5 comments/ 17158 views/ 1 favorites 3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 04-06 By: inspirixis1 CHAPTER FOUR SPRING, FRESHMAN YEAR It felt so good to be back out on the water again. Grace reveled in the feeling of the cold air passing over her cheeks as the rowers pulled the boat through the water. The women's team felt sluggish compared to the men, they didn't have the same power, but it wasn't just that, the crew she'd been given sucked. They had no discipline on the water and their technique was terrible. Since Grace was a freshman and she had been the last to join the team she was given the four worst novice rowers. They could hardly hold it together for two or three strokes in a row. The boat tipped violently from side to side and lurched through the water. They were so bad that the coaches didn't even bother with them. They yelled the workout to Grace as they sped past in the launch towards the faster crews. "Okay guys, looks like we're on our own today, so I'm going to make an executive decision," she told them. "I'm going to be brutally honest. This boat needs remedial work. This afternoon I want you guys in the gym on the erg doing the workout that was assigned, this morning we are going to learn how to row." She had one pair keep the boat steady while the other two rowed and she coached them. She told them what they were doing wrong and how to correct it. She praised every tiny little improvement. She stood up in the cockpit and watched them from above, telling the follower how to move better with the person in front and the person in front how to be more consistent. They did that for weeks. She taught them how to row in the mornings and they did the workouts on the rowing machines in the afternoons. After two weeks all four could row together without the boat tipping from side to side. After three weeks their oars were entering the water at the catch at the same time. After a month they were able to do the workouts on the water. She didn't tolerate any sloppiness and they responded well. She had high expectations of them and they delivered, they took themselves seriously. Her crew had improved by leaps and bounds and the coaching staff noticed. She was asked if she wanted to cox the novice eight. She wanted to race her crew first, she wanted to beat the other four, the one that was supposed to be faster than them. She told the coach that she would try the novice eight after the first race of the season. The first race was on the Charles, it was just a scrimmage with Northeastern University, but she was excited. Nicholas was going to watch from the shoreline and take photos for her mom and dad. There were three other boats in her race, the '1st' four from BU and two fours from Northeastern. She was expecting to see some pretty sloppy rowing and some pretty incompetent coxing but she was still surprised when one of the Northeastern crews held up the start because the cox couldn't hold her bow straight. She tried to keep her crew calm as they waited. She talked them through the race plan she had made up for them. She had no idea if it was appropriate or not but the coaches essentially ignored them so she was free to do whatever she liked. Finally the other crews were lined up and the starting gun went off. They got off to a reasonable start, and she encouraged them to stay calm and concentrate. There were two crews ahead of them at the 500 m mark, but she wasn't worried, her crew was holding it together really well and she told them so. By the 1,000 m mark they were even with the other BU crew and the Northeastern crew was just a half a boat length ahead. She didn't yell at her crew the way the other coxswains did, she didn't see the point. She needed to keep them calm and thinking about what they were doing rather than send them into a tizzy. At what she guessed was the 1250 m mark she talked them through a push to get their bow ahead. Her girls were tired, she could see that, but they weren't falling apart. She praised them and reminded them about their technique. By the 1500 m mark they were a boat length ahead. She looked behind her, everyone else was falling apart, but not her crew. She told them that they weren't going to sprint to the finish, instead they were going to concentrate on their technique, they were going to look like professionals, it would be like a big 'fuck you' to the coaches that had ignored them all season. The response she got was phenomenal. Their catches were crisp, their rhythm was strong, they pulled ahead by another boat length. Yards and yards of open water separated them from the rest of the field. It felt pretty damn good. They won by a long margin. She rowed them around the corner before she let them rest. Melissa, who sat in two seat, was crying with joy. They were laughing and hugging each other. Justine, the stroke, leaned forward and pat Grace on the legs and thanked her. These girls had never expected to win anything and they were completely overcome with emotion. She felt good. She was a part of something good. Nicholas was at the boathouse when she got back, waiting for her like she had asked him to. She didn't really feel like seeing him. She was still so excited about the win. She just wanted to hang out with her crew. She introduced him to them as her cousin, and he smiled and asked to take the crew photo in front of their boat. It was nice of him. He seemed to sense that she didn't need him there and he told her that he needed to go but to call him later. How did he always know what she needed? She went back to campus with her crew and they ate breakfast together in the cafeteria. Nicholas sent two photos to her cell phone, one of them during the race kicking ass and the one of them beside the boat. She forwarded them on to the rest of the crew who were completely delighted. They all sent them to their parents and friends back home. For the first time she felt disappointed not to have a dorm room to go home to like the rest of them. She had thought the apartment she had with Nicholas was way better than a dorm room, but now she felt left out. While she had been tucked away with Nicholas everyone else had been out having a good time and making new friends. When she got back to the apartment Nicholas wasn't there. She found a note from him that said he went to practice Tai Chi. She thought Nicholas was getting stranger. He had always been slightly odd but recently he had gotten really into this Tai Chi thing. She had watched him once or twice when they had been at the taekwondo gym and she found it weird. As far as she knew Tai Chi was for little old Chinese ladies to practice in the park, not for young men. But that was Nicholas. He didn't seem to give a shit about social norms. As the spring wore on Grace started to feel more self-confident. She was coxing the novice eight and they were on par with the varsity eight, she thought that by the end of the season her crew would be faster than them. They had won every novice race. A couple of times they had to travel for away races. At first it had made Grace nervous but she roomed with Stacie and she slept most nights. Not a full nights sleep, but at least part of the night. Once she woke up in the middle of the night and Stacie was standing over her, shaking her. "What were you dreaming about?" She asked. "You were calling 'Kolya, Kolya'." "Oh nothing," she had replied, "sometimes I have bad nightmares. I don't even remember them once I wake up." She couldn't get back to sleep that night and so she had taken her anatomy and physiology homework into the bathroom and sat in the bathtub reading the text book. Apart from a few little hiccups like that things generally went pretty smoothly for her with away races. She was always relieved to come home to Nicholas. Even though one part of her yearned for a normal dorm room with lots of friends, a bigger part of her craved the security that Nicholas offered. When Grace came home from away races he always cooked dinner, they went to bed early and she slept at his end of the bed. She always started off with her back to him but now and then she would turn around in the night. She liked to snuggle into him and he didn't seem to mind, he was gay after all, he didn't care if she liked to press herself up against him. She didn't know why she liked it so much, but she did. Nicholas was warm and sleek and muscular. Not muscular like her dad, it was a different feeling that when she hugged her dad. When she hugged Sam she was totally lost in his body, like a little child. He was so big that she felt she could hide behind just one of his arms. Nicholas was nowhere near the size of her dad. He was average height but his limbs were abnormally long. When he was a kid he looked gangly, now that he was older and he'd filled out he looked graceful. He still kind of looked like a stick insect when he did his Tai Chi though. When she hugged Nicholas she didn't feel like a little girl, she felt like a woman. When she put her arm around him and felt his chest expanding and contracting as he breathed, and his heart beating slowly and steadily she felt like his equal. Sometimes when she put her arm around him he would put his hand over hers. She loved it when he did that. That was all he ever did though. He always slept curled up on his left side and he never turned around to her. He never put his arms around her when they were in bed. Grace was fucking killing him. She had no idea that she was going to be the cause of his death. Nicholas was sure that one of these days he was going to wake up with her beautiful body pressed up against his back and he was going to drop dead from desire. Today she was wearing a thin cotton t-shirt, and she was cold. He could feel her hard nipples through the fabric of their nightclothes. He reached down and pulled the comforter over them to try and warm her up. She was still asleep, he had a few minutes to calm himself down before she would wake up. He deepened his breathing and relaxed his muscles, descending into his clam place. All of the Tai Chi he had been studying was really paying off, he had found that when he really concentrated on his body he could get it to do almost anything he wanted it to, and that included his cock. He could go from rock hard to flaccid in seconds, so long as he could find his calm place. This morning it was working. After Zach's wedding this had become a more common occurrence. Grace liked to cuddle into him. To say it was difficult for him would have been the understatement of the year. It was torturous, but he couldn't bring himself to ask her to stop. He actually understood that Dickens line now... "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." About once or twice a week he would wake up and Grace's arm would be around him and her body would be pressed against his back. It was the most sublime feeling. To have her so close, for her warm breath to tickle his skin, to feel her heart beating, those were the best moments of his life. But they were also the worst moments of his life. He knew that Grace only wanted friendship from him. He knew that it was inappropriate for him to want more from her. He thought that it was probably just because she was female. Maybe he would react this way if he woke up and any pretty girl was in his bed, he had no way of knowing. Nicholas had never had a girlfriend before. He was too shy to ask girls out, Grace was the only girl he had ever even talked to in depth. It was Sunday. Sleeping in day. The day that they went to practice self defense and then ate pancakes. Grace always made his pancakes with blueberries and topped them with Greek yoghurt and honey, just the way he liked them. Sunday was his favorite day of the week. She stirred and sighed behind him and retracted her arm to stretch. It was still early, only 4:45 am, the time that they usually got up to get Grace to practice on time. "Mmm... Sunday," she said, her voice grainy with sleep. She put her arm back around him and within moments her breathing returned to the deep slow rhythm of sleep. Nicholas was tempted to lie in with her but he couldn't get back to sleep. Some Sundays he could, but not today. He slid away from her embrace and started his day. He showered and made tea and fired up his laptop and read the news. He should probably do homework, he had a ton of work to do and the semester was rapidly drawing to a close but he figured reading the news was a kind of homework in itself. How could he ever understand markets if he didn't know politics or keep up with world events? At seven he woke Grace up and they went to the gym. There was a pretty good dojang in Cambridge. Harvard actually had a taekwondo team and every now and then he would see someone from the team there. They always tried to convince him to join, but he wasn't interested, he wouldn't mind having other people to practice with but he didn't want to compete. He had put Grace's kicking on hold in order to teach her some basic self defense holds and throws, more aikido based stuff. When he saw her at Zach's wedding, poised ready to strike Jeff, he had realized that a more subtle approach might better suit. She would have caused quite a scene if she had kicked Jeff. It made him smile to think of that incident. She had been so cute. There she was in a beautiful evening gown, with high heels to match, her hair swept up in some sort of cascading up-do, poised in the tiger stance, her eyes leveled on her opponent who had no idea that he was in danger. The poor guy was just trying to chat her up, he had no idea he was making her feel uncomfortable. They warmed up and stretched and started off with some basic exercises. The gym was pretty empty on Sunday mornings so there were only a few other people around. They were practicing some pretty basic moves. He was showing her how to get out of a rear bear hug using the nerve points in the attacker's hands, when he noticed another girl watching them. She was as small as Grace with straight black hair, creamy skin and deep brown eyes the shape of half-moons. She looked Asian. He tuned to her. "Hi," he said. She smiled. "Hi, I'm new here. I'm Mariko." Mariko. That sounded like a Japanese name. He held his hand out to her. "Nicholas." She shook his hand and then Grace introduced herself. "I think there is a better way to do that, for her at least," she said. "Here, I'll show you." They moved into the center of the floor and Nicholas grabbed her from behind around the chest. She brought her hand up to his wrist and twisted under and away from him, and still holding his wrist she moved behind him. She twisted his arm into the small of his back and used her free arm to pull him into a choke position. It was nicely done. She released him. "The nerve point thing works too, but if your attacker is bigger and stronger than you it could backfire and make them angry. Being small can be an advantage, if you know how to use it." Nicholas looked over at Grace and saw that she was smiling. They worked with Mariko for a solid hour. She had been trained in aikido and she was a wealth of information, but the best part was that she was small like Grace. When he tried to 'attack' her the way a common thug might she could kick his butt and that delighted Grace. They asked her to come back to their apartment for breakfast and Grace cooked pancakes. "So how long have you two been together?" Mariko asked. "Oh, we're not together," Grace replied. "We're cousins." Nicholas liked Mariko. She was bright and cheerful and smart. Her parents were Japanese but she was born American. She'd been studying aikido since she was a little kid and now she wanted to learn taekwondo. "Nicholas could teach you, he's really good," Grace volunteered. "Would you? I have an instructor, but it would be good to practice." Mariko's pretty little face was hopeful. Grace had unwittingly gotten him a date with a beautiful woman who had interests that were similar to his own. Nicholas couldn't believe his luck. What was even better was that the 'date' wasn't really a date, so he didn't have to feel nervous about it. He was just going to meet her at the gym and show her a few kicks. It went well. Mariko was sweet. He met with her at the gym regularly. They sparred in both taekwondo and aikido. She was pretty good, not brilliant, but that didn't bother him. Grace's crew won their big end of season rowing race and she was ecstatic. It was in New Jersey, he didn't go but her mom and her youngest brother Oliver did. When she came back she was so excited. She hugged him and jumped around the room and talked with her hands as she told him about the races. Her eyes sparkled and she had the hugest grin plastered on her face. There had been a heat and a final and her crew had won both of them. She told him about the course and the other teams and how the wind had been so strong that it was blowing some of the boats out of their lanes. She had a big gold medal that she wanted to hang up. They couldn't decide where to put it. In the end he hammered a nail into the wall in the bathroom and they hung it in front of the toilet. "There, now you can think about your team every time you take a dump," he said. Grace held onto his arm as she laughed. That night he cooked dinner and they went to bed early, the same as they always did when she got home from an away race, but something odd happened. As they were getting ready for bed his cock kept on twitching to life. He had to keep on stopping what he was doing in order to concentrate on making it behave. "Are you okay?" Grace asked. She was wearing a set of pink and white striped cotton 'inmate' pajamas that her mom had bought her from one of those cheesy 'Escape from Alcatraz' stores at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. She looked so innocent, so totally unaware of how beautiful she was. Nicholas closed his eyes and took deep breaths, trying to slow his blood down. "Um... I don't feel well. I think I'm going to take a shower." "What's the matter?" There was concern in her voice. "I just don't feel good," he muttered as he passed her on the way to the bathroom. Once he was safe behind the bathroom door he let go and his cock swelled to its erect state. Fuck. This was not a good sign. What was his problem? He had only ever been hard for Grace in the morning before, when he'd just woken up and her body was right beside him, which was understandable. This was something else. His raging teenage hormones could not explain this away. He felt like he had no choice but to take care of it. He didn't want to calm himself down only to go to bed and get turned on again. He turned the shower on and went through his ritual. When he felt the need to jerk off he always did it in the shower out of respect for Grace. He felt sure that she didn't want to smell his bodily fluids. He let himself think about her as he stroked himself, it was futile to resist. She seemed happier lately. All of her smiling and laughing is what was getting to him. There was nothing more beautiful than Grace when she smiled. When she laughed her nose scrunched up and she got little lines around her eyes. She had plump curvaceous lips that Nicholas would love to kiss. One of these mornings he might get up the courage to turn to her. He would run his hand over the curve of her waist, maybe even let her pajama top ride up so that he could touch her smooth skin. He would lean in to her and kiss those delicious lips. He would be gentle with her. He would whisper how beautiful she was and he would kiss her on her nose and cheeks and then come back to her mouth. She might open her lips and let him slip his tongue inside and then she might moan. And if she moaned he would run his hand very slowly up her stomach and over her ribs and he would touch her breast. 3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 04-06 Oh fuck. The thought of touching Grace's breasts put him over the edge. He wondered how he had gotten himself into this mess as he watched the shower water wash his cum down the drain. How was it that he was sharing a bed with his beautiful childhood friend who was driving him insane with desire and who thought he was gay? How did he let it come to this? More importantly, how was he going to get himself out of it without ruining their friendship? How could he tell Grace that he was straight now? What would she think if she knew that she was snuggling into a man who wanted to touch her intimately? And why did he want to touch Grace intimately anyway? He wondered if this was how arranged marriages worked. In many ways she was like a traditional Indian wife to him. She cooked and cleaned for him, and she made the apartment a nice place to come home to. They talked to each other about their lives and he made sure that she always felt safe and comfortable. At the end of the day they went to bed together and cuddled. The only thing that was missing was sex. If it were an arranged marriage his wife would expect sex. How else could she produce children? His baaba and daadi would love to arrange a wife for him, they were fairly modern and open-minded, but they still held onto some of what he considered to be old-world beliefs. They had tried to talk to him about it on several occasions. He had never even considered it as an option before, but what was happening with Grace now was... well it was interesting. Crazy as it sounded, he was starting to like the idea of an arranged marriage. His parents would flip out, there was no doubt about that. But look at the facts... Nine months ago he would have laughed if someone had told him that he would get off on thinking about Grace, but day by day she was becoming more and more appealing to him. The slow steady rhythm of their life together was causing him to respond to her. He wanted her. But Grace couldn't be his arranged marriage. If he was going to have one it had to be with a woman who knew what to expect, one who had been primed for the sort of boring, plodding, steady life he could offer. Grace deserved a fast exciting life with a dynamic man. She deserved to fall in love. He got out of the shower and went into the spare room for clean clothes. Grace was in the living room, sitting on the couch wearing her fluffy robe over her pajamas. "Are you okay Kolya?" She asked. "I made you some chamomile tea, do you want some?" What a good traditional Indian wife she would make. "Thanks milaya. Sure I'll have some." She poured the tea and handed him the mug. "What's the matter?" She looked genuinely concerned. "I just felt sick in the stomach, but I'm feeling better now." She smiled. "You didn't make Zach's chili did you? Because if you did I want to know about it, and I'll sleep in the spare room." He laughed. A few months ago Grace had used a chili recipe that Zach had given her and they'd both had such bad gas that they were up half the night laughing at each other's farts. "No I didn't eat any chili, it's safe in our bed." That night Grace didn't even bother with the pretense of sleeping back to back, she curled up against him and put her arm around him. Nicholas knew he shouldn't but he put his hand over hers and squeezed it lightly. "Congratulations milaya," he whispered, "I knew you would win." She squeezed his body to her as a reply. CHAPTER FIVE SUMMER FRESHMAN/SOPHOMORE YEAR Adrian Wheeler. He was so dreamy and Grace got to look at him for two and a half hours a day six days a week. Jim, the men's coach, had recruited her to cox an eight that was going to Canadian Henley at the end of the summer and Adrian was the stroke. Tall, blonde and ruggedly handsome with a crooked grin and body like a Greek sculpture, Adrian was so good looking he made Grace drool. The first couple of times she had coxed with him in stroke seat she had been so flustered that she kept on making stupid mistakes. She was so preoccupied with how good he looked that she almost rowed them into a bridge. Thankfully she had gotten over that and now she could actually watch him and the rest of the crew objectively. She hadn't been in a men's crew since the fall and it was a pretty big thrill to feel the power of eight fit guys pull the boat through the water again. They were pretty good, but there were definitely things that they could improve upon and Grace made sure they knew it. Guys like these were used to feeling like gods, it didn't hurt to tell them that they weren't. Every now and then she would turn her microphone off and talk to Adrian about how the boat felt. There were a lot of things that a stroke could feel that a coxswain couldn't. He had good sensitivity. He told her that someone was rushing the recovery but he couldn't tell whom. She couldn't tell from looking at the oars and so she had the stroke pair rest and the bow six row while she stood up to figure out who the culprit was. The men were taller than the women and she couldn't see all the way to the bow standing on her seat, she needed to stand on the gunwales. "Hold my legs?" She asked Adrian. He gave her a funny smirk, "Sure." She climbed out of the cockpit and stepped carefully onto the ribs that supported the tracks that his seat rolled over. If she slipped she would put a foot through the delicate hull and sink the boat. Adrian reached out for her and helped to keep her steady. She was standing between his legs and she held onto his shoulders as she stepped up onto the gunwales. Adrian's strong, callused hands encircled her calves and she stood up, keeping her knees bent enough to take the slight lurch of the boat through the power phase of the stroke. She could see so much more from up here. The bow was good, talented. It was a pity for him that he was probably too small to ever make it big time. Two seat had a funny side to side wobble during the recovery. Three seat was scrunching up his shoulders at the catch. Four seat's hands were fast out of the release, which was generally a good thing, but in this case they were too fast and it was causing five seat to rush the slide, just as Adrian had said. She coached from up there for a while, yelling into the wind. It felt good, she felt like that chick in the titanic movie, you know the scene, the one where she is standing on the bow with her arms stretched out like she's flying. After she had done all that she thought she could from up there she carefully descended back into the boat and sat back down in the cox seat. She had the stroke pair join back in. "Better?" She asked Adrian. He smiled. "Way better." He had a nice smile. When she was leaving the boathouse that day Adrian called out to her and she waited for him at the front door. "Can I walk you somewhere?" He asked. "Yeah, I was going to go home. It's just a few blocks away." The chatted about school as they walked. Adrian went to Northeastern University and he was studying criminal justice. He was impressed when Grace told him that she was studying physical therapy. "Awesome, so you can rub this crick out of my neck then?" He was half joking but she could tell he wanted her to say yes. "Sorry, that's not until second year." Much as she yearned to get her hands on this amazing specimen, Grace had more sense than to start something physical with him now. Maybe she would at the end of the summer when she wouldn't have to cox him anymore, but not now. He didn't seem the least bit perturbed by the prospect of ruining their sporting relationship. He asked her out. He wanted to do something with her. "Like what?" She asked. "I don't know, anything. You choose." She smiled. "Okay, on Sunday morning meet me here at seven and wear workout clothes." He tilted his head to the side, a puzzled look on his face. "Okay." Mariko was going to have a field day. She was always saying that she wanted to practice on a big man. On Sunday she and Nicholas waited on the stoop for Adrian to arrive. When Adrian turned the corner and saw her there with another man he looked confused, she guessed that he thought she would be alone. She introduced Nicholas to him as her cousin and he seemed to brighten. Nicholas had a funny half smile on his face as they walked over to the gym. Mariko was already there and her eyes lit up when she saw that Grace had brought a monstrous man for her to play with. She actually jumped on her toes and clapped her hands, her straight black hair bobbing up and down in her pony tail. "What is going on here?" Adrian asked. "We practice self defense on Sundays," Grace explained. "You're going to be the attacker." Adrian looked around at the three of them, who must have appeared small and easy to dominate to him because he shrugged his enormous shoulders. "Okay." They skipped to warm up and then they stretched. "You guys have fun, I'm going to go use the kick bags," Nicholas said and he walked away. Mariko started with Adrian. "Try to grab me," she instructed. Poor Adrian. He really hadn't known what he was in for. Grace felt kind of bad, she should have prepared him better. Mariko was kicking his ass. Then it was her turn and she was proud that she was able to fend him off most of the time. When she made a wrong move Mariko would stop them immediately and coach her on how to do it right. He was a good sport. He didn't seem to mind it too much. Nicholas was at the other end of the gym, someone had asked him to spar and he had his headgear and chest plate on, bouncing lightly on his toes waiting for their attack. His opponent made a move and he countered quickly, striking him in the chest. Nicholas was clearly the superior fighter of the two. Grace never understood why he didn't want to compete. After Mariko was through with Adrian for a second time they decided to call it quits and went back to hers and Nicholas' apartment for pancakes, as had become their tradition. Grace cooked and Nicholas set the table. She cooked Nicholas' pancakes last so that they would be the hottest. "Mmm... thanks milaya," Nicholas said as he munched through his breakfast. "How come he gets berries?" Adrian asked. She hadn't even thought to ask if anyone else wanted berries in their pancakes. "Oh, sorry. I'll make yours with berries next time." Adrian seemed to be satisfied with this compromise. When she said goodbye to him on the front stoop he leaned in for a kiss. She dodged. He looked at her, confusion all over his gorgeous face. "I thought..." "I'm not going to hook up with you until after Canadian Henley, when we don't have to row together anymore," she explained. "Oh. But that's ages away," he complained like a little kid. She laughed. "Well I guess you'll have to learn some patience then." "Okay, if that's what you want. I think I at least deserve a hug though. You and Mariko beat up on me pretty bad, I think I deserve a hug for that." She laughed again. "Okay." She gave him a nice long hug, enjoying the way he towered over her, the way his arms enveloped her completely. Adrian joined their Sunday morning routine. He became a stable fixture. Mariko was delighted and Nicholas didn't seem to mind, so everyone was happy. After a few weeks Adrian pulled her to the side. "Why does Nicholas call you milaya?" He asked. Grace shrugged. "It's what his dad used to call me when we were kids." "Did you know that it means 'my darling'? I looked it up." "No, but that's not what he means when he says it. It's just a nickname." "Are you sure?" Adrian looked skeptical. "Yes. Nicholas isn't interested in me, I'm sure of that." "But you said you weren't really related. I think he has feelings for you." She shook her head. "Adrian, he's gay." He narrowed his eyes. "Are you sure?" "Yes I'm sure, I was there when he came out to our parents." Grace followed Adrian's eyes across the gym to where Nicholas was practicing spinning kicks on the mannequin bust. They were particularly violent moves that he administered with force and precision. The sound of his foot connecting with the mannequin's head reverberated around the gymnasium. "He doesn't look gay to me," Adrian said. The gay issue was something that had been resting heavily on Nicholas' shoulders for weeks. He needed to tell Grace that he wasn't gay, but he didn't know how. It was a little white lie that had snowballed into something big and uncontrollable. He needed to tell her before she found out directly from Mariko. Nicholas and Mariko had been spending a lot of time together and it had turned into something that was more than just friends. They worked out together in the mornings while Grace and Sam Jr. were out on the water. Nicholas thought it was so funny that Grace had found herself a man who was the spitting image of her father. He never called Adrian Sam Jr. out loud, but it amused him to call him that in his head. In a way Nicholas was jealous, but at the same time he recognized that he and Grace weren't meant to be together, and he was glad that she had recovered from the assault enough to consider a relationship. He loved Grace and she drove him mad with desire, but that was just because of their living arrangement. Theirs was like an arranged marriage that only he was aware of. He felt confident that when they stopped living together she would fall away from his fantasies. Adrian seemed like a nice enough guy. Nicholas made sure to practice the most violent bone-breaking brain-damaging moves on the Sundays that Adrian was at the dojang with them, just to make sure that he knew not to place a finger wrong, but he wasn't really that worried about him hurting Grace, at least not physically. He was a big bear of a man, but he had gentleness about him. He didn't seem like the type to assault a girl. It seemed like they were taking things slowly. As far as he could tell they hadn't been to bed together, unless they were making out together at Adrian's place, or at the boathouse, which he doubted. He and Grace were still sleeping in the same bed and now always at the same end of the bed, but Nicholas had a feeling that it was more out of habit than need. After the rape she had needed him there to feel safe and so that he could comfort her when she had nightmares, but she rarely woke up crying anymore. Perhaps once every second or third week she would wake in the night, but it wasn't the frantic wailing and flailing that it had once been, now she just sobbed and cried a little and he would rub her back and she would go back to sleep. He needed to figure out a way to stop sleeping in the same bed as Grace. If Mariko knew she would flip out. Mariko was jealous of Grace. She made little jokes about her that seemed sweet enough but he knew were actually nasty. She liked to refer to Grace as a soft little girl. It sounded innocent enough but he knew there was poison in her words. Once she made a comment that the toilet was the best place for Grace's rowing medal. "I mean, it's so stupid, who cares how fast a bunch of dumb jocks can make a boat go?" She had said. It was just her insecurity, she wasn't a mean person she just didn't have the self-confidence to accept Grace and the position she held in Nicholas' life. Mariko was a very physical person. She was prone to attacking Nicholas in fits of passion. Any time they were alone she wanted to be on top of him. The first time they'd kissed had been when they were practicing at the dojang. She had him locked in a hold and she leaned in and kissed him. He had been surprised but happy. She kissed him hungrily, as if he had something in his mouth that she needed urgently. She wanted those kisses to lead to something more. More than once she had tried to slip her hands underneath his clothes and she had invited him over to her apartment several times. He hadn't gone yet. He made up excuses. Really he felt that he needed to sort out the situation with Grace first. He just didn't know how to do that. On the 4th of July there was a huge festival down by the Charles River. Nicholas wanted to go to hear the Boston Pops performing live and they decided to make a day of it. They took a blanket to sit on and a cooler full of picnic foods. Grace invited Adrian and Stacie and they invited some of their friends, in the end there was a big group of them laying out in the sun. The only one who couldn't make it was Mariko, she had gone home to Connecticut to visit her parents for the long weekend. Her absence didn't bother Grace in the least. Lately she had gotten the feeling that Mariko didn't really like her very much. Grace wore the strappy sandals that Nicholas had given her for her birthday and they looked and felt just right for the occasion. He took after his dad in his gift giving. Her Uncle Tyler loved giving gifts and he always chose the best ones. Stacie had brought her friend Carl with her. After talking to him for a while Grace started to suspect that he was homosexual and that Stacie had brought him along to set Nicholas up. It was such a typical Stacie thing to do, she didn't think about whether or not Nicholas wanted to be set up, she just did it. Act now think later, was the motto Stacie lived by. "Those are cute sandals," Carl complemented her. He was a good-looking guy, he was tall and well built with thick dark hair, tanned skin and blue eyes, maybe Nicholas would like him. "Oh, thanks. Nicholas gave them to me for my birthday." Adrian gave her a sideways glance that let her know that he was not impressed. He had made it clear that he didn't trust Nicholas. Grace and Adrian didn't have a physical relationship but he had made it clear that he wanted her to be his girlfriend. On her birthday he had wanted to take her out and when he'd brought her home she had let him kiss her on the front stoop. That's as far as it had gone though. "Nice choice," Carl said to Nicholas in reference to the shoes. Nicholas just nodded and looked away. Later, when Nicholas got up to go to the bathroom Carl followed him. It made Grace uncomfortable, but she knew Nicholas could look after himself and it was entirely possible that he might want to hook up with Carl so she didn't say or do anything. She couldn't help but count the minutes though. She couldn't help but worry about him. After a few minutes her phone beeped. She had a text message from Nicholas. "I'm going home. Are you okay with the cooler?" He asked. She smiled. Nicholas' text messages were so funny. He always used correct spelling and punctuation. That wasn't the only reason it made her smile. He must like Carl. He was going to take him home. "K. L8r," she wrote back. She hoped that he knew about condoms. She had no idea what he would do with Carl, Nicholas didn't seem like the sort who would sleep with someone he didn't know, but she worried regardless. She knew there were no condoms in their apartment and without the fear of an unwanted pregnancy there may be a reduced impetus to use protection. She was still worrying about this as she saw Carl coming towards them. He had a murderous look on his face. There was something very wrong here. He walked straight up to Stacie. "That dude is not gay," he said, his words brimming with anger. "What? Yes he is. He told me himself," she replied. "Stacie." Carl was on the edge of control, he looked like he was about to loose it. "He threatened to break my collar bone if I tried to touch him. That's not the way gay people interact." Shit. Nicholas must have felt really threatened to say something like that. "You didn't do anything after that did you?" Grace asked. "Well yeah, I didn't know he was serious, the next thing I knew I was on the ground and my chest felt like it had exploded." He pulled up his t-shirt to show her the large black bruise over his sternum. "What the fuck sort of screwed up person does that?" 3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 04-06 Adrian gave her a look that said, 'I told you so.' "Fuck," she breathed. "Why would he lie about being gay?" Adrian turned to her. "So that he can live with you and try to get in your pants." That couldn't be true. She was the one who had moved into his dorm room last fall. They'd only gotten an apartment together because she might get chucked out of his dorm. He'd arranged it. Nicholas had arranged everything. He'd even ordered the beds and dressers and the kitchen table and couch using his dad's credit card. He'd made everything so easy for her. Did he have an ulterior motive? Surely not. They slept together every night and he had never once tried to kiss her or touch her. "I've got to go," she said. She got up and started packing up the picnic stuff. "Adrian will you help me get this stuff home please?" "No." She was surprised. "No?" "No. Why should I help you go home to that screwed up loser who is trying to win you away from me?" That made Grace angry. Even if Nicholas did have an ulterior motive, which she doubted, he was not a screwed up loser. "Fine." She stuffed the blanket in her backpack and picked up the cooler. Luckily it was one of those ones that has a handle and rear wheels, but it was still heavy and awkward. "I'll see you guys later," she said and she turned and walked away. On the way to the train station she passed a homeless man and gave him the entire contents of the cooler. It helped, but it was still bulky and awkward to get around with. Finally she got home and Nicholas wasn't there. She called his phone but it was turned off. He was probably at the gym. She decided to wait for him at home. She made hot tea and surfed the web for a while, doing nothing in particular. Nicholas' family didn't drink coffee and even though her family did she had adjusted to drinking tea since she'd been living with him. Occasionally she would buy a latte from Pete's but she was mostly a tea drinker now. She thought about the conversation that she was going to have with Nicholas. How should she act? She was feeling a lot of different things all at once. It seemed clear now that Nicholas was not gay. He had lied to her and so she felt hurt. She also felt betrayed. She had been sharing a bed with him for almost a year under the pretense that he preferred guys, but he had never touched her sexually and so what was the difference? He obviously didn't have sexual feelings for her. Was there a difference between a straight guy who wasn't interested in you and a gay guy? Probably not. She probably had no right to be upset about the sleeping arrangements. There was something else that was bothering her. If Nicholas was straight then how come he didn't feel anything for her? Was she ugly to him? What straight man could sleep in the same bed as a woman, cuddling together every other night, and never get a hard on? He must think she was ugly. He was the only one who knew about the rape. He must think that she was used and soiled and ugly. He never got a hard on for her because he had no interest in putting his willy anywhere near her tainted body. It was as she had suspected. No man would want her if they knew what had happened. She heard a key in the front door and Nicholas came in. "Hey," he said. "Are you okay?" She asked. "I'm fine. How's Carl?" He grimaced as he asked, as if he regretted what he'd done. Grace waved her hand in dismissal. "He was pissed, but he's fine. He just has a bruise." Nicholas nodded. He was still standing at the entrance of the room, as if he didn't know if he was welcome or not. "So..." Grace ventured. "You're straight aren't you?" He nodded. "I'm sorry Grace. I should have told you." "Why didn't you?" "At first it was convenient for you to think that I was gay. I didn't want you to worry about me hitting on you. I wanted you to feel safe with me. But then I didn't know when or how to tell you that it wasn't true." "Do your parents know?" "Dad does, mom doesn't." "When are you going to tell her?" "When you tell your parents about the rape." She was confused. "What has that got to do with anything?" "Well, saying that I was gay seemed like an easy way to get your parents off your back when they started asking questions about us." Grace thought back to last Christmas, when Nicholas had 'come out'. Her dad had assumed that they were sleeping together and he'd wanted to talk about birth control. It clicked in her brain. Nicholas had told everyone that he was gay so that she wouldn't have to divulge the rape. What a selfless thing to do. She got off the couch, walked across the room and hugged him. "Thank you," she said. He wrapped his arms around her. It wasn't the same as when Adrian hugged her, Adrian felt like a bear, Nicholas felt like... Nicholas. "There's more that I should tell you Gracie." She pulled back. "What?" "Well... Mariko and I are dating." "Oh." She didn't know how she should respond to that. "Okay. So you want your bed back?" He laughed. "What do you mean back? I never had it in the first place. But yes, now that you are sleeping better I think we should have our own rooms. Something tells me that Adrian wouldn't be too impressed if he came over and found us in bed together, no matter if it is just sleeping." "No. He's pretty jealous of you." He smiled. "Well Mariko is beside herself with jealousy for you so we can call it even." That evening they rearranged the bedrooms, and then they walked down to the river to watch the 4th of July fireworks from the BU bridge. There was an out-of-service railroad bridge under the street bridge that and they climbed down to and sat at the edge with their feet dangling down over the water. Nicholas got his fancy cell phone out and tuned in to the radio station that was broadcasting the Boston Pops music that the fireworks were choreographed to. It was an extremely impressive display that seemed to go on forever. There was every type of firework in every imaginable color, although of course they featured the red white and blue heavily. They had those trick fireworks to, the ones that explode into different shapes in the air. "Do you remember when my dad proposed to my mom?" Nicholas asked. Grace smiled, that was one of her earliest childhood memories. "Yeah, I remember I was the one who told him he should get fireworks. Your dad is so over the top. Most people would have just gotten a couple of sparklers or something but he had to go for the full professional pyrotechnics display." "Of course. Dad is a hopeless romantic. He still puts on the most ridiculous displays of affection for her. He still buys her lingerie. A couple of years ago I signed for a package addressed to him and I thought it was spare parts for that remote controlled helicopter we had, so I opened it. It was sexy lingerie. I was completely mortified." Grace laughed. She could imagine the look on Nicholas' face. "Have you ever accidentally walked in on them?" "Urgh..." His head dropped down into his hands. "Don't make me think about that. It makes me so embarrassed." "Why? What happened?" "I was just a kid, maybe six or seven. I didn't know what sex was yet and one morning I woke up and I could hear noises coming from their room, so I went to investigate. I don't know why they didn't hear me open the door and I don't know how long I watched for. Long enough that I've never been able to forget it no matter how hard I've tried." "What was it like?" She asked. He looked over and stared at her for a few seconds. "It was gentle. He was whispering to her in Russian and she was sighing and moaning." Grace felt her face go red, that was more information than she wanted to know, but she had asked for it. He was still looking at her. "The worst part was that I didn't just sneak out and close the door behind me, I asked dad what he was doing." Grace couldn't help but laugh. "What did he say?" Nicholas looked away and shook his head. "I don't remember. All I remember was how shocked they looked, how dad tried to cover her up with the sheets even though he was buck naked with a huge hard on." Grace continued to laugh and then Nicholas let go of his embarrassment and laughed with her. "Later that day I got the first version of the birds and the bees talk." "You got it more than once?" "Yeah, he felt the need to reiterate everything when I was fourteen." "What did he tell you?" For some reason Grace was really curious about what Uncle Tyler had told Nicholas about sex. "Just the usual stuff. The logistics and the precautions, and then he told me to save it for someone I loved." "Is that the usual stuff?" "I assume so, isn't that what your parents told you?" "Yeah, mom sat me down when I was twelve. I have no idea why she thought I would be sexually active at that age, but that's when she chose. She said the same thing. She told me that it made her happy to know that the only man she would ever share her body with was my dad." Suddenly Grace's mood changed. If she ever had a daughter she wouldn't be able to tell her that the only man who'd had her body was her husband. It made her angry and sad at the same time. "Are you a virgin?" She asked. Nicholas was looking out over the water at the fireworks and he nodded. "Yeah." Then he turned to her and did something very cruel. He asked, "Are you?" She couldn't believe he would ask that. It was so mean of him. Was he trying to make her feel bad? "Nicholas, you know what happened... You know I'm not." "Really? Is that what you think sex is? A man forcing himself into a woman?" Grace didn't know what to say. Nicholas was looking at her through the darkness, the brightness of the fireworks illuminated one side of his face in soft flashes. He continued. "Because I don't think that's what our parents were talking about. I'm pretty sure they were talking about what happens when two people decide together that they want to share their bodies with each other. So unless you screwed Randy Jackson under the bleachers in high school, I'm pretty sure you're still a virgin." He smiled at her. Randy Jackson was the quarterback in their high school football team and Nicholas knew full well that she hadn't screwed him or anyone else under the bleachers. She'd gone on a few dates but she'd never had a boyfriend, she'd never even been naked with a guy until the assault. Nicholas put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him. "Milaya, you're still a virgin. You still have that gift to give to whoever you choose." He kissed her on her hair and she started crying. They weren't sad tears or happy tears, they were just tears of emotion. She felt like he had just given something back to her, something she thought she would never have again. She put her arm around his waist and they sat like that watching the rest of the fireworks. Near the end there was one that shot high up into the sky and they both looked up to watch it. It was one of those ones that explode into a shape. It was a red heart, the same as the one at the end of the fireworks that Uncle Tyler had put on for Nicholas' mom when he proposed. They both laughed and she felt Nicholas squeeze her shoulders. She was glad that they hadn't stayed down at the festival with everyone else. This was better. That night she went to their room, which was now her bedroom, and Nicholas went to the spare room, which was now his bedroom. "Goodnight Kolya," she called out. "Sleep tight milaya," he called back. Grace liked it that Nicholas called her milaya, even now that she knew what the literal translation was. She hadn't slept in a room on her own for a while, not since Zach's wedding. The bed felt big and lonely without Nicholas. She wondered what it would be like to have Adrian in here with her. He would probably take up most of the bed. Nicholas had bought Queen sized beds, which were way big enough for the two of them, but Adrian was massive, even in this big bed she would probably be forced to sleep right beside him. But it wasn't the sleeping beside him part that bothered her, it was what she knew he would want to do before the sleeping. She had no idea if she was ready for intimacy yet. She knew she didn't want to have sex with him, at least not yet, but there was a lot of stuff apart from sex that she was interested in but unsure about. She was curious about touching and kissing. Not on her private parts, on the rest of her body, and not on his penis, but on the rest of his body. She still felt very nervous about penises. Just the thought of Adrian's penis made her feel uncomfortable, how was she going to react when he wanted her to touch it? When it was all big and swollen and wanting to go inside her? She didn't know but she had a feeling that she was going to find out. She liked Adrian and she wanted to try and have a relationship with him and part of that was going to have to be physical intimacy. It was only a few weeks later that she went away to St. Catherines in Ontario, Canada, for Canadian Henley. Grace had never been to such a big regatta. It was exciting and frightening at the same time. It seemed like there were thousands of boats out on the water to navigate through. There were multiple times when she had to halt her crew in the middle of a piece and have them hold water so that they didn't crash into some idiot who'd chosen to cross their path. She was thankful for two things. First, Adrian had gotten over the argument that they'd had about Nicholas and second, her dad had decided to fly up to watch. Grace shared a hotel room with her dad, giving her a good excuse not to have to visit Adrian's hotel room. It was so weird to look at Adrian and her dad standing side by side, they looked so similar. Her dad was an inch or two taller and Adrian had brown eyes, not like her dad's bright blue ones, but apart from that they could have been father and son. That is of course if her mom was white. Grace's mom was black and so all of her younger brothers, who were her parents' biological children, were varying shades of brown. Micah was the darkest, followed by Ollie and then Matthew. She coxed six races; the heats, semi-finals and finals for the men's under 23 eight and the men's under 23 four. They ended up coming third in the eight and fifth in the four. She thought it was a pretty good result and the coach and the athletes seemed happy. All of the athletes went out that night and got hammered. She was so glad her dad was there so she didn't have to go with them. Instead they went out to dinner and then he took her to Tim Horton's to buy doughnuts for her to take home the next day. She didn't usually eat shit like this but if there was one thing that Canadians knew how to do it was doughnuts. She got a whole dozen, a couple of the ones that she liked and then a selection of the ones she thought Nicholas would like. "Gracie you can't eat those," her dad pointed out when she ordered the ones that had nuts in them. She looked up at him, not knowing what to say. Her parents knew that she shared an apartment with Nicholas, they thought they'd moved in together just for the summer, but her dad might think it was weird for her to be bringing doughnuts home for him. "Oh," he shook his head as if to acknowledge his own stupidity. "They're for Adrian. Sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you, get whatever you want." Grace hadn't even thought about getting Adrian doughnuts. CHAPTER SIX He had been hesitant and he still wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but Nicholas had finally given in and accepted Mariko's invitation to go to her apartment. He wanted to sit and talk and snuggle with her. To watch movies with her and see which parts made her laugh and whether or not she cried in the sad parts. He wanted to get on the train with her and get off at random stops and explore, see which stores she wanted to go in, what music she flipped through, whether or not she stopped to read the historical markers that were scattered around Boston. He wanted to take her to the Museum of Fine Art and see which pieces she stopped to look more closely at, to walk through the Boston Common with her and see if she dropped her spare change into the instrument cases of the buskers that played around the park, or if she would offer the half of the burrito that she couldn't finish to a homeless guy sitting on the park bench. But these sorts of activities seemed to bore the shit out of Mariko. All she seemed to want was Nicholas alone in her bedroom, and when she finally got that she scared the shit out of him. She sat him down on her bed and told him that she would be back in a minute and then went to the bathroom. Nicholas looked around. Her room was neat and sparse. She didn't have any pictures on the walls or photos in frames. The surfaces were all completely bare. It was nothing like his and Grace's apartment. They had blown up photos on the walls and most of their surfaces were cluttered with photo frames. Grace liked to change the photos every couple of weeks. He loved it. He loved coming home and being surprised with new photos. Sometimes they would be ones he hadn't seen before, like when she put up the ones from Zach's wedding, but other times she would put up old photos that would bring back warm memories and make him smile. Last time she changed the photos she put up the ones of Josh the cow. It had made him laugh. When they were little his dad had gone to Australia and befriended a family that had a dairy farm, and they had let him name some of their cows. The story went that he had named a cow after his brother Josh but that it had to be slaughtered because it was brain damaged. The first photo was of his dad in a muddy pen with three cows with the names Josh, Emma and Maya printed on the cows. The one called Josh was clearly not right in the head. The family promised to name the next calf Josh, which they did, but it turned out that the next calf grew into a prize-winning bull, which they put to stud. Every couple of years the family would send a photo of Josh the bull, which completed the series of photos that Grace had out on the sill above the kitchen sink at the moment. Some of the photos had a teenage girl in them. You could see how she had grown over the years. In the second photo, when Josh the bull was just a little calf, she was about twelve or thirteen and super skinny. In later photos, as Josh grew and the 'best in show' ribbons accumulated on his halter, the girl turned into a teenager and then a young woman. She always looked so happy. Nicholas remembered looking at those photos when he was young and wondering if having a prize-winning bull would make him that happy. He was smiling to himself about the bull photos when Mariko walked back into the room. No, she strutted back into the room. The smile fell from his face. She was dressed in black leather school shoes, knee high socks, the tiniest little plaid skirt he had ever seen and a bra that was so small that it made her breasts look like they were about to spill out of the top of it. Her hair was in duel ponytails, one on either side of her head. Nicholas blinked. She twirled and the skirt fanned out around her, revealing her bare buttocks and completely hairless pubic region. Holy fuck. He knew he shouldn't have agreed to this. Nicholas swallowed hard, trying to think of a way out. Mariko stalked across the room towards him, her hands roaming over her body. One hand pushed on her breast, causing it squeeze against its twin, her cleavage bulging out of her bra. The other hand moved over her skirt, letting the fabric catch under her fingers so it would ride up, giving him a view of her naked pussy. 3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 04-06 She came to a stop between his legs and knelt down. "Let's see what we have here," she purred. She undid his belt and the front of his jeans. Nicholas wanted to protest but he couldn't find his voice. He should have moved to stop her but he was too stunned. He knew his cock was engorged, he could feel the blood coursing through it. Mariko reached her manicured little hand into his boxer shorts and pulled it out. "Oh... this is a nice one Nicky," she said as she stroked her hand up and down his shaft. "Ah, Mariko... I don't think...I mean... I don't want you to..." Mariko smiled wickedly and then she opened her mouth and sank it around his cock. Oh god that felt good. That felt amazingly good. Her mouth was so warm and wet and dynamic, she must have been moving her tongue around or something. Nicholas knew that he didn't want this. He knew that he wanted sex to be special, and in his mind oral sex counted as sex. He did not want kinky sex. He did not want sex with someone he wasn't in love with or who wasn't in love with him. No matter how much his cock wanted this, he did not. "Mariko stop," his voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. She ignored him and started bobbing over him more quickly. "Mariko, please stop." Things were starting to come back into focus. He needed to make her stop. Mariko was either so caught up in what she was doing that it wasn't computing that he wanted her to stop, or she didn't care what he wanted. He tried to push her away gently but she resisted. He shoved her shoulders roughly and she fell backwards onto her butt. She looked up at him, the shock evident on her face. Nicholas' cock stood erect between them, glistening with her spit. He closed his eyes and forced his heart to slow down. He concentrated on his breathing and the feeling of his blood pumping through his body, and drew it all back to his center. He opened his eyes and tucked his now limp penis into his pants and zipped and buttoned them back up. Mariko was looking at him in stunned silence. Nicholas didn't know what to say to her and so they just sat there looking at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Finally she broke the silence, but it wasn't good. She started crying. Fuck. First she attacks him and then she starts crying like he's done something horrible to her. "Mariko..." He knelt down on the floor and sat beside her. "I'm not ready for that yet." "You think I'm ugly," she sobbed. He put his arm around her shoulders. "No. You are beautiful. You are very beautiful." "Then why don't you want me?" "Of course I want you, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I don't know you well enough... I don't even know your middle name." She looked up at him, her eyes damp with tears. "I don't have one." He smiled, trying to bring the mood back to something approaching normal. " No middle name? You want one of mine? I have a million." "What are they?" "Are you ready? I have a long name." She nodded. "I am Nicholas Amir Chandrasekhar Galloway Gray." She scrunched up her nose. "Why do you have so many?" "I don't know. My mom just kept on adding names as I got older." He did know why he had so many names but he didn't feel like getting into that with her now. "Hey, why don't we go out and walk by the river?" He asked. "It's a full moon tonight." "Okay." She put her clothes back on and they walked along the river. It was a warm night, the air thick with humidity. He tried to make conversation with her but she kept on going silent. Nicholas loved being outside in the middle of the night. He loved the stillness of the usually busy world around him, but Mariko didn't seem to be enjoying this. He looped them back past her apartment to drop her off. She didn't invite him inside and he was glad. He hugged her on the front stoop and nuzzled into her neck. "Don't be embarrassed Mariko, it's just me, I'm not going to tell anyone." "Not even Grace?" She said it so quietly that he almost missed it. He pulled back and looked down at her. "No. I wouldn't tell that to Grace. I don't talk to her about you." Mariko nodded. She refused to make eye contact with him. "Gym in the morning?" He asked. "Okay." He rubbed her arms. "Okay. I'll see you then." He kissed her on the forehead and let go of her. She still hadn't made eye contact. She turned around and entered the building without looking back at him. Shit. Nicholas had a feeling that he had lost her. Not that he really had her in the first place. They practiced martial arts together almost every morning but he didn't really know her that well, he only knew the surface of her. He was upset about it, but what could he have done differently? He didn't want to have sex with her. He shouldn't have gone in the first place. He hadn't felt comfortable going, he should have listened to his instincts. When he got home the apartment felt big and empty. He missed Grace. She'd been gone for four days but it felt like four months. He had been missing her for weeks before she left though. He missed her body beside him in the bed at night, he craved that physical contact with her. He missed the way she took her socks off in the middle of the night. Every night Grace put socks on to go to bed and every morning he would wake up and her socks would be on the floor on her side of the bed. The next morning at the gym he was relieved that Mariko showed up, and that she acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Maybe they would be able to get over last night after all. It was Saturday and usually he tried to do something with her on Saturdays but she told him that she had made plans with her friends from school and so she would just see him at the gym again the next morning. It was fine with him. He wanted to clean the apartment before Grace got home anyway. Usually she did the cleaning and he did the laundry but he didn't want her to get home and feel like she had to clean up when she hadn't even been there for the past five days. When he was done cleaning he decided to surprise her by changing some of the photos. Nicholas had access to thousands of photos that his dad had taken over the years. His dad always had a camera with him and he stored all of the photos on a server in their basement, a server that Nicholas had remote access to. He logged on and started browsing through the albums. The files were indexed by date but Nicholas had software on his laptop that could recognize faces, so he started browsing the photos that the computer recognized as having Grace in them. It wasn't perfect, every now and then it would misidentify her and he was sure that it was missing her in a lot of them but it was easier than sorting through by date. God his dad took a lot of photos. There were photos from every conceivable event or milestone. He flipped through photos of Grace in the high school musical, opening presents beside multiple Christmas trees, learning how to ski, canoeing on an alpine lake, carving Halloween pumpkins. As he sorted through them he confirmed the correct matches and denied the incorrect ones and it started to pick up photos from when she was younger. Nicholas was in a lot of these photos of young Grace. Their parents had shared childcare responsibility so that all of them could work. His mom was the only one who had always worked full time, the other three had worked part time and looked after him and Grace and later Matthew, Lucas, Micah and Ollie. There were photos of them at the park, at the zoo, playing with his train set, and then he found one of her playing dress-up with Cassie, his family's dog. He opened the album from that date and looked through them. They were so cute. He looked at the date on the folder, they would have been three years old. They had obviously had a pretty good selection of dress-up clothes, there were heaps of photos and they were wearing several different outfits throughout the time that his dad had taken the photos. He wanted to print one of these out and put it in a frame for her. He chose the one in which she was dressed in a ballerina tutu with cowboy boots on her feet and a fireman's hat on her head. Cassie was sitting obediently beside her with a matching tutu around her neck. Grace had some sort of fairy wand in her hand and Nicholas was in the background with a bridal veil on his head. It wasn't the cutest photo, but it was the one that was most likely to make her laugh. He transferred the file to his laptop and then a data stick and walked down to the local CVS pharmacy to print it out. It didn't take her long to notice it when she got home and she was delighted by it. "Where did you get that photo? I've never seen it before." He told her about his dad's server full of photographs and showed her how to use his laptop to search through them. She sat there for hours looking through photos. He got his guitar out and played while she sat glued to the computer. Every now and then she would giggle or squeal and motion for him to come and look at a funny photo. He showed her how to transfer the file onto his computer and made a folder for her on the desktop. A few minutes later she started laughing. "I can see your willy," she giggled. "What?" He got up to look at the photo. Sure enough, there was Nicholas, naked as the day he was born, playing with a bucket and spade in the sand at the beach, his little boy penis dangling for the world to see. She grinned up at him. "It's not very big." "Gracie, I was..." He checked the date on the file... "Four years old... And I was probably cold. It looks cold in that photo." Grace laughed. "Yeah, right. You were cold in San Diego in the middle of summer." "Two can play that game," he countered. "There are photos on there where you can see your who-ha." Grace burst out laughing. "My who-ha?" Nicholas felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment. "Yeah, you know, your private parts." Grace was still laughing at him. "I never knew I had a who-ha." "Okay, whatever." Nicholas didn't feel like being teased anymore about his lack of knowledge of the correct terminology for a girl's pubic region. "I'm going to start dinner." Grace gasped, suddenly serious. "What?" He asked. "I forgot to tell you, I invited Adrian over for dinner. I hope that's okay." "Yeah that's fine. I don't care." Nicholas tripled the amounts of everything that he was cooking. If Adrian was anything like his or Grace's dads he would consume an exorbitant amount of food. It wasn't long before there was a knock at the front door and he heard Grace letting Adrian in. They were in the living room and she was showing him photos of her family on Nicholas' computer. He could hear her explaining who everyone was. After a while he said, "It smells good, what are you cooking?" "Nicholas," Grace called out, "what's for dinner?" He wanted to mess with her to get back at her for the who-ha comment. He walked out into the living room and said, "Zach's chili." Grace's eyes went wide and she looked at him as if he were some sort of monster. He couldn't help but laugh at her. "I'm only kidding. It's tacos. Hey Adrian." "Hi." Adrian looked up at him. "Grace told me that you got third place, congratulations." "Thanks, it was a good race." He seemed cheerful. They chatted amicably over dinner. Adrian was a nice guy, not the sharpest stick in the forest, but a nice guy nonetheless. He was born in New York City, same as Nicholas was, and his family had moved back to Massachusetts when he was young. He had an older brother named Paul. Grace had brought doughnuts back from Canada and they ate them for dessert. Nicholas got the fruit bowl out of the fridge to go along with them. He figured he'd better try and balance the crap out with something healthy. Grace said that she and Adrian would do the dishes so he took his guitar and went back into his room to play a bit more. Nicholas didn't have much of a voice but he was a decent guitar player. He'd often thought about joining a band, maybe he would this year. Now that Grace was essentially independent there was no reason for him not to go out and get himself a social life. He went back out into the living room to get his computer and Grace and Adrian were nowhere in sight. They must have gone back to her room. When he brushed his teeth he listened carefully for noises coming through the wall that separated the bathroom from her room. He was reassured when he heard their voices. She was okay. He trusted Adrian, that's why he was surprised when he heard her voice later that night calling for him frantically. "Kolya! Kolya!" He didn't put clothes on and he didn't knock on her door, he just ran straight in there. His first instinct was to beat the shit out of Adrian. Obviously he'd tried to make her do something she didn't want to. But she was almost fully dressed, curled up on the bed crying and sobbing loudly, and Adrian still had his jeans on. He was sitting back on his knees looking at Grace as if in shock. The confusion in Adrian's eyes turned to fear when he saw Nicholas, and he put his hands up in the air as if in surrender while he tried to scramble away from Grace. Adrian hadn't been trying to force her into anything. She'd just gotten spooked, like the time with Micah in her parents' living room. Nicholas sat down on the bed and pulled Grace into his embrace. "Hush milaya, it's okay, you're safe." Grace put her arms around him and buried her face into his chest. "It's okay Gracie, it was just a nightmare. You're at home. I'm here. Everything is okay." He rubbed her back. She was calming down. She wasn't wailing anymore, she was just breathing unevenly and sniffing. Nicholas felt that familiar sadness settle over his heart. She hadn't had a fit like this in months, and he had been hoping that she might be over them. It had been almost a year since the assault, but as far as he knew this was the first time she'd been in bed with a guy. Apart from him of course, but that didn't count. Much as it saddened him, he knew that Adrian would be the one who would get to help her through this next phase of her recovery. Adrian was what Grace wanted in a man. Nicholas was what Grace wanted in a friend. "Open your eyes milaya." She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her eyelashes clumped together with tears. "Look," he nodded over at Adrian. "It's just Adrian, he's not going to hurt you. Look at him." Grace looked over at Adrian who was perched on the opposite edge of the bed, his eyes wide and his mouth gaping open with shock. "He's harmless, just like a big teddy bear. Mariko could beat him up with one hand tied behind her back." Grace let out a funny sound that he guessed was a laugh. "It's okay baby," Nicholas reassured her as he stroked her hair. "He'll sleep out on the couch and you can talk about it in the morning." She nodded. Nicholas motioned with his head for Adrian to leave the room. He got off the bed and picked his shirt up off the floor then walked out. Nicholas pulled the covers over Grace and rubbed her back for a few minutes. "Sorry Kolya," she croaked. "Don't worry about it milaya, it'll be okay. Just go to sleep now." Adrian was waiting for him on the couch. "Just give me a second," Nicholas said. He went into his room and put clothes on. He had been naked that whole time. Now that he and Grace weren't sleeping in the same bed anymore he slept naked some nights. "She didn't tell you did she?" Nicholas asked when he came back out. He sat down on the desk chair. "No. I don't know what the fuck that was in there. I hardly even touched her." Adrian looked tired and upset. Nicholas nodded. Adrian wasn't a bad guy he just hadn't known to be careful with her. "Grace went through a... traumatic experience." "What happened?" He asked. Nicholas shook his head. "I don't know how much she wants you to know, I think it's better if she tells you herself." Adrian breathed out heavily and looked down at the palms of his hands. "That's why you're so protective of her?" "Yeah." Adrian shook his head slowly. "I don't know what to tell you Adrian. If you want to be with her you're just going to have to try and work through it with her." Nicholas got up and went to the hallway closet to get their camping gear. The couch was nowhere near big enough for Adrian, he would be way more comfortable on a sleeping pad on the floor. He threw his sleeping bag to him and blew up his thermarest, moved the coffee table over and laid it down for him. "Goodnight," Nicholas said and started to walk away. "Nicholas?" He turned back to him. "Thanks for not beating me up." He was serious. Nicholas sighed. "That thing with Carl... let me tell you, Carl is not a nice man. Outside of sparring I've only ever hit two people in my life and both times were in self defense." Adrian looked away and nodded. "Goodnight."