“I see iced tea or water in your future.” His whine made me smile in spite of myself. “How ’bout an Arnold Palmer?”
“There is no way there is actual sweet tea in that refrigerator,” he assured me.
“There is. Marisol made some.”
“It’s doubtful that it’s real Southern sweet tea,” he announced, sounding really snotty about it.
“I dunno. I don’t drink tea, but you wanna try it out, kid?”
“Not a kid,” he corrected me, as he’d been doing all day. “You’re not that much older than me.”
“Nine years is a lot,” I reminded him as my phone chirped and I answered it. “Yeah?”
“Loc, there’s a woman down here at the gate who says she’s Nick’s girlfriend.”
I grunted. “What’s her name?”
“Talia.”
“Hey.” Nick lifted his head to meet my gaze. “Is Talia your girlfriend?”
“Who?”
Clearly, he had no idea who she was.
“That’s a negative on the girlfriend,” I told Tony.
There was a pause, and I could hear yelling and cursing in the background on his end.
“Okay,” Tony said, back on the line, “I told her to leave—nicely, I might add—but she says she’s going to call in a wellness check to the police if we don’t let her see him.”
“That’s fine, tell her to g’head and call. The police are aware that I’m here and that there would be many calls to them once I cut Nick off from his hundreds of fake friends.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, that’s how this works,” I explained. “When you cut off leeches, they bitch about it before they get the hint and disappear.”
“She wants to know why she can’t reach him on the phone.”
“I changed his number,” I told him. “If he calls her, she can have his new one, but he has to specifically find the contact on his new phone. If she’s not special, it’ll never happen, because there are literally hundreds of contacts in there with just initials.”
“You’re breaking hearts all over the place, Loc,” he said, chuckling. “How are all these people supposed to reel in a sugar daddy with you being a cockblock?”
“Exactly right,” I said, smiling as I hung up.
“Fine,” Nick told me, yawning and stretching out on the couch. “I’ll try an Arnold Palmer, but the lemonade better be fresh.”
I rolled my eyes and went to the kitchen.
As I anticipated, he fell under the spell of Peter Jackson’s epic. What was difficult was that because he was used to putting all manner of drugs into his system, it was hard for him to get comfortable. He’d been full of God-knew-what just a few months ago, and so he jolted now and then and continually twitched and shivered. He also had trouble regulating his body temperature, so even though it was seventy-two degrees in the house, he had on socks and sweats, a T-shirt and a zippered cardigan. When I gave him one of the blankets I’d put in the chest that he used for a coffee table, he stared at me, stunned.
“What?”
“Since when are there blankets in there?”
“Since yesterday,” I replied.
He reached for the remote and paused the movie. “What did you do with all my blow?”
“You didn’t actually have very much,” I told him.
“No, there was a lot.”
“Then somebody took it with them.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you got it all, because I’m really good at hiding my shit.”
He sounded so cocky. “I had another security company in here on Friday, and they have a retired drug dog, so believe me when I tell you there is nothing left in this house but some edibles.”
He looked pained.
“From what I understand, they can help you sleep,” I told him.
“What?”
“The pot edibles,” I clarified.
“I don’t have them to sleep. I have them to get high.”
I shrugged.
“And what’d you do with all my booze?”
“The high-end wine was donated in your name to a charity auction, along with the unopened top-shelf bourbon, scotch, and tequila.”
“And the rest?”
“Well, the rest went down the drain,” I explained, “and it was painful to see the whiskey go, so yeah, I share in your time of mourning.”
He got to his knees on the couch, glaring at me. “I’m not a child, and you can’t treat me like one.”
“I’ll make you a deal; you stop acting like one, and I’ll stop treating you like one,” I countered, squinting at him. “Whaddya say?”
He shook his head. “I’m going to call my lawyer tomorrow.”
“On a Sunday?”
“When you’re rich, they always pick up the phone,” he assured me snidely.
“Good, then make the call. I think you should.”
“You don’t think I will.”
“No, I’m sure you will, and I suspect she’ll tell you exactly what I’m telling you now,” I said with a sigh. “You need to play ball with Mr. Cox so he doesn’t take over your entire life.”
“What’s the difference between that and this?”
“Well, right now, me being here still gives you a say. You get to spend your money how you like, as long as it’s not on drugs or booze,” I told him. “With a conservatorship, there are hard limits not only on who you can see and where you can go, but also on how you’re allowed to spend any money that’s allotted to you.”