Nickels (3 page)

Marcy dropped her hands to her side with an exasperated
sigh.  “I was thinking of your happiness.  My mistake.”

“Well, I was thinking of yours when I gave him your number. 
Did you really talk to him for two hours?”

“Yes.  And he was very nice.”

“And I think he’d be perfect for
you
.  That’s why I
gave him your number.”

Marcy leaned forward on the bar height side of the kitchen
island.  Silently, she stared at Niki, her expression turning serious.

Niki swallowed.  The fajita turned to lead in her stomach. 
Here
it comes.

“When are you going to let go and move on?”

No.  She would not talk about this.  Not now.  Not even with
her best friend.  “I have moved on.”

“No, you haven’t.  You isolate yourself.  You throw yourself
into your work.  You make up rules to keep people at arm’s length.  All of it
screams that you have not let go.”

She frowned and her hand shook.  Marcy knew this was a
touchy subject for her.  Why was she pressing so hard?  And why now?

“Enlighten me, Marcy.  What am I not letting go of?”

“Jack.  Your parents.”

Three simple words.  The three that had the power to break
down all of the defenses she had carefully crafted into an impenetrable wall.

Niki slowly set the spoon on the counter.  She placed both
of her hands flat against the cold granite.  She looked at Marcy.  Concern
wrinkled her friend’s brow.  She wasn’t trying to be spiteful or pick a fight.

She looked away, swallowing hard as she blinked rapidly to
hold the tears at bay.  She didn’t want to have this conversation.  Not now. 
Not ever.

“Look, I don’t mean to hurt you.  But, you really need to
move on.  Stop hurting yourself with this tough act.  You can’t go through life
pretending like you don’t need anyone.  You do.”

Niki’s head snapped back.  No matter how truthful Marcy’s
words were, she had no right to say these things.

“What do you know!  You have perfect parents, an older
brother you adore, and more friends than I can count on one hand.  You have
never known the loss of everyone close to you.  Talk to me when you’ve felt
some pain.”  The acid of Niki’s own words surprised her.

Marcy looked down, tracing the lighter pattern in the
granite countertop with her index finger.  “You know, I have felt pain.  Just
not in the same way as you.  When Jack was killed in Afghanistan and you got
the news, I hurt with you.  I saw how much you loved your brother.  I walked by
your side for years as you grieved for him and your parents.

“And I’ve sat by for the last four years thinking that
surely you would move on.  You graduated from college.  Started your career. 
The next natural step is to want to find love, to marry a handsome man, and
settle down.

“But, Niki, you’re stuck.  It’s been eight years since Jack
died.  Twelve since your parents died.  It’s time to move on.”

Marcy reached out and rested her hand on Niki’s forearm. 
She wanted to pull away, but something in the honesty of the gesture held her
steady.  Tears rolled down her face and she let Marcy pull her into an embrace.

Then, with sudden determination, Niki backed away.

“I can’t.  I just can’t.”  Leaving her unfinished dinner
behind, she ran to the sanctuary of her room.

Niki rolled over, bringing her hand down hard on the loud
offending buzz of her alarm clock.  Five in the morning.  Monday morning after
a long, restless weekend.  She spent far too much time thinking about what both
Doug and Marcy said about her.  The worst part about today, she thought, as she
dropped her feet to the floor, was that she could not even find solace in her
work.  She was between client assignments.

She padded down the hall to the kitchen, thankful for the
life-saving aroma of freshly brewed coffee.  She quickly prepared the strong
brew the way she liked it—a little bit of coffee with a lot of caramel flavored
creamer.  Taking a few sips, she felt the fog of sleep start to lift.  After a
few more sips, she was ready to start her morning routine.

Forty-five minutes later, a showered, dressed, and primped
Niki poured a travel mug full of coffee.  Taking it, along with her purse and
laptop case, she headed off to work.  Normally, she liked the long commute. 
She kept loud music with a heavy beat blaring as background noise as she
thought through whatever challenging problem she needed to solve for her
client.  Unfortunately, with no clients this week, the only thoughts rolling
around her mind were the ones spilling over from the weekend.

In a few weeks, she would turn twenty-six.  Like Marcy said,
normal people started thinking about more permanent relationships at this stage
of life.  But, nothing about Niki’s life was normal.

As a teenager, she hated Dad’s job.  He was an important
salesman for a high tech company.  Every few years they would assign him a new
territory and the family would be uprooted and moved to some new part of the
country.  She would have to start at a new school.  At least she had Jack.  He
watched out for her at the new school, often helping her make her first friend.

But the move to Arizona was different.  Jack entered basic
training in the Air Force just before Dad found out he was being transferred. 
At fourteen, she dreaded the thought of moving again, especially without Jack. 
She threw herself into her studies this time around instead of trying to make
any friends.  She did good—even getting straight A’s—until…

Until November, when a drunk driver crossed over the center
median of the freeway and hit her parents’ car, killing them instantly.  They
were on their way home from a company party in Scottsdale.  They had just
merged into traffic on the freeway headed back to their home in Chandler when
the accident occurred.  The drunk driver walked away from the scene but none of
the passengers from the other two vehicles survived.  In an instant, Niki
became an orphan.

Jack finished basic training and had just settled on base in
Ramstein, Germany.  He took the first flight to Arizona as soon as Niki
called.  She stayed with a neighbor, a friend of her mother’s, until Jack got
there.  Then he took care of everything—the funeral, the will, the house. 
Thankfully, Mom and Dad updated their will a few months earlier to make Jack
her guardian.  Who knows where she would have ended up if they hadn’t.

He took her to Germany.  He enrolled her in the high school
on the military base and he applied for enlisted quarters so they would have
some sort of home to live in.  The first few weeks, they lived in the base
hotel, since the Air Force was short on housing and they could not live in
Jack’s dorm room.  For three months they lived in temporary housing until they
were finally granted permanent housing.

The next three years of her life seemed relatively normal,
other than she was living and going to school on an Air Force base in a foreign
country.  She met Marcy within weeks of arriving in Ramstein and the two became
fast friends, though Niki admitted she was not much of a friend the first few
months as she struggled with her grief.

Jack became both parent and brother, often clumsily
navigating the new role thrust upon him.  He was the one who taught her how to
drive.  He was the one who scared off the boys who might have asked to date
her—not that any had.  He was the one who talked about using some of the life
insurance money to pay for her college education.  He suggested going back to
Arizona since he had kept their parent’s home.

Life was normal—until September 11, 2001.  Every American’s
life changed that day, including hers.  Within weeks of the attacks, Jack
deployed to Afghanistan, leaving Niki with Marcy’s family.  She was only
supposed to live with them until the war was over or until she graduated in May
and headed back to Arizona with Marcy for college.

Living with the Jacobs family was awesome.  She and Marcy
grew closer—practically sisters.  Rick and Brenda, Marcy’s parents, modeled a
happy relationship.  Unlike her own parents, Rick and Brenda loved each other
deeply.  The idea of being unfaithful never crossed their minds.  Out of their
love flowed a love for their children, Kyle and Marcy, and then to Niki as a
sort of adopted daughter.

Thankfully, Kyle, Marcy’s older brother, already left for
college.  He was a junior when Niki and Marcy were freshmen.  And he terrorized
Niki.  At every turn he teased her.  He and his buddies used to drive by her
home and play pranks on her, causing tension between her and Jack.  Jack didn’t
know how to handle a bunch of teenage guys picking on his sister, so he often
turned his frustration on her.  She didn’t blame him.  He had more
responsibility than any man his age.  She never blamed Jack.

For her eighteenth birthday in April 2002, Jack got to video
chat with her from his remote location in Afghanistan.  He teased her—calling
her “Nickels,” the pet name that came from an old family tale.  Apparently when
she was a toddler, she was trying to say that something was “Nicole’s” but it
came out sounding more like “Nickels.”  So, the nickname stuck.  Through the
years, while her parents and her friends used her preferred nickname of “Niki,”
Jack found ways to bring up the pet name—like on the video chat.  He teased her
about being legal, a real adult now.  Then he ended by saying he found
something he had always been looking for and he found it in Afghanistan.  He
promised to tell her more later.  She remembered being so happy for the chance
to see him.  He looked good and different somehow.

The happy homey bubble exploded into a million fragmented
pieces two weeks later when two uniformed men showed up at the Jacobses door. 
They asked for Niki—well, more specifically, they asked for Miss Nicole
Turner.  No one called her that.  Then they told her the worst news of her
life.  Jack was dead.  Killed in action by an IED someplace in the Afghanistan
desert.

Chapter 3

A horn honked, jarring Niki from the memory.  She looked
around to see if she offended someone.  Seeing nothing, she scanned the highway
signs for her exit.  Only two more to go.

With a shaky hand, she pushed her hair back from her face,
noticing the light moisture on her cheek.  She fumbled in the console between
the two front seats for a napkin and dabbed her face dry.  What floodgate
opened in her heart?  She could not even get to work without crying this
morning.

She exited the freeway and drove the few blocks to Elite
Software’s headquarters.  Finding a parking space, she stopped her car.  Before
getting out, she looked at herself in the vanity mirror.  No major damage. 
Thankful for waterproof mascara, she gathered her things and entered the
office.

“Morning, Niki,” Brian called as she walked past his office.

She mumbled something in response, eager to find an empty
desk to claim for the week.  She hoped she would be off “the bench” by the end
of the week.  With her current state of mind, she doubted if she would last the
day, much less the week with next to nothing to work on.  She never understood
why Brian required them to put in a full day at the office when they were
between assignments.

Quirky Brian, owner of Elite Software.  He insisted on doing
things his way.  Besides being the CEO, he doubled as a salesman.  His staff at
Elite Software consisted of four project managers, four business analysts,
twenty-five software engineers, and three quality analysts.  Oh, and an
administrative assistant who doubled as HR.  Not too bad for an independently
owned consulting firm.

Brian started the place back in 1998.  He survived the “dot
com” crash, mostly because his major clients were Department of Defense
suppliers and contractors.  His years working intelligence in the military left
him with many contacts in the DoD.  He maintained his top secret clearance and
hand selected staff who also qualified for top secret clearance.  Over the
years, the firm branched out beyond DoD clients, but they still provided nearly
two thirds of the revenue for Elite.