24
We walked down the streets and alleyways of Melbourne. Trams zoomed past, ringing their bells, people came out of shopping centres, their arms weighed down with paper and plastic bags.
“How were your exams?” Nick asked.
“Yeah, fine,” I replied. “Yours?” We sounded like two classmates making polite small talk.
“They were alright,” he said, but I knew he’d probably get high distinctions in everything.
Soon, we arrived at a three-storey building. The exterior was old cracked stone, but the interior was modern, and when I saw the bottles of liquor behind the bar, lit up like precious gemstones, the memory clicked into place.
Nick spoke to a staff member before leading me up to the rooftop, which was surprisingly quiet for a Friday evening. We sat on stools at a high table that overlooked the city. The sun hung above the western horizon, casting everything in amber and gold.
“What do you want to drink?” Nick asked.
“Beer is fine. Thank you.”
He nodded and disappeared in the direction of the bar, which was manned by a single pimply teenager.
He returned a few minutes later with two Coronas, slices of lime in the bottlenecks, and placed one in front of me.
“Thanks,” I said.
He took his seat opposite me. “This is where we first met, by the way.”
I couldn’t help a smile. “Oh really? I hadn’t realised.”
He huffed. “I just wanted to make sure you remembered.”
“Of course I remembered.”
Nick shifted on his seat. “This is just the first stop of the night, by the way. We’ll get proper food after this.”
I sipped some beer, needing liquid courage. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear from you again.”
He met my eyes.
“I mean,” I continued with a forced laugh, “I wouldn’t blame you. I did storm over to your house just to yell at you.”
“No, I deserved it.” His eyes fixed on mine, unblinking. “I’m sorry, Hayden. I shouldn’t have left your place that morning, and I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when you came over. I… well, I acted like a dickhead.”
“Just a bit.”
“You were right. I was—am—scared. I’m scared right now, actually.” There was the barest hint of a self-deprecating smile.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because of how you might react. You could leave right now, even though I have the rest of this night planned out.”
“I wouldn’t leave early,” I said. I scooted my stool closer, resting my elbows on the table. “Why were you scared? I was the one who admitted my feelings first.”
It’s not as if he’d been the one taking the risk. That had been all me—even though I was fairly certain Nick reciprocated my feelings, it had still been scary, but I’d done it anyway. Maybe because I wanted it too much.
“It’s not that,” Nick said. “I know I accused you of deceiving me, but deep down, I knew you felt the same way. I wasn’t afraid of rejection.”
“Then what?” I asked. “Do you think that I would hurt you?”
His expression flickered, and that was all the answer I needed. I felt myself deflate.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said quietly.
“I know you wouldn’t,” Nick said. “Rationally, I know you wouldn’t hurt me. But when you care about someone—anyone—you care about what they think of you. Existing around you kind of hurts.”
I stared at him.
“So it’s painful to be around me?” I asked.
He shoved a hand through his hair.
“No, I mean… I mean that when I’m around you, I feel naked. Not only that—it’s like all my skin is sunburned. Shit, I’m not explaining myself right.” He looked down at his Corona and took a moment to gather himself. “What I mean is that when I’m around you, I overthink everything. Usually, I don’t care what people think of me. But I care about what you think. I know it doesn’t seem like it. I know I act like I don’t give a fuck. But I do.”
He ran a thumb down the condensation gathering on the bottle. “Maybe I wouldn’t have reacted that way if you told me another time. I’m not trying to make excuses or blame you, but that morning after my yiayia’s…” There was a heaviness in the set of his shoulders. “I was just so embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed of what?” I asked.
He looked up at me like it was obvious. “Of the way that I acted. You were there. I got completely wasted and you had to take me home and my memory isn’t perfect, but I know that I was saying all this rubbish and trying to get you into…” his cheeks tinged pink. “Get you into bed,” he finished. “And then there was my cousins and the fact they picked up on us, and you had found out that I told them about you—not just about you, but about your nice apartment and your dad’s job, and I shouldn’t have told them that stuff, but I did, and I was just… everything made me feel so humiliated.” He kept rubbing the condensation, barely looking at me. “And you were still nice to me the day after anyway, even though I was a complete idiot.”
“You weren’t an idiot,” I said. “Sure, you getting drunk was a bit… out of character. But you don’t have to be embarrassed around me. I embarrass myself all the time. Does that make you think I’m a dumbass?”
His expression flickered.
“Don’t answer that,” I said.
“No,” he said softly. “I don’t think you’re a dumbass, even when you’re silly and ridiculous.” He hesitated, looking almost… guilty. “I want to laugh with you, not at you. And even when I laugh at you, it’s never with contempt. I know I’ve been a dick. Especially when we first met. But I want you to know that I don’t look down on you.”
“I know you don’t,” I said.
His brows came together. “But how do you know that?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s something I can sense. Even when you shroud yourself in twenty-eight layers of aloofness, I feel this… warmness… coming from you.” I gave him a small smile. “I wouldn’t want you if I thought you were unkind.”
He stared at me. When he didn’t reply, I worried that I’d derailed the conversation. What had we been talking about again?
Oh, right. The night after Yiayia’s.
“The way you feel when I embarrass myself around you… that’s how I feel about you. Because, yeah, maybe you acted differently from your usual self when you got drunk, and yeah, maybe it did surprise me that you told your cousins about me, but all of that didn’t matter. The next morning, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. All I was thinking about was how nice it was to have you in my shower.”
Nick nodded slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I know I keep apologising, but… I really shouldn’t have freaked out the way I did. I wish I could be open like you.”
“You’re being open now. It’s a skill you can practise.” I paused. “I ran into Tyler at the library during exam season, and he told me that you’ve always been like this.”
“Yeah, I guess there are people who are expressive, and there are people like me,” Nick said. “I know that you ran into Tyler.”
My brows lifted. “He told you?”
Thinking about it, it wasn’t that surprising.
He nodded. “He told me that you missed me, and I thought maybe I didn’t fuck everything up. Or maybe I did, but I still had a chance, you know. Uni’s finished. It’s not like it’d be very likely for me to run into you on campus. So I figured that if I wanted to do something, then I would have to do it now.”
“Well,” I said, “I told the truth. I did miss you. I do miss you.”
I missed him right now, actually, because it still wasn’t exactly the same as it had been, but with every passing minute of this conversation, it was getting there.
We finished our Coronas. The mirrored surfaces of surrounding skyscrapers reflected the red-orange setting sun.
“Well, if you don’t want to run away yet,” Nick said, “we could go to the next phase of this date.”
“I don’t want to run away,” I said. “I know we’re still talking about all this stuff and clarifying everything, but...” I shrugged one shoulder. “I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ll go wherever you want.”
He let out the softest little exhale. “That’s what I mean, that you can just say things like that.”
“And you can’t?” I asked. “I know you can. You can do anything.”
He blushed, and it was beautiful.
We left The Henderson and ventured further north. The streets were busier now, with people celebrating the end of the work week and hitting up bars and restaurants. The paths were crowded, and as we manoeuvred past groups of people in business casual attire, my shoulders bumped against Nick’s.
“Here,” Nick said, coming to a sudden stop.
It was a Thai restaurant. Through the large front windows, I could see families gathered around dark wooden tables and waiters milling about dressed in black head to toe.
“It’s where I work,” Nick said. “I thought about taking you to Kiss and Tell, but that’s out of my price range.”
“This looks really good,” I said and followed him into the restaurant, where he spoke to a waitress by the front counter.
She greeted him with a big smile and glanced at me over his shoulder. “Table for two? Come, follow me upstairs.”
At the back of the restaurant was a narrow staircase, and as soon as we arrived on the second floor, there was a cascade of chatter. Thankfully, Nick and I had a corner to ourselves, sitting down at a square table as the waitress set down the laminated menus, saying she’d be back in a few minutes to take our order.
“We can share if you’d like,” Nick said, not bothering to open the menu.
“Sure,” I said, flicking through mine to look at the photos. “What do you recommend?”
“The curries here are the best. We can get red and green and a bowl of coconut rice each?”
“Okay, sure.”
A few minutes later, the waitress arrived with two glasses of milk tea.
“It’s on the house,” she said.
Nick frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Sarah won’t mind,” the waitress said with a wave of her hand and beamed at us. “So, have you decided what you would like?”
“One red curry with duck, one green curry with chicken and two bowls of coconut rice, please,” Nick said.
“The same as usual, huh?” She took our menus and whisked away.
I picked up a glass of the light-brown milk tea and was pleasantly surprised to find it was not too sweet. “Who’s Sarah?” I asked.
“The owner,” Nick replied. “The waitress’s name is Mali.”
“Does she know we’re on a date?”
“Probably,” Nick said. “I don’t talk much about myself at work.”
That sounded about right. I nodded and took another sip of the milk tea. Silence stretched out. When a waiter appeared with little bowls, napkins and cutlery, Nick spent a considerable amount of time straightening everything.
I cleared my throat. “I want to tell you that I did have a really good time at your yiayia’s. I’m glad I got to meet her and the rest of your family, and your cousins too.”
Nick made a face. “They are friendly. I know they can come across as…” he trailed off. “It’s just banter, you know.” He sighed. “I wish I did things differently. I shouldn’t have asked them not to embarrass me.”
I tapped my fingers against the side of the glass. “Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Why did you tell them about my apartment and my dad’s job?”
Nick pushed his thumbnail into the wooden table. He probably shouldn’t have been attempting to damage the property of the restaurant he worked at, but I doubted he was paying that much attention right now.
“Do you remember the time I went over to your place and put something in the dishwasher, and I closed it wrong?”
I blinked. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“And I said that I closed it wrong because my dishwasher at home was different. That was a lie. My family never used our dishwasher because my dad thought it used too much water, and he didn’t want the water bill to get too high.
“I guess when I first met you, your fancy apartment freaked me out. It’s not that I haven’t met wealthy students before—hell, most of the students at Lygon U went to private school—but I just felt… out of place. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry about what you’d think of my yiayia’s place, especially with the broken-down shed and all the marks on the floorboards.”
I literally had not noticed any marks on the floor.
“But that stuff doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how nice your apartment is, or how much money your dad makes, because I like hanging out with you. And I hope it doesn’t matter to you that I live in the sketchiest studio apartment imaginable, and this is the nicest restaurant I can afford—partly because I get a twenty per cent off staff discount here.”
I laughed. “You know it doesn’t matter to me.” I frowned. “I hope I haven’t given you any indication that—”
“You haven’t,” Nick said. “Actually, to be honest, you seemed kind of oblivious to it, which is its own kind of frustrating.”
“I’m just oblivious generally.” I paused. “You don’t resent me, do you? I know it’s unfair.”
“I don’t resent you,” Nick said. “I mean, maybe I would if you were a dickhead, but you’re not. And I guess I’m used to it now, funny as it sounds. I’m used to your fancy-ass jeans—”
“My jeans are not fancy,” I said.
“Yeah they are. Did you even buy them yourself?”
“No,” I admitted. “Lisa did.”
“The point is, I’m used to your fancy jeans and fancy apartment and fancy bedsheets. Yeah, going to Kiss and Tell and having that expensive meal did freak me out, but you said you wouldn’t do it again. And I did feel stressed going to high tea with your family, but that was fine. And I’m sorry I told my cousins that personal stuff about your family’s money—I know that was weird. Maybe subconsciously, I was trying to sabotage myself. Say that it’d never work because of my shitty student accommodation. But we already agreed we’d hang out at yours.”
“We did,” I said. “But you know, I’d happily stay at your place again. Cold showers and all.”
Nick gave me a dry look, an action so familiar it made my heart skip a beat. “Speak for yourself. You’re not the one who has to share with someone who’s six foot four.”
Our meals arrived, and I was surprised at how delicious both of the curries were. The red curry was sort of like the one Nick and I cooked all those weeks ago, except better—the flavours richer, spicier, the meat juicier.
Afterwards, Nick paid at the counter, and I knew not to offer to pay for my half.
“Thank you for dinner,” I said as we stepped out onto the street.
“Do you have space for dessert?” he asked.
I smiled at him. “Of course.”
He took me to a frozen yoghurt place, where we chose a large cardboard cup and filled it with caramel, pistachio and vanilla froyo. We topped it up with pieces of chocolate and lollies, giggling to ourselves like little kids as the cardboard cup started to overflow.
“Shit,” I said when we took the cup over to the counter, and I saw the silver scale, reminding me we’d be charged by the dessert’s weight. “We should have been more mathematical about this.”
“It’s fine,” Nick said and didn’t hesitate to pay sixteen dollars for our multi-coloured monstrosity.
There were no places to sit in the restaurant. Nick said he knew a place nearby, and so I followed him, expecting we’d sit in one of the small parks that peppered this suburb.
Instead, he took me to a three-storey parking lot.
I frowned, looking around. “Do you have a car?”
“No,” he replied, walking up the steep incline.
“Did you take me here to murder me?”
“No, I didn’t take you here to murder you,” he said patiently.
After a few minutes of walking, we arrived on the roof of the carpark, which provided a nice view of the city, including Lygon University’s campus, with its oak trees and old stone buildings. I could make out the general location of Professors Lane Caf é , and the red-brick science library we’d had so many study sessions.
We sat on the waist-high concrete railing that ran around the perimeter of the car park, setting the froyo cut between us.
“Maybe this was stupid,” Nick mumbled, stabbing the yoghurt with his plastic.
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking around. “The view’s gorgeous.” I tasted some of the froyo and tried not to wince at the clashing flavours. Perhaps I should have thought twice before dumping so much sour candy into the cup. “And this is delicious, mmmm.”
Nick laughed. Then his expression turned serious. “This is me laying all my cards on the table,” he said. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious, but I want to be with you, Hayden. I shouldn’t have wasted time being stupid. I should have been honest. I know I hurt your feelings, and I hate myself for that.”
“Don’t hate yourself,” I murmured. “It’s okay.”
“Is it?”
I nodded, unable to stop the smile spreading across my face. “You don’t know how happy I am right now.”
“So you’ll—”
“Yes,” I said, and then I kissed him. His tongue was cold and tasted of vanilla.
When I pulled back, Nick’s eyes were blinking rapidly. “Sour,” he said.
I chuckled. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” He gave me a look. “You do know what I was going to ask before you rudely interrupted me?”
“I have a good idea,” I replied.
His expression changed. “But you’re… you’re going home for the summer, I assume?”
I brightened. “No, I’m staying in Melbourne. I got a job, actually. So much has happened I need to tell you about.” I paused. “You’re not leaving the city, though, are you?”
“Fuck no,” he replied. “Nah, I’ll be working full-time at the restaurant over the summer.”
“So we’ll both be here,” I said.
“Yeah.”
We smiled at each other.
By the time we finished off the rest of the yoghurt, the sky was dark purple. I shivered, not sure whether I was cold from dessert or whether it was actually colder now. Nick played with my hands, which was nice. His skin was warm.
“Nick?” I murmured.
“Yes?” His voice was low. I loved his voice.
“Would you like to come home with me? I have the place to myself.”
His eyes lit up, but then he seemed to catch himself. “Are you sure? Maybe we should… move slowly?”
“Fuck that,” I said. “We haven’t moved slowly from the moment we met each other. And besides, I want to kiss you and touch you without restraining myself.”
“Were you really restraining yourself? Because you’re the type to blurt out everything you’re thinking.”
“Maybe, but this time you can’t tell me to stop. I’ll tell you you’re clever. And sweet. And fucking hot.”
Splotches of pink appeared high on his cheekbones.
“Let’s go,” he said.