NIKKI

Heart break on a street corner in downtown San Francisco.

NIKKI

Nikki covered her face with her hands, since she cut her hair, crying in public was harder to hide. A cold gust blew off the San Francisco Bay and she could taste the salt in the air prelude to the salt of bitter tears.

“I'm sorry Nikki. I never promised you anything you know.” Keith said scrubbing his hand through his hair. Nikki could not look at him. How he looked started all this and she did not want to see the lie of his face.

“Nikki get back in the car I can at least take you to the boarding house, Carrie is not leaving till tomorrow.”

At the curb of the rundown street was the little SUV she had rambled around the hills of San Francisco in the last three weeks, jazzed on infatuation and belonging. With a new boyfriend at the wheel who knew the town and her best friend in the back with her, they had breezed from party to party.

Carrie is going to freak out if I come back without you” He said.

“I don't care” Speaking had cracked her hold on herself and the tears came freely, in a moment she would not be talking but sobbing. She dared a glance out of the corner of her eye, her back to the street, a boarded up electronics shop in front of her. Nikki's escape from the SUV had stopped a step from the wall, trying to hide her face from the late night crowd hitting one more bar before last call. She stood silent for his lame apologies and explanations which all amounted to the same thing. It's over, not interested.

Keith was tall and blessed with easy grace, he was quick to smile especially at a young girl, and never had to work for attention. Every girl was sure he smiled for them, and he probably did. He smiled for them and forgot them.

Nikki and Keith bumped into each other one night and spent the next three weeks together. For Nikki it was a water-slide, out of control and too slick to slow down. She was in Frisco for a week to visit her “Bestie” Carrie, and never made it back to Portland for work.

“I have to see if things work out with Keith” she said

“Work out? Are you sure he's not just partying with you?” Carrie asked in the line at Starbucks.

“We haven't talked about it yet but we will, I'm having fun, He's having fun. I don't want to ruin it asking questions.” Nikki lied. She wanted very much to hear him ask her to stay in town. She thought she could flop with one of the new friends she had made, maybe with him and his brother in their awesome loft. Why not, everything was so easy with him.

He let her feel free as she roamed around the room through the beat of the music. Downtown in a bar, or at those parties with so many clever young kids, she would laugh and flirt with whoever came along, drunk on more than the liquor and high on more than the weed. He would let her roam. But she would see him looking at her across the room and she would arch a little letting her best features come forward, embarrassed that she was so brazen, but flushing with the reward of his attention. She was wearing less and less and daring more. Pushing into where she knew it was dangerous for a girl on her own. But she was not alone. Every so often he would whisper in her ear. A joke or an observation. Then later the clothes would come off and she would drown in the pleasure through the haze of alcohol and float away.

“Where will you live?”

“It'll work out.”

“Aren't you living with Brian back home?” Carrie asked.

“'I'm sick of his s**t” Nikki said. “I don't know. Brian never made me feel like I feel right now.” Carrie rolled her eyes and offered a few useless warnings over smoking lattes that had bounced off Nikki's bubble. What did Carrie know anyway? She didn't understand how Keith made her feel.

“I like your hair, short and wild” Carrie said.

“Like me!” Nikki laughed and Carrie joined her, they drank and smoked and talked about their future, or at least whatever they imagined it would be.

Nikki would find out later that afternoon that Keith was applying his charms to a seventeen year old girl on her parent’s boat in the marina. He was polite and apologetic. He never meant to hurt anyone. He told her after a week of spending his mornings under the red-head on the Bay and his nights on Nikki.

What now? The question burned her. She felt like she had come up short in a game of musical chairs. 

Carrie was going to school and engaged, and Nikki had worn her welcome out at the boarding house. The b***h in the lobby was on to them and Carrie had reluctantly asked her twice already when she would be leaving. All the people Nikki knew here were friends of Keith or vague acquaintances, no one who was looking to put up a girl without money or a job. Why would I even stay here? She thought, Everyone knows, everyone knows what he has been up to. Brian knows what I've been doing. Her time with Keith had numbed her feelings for her boyfriend. Now she mostly felt embarrassment. She couldn’t face him. Most of her things were still in Brian's apartment. She thought of asking her Dad to drive up and get her stuff. I can’t do that. Explaining all this to her father was too much to imagine. Shame heated her face.

A soft chime sounded. Her head turned. Keith was absorbed in his phone, ignition key peeking out of his hand. His face was smooth his mind elsewhere, just waiting what he considered a decent interval before he floated his charmed way off to whatever new diversions lay ahead of him. Keith wore the look of clear conscience. Not my fault, just born this way thank you very much.

Something in Nikki broke. She was swallowing pain and guilt, watching a vivid day dream torn violently away. Stupid she thought, I am so stupid and he does not care. If I look at him one more second I am going to scream.

“Go” Nikki said.

“Come on don't be like that hop in the car and I'll take you to Carrie's or wherever.”

“GO” she screamed, stomping a sneakered foot. He took a step back, very aware that they were in public. Nikki reached down and picked a whiskey bottle up where it lay discarded at the mouth of an alley, winking in the neon. She threw it as hard as she could and it sailed past Keith's head and into the street. Keith snickered and she turned away from him.

“Whatever.” He said. A moment later a door closed and she heard the SUV pull away. When Nikki raised her head she was alone. My life is over, Nikki thought. She was wrong.

Author's Note

All comments welcome.