When Evie got home, she found her father passed out drunk on the couch. She stood there for a few moments, feeling her throat close and her legs go weak. Evie always hated it when her dad got drunk, but she had learned to accept that it was bound to happen once a week or so. She couldn't (and wouldn't) accept it happening every other day.
He had only drank at this level in their darkest days. After her mom left. After the five failed band auditions. After the car accident and the medical bills. Not after joining a new band. Not after they were making enough to afford the groceries and the mortgage.
She had considered it before, and now she was certain that it had to be the guys in the band. The fucking kids who wanted to do nothing but drink, get high, and sleep around. They were taking away her kind, loving father, and turning him into a useless alcoholic.
She wanted to go down to the basement and scream at Nikki, tell him he needed to get his shit together, get out of their house, and stop trying to take away the one person in her life she could rely upon.
She restrained herself, though. She forced herself to go in the opposite direction, up to her room. The tears started coming halfway up the staircase, and they didn't stop for a good half an hour.
She didn't make dinner. She didn't eat, either. She stayed up in her room reading a book until she knew it time for her dad to leave to go to work.
He was stumbling around. When he was putting on his shoes, he might as well have been pulling his feet out of quicksand. It required the same amount of energy. When he saw Evie coming down the stairs, he looked at her with an ashamed look on his face. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn't think of a way to say it without it turning into a conversation that they did not have time for.
Evie broke their momentary eye contact, making Mick feel like a piece of shit. He didn't get off the couch until Evie had gone into the kitchen, seemingly for no reason, and then went back to her room.
Mick wouldn't see her again for the rest of the night.
Upstairs, the phone rang. It stopped. Then it rang again. Nikki wondered why no one was answering. On the fourth attempted call, he finally went up to the dark main level and answered it.
"Hello?"
"Nikki?" A sweet southern accent asked him.
"Yeah, Vince, what's up?"
"Tom and I are at your old place. We've got a beautiful redhead who'd like to meet you, if you're up to it."
Just like that, Nikki's spirits lifted. "I'll be over there in fifteen."
Nikki ran back to the basement, grabbed his coat, fixed his hair, and headed out the door.
He stopped, though, when he heard the startled gasp come from the wooden bench on the front porch. He turned to find Evie, her hands over her eyes to try to cover the fact that she was crying.
Nikki had always been bad at consoling people, so he just stood there like an idiot for a moment, debating whether he should get in his car and go or stay and help. He chose the latter.
"Are you okay?"
Evie just lowered her eyes and nodded her head softly. Nikki sat down next to her.
"Really? You're fine? Just crying for fun?"
Evie's first instinct was to yell at him to go away, to tell him he was at least a third of the problem. But the contemplation that led her to crying on her front porch at sunset told her it really wasn't Nikki or Tommy, or Vince, or her, or anyone else's fault. Her father was nearly thirty five years old. He could make decisions for himself, and he made the choice to hang around irresponsible people and he made the choice to drink. She shouldn't misdirect her anger at Nikki. So, to answer his questions, she shook her head.
"Why are you crying then? You can tell me." Nikki would be lying if he said his main reason wasn't curiosity. He knew relatively little about this girl's life. What kind of stuff kept her up at night?
Slowly, she raised her head to meet his eyes. Nikki noticed how her hazel eyes sparkled in the light of the descending sun.
"It's... it's just my dad." She started to tear up again. "He never drinks this much."
Nikki understood immediately. He had been there, but when he was there, he didn't have anyone to talk to about it. That's why he was gonna make sure she had someone to talk to. But what should he say?
"Uhm...why do you think he drinks?" It was stupid, but it was gonna get her to open up more.
Evie couldn't help but chuckle. Was this her time to lecture Nikki about being a bad influence on her father? She didn't want to go there, but in her search for other reasons, she couldn't find a single one that didn't include the band.
"I guess," she said. "You guys, the band I mean, drink a lot. He's had problems with alcohol before, so I think just having you guys encourage it is making it come back again."
Nikki looked up, toward the street and houses across it. He spent so much time cursing his bitch of a mother for never being there for him, always running off with men and getting drunk and high all the time. But here he was, being the one who would cause Evie to look back on her father in the same way he looked at his mom. He stayed silent for a minute, considering the weight of the realization.
"I'm sorry," he said finally.
"It's okay." She looked up at him again.
"Do you want me to talk to him?"
Evie thought about it. "No, probably not. I don't think it would change anything."
"Are you sure? I don't want you to turn out all fucked up when you're older."
She smiled. "I think I'll be alright." She thought for a moment longer. "I should be the one to talk to him. It would probably mean more coming from me."
"Yeah, you're probably right. I can talk to Tommy and Vince, though."
Evie sighed, her tears starting to stop. "That's a good idea. Just don't let my dad find out. He would be pissed if he knew I told you this."
"Don't worry. I'm not gonna tell him. And I'll make sure the guys keep their mouths shut, alright?"
She nodded her head and looked down at her lap. "Thank you."
Nikki put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned in closer to him.
"How long were you out here crying?"
"I don't know," she said, the emotion finally leaving her voice. "Twenty minutes? I was crying on and off all afternoon, after I got home and he was passed out on the couch. I went on a walk, but I was thinking so much that I just started crying..." This was when she started crying again, brought on by remembering the pain of those moments. "So I came home, and I stayed out here because I didn't know if you were in the kitchen or something, and I didn't want you to see me cry."
Nikki pulled her tighter, and her head met his chest. "You don't have to hide it from me," he said. "You can come down and talk to me whenever you feel like it, okay?"
"Okay." It was only a squeak.
They stayed like that, her head resting against him and his hand rubbing her arm until she calmed down again. It was Evie who sat up first.
"We should probably go inside. I'm hungry."
"Yeah." Nikki stood up. "What did you make?"
"Nothing. I didn't feel like it. I'll probably make rice or something easy."
He followed her back into the house. "You need any help?"
"No."
"Are you sure? I'd hate to just sit here for twenty minutes and watch you do all the work."
"Well, you could take a shower..."
It occurred to Nikki that he hadn't showered since moving into the Deal house, which had been, what, three days? Four days? He didn't really feel like taking one now, though.
"I don't like to shower alone." She looked up at him. "I get bored." He gauged her reaction, trying to see if jokes like that made her uncomfortable or angry. Instead, she smiled and blushed.
"Go," she said with a grin. "You're not allowed to eat until you're clean."
Nikki put his hands up in surrender and went to the basement, where he showered and gave himself a much needed release while thinking of her smile, the feel of her body against his, and imagining what it would look like if she was on her knees in front of him. Sitting across from her at the dining room table later that night, he wondered if she knew.
______
"Where the fuck were you last night?" Vince interrogated the bassist in the Deal home's garage the next day.
"Approximately nine feet down from here," Nikki responded, pointing at the ground.
"Why did you say you were gonna come, then. You left us looking like a bunch of idiots in front of that hot chick."
"I was going to come. But when I went to get ready, I got distracted and ended up writing the final song for our album."
Vince looked at him, speechless. "What do you mean the final song?"
"I don't have many of the instrumentals done yet, but I've got the lyrics." The other two men had come over by this point, and together, they read the lines Nikki had stayed up all night writing after having a rather inspiring experience with a certain someone.
By the time the men left that evening, the song was complete.