Chapter Six
Alex
Mom is up and gone by the time I head downstairs in the morning.
She’s meeting with her framer in Lincoln to talk about her current commission, and then she has a client meeting in Omaha in the afternoon.
I love my mom, but I’m secretly happy she’s not home so I won’t have to explain why Nico showed up on our doorstep at nearly one thirty in the morning, looking worse than I’ve seen him look in a long time.
Actually, I still don’t even know why he’s here. It had to have been bad for him to come over so late.
And, given the conversation I had with my mom yesterday—what I didn’t really admit but sort of did—having Nico sleeping over in my room, even though nothing happened, might look a little sus. Nico definitely doesn’t need my meddling mom to be interrogating him right now.
What he will need, though, when he eventually wakes up, is coffee and food. And those things are easy. I can do coffee. And we’ve got pancake mix and eggs.
So I shuffle around the kitchen, taking my time as I cook up breakfast. Then I plate everything, drenching his pancakes and scrambled eggs in syrup, just how he likes it, and I arrange our plates and coffees on a big tray and head back upstairs.
It’s probably after nine now, but he’s still out cold when I push the door open with my foot, balancing the tray carefully to make sure nothing spills. I pause in the doorway, and my heart skips a beat.
He’s asleep in my bed.
Not that it means anything, other than the fact that he was too exhausted to argue with me last night.
But the sight of him there, tucked away under my comforter, relaxed and sleeping, with his head resting on my pillow—it does something to me.
I tear my eyes away, because I shouldn’t be staring at him, and I cough lightly to clear my throat as I step into the room. He stirs, blinking his eyes open with a quiet groan, and I smile.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” I tease as I set the tray on my desk.
He groans and tugs the pillow up over his head. “Too early.”
“That’s why I brought coffee. And pancakes and eggs.”
“Syrup?”
“A ridiculously excessive amount, just for you.”
He groans again but pushes the pillow off his face, and my stomach drops as he turns his head to look at me. His cheeks are sunken, and his skin is pale, contrasting with the dark circles under his eyes.
Just how long has he been having trouble sleeping? And why does he look like he hasn’t eaten in days?
I force a small smile and tilt my head toward the food. “You want?”
He hesitates, his eyes shifting to the tray on my desk. Then he bites his lip and pushes himself up to sit cross-legged. “Um, yeah. Thanks.”
It feels like a win, even if it’s just a small one.
I bring the whole tray over, and we both scoot back on the bed until our backs are against the wall. He laughs lightly as he picks up his plate.
“Barely enough syrup.”
“Barely enough?” I fake-scoff, knowing he’s joking. “There’s more syrup on the plate than real food.”
“Syrup is a real food,” he argues as he cuts off a piece of one of the pancakes. He brings the plate up to his chin to keep himself from spilling, and he takes a bite, syrup dripping off the pancake. It’s funny, and I laugh.
“Whatever,” I say.
He turns his head toward me with a silly grin and sort of rolls his eyes before taking another bite. And just like that, my heart soars.
This is us. This has been us for a while now.
As soon as I think that thought, though, reality hits, and it’s sobering as hell. I look back at my own plate, but my appetite is gone, even if I haven’t yet eaten a single bite.
How much longer do we have? My brain automatically does the numbers and spits the answer back out: just over one hundred days. We have just over one hundred more days of this.
Unless I can convince him to come to California with me.
I force myself to eat, if only so he doesn’t notice the look of existential dread that must have crossed my face.
And the silence persists for a few minutes.
It’s not uncomfortable, thankfully, and I feel something like relief when he eats everything I’ve put on the plate and drinks his whole coffee.
I’m slower to eat than him, but that in itself isn’t unusual. By the time I’ve finished, he’s leaning back against the wall, his eyes closed lightly as he cradles his now-empty coffee mug in his hands.
I should say something about California.
Start the conversation again, especially now that I’m armed with all the information from my mom’s impromptu planning session in the car the night before.
But there’s still a funny feeling tickling the back of my mind, telling me now’s not quite the right time. So I try something else instead.
“Wanna head out to the river today?” I ask as casually as I can. “The weather’s supposed to be good, I think.”
Platte River is just a couple of miles east of town, and even back before Nico got given his mom’s old car when he turned sixteen, we used to walk or bike out there a lot, especially in the summer.
There’s a spot we found that’s sort of “ours”—a small, sandy beach just about a quarter of a mile from the road, sheltered by a thick stand of trees—and despite the crowds of people that head out to the river every summer, our spot is hidden just enough that we’re always the only ones there. That seems to suit Nico quite well.
I watch him, waiting for his answer, but he just opens his eyes to stare down at his mug, and his fingers begin tapping anxiously on the ceramic. Now the silence is uncomfortable, especially when he shakes his head and frowns but still doesn’t answer.
“Oh. Alright. Did you have something else in mind? I don’t have any plans, and—”
“I should go,” he cuts in, though he doesn’t move from his spot on my bed.
Confused, I shift to face him, sitting cross-legged, and he finally looks up at me.
There’s a sadness in his eyes that I can’t stand, and it’s the same as what I saw last night, when he let me hug him.
I swallow back all the discomfort and emotions swirling around in my chest, and this time, it’s me shaking my head.
“Don’t go. Whatever it is, we can talk about it. Here, or at the river, or hell, wherever you want. Or we don’t have to talk at all. That’s fine, too. But don’t go. Please.”
His expression tightens, and he drops his eyes back to his hands.
With a sudden flash of fear—fear that he’s pulling away from me, even though the summer’s not even really started yet—I scoot closer, part of my brain arguing that maybe I should just tell him how I feel.
But that seems like an awful idea when I let myself think about it more, at least right now, in this heavy moment that’s being held together by a thread.
His long, slender fingers wrap tighter around the mug, and he closes his eyes again, his lips pursed in a frown. The muscles in his jaw tremble. And I can’t stand it.
I set my coffee and plate back on the tray next to his plate, then carefully reach over and take his mug from him.
I move the entire tray to the floor next to the bed, and when everything’s cleared off, I scoot back onto the bed, shimmying over until I’m next to him, our shoulders just barely touching.
Do friends do this? I don’t really know. I don’t do this with anyone besides him. So maybe the answer is no.
Still, I only hesitate when he flinches slightly as my arm comes up around his shoulders. “Nico?”
His body shakes, and he lets out some quiet sound—some uncertain, uneasy whimper—and leans into me.
He could have moved away. He could have jumped up from the bed, repeated his earlier “I should go,” and left. But he didn’t. He chose to lean on me instead.
That has to mean something.
I shut my eyes and squeeze his shoulder gently, and I take a long, slow breath.
He’ll talk when he’s ready. I know this.
Yet, I still have to hold myself back from asking him what happened last night.
I let myself be distracted by his closeness, by the warmth of his body next to mine, by the feel of his curly hair brushing against my cheek.
We stay there like that for minutes. Or, at least, it seems like minutes.
My brain is jumping all over the place, wondering what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling.
I relish the closeness, but then there’s also this overwhelming sadness in my heart because he’s obviously hurting.
I want to hug him, like he let me last night.
And I find myself wishing, yet again, that I could tell him how much he means to me.
God, what the hell is holding me back?
His shaking finally calms, and his body relaxes a little. And just as I’m about to say something, he slowly straightens up and scoots away. The space between us is only a few inches, but it feels much greater for some reason.
“Thanks,” Nico says, and he crosses his arms over his chest like he’s protecting himself from something. He seems to try to speak, but his mouth just closes again before any words come.
I watch him, waiting, but it’s hard to see him struggle with whatever’s on his mind. I’m no stranger to this mood of his—he tends to do exactly this when things get difficult. He gets quiet, brooding. He pulls away. He doesn’t text back. He isolates, even more than normal.
But he did come here last night. He came to me rather than stay at home by himself.
Dammit. What happened?
“I have to go home, but I . . .” He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “My mom had s-someone over last night. I couldn’t stand, uh, hearing them,” he explains, though I can tell he’s still holding something back.
I wish I knew what to say, but all that comes out of my mouth is “Oh. Yuck.”
He doesn’t laugh, and he seems to clench his jaw as he nods. “Yeah. I don’t know if the . . . if the guy is still there.”
“I’ll come with you.” It seems like the very least I can do. But Nico immediately rejects my suggestion.
“No. That’s not a good idea. I don’t—” He shuts his mouth and stops talking suddenly, almost as though he’d been slapped in the face, and my stomach drops. Pushing himself forward, Nico starts over. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just go. Thanks for the food and stuff.”
He stands up, careful to not step on the tray sitting next to the bed, and he gathers his phone and then puts his shoes on.
I want to hop up after him, pull him back into another hug, tell him that whatever’s bothering him—whatever’s really bothering him—we can figure it out.
But I can see him starting to spiral. The tension in his shoulders is growing, and his jaw is clenched again.
When he stands back up after putting his shoes on, his hands have balled up into fists, which he holds tight against his sides.
I don’t want him leaving like this.
I’ve never really known what to do or how to handle him when he starts to get upset. It always seems best just to let him go so he can calm down, because he always does. But this time, something’s different. I don’t know what it is, but I do know I can’t let him leave.
So I shake my head and jump up after him as he turns toward the door. “Nico, wait. Please.”
He stops, his shoulders slumped over so he looks even smaller than he is. “What?” he says, the sharpness of his tone halting me in my tracks.
Maybe I should just let him go. That’s what he wants, after all. But as soon as I have the thought, I know it’s wrong. I can’t just let him go this time.
“I’m coming with you,” I say with much more confidence than I feel, and before he can reply, I turn and head over to my dresser. “Give me a minute.”
To my surprise, he doesn’t move while I sift through the middle drawer to find a pair of comfortable sweats, tug them on, and then slip on a clean pair of socks and my tennis shoes.
I grab my cell phone and stuff it in my pocket, and then I step ahead of him and pull the bedroom door open the rest of the way.
It’s only then that I see his face. Tears escape from the corners of his eyes, although he’s trying to blink them back, and his cheeks are tinged red.
“Y-you should stay here, Alex,” he says quietly, all of the anger gone from his voice now.
I shake my head. “Not unless you’re staying too.”
There’s a moment of hesitation. Then his fists loosen, and he turns his head to look at me.
“Can we just hang out here, then? Watch movies or something? I don’t want to . . . go out.”
“Yeah. Of course. Whatever you want.”
He almost looks like he’s going to laugh, but he doesn’t, and instead, he nods and turns back to the bed. Without a word, he starts straightening the blanket and pillows. After a second where I allow myself to breathe, I head over to help.