By Hunter Perez

I opted not to block Nicky on social media. Instead, I responded that I would contact him once I had more details on my Albuquerque trip. I quietly resolved not to engage him in further conversation – while I had no bad feelings to him, I was also not eager to pick up where we left off ten years earlier.

The next morning, there was a message from Nicky on my social media page. “Good morning!” he wrote. “I hope today will be a happy and productive day for you. Take care of yourself! Nicky.” He added a couple of smiley emojis at the end of the message. I did not respond.

The following morning, there was another message. “Good morning! It will be a good day for you, enjoy it! Nicky.” A few more smiley emojis were part of that message. Again, I did not respond.

Each morning, my social media page featured a similar message of good wishes and cheer. The emojis were soon joined by gifs and memes with happy kittens, dancing penguins and whatever else the Internet had to offer for chuckle-generating distraction. But rather than be annoyed by the morning message, I found myself looking forward to the start-the-day greeting and positive vibes – hey, no one else was sharing such glad tidings with me on a daily basis. The emotionally needy person from the reconnected communications was replaced with the old eager-to-please Nicky I knew from our college days. After a week of these messages, I began to respond with a thumbs-up emoji.

I received word from my boss that the Albuquerque trip was indefinitely delayed because one of the stakeholders in the deal was hospitalized from a cardiac arrest. I responded to one of Nicky’s morning greetings with the news of what occurred. He responded, “I am sorry to hear this. I will pray for your friend’s speedy recovery.” The person in question was not a friend of mine – in fact, he was a member of the other side of the deal and I didn’t know him – but the sincerity of Nicky’s message convinced me this little mistake could go uncorrected.

Now, my mornings had a new routine – yogurt and coffee for breakfast, a quick glimpse at the TV news for the weather forecast and checking my social media page for Nicky’s daily appearance. He began to add photographs to these messages – he said he took a photography class at a local community college and wanted to share glimpses of New Mexico. These were the nicest surprises of them all – some of the photos of the New Mexico landscapes and the funky Route 66 attractions were uncommonly well done. While I kept my responses to a thumbs-up emoji, I appreciated what he was sharing.

On occasion, he included photos of himself. One picture showed him playing golf, with the caption “Rory McElroy won’t be losing sleep.” Since I don’t play golf, I had to look up the person he was citing to get the joke. Another photo found him standing next to a horse, with the caption “Greeting from Ruidoso Downs.” Again, I needed some quickie research to understand his reference.

My favorite photo was also the funniest, if only for the wrong reason. “Me and Shirley MacLaine at a Santa Fe art gallery gala!” he wrote under the photo that found him wearing a well-tailored black suit and a crisp black tie while holding up a glass of red wine as a toast to the camera. Nicky had an ear-to-ear grin while his arm was around Ms. MacLaine, who appeared to be looking beyond the photographer with a vaguely hopeful expression, as if trying to locate someone to rescue her from this situation. With this photo, I finally gave a written response – “Star collector!” Nicky responded with a heart emoji.

But what truly intrigued me about these messages were the things that Nicky was not sharing. He didn’t say who took the photos where he was posing, nor did he volunteer any personal information on any aspects of his life. All I could determine about his life was his fondness for photography, golf, horse racing and art gallery parties. Strangely, he never said anything about the ghost town property that he wanted me to appraise.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about his daily wishes to my having a good day was that he never included inquiries on what I was doing. If he wanted to learn more about where my life was going, he didn’t share that curiosity. I was grateful that he didn’t ask a thousand questions – or any questions, for that matter.

Roughly six weeks passed before I received word that the Albuquerque trip was rescheduled for the beginning of the following month. I informed Nicky of my schedule – I arrived on a red-eye flight on a Thursday night, the business aspect of the trip would take up all day on a Friday and I had a free Saturday before having to return home to New York City on a Sunday. He gave me his phone number and asked me to text him on the Saturday morning regarding when and where I would be ready to see him.

At this point, I bought a burner phone that I would use to communicate with him while in Albuquerque. While I was more comfortable over having a reunion with him, I still felt it would be better if I kept him separate from the rest of my world – hence the standalone phone reserved only for him. I gave him the number to that phone but feared that I would be bombarded with calls and text messages. I was wrong, as the phone only rang once – a recorded message that I won a free trip to the Bahamas.

Cut to the chase: the Albuquerque business deal was closed after a long and exhausting day and the Saturday came around when we would see each other again. I texted him the hotel where I was staying and informed him I would be ready after nine in the morning. He responded that the time was fine and he was eager to see me again.

I came into the lobby of the hotel exactly at nine and looked around for Nicky. No one was there. A text message came in: “Running a little late due to traffic. Can you please meet me outside the entrance?”

I stood in front of the hotel and looked up and down the street. Five minutes passed, then ten. A black SUV slowly pulled up to the front of the hotel, but an elderly lady came out of the lobby and made her way into the vehicle, which sped off. A few minutes later, a flashy red convertible came zooming up, only to stop abruptly at the hotel’s entrance. The driver was not Nicky and his passenger – another elderly lady from the hotel – was driven away.

By now, twenty minutes passed and I was getting antsy. I took out a vaping pen from my jacket and started to inhale a bit of relaxation. A police car slowly drove up the street and parked in front of me. The door opened and out stepped what could have been a cartoon version of a Western law enforcement officer – a white Stetson hat, dark sunglasses and a form-fitting uniform that framed a powerfully constructed body.

“Excuse me, Sir, but do you realize you’re not allowed to smoke in front of this hotel?” the officer said.

I choked on my smoke and stammered, “I am sorry, officer. I was vaping, not cigarette smoking.”

The officer took off his sunglasses and folded his muscular arms across his chest, flashing a big smile. Waving the smoke from my view, I blinked and stepped forward, uncertain at what I was seeing.

“Have I changed that much?” he said.

“Nicky?” I gasped. “I…I didn’t know you were a cop.”

“Deputy sheriff,” he said. “To be precise, auxiliary deputy sheriff. This is volunteer work that I do in my off-hours. This isn’t my full-time job.”

I stared at Nicky dumbfounded for what seemed to be much too long while his smile grew wider.

“You never told me,” I said.

“You never asked,” he responded. “Do you like what you see?”

I started laughing and tried to regain my composure. “Of course, you look wonderful. Very sharp. I just never expected this. Looking at you, I just…” I stopped, not certain how to respond.

“You may find this funny, but a lot of tourists ask to take their picture with me,” he said. “I think it’s because of the hat and the sunglasses. I’ve found my picture in at least 14 different Instagram pages, usually with some funny comment about wanting to be arrested by me.”

“I don’t blame them,” I said. “Who wouldn’t want to be arrested by someone who looks as good as you?”

“I wouldn’t mind arresting someone who looks as good as you,” Nicky said. “Come over here and put your hands on the car. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Without thinking, I followed his suggestion and walked to the car, placing my hands on the hood. He told me to hold my head down and he started to run his hands down my body, reciting what sounded like the Miranda Rights speech. When he was done, he took my right arm and gently twisted it behind my back. I felt a handcuff click on the wrist and he repeated the move with my left arm. He turned me around by my shoulders and stood right in front of me.

“You’re under arrest for being too beautiful without a license,” he whispered.

I abruptly burst out laughing. “Oh, my goodness, I feel like I’m in a MetalbondNYC story! This is really amazing.”

“How would like to see the ghost town?” he said.

I nodded, and he opened the back door to his police car.

“Shouldn’t you take these things off?” I said, motioning with my head to the locked wrists behind my back.

He grinned, “Of course not. That’s the best way to travel in a police car.”

To my astonishment, Nicky maneuvered me into the back of the car, putting his hand on my head to ensure I didn’t bang it while getting seated. Once inside, he secured a seatbelt on me. Our faces were almost close enough to touch when he looked square into my eyes – the beaming expression from our initial greeting seemed to change instantly into something more rueful. Without saying anything, he deeply planted his lips on mine – and just as quickly, he drew back and closed the door. I looked around to see if anyone witnessed what transpired but there was no one to view us as Nicky drove away from the hotel.

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Metal would like to thank the author, Hunter Perez, for this story!  He’s also author of The Friend Request, available on Amazon.