compared to the two and a half years when they hadn’t been together, struck him.
He parked behind the studio and looked for any sign that someone was inside. He couldn’t see any lights and there weren’t any other vehicles in the parking lot.
There was only one way to know for sure.
He let himself into the back door and locked it behind him. If Johnny asked him tomorrow why he’d used his code to go in at two in the morning, he’d be honest.
He was looking for Nikki.
He found her in the control room of Studio X.
She was sitting at the board, headphones on, moving switches with her fingers.
He knocked on the doorframe, not wanting to startle her like he was prone to doing.
She turned towards him but didn’t jump. Instead, her shoulders slumped and that’s when he saw the tears.
It broke something inside him.
André came to her and sank to his knees at her feet.
She removed the headphones, tossing them on the board, and then wiped at her wet face with her fingertips.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gently resting his hands on her knees if only to touch her, comfort her.
