Chapter Eight
Alex
Monday mornings during senior year were the absolute worst. Our econ teacher, Mr. Replogle, had a penchant for giving us pop quizzes or making us read current political news—what a total shitshow—first thing in the morning every Monday.
But now that it’s summer, I expect my relationship with Monday mornings will be much less shaky.
I’m not working, except to help my mom when she needs it, so Monday mornings should just be like every other morning.
Hell, I don’t even have an alarm set anymore since I have nowhere to be and nothing to do.
I’ve rather conveniently forgotten that the same is not true for Nico, however.
As the first Monday morning of the summer rolls around, Nico, who’s been staying at my house all weekend, seems to have almost worked himself into a panic.
It can’t be later than six in the morning when he tumbles out of bed and nearly steps on me as he rushes out of the room and down the hallway, presumably to the bathroom.
By the time I roll over and push myself up into a sitting position several minutes later, he’s back, looking pale and nauseous. He doesn’t say anything as he crawls back into my bed and buries himself under the covers, but I get a whiff of a faint minty smell, like my toothpaste.
I decide not to ask if he’s okay, since he’s clearly not, and instead, I rub the sleep from my eyes and then reach up behind me and grab my phone. Six oh three. Way too early still.
“What time do you have to be at the library?” I ask. My brain isn’t fully functional yet, and I vaguely remember him saying nine. But it could be earlier.
He tugs the blanket down under his chin, and his hair falls in messy curls over his forehead as his eyes meet mine. He looks like he might throw up. Or throw up again, since I’m fairly sure that was what just happened in the bathroom.
“Eight fifteen,” he says, his voice scratchy.
I frown. “Oh. Okay. So then—”
“Eight thirty, actually, but I don’t want to be late. So, eight fifteen.”
“Ah, right. Do you want—”
“I need to go home to get clothes and my wallet and my car.” He shakes his head and turns to look up at the ceiling, reaching up to brush his hair back from his forehead with a shaky hand. “Sorry,” he whispers, and this time, there’s clear shame in his voice.
I hate that. Or actually, it just makes me sad to hear because he knows it’s okay.
We’ve been there, done that enough times before.
His anxiety makes him blurt things out, interrupt when other people are talking.
And I can see how anxious he is now; he definitely doesn’t need to apologize for it.
Only, I’m not sure whether he’s so anxious because he has to go home, which he’s been avoiding for days now, or because he’s not sure what the day is going to be like, starting his summer job.
It’s probably both.
“I’ll come with you,” I promise, and I watch as his jaw ticks and his eyes close.
I one hundred percent expect him to say no, to tell me I should stay home and that he’ll be fine. But instead, he gives the smallest nod. It’s both a relief and a surprise.
I’m still barely awake, but I drag myself up anyway, take a few minutes in the bathroom, and then head downstairs to make coffee and toast up some bagels.
I didn’t ask him if he wanted anything to eat, and I’m not surprised when he comes downstairs about ten minutes later, takes one look at the bagel I made him, and then spins around and sprints back up the stairs to the bathroom.
By the time he comes back down fifteen minutes or so later, again bringing that faint whiff of minty toothpaste with him, I’ve eaten my own bagel and wrapped his up in a paper bag.
“Here,” I say, offering the bag to him, “so you can eat it later, if you’re feeling up to it.”
He hesitates, his shoulders slumped, but then reaches out and takes the bag. “Thanks. I, um, can walk home. Alone. It’s fine. I don’t want you to have to . . .” He sighs as he trails off, and he looks up at me, frowning.
I can see him fighting himself right now—fighting against his awful anxiety—and I shake my head gently, doing the best I can to counter his frown with a small smile.
“It’s cool, I don’t mind,” I say. Again, I expect an argument, another no, another it’s fine. Given his level of anxiety, I also expect that familiar flicker of anger to start building in him. But he just stares at me for a second, the pain in his eyes tugging right at my heart, and then, he nods.
“Okay.”
I let myself smile more, and then I pat him on the shoulder. “Give me five minutes to change.”
“Yeah, sure.” He sits at the table and picks up the coffee I made him, and I turn and jog up the stairs.
Thankfully, he’s still there when I return less than five minutes later.
I scribble a quick note for my mom to let her know where I am in case she’s up early—we’re weird like that and still leave each other handwritten notes rather than texting whenever we can—and he dumps out the rest of his coffee, grabs the bag with his bagel in it, and leads the way toward the front door.
It’s already warm out, hinting at the heat wave I think we’re supposed to be having this whole week, and it feels great. I follow Nico out of the house and down the sidewalk to the main road, and as we turn right, hugging the shoulder, I tilt my head back and let the sun warm my face.
Next to me, Nico is quiet, but his shoulders have loosened a bit, and the silence doesn’t seem too tense.
However, the closer we get to his house, the more I notice the tightness creeping back in.
When we reach the end of his driveway, he stops and just stares down the long dirt road toward his house, his jaw clenched and his expression hard.
I follow his gaze, confused, and then I see it—an old, light-blue pickup truck parked just next to Nico’s car in front of the house.
A sharp pain lances through my chest. “Nico, what the—”
“So you see it, too, right?” Nico spins around, away from the house, shrinking in on himself.
“Fucking hell, he’s still here. He’s still here.
” He drops into a crouch, the bag with his breakfast bagel falling to the ground and his head suddenly down between his knees as he takes several fast, shallow breaths.
I’m pretty sure he’s going to throw up again.
I kneel down next to him and don’t even think twice before my arm goes up around his shoulders. Tension radiates off him, and I squeeze him gently. “Breathe. Deep, slow breaths.”
“I can’t take slow fuckin’ breaths,” he hisses. “Dammit. Dammit, I—I can’t—I can’t believe he’s still here. Fuck!” He smashes a fist into the hard ground, then growls a few more choice curse words. And he’s shaking. Badly. And still barely breathing.
I stand slowly, pulling him up with me, and then I hold him tightly to me. He doesn’t fight it, and instead, his arms loop around my waist, and he clings to me, burying his head in my chest.
“Fuck,” he says again, his voice muffled and raw.
A million questions come to my mind, but he’s so upset right now that I’m scared to ask even the most obvious one. I have to, though, because I feel like I really need to know. Bracing myself for his backlash, I say, “Since when?”
“Friday night,” he mumbles against me.
That explains a whole lot, especially why he showed up at my house at one thirty in the morning, looking like he’d been through the wringer.
I hug him a little tighter, though I’m not sure what else to say right then, and so we just stand there for a few more minutes.
When he eventually pulls away, he wipes his cheeks.
His face is red, his eyes are puffy, and his shoulders are still tense.
He keeps his back to the house and crosses his arms over his chest.
“I’ll go,” I say, without really thinking it through. “I’ll grab your stuff, and then we can go back to my house so you can get changed. What all do you need? Your wallet, your—”
“No.”
“Nico.”
“Alex,” he retorts, and he glances up at me very briefly before turning back around toward the house. He bites his lower lip. “W-wait here for me?”
I shake my head. “Let me come with you.”
“No.”
He starts to walk, stiffly but with purpose, and I follow him. Like hell I’m waiting here. He drops his chin but doesn’t stop walking.
“Please stay here,” he says, the rough words simmering with whatever anger is building in him.
“I’m not going to let him hurt you again. Not even a chance. I’m coming with you.” I frown. “Please, Nico. I don’t want you to go alone.”
He stops and closes his eyes, and his hands fall to his sides and ball up into fists.
Suddenly, he looks twelve again, about to pull away from me as he had in the beginning, when that asshole first started hurting him.
He didn’t really keep anything from me, though we also didn’t talk about it too much.
But as the bruises gradually got worse, so did his fear and anxiety and depression.
He got quieter, and then, after that bastard Patrick finally hit Nico in the face and broke his nose, Nico started to have strong reactions to anyone touching him.
His anxiety morphed, making him prone to irritability and anger.
And his social anxiety ballooned into something almost unmanageable.
He seemed to only find solace in being alone, or in being alone with me. He let me hug him, comfort him.
He trusted me then. And I need him to trust me now, too.
“Come on,” I say quietly, and I start walking, slowly, to give him a chance to catch up. His feet stutter a little as he gets moving, and then he’s silent as we make our way up the driveway, our shoes kicking up dust.
The small one-story home has seen better days.
I haven’t been here in a while, but it looks rougher than I remember.
The siding is faded, its medium-brown paint peeling, and one of the windows has a long crack in the glass, stretching all the way from the top right corner to the lower left.
The fascia along the lower edge of the roof is rotted, and the gutter at the near side of the house has come loose, drooping down to show an overflow of dead leaves and other junk.
And the garden under the front windows is full of dry weeds and a single dead rosebush.
I remember planting that rosebush with Nico as a present to his mom when we were ten. He saved up his allowance for months to buy it for her. She loved it.
And it was shortly after that when Patrick started coming around.
I swallow hard and glance over at Nico. He’s staring at the ground, his expression still hardened and angry and scared. I step a little closer to him.
“In and out, okay?”
He nods. Then he blinks, long and slow. “I need clothes. And my wallet and keys. A-and maybe . . .” He shakes his head and then moves ahead of me, taking the porch steps two at a time.
I follow, unsure of what we’re about to encounter but certain we’re going to get through it together.