Nivek woke to the smell of coffee in his nose and bright sunlight penetrating his eyelids, as Keighley moved his legs and sunk into her seat at the edge of the couch.
He heard a flame ignite, then a sizzle, and the aroma of kalisti filled the air.
"Best hangover cure in the whole of Sirius." she said, while holding in her smoke.
He leaned up into a sitting position and harvested the crust out of his eyes with a yawn.
He was definitely hungover. "Thanks." he said to Keighley as she passed the joint to him, and he allowed himself to take a deep hit.
"What are your plans today?" She asked him, as Nivek passed the kalisti back over.
He gave it some thought and answered, "Well, I'm stuck here on the planet until I make some money, so, the best thing I can do is go find a job."
"Good idea." she said, "but first things first: You smell like beer sweat and need a shower."
Nivek smelled his shirt, then one of his armpits, and was forced to agree.
"Be right back." she chirped as she hopped up, and crossed the small apartment into her bedroom.
A knock came at the door as Nivek reached for the kalisti smouldering in the tray on the table, and Alia announced her presence as she came inside. "Hey Leigh, it's me!"
"Be right there!" Keighley shouted back from the other room.
Alia took a seat next to Nivek on the edge of the couch, & happily took a draw from the joint when he passed it to her.
Keighley came back into the living area and set some clean clothes on the coffee table and said, "These belonged to an ex. I'm pretty sure they'll fit...We have a uh, staff meeting downstairs, so after your shower, feel free to make yourself comfortable until we come back up."
Alia leaned over to Nivek and whispered with a conspiratorial smirk, "Yeah, we're all probably going to talk about you the whole time."
As the girls walked to the door to go downstairs, Alia turned and said, "Don't wait too long on that shower. You smell like a wet dog with the beer farts."
"I've been getting alot of that today." He replied with an embarrassed smile and shrug while waving them out the door.
Nivek hangs his apron in his locker and clocks out before leaving the break room.
Today is a good day.
He checks his bank account on the neural-net as he says goodbye to the other kitchen staff for the afternoon and exits the bar though the side door.
After a couple of weeks now, he finally has the money to move into the vacant apartment across the street.
'It's going to be nice to have a place to call my own again.' He thinks to himself, as he enters the shop to pay his new landlord.
He finds Joaquin leaning on the counter, playing a game of solitaire with a deck of tarot cards.
"The girls are upstairs moving you in already." He says to Nivek without looking up.
Nivek was confused.
"The previous tenant works for me out in the field now," Joaquin continued casually, "but the one before her, well, we moved his things down to the basement after he died."
"Ah. Ok, thanks. I appreciate the generosity." Said Nivek. "Keighley and Alia must be really tired of me playing musical couches between them every night."
"That's not it at all." Joaquin corrected him as he scooped up the cards and began shuffling the deck. "They really like having you around, and just want you settled in as quickly as possible."
Joaquin straightened the cards and placed them face-down on the counter in front of Nivek.
"Time to pay the Ferryman." he said.
"Right." Nivek replied, and pulled up his bank account, transferring funds for the deposit, along with first and last months rent.
The landlord verified payment, and encouraged his new tenant to cut the deck in front of them as he spoke: "I have only two hard and fast rules here. Don't sh*t where you eat, and don't even think about breaking your lease."
Nivek cut the deck and saw a look in Joaquin's eyes that, in spite of the landlords kind and easy-going nature, sent a chill of fear up the spine.
"Understood."
"Now," Joaquin continued as he spread the deck longways over the counter, "before you go, would you like to pick a card and see a glimpse of your future?"
He wasn't into it, but decided to play along and looked over the deck.
"Don't think. Just pick." Joaquin goaded.
Nivek chose a card & flipped it.
Nivek tries to be funny without trying hard enough and says, "Well, that doesn't really inspire confidence."
Joaquin smiled and shrugged. "The meanings of a tarot are very rarely taken at face value...I'd say for you, that it simply represents a new beginning.
Nivek holds up his pad and stares at his empty inbox and slumps deeper into his couch and his depression, debating if he should send another message to Jaina.
He taps into his sentbox and counts the long list of ignored messages he's written to her already for the past few weeks. Each and every one of them marked as 'Unread'
She obviously doesn't want to talk to him.
He can't blame her though. He's the fool that walked out on her.
An old saying echos loudly over and over again in his otherwise empty mind as an hour passes by in the blink of an eye:
'It's better to regret something you have done, than something you haven't.'
He stares at the images on the TV, but doesn't really see them. All he sees these days is how much he regrets abandoning her and how f**king stupid that saying is.
He imagines knocking his head against the wall just to punish himself a little more.
He, for a moment hopes maybe she's ignoring his messages just to knock some sense into him, because even though life is full of hard knocks, when one door closes, another one opens.
Of course he's going to send her another message.
Alia Daeva pokes her head in the door and calls out, "Nivek? You home? Can I come in?"
Alia can see Nivek across the room on the couch and waits for his invite, but when it doesn't come, she lets herself in anyway, asking, "It's just me. Didn't you hear me knocking?"
He finally looks up towards her and mutters a distant and distracted apology and gestures that she can have a seat on the chair by the coffee table.
She ignores that and plops down right next to him on the sofa, allowing gravity on the cushions to smoosh them together, allowing absolutely no space between them.
She stays silent for a few moments, gazing at his profile, waiting for some kind of response. Any kind of response, and when it doesn't come, she thumps him hard with her finger in the tender spot under his earlobe, right next to the hinge of his jaw.
"OWww! Jeezus!"
"Oh! There you are!" she said to him innocently.
-----
Alia didn't really like Nivek at first. She was friendly to him when he came into town, but she soured on him for a while after she heard him tell Her, Joaquin and Keighley the story of how he made his way to Los Angeles after leaving his girlfriend. It was cold, and it really pissed her off.
She thinks back to about nine months ago when she was at the Spiderbabies show on Freeport 6. Her & Jaina walking behind Joaquin & Keighley, all making their way towards the western bio-dome entrance with the rest of the crowd. Jaina going on and on about how great the band was going to be, about serendipity this, and inevitability that, intense deja'vu, and how convinced she was that this was going to be the night that she meets "the guy"
It was cute and everything, but it was all starting to get a little insufferable for Alia to bear.
As they passed one of the entrance gates, she saw an attractive guy coming through the turnstile, and put her leg out, tripping Jaina, forcing her friend to stumble and slam into the unexpecting guy, and thinking: 'Pleeease, let that shut her up for a while.'
She kept walking on with Joaquin and Keighley while Jaina stayed behind apologizing to the man while helping him back onto his feet. The moments peace was only just that though: a moment. Jaina came running up from behind shortly after, happily crowing "It's him!just like the dream!It's him!"
Jaina separated herself from her friends at the concession stand with a couple of beers in her hand, announcing to them that she was going off to find "the guy" again, and Alia finally got the peace she was looking for.
----
Nivek still doesn't know that through Jaina, they are all connected. Alia gets tempted to tell him sometimes, but Joaquin keeps warning against it, so she grudgingly continues to keep it a secret.
At first, before she got to know him as she does now, and back when she soured on him during the three weeks when Nivek was broke and homeless, playing musical couches between her and Keighley every night, She was absolutely convinced that Jaina was far too good for him, and, right or wrong, Alia made the decision to protect her friend in the most efficient way she knew how and decided to make it her mission to seduce him and expose him for the unworthy dog he is. She, of course had no intention of actually letting Nivek have her when she succeeded, because it would be absolutely unthinkable to betray one of her best friends like that.
Sisters before Misters...Always.
On the nights he stayed in her apartment, Alia would pour on her charm as they spent the hours alone together. As time progressed, so did her efforts. To her frustration however, his rebuffs of her became stronger as she became more provocative. More assertive.
He was playing her. She was absolutely convinced of that. Not once in their time alone did he ever express any discomfort around her. Not once did he ever comment when she would leave her bedroom door open and position her dressing mirror so that he could watch her change into her lingerie for him. She knew he stole some glances in some of those moments, though, but not once did he ever complement her body.
When she began greeting him with a warm kiss on the lips the nights when he knocked on her door, not once did he ever kiss her back.
Not once in her adult life has Alia ever experienced such resistance from a man, and it infuriated her.
She's not the kind of woman that knows how to deal with that.
On the night of her final attempt, determined to prove (to herself?) once and for all what a piece of s**t this guy really was, she came into her living room stark naked, and slid up against Nivek on the couch while he slept. slowly and seductively rubbing up against him, breathing low and hot in his ear.
Although his mind was asleep, she could feel his body begin to awaken against her, and she whispered to him, "say my name." and Nivek whispered back in a dreamlike tone, "Jaina."
Alia was broken in that moment and immediately stopped...she very carefully and quietly separated herself off the couch away from his sleeping form, and tiptoed back into her bedroom, feeling somewhat ashamed of herself for going too far.
She curled up alone that night understanding now that she wasn't being played at all. The true reality is, she just couldn't compare to the woman of his dreams, and she remained awake for the rest of the wee hours, feeling a true respect for "the guy" that she has unfairly misjudged.
----
Nivek Finally turned to look at her, rubbing the bottom crook of his ear.
"What the f**k did you do that for?!"
"Do you remember letting me in?" she asked.
Nivek refused to answer the question because he didn't want to admit the answer was 'no.'
"That's why." Alia answered for him.
"I hate it when you get like this," she continued, "so you and I are going to spend the day together."
She ignored his protests.
She stood up, pulled him off the couch, shoved him out of his own door, closed it behind her, and led him by the hand down the stairs and outside to the street.
About half an hour later, Nivek and Alia are having coffee at a sidewalk cafe'.
Alia's trying her best to cheer him up, but she's not at all being successful. So far, the most she's gotten him to engage with her in conversation, was a five word answer he gave to her a few minutes ago.
While they sit in silence, Alia looks up at the clock on the building across the street, and estimates they still have another half hour before they have to be at the medical center a few blocks up the road.
Wait. That's not entirely true...Alia has to be at the medical center in another half an hour.
Since she can't help elevate him up out of his depressed mood, she decides to help talk him through it instead. She takes a sip of her coffee, and without lifting her eyes to look at him, she quietly asks him to talk about "her."
Another handful of moments pass in silence, but he finally engaged, and asked Alia, "What would you like to know about her?"
She chose her response carefully: "Whatever you decide I deserve to know."
For the next fifteen minutes she listened, and watched his mood slowly brighten, as he shifted his focus to thinking of the best of "her" instead of wallowing in the worst of himself.
She caught herself smiling at him from time to time as he talked about his woman. How he..."OH, S**T! TIME!"
Nivek stopped talking and asked, "What's wrong?"
Alia looked up at the clock across the street, and asked, "You don't want to go home do you?"
Nivek surprised himself with his answer. "I thought I did, but now that you mention it, no. I don't."
"Good." she said. "I'm sorry I didn't say earlier, but I have an appointment up the street, and I was hoping you'd come with me.
"Sure." he replied.
Alia downed her cup, paid the bill, and said to Nivek, "C'mon. We have to go. Right Now."
They began to walk up the sidewalk together towards the medical center, and Nivek couldn't help but notice how much she sounded like Jaina just then.
As the pair walked up the street, their conversation flowed back and forth down a stream of consciousness as they tend to do.
After arriving at the medical center and entering the elevator, Alia steers the conversation.
"Can I be honest with you?" she asked.
"Have you ever asked if you could be dishonest with me?" He asked back.
Nivek's retort was quick. She was simply leading him to agree to hear what she wanted to tell him, but, he did the unexpected and it caught her off balance. She liked that.
It's little moments like these that have really warmed her opinion of him over the weeks.
She decided to adapt and begin to say some things she didn't plan for and declared to him, "I owe you an apology"
As they continue to approach their floor, Alia once again found herself having to choose her words carefully. When she inhaled to speak, she once more was caught off balance when he told her, "Apology accepted" in a way that made clear to her that nothing more needs to be said.
She liked that even more.
Once they arrived at the nurses station, Alia asks for the room number of a patient, and while she waits for the answer to be found, she turns to Nivek and says, "You should take a seat and wait here. I won't be long."
"No." he told her flatly." He stood in front of her, gently rested his hands on her shoulders and continued: I know you think I'm an idiot. I deserve that, but don't think I'm stupid. That, I don'tdeserve."
'He's right' she thought to herself, and didn't realize she averted her gaze downward until he softened his tone and said, "Hey. Look at me."
When she did, he went on: "You told me that you were hoping I'd come with you, and that's exactly what I'm doing."
Nivek turned to the nurse, got the room number from her, and headed down the corridor.
'There. He did it to me again.' she thought with a fair amount of guilt. She is beginning to understand how Jaina fell for this guy so quickly, and couldn't help but remember back to the night when she whispered in his ear and said, "Say my name."
"Alia!You coming!?" He asked from down the hall.
'That will have to do.' she said in her mind as she snapped out of her reverie.
Nivek opened the door and quietly followed Alia through it.
As she approached the sick man on the bed, Nivek found a shadow in the corner and remained there as an unobtrusive observer.
He watched her, completely unmoving as time passed. The rhythmic beep of the heart monitor counting the passing of each elongated second like drips of water in a subterranean cavern.
Nivek was unsure when Alia extended a hand out behind her, beckoning him to join this bedside deathwatch, but he stepped foreward, interlaced his fingers with hers, and stood beside her as she stood.
The sensation was unlike any he's ever experienced. He felt light as a feather, yet simultaneously, frozen...heavier than a thousand stone.
Time continued to pass.
The beeping of the heart monitor came faster as blood began to fill the dying man's lungs, and Alia turned to Nivek with a tear in her eye. "Do you understand this?" she asked.
"No." he said back to her as he wiped away her tear, "but I accept it."
She loved that, and rested her head on his shoulder as time continued to pass.
The man coughed in his medicated sleep, and a spatter of blood came to rest on his elderly lips and chin. Alia lifted her head, and Nivek stated, "It's time."
He didn't intended to speak...it was just a natural reflex that was new to him and beyond his ability to control.
Alia took a seat at the edge of the bed with Nivek mirroring her likewise. She took his hand, and together, they made contact with the old man's body.
Through Alia's hand under his own, he could feel the dying man's life as a warmth quickly going cold. In his ears, he could hear something that he couldn't quite describe...it was like a perfect tone, dropping its pitch as it reduced its volume and faded away.
Nivek turned his head as the old man's death rattle seared into his memory, and watched the racing rhythm of the heart monitor end with the high ring of a flatline.
Alia rose her eyes to the ceiling, and after a moment, silently whispered 'Goodbye.'