Page 34 of Heartsick & Lipsticks
NICK
One week.That was how long I’d known that Skye Taylor existed. So why couldn’t I remember a time before I did? She’d taken up permanent residency in my head, and it was hard for me to imagine a time when I thought about anything but her.
I hadn’t seen her since she got off of her last shift on Friday morning. I’d done everything I could to stop thinking of her over the weekend, including going out on two dates. Nothing had worked.
As I sat at my desk in my office, there were about a hundred things I should be doing. But what was I doing? Looking up Skye Taylor online. Again.
She’d opened up a little about her life when I’d asked her if she’d always wanted to be a nurse, and it only made me want to know her more. But since then, all of our conversations had been shorter and shorter.
The first time she excused herself the moment I walked into the room, I told myself that she just took her job seriously. But after it happened the next day and the day after that, I was starting to take it personally. She was avoiding me because she didn’t want to talk to me. I had two pieces of evidence to support that theory. First, she seemed to have no problem talking to Parker, Carmen, Bella, and Kurt. And two, I’d spoken at length to Gary, the day nurse, several times, and I knew a lot about him.
I knew that he was married to Annette, and the couple had twin sons, Mark and Max, who had just completed their first year of college. He had two dogs: a Brussels Griffon named Chewie after Chewbacca and a Shih Tzu named Princess Leia. He and Annette met in college; they’d been married for twenty-two years, and she worked in forensic science as a DNA analyst. He was a die-hard A’s, 49rs, and Warriors fan.
I was good at getting information out of people and had a steel-trap memory, which helped when my job called for networking, which was often. I had more than twenty years of experience as a radio and podcast host, interviewing people.
Since Skye wasn’t as forthcoming with details about her life as Gary was, I resorted to cyber research, which sounded a lot better than stalking.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot about her. Her Instagram page was private. I thought about following her, but I thought that might seem a little strange. The only other site she was on was Complete Care Hospice. All of the employees had a page with their bio and photo. Her bio was a single paragraph that only outlined and highlighted her professional qualifications. It made sense that there was nothing about her personal life, but it was still frustrating.
I wanted to know more, so much so that I considered doing something I’d only ever done once before in my life. I picked up my phone and had only a moment’s hesitation before dialing.
“Hey man,” Maddox answered after only two rings.
“Can you do a background check on someone?”
Maddox could find out anything about anyone. I’d used his skill set to help find out who Bella’s mom was. He’d worked in tandem with the private eye I’d hired, and it only took two days to find out who and where she was.
“Sure, what do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?” he questioned.
“Yes.”
“Who am I running?”
“Her name is Skye Taylor.”
“Is that it? Just a name?”
“She works for Complete Care Hospice.”
“Is she one of the nurses caring for your mom?” Maddox asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you not trust her in your house?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just—” I had no idea how to tell my friend that I just couldn’t stop thinking about her and needed to know everything I could about her. Before I replied at all, there was a knock on my door a second before it opened, and Jada walked in.
I could see from the expression on her face that I’d fucked up.
“Hold on!” I told Maddox.
“What are you doing?” Jada asked. “You’re late.”
I glanced down at my watch and saw that there were only five minutes to air. How in the fuck had an hour passed? “Shit. Maddox, I’ve gotta go, but you’ll look into it?”
