Chapter 13
NICK
Lois is still sleeping when I slip out of her grip and run to the bathroom to collect the clothes we abandoned last night.
It’s so early the birds aren’t even awake yet, the darkness still engulfs the car park when I look out of Lois’s bedroom window.
Last night feels like a blur, like a mash of emotions that I'm struggling to piece together into some sort of sense.
But there’s one emotion that’s more prominent than the rest and that’s the suffocating love that’s growing by the day.
I don't know what the fuck to do about it either.
I don’t want to come on too strong and scare Lois away, but it’s also fucking hard to suppress this overwhelming need to be touching her at all times.
When I slip back into her bedroom she stirs, opening one eye and groaning when she sees me pulling my underwear up my legs.
“No, not yet Nick it’s too early.”
She whines, rolling onto her back and kicking the covers off. She sits up straight and smacks both hands down onto the mattress like a child.
“Don’t leave yet, please.”
I snicker, tackling her back down to the mattress.
“I wasn’t leaving yet, I was just collecting the evidence of last night from the bathroom and I was going to make us both a coffee.”
She ponders this for a beat, then her hazel eyes brighten.
“Ok, you’ve convinced me.”
I pull her to her feet, handing her a pair of clean shorts from her dresser and a white, almost see-through t-shirt that’s flung over the back of her desk chair.
She follows me out into the kitchen, the whole dorm still cloaked in darkness.
I flick on the light and Lois squints, running her fingers through her soft curls whilst I get started on the coffee.
I place two steamy mugs onto the marble island once they’re done and lift Lois onto a bar stool, which earns me a cheesy grin.
I want to kiss her literally every second of the day, but I let her drink her coffee first.
A shiver rolls over her when she takes her first sip and she hums with happiness.
I drop down on the bar stool next to her and she glances at me over the rim of her coffee cup.
“What’s your plan for today then?”
She says, dimpled smile making my stomach flip.
I shrug.
“Just training I guess and then…”
I look back at her, trying to work out whether I should ask her to come over tonight.
“Maybe…you could come over tonight?”
Lois blinks and looks back down at her hot coffee.
“Maybe…”
she pauses for a moment and I brush the curls over her shoulder, rubbing the back of her neck comfortingly. I’m scared I’ve upset her, but I don’t know what I said wrong.
After a beat she turns back to me, eyes vulnerable and open.
“I hope you’re going to catch me…when I fall in love with you.”
My heart beats out of my chest and I nod quickly.
“I promise.”
Her worry fades and I see the relief flood her, she hops down off her bar stool and skips across the room to drop her mug in the sink.
I follow her, pressing her against the countertop and kissing her slow, trying to show her how much I meant that promise.
Molly’s bedroom door creaks open and Lois jumps away from me.
I huff a laugh and yank her back to me, tickling her waist with my fingers and kissing a trail across her jaw as she wriggles in my grasp.
Molly rounds the corner, eyes twinkling when she sees Lois and I tangled in each other.
“Oh,”
she smirks, leaning against the wall.
“What’s going on here then?”
Lois rolls her eyes and slips away from me.
“Nothing you don’t already know about.”
Molly’s grin sparkles with knowing as she passes me, slapping my ass on her way past. Lois’ bright laugh rings through the air, permeating my ears and making my chest tight.
Jesus, I'm in trouble with this girl.
I spend the next couple of hours with Lois at her dorm, binge watching a new series on TV and kissing her every chance I get.
Molly heads back into her bedroom after making a coffee and warns us not to have sex on any of the furniture in the living room or kitchen.
Apparently if we do she’ll have to burn it all.
That girl makes me laugh, I'm so glad she’s with Ky, he needs someone like her.
At around midday I haul open the front door and turn back to a frown faced Lois.
“I’ll call you later, you can come over and rock my world again.”
I chuckle, but Lois is playing with her fingers nervously, pinning her eyes to the ground.
I take her hands in mine.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just—”
she shakes her curls, finally meeting my eyes.
“I don’t want to be that girl that asks what we are just because we had sex a couple of times. But I also don’t want to be the one you come to when you just want a quick fuck, you know that right?”
Her voice is mild, quiet like a mouse and she’s wringing her hands together again.
“I’m not that girl, I don’t want to be that girl.”
I lift her chin with my finger and soften my voice.
“Good, because I don’t want that either. I was going to ask you last night but I didn’t think the timing was right, what with that bastard putting his hands on you.”
The red fire lights in my stomach again at the memory, but I extinguish it quickly.
“I want to take you out, maybe this weekend?”
“Out?”
Her eyes narrow with suspicion.
“Yeah, out.”
“Like on a date?”
I breathe a laugh.
“Yeah, on a date, I plan great dates.”
Lois purses her lips, swallowing her smile.
“You say that like you’ve dated before.”
“I have. I dated a girl for a few months, before she ran off with a football player.”
Yeah, she did, after I told her I wasn’t interested anymore.
“Oh, sorry,”
Lois’ expression softens with guilt.
“I didn’t think you were into dating and stuff.”
“Well, I am, so…date?”
I flash her a toothy grin and her dimples sink into her cheeks when she returns the smile.
“Ok, Saturday?”
I nod.
“Yeah, I’ll text you once I’ve decided what we’re doing.”
“Plan something away from campus, so we won’t have to look over our shoulder the whole night.”
“Ok…are you still set on hiding this from Sean?”
Her eyes widen and she nods slowly.
“Absolutely, he cannot know about this. Seriously Nick, he could get you kicked off the team.”
“Ok, ok,”
I slide the imaginary zip across my lips.
“I won’t say a word.”
I press a kiss to her lips, lingering as long as possible before leaving and closing her door behind me.
LOIS
Nick leaves me horny and anxious all at the same time.
His taste still floats on my lips, his words looping and curling through my mind.
All I’ve wanted since I met Nick when I first came to Redwood was to have him notice me, to have him want me like I wanted him.
Now I have everything I’ve ever wanted, but I'm scared and in some sort of limbo.
Even though Nick has asked me out on a date, I still don’t know where the fuck this path that I'm on is going to lead.
Will he want a real relationship? Will he eventually get bored and miss his fuck boy lifestyle? The unknown is making me sick to my stomach.
Luckily when I turn around, my calm during any storm is standing in her running gear, leaning against the kitchen counter smiling at me.
She’s grinning triumphantly, like she’s Cupid and I’ve just found my future husband.
“What?”
I say dryly and she grins harder.
“Nothing.”
I head towards my bedroom, bracing myself for a cold shower to help with my muscle recovery — Ellen makes us do it at least once per week.
I have training this afternoon and I don’t know how I'm expected to focus on anything for the rest of the week with this date hanging over me.
Don’t get me wrong I'm excited to spend some time alone with him away from campus, but I'm nervous.
“Hey,”
Molly drags me out of my train of anxiety.
“What happened with your date last night? You were really messed up.”
I drop my eyes to the ground.
“I don’t want to talk about it Mol.”
Molly’s fingers wrap around my arm and pull me around to face her.
“Ok, but you know if you do want to talk about it, you can right?”
I pause, staring at the sincerity in her expression for a moment. Then I haul her into a tight hug, sinking my face into her shoulder and inhaling her comforting smell.
“I love you,”
I murmur into her shoulder.
She squeezes me hard.
“I love you more.”
My fingers are floating across the piano keys like they were made for it.
The melody that my hands produce is wafting through my parents’ house, creating a peace like no other.
This is one of the reasons I love playing the piano so much.
Not only does it fill me with comfort and warmth, like a hot chocolate on a winter’s day.
But with my butt on the worn, leather seat and my fingers playing effortlessly, I feel like I belong right here, always have.
My mind is on the sound, the tingling in my stomach as I loose myself in the music, when something hard slams onto the top of my piano.
I jump, tapping the wrong key and ruining the melody completely. When I look up, my brother’s dimpled smirk stares back at me and I want to punch him in the mouth.
“Jesus Christ! You ruined my piece you fucktard!”
I swat a hand towards him, which he dodges.
He smiles, which pisses me off even more.
“Sorry,”
he says and that’s when I notice the 12 box of doughnuts under one arm and his baby daughter in the other.
I stand up, making grabby hands at him.
“Gimme,”
He moves the doughnuts away, eyes narrowing.
“No chance, they’re for Mum. I promised her I’d get them before I came over today.”
I tilt my head, eyes rolling.
“I was talking about my niece, not your shitty doughnuts that taste like plasticine.”
“Oh, here, have at her.”
He sighs, handing Lily to me.
“She’s been crying all night and only stopped when I took her for a walk at 5am to let Callie get some sleep.”
The bags under his eyes are evident now I'm looking at him more closely and I feel a pang of guilt for always giving him a hard time.
I do love my brother, really I do but we’ve not always been the best of friends.
Things have definitely improved between us the older we’ve gotten and I’d say we’re the closest we’ve ever been right now.
Which is another reason I am absolutely not telling him that I’ve been riding his best friend’s dick recently.
I place Lily on one shoulder and move around the piano, smushing my face against Sean's chest and squeezing an arm around his middle. He hugs me back, albeit with confusion.
“What’s that for?”
He chuckles, ruffling my hair like I'm five years old.
I lift my shoulders in a light shrug, releasing him from my hug.
“Nothing, I just appreciate you making this perfect human.”
Sean’s deep laugh echoes through the vast entryway of our parents’ home, the silence pinging off the walls the moment he’s quiet again.
“Oh, also, Mum’s not home yet. I broke in here to play piano before she got back.”
“Ahh, you broke in…with your key?”
He grins, planting a kiss on Lily’s tiny head that still rests on my shoulder.
“Come help me with these will you?”
I follow him to the kitchen and grab a plate for the doughnuts.
Sean arranges them like a bouquet of flowers for Mum, the pink iced ones lining the border of the plate and the chocolate frosted ones in the centre.
Sean has really stepped into his gentleman era since he met Callie and I know I can speak for my mum too when I say, I'm eternally grateful to her for bringing that side out of him.
Sean makes Lily a bottle and I feed it to her, rocking her in my arms as she takes tiny gulps of milk, a trail of it running down her little chin.
The front door clicks open and Sean takes Lily from me, laying her down for a nap in her bouncy chair just as my mum walks through the archway into the kitchen.
She beams at us both, like we’re the best thing she ever created and I wait no more than nought point two-seconds to pull her into a hug.
“Ohhh,”
she chuckles lightly, “hi honey, how’s things?”
After a beat she starts to pull back, but I don’t let her. I need her to hold me for a minute, to make me feel small again, when life was simple. The nerves about my date with Nick on Saturday melt away the longer she squeezes me to her.
When I finally release her she holds me at arms length with a puzzled expression.
She says nothing though and I don’t need to either for her to know something’s going on with me.
She smacks a kiss to Sean's cheek, thanking him for the doughnuts.
Then she grabs my hand and pulls me out of the kitchen and sits us both down on the sofa.
“Right, tell me what’s wrong with you.”
She says, my hand in her warm one. I think about denying that anything is wrong at all, but Mum can read me like a book, always has.
I sigh heavily.
“I’m just nervous about something, but…”
I peer over one shoulder towards the kitchen, Sean is out of sight and hopefully ear shot too.
“I have a date with someone on Saturday and I really like him, which is making me feel sick to my stomach.”
“Ahh, I see,”
she muses, giving my hand a comforting squeeze.
“Well, all I can say honey is to try and relax. If you really like this guy then you have to be yourself, show him who you really are. Then and only then will you see if you likes you as much as you like him.”
I nod, contemplating her words. Really they’re useless because I'm almost certain that Nick has seen more of the real me than anyone in the world and he continues to want to be around me all the time.
“There’s something else,”
I whisper, checking over my shoulder again. Sean is nowhere to be seen, which is making me more nervous.
Mum flashes a glance in the direction of the kitchen too, then her eyes land back on me with an understanding softness to them.
“Oh…he’s one of your brother’s friends isn’t he?”
I gulp hard and nod, a few drops of moisture forming in my eyes.
I feel immense guilt for lying to Sean, for being with someone I know for a fact he won’t approve of.
But what can I do? My feelings for Nick are already so strong, so intense that there’s no suppressing them anymore.
Mum takes my face in her hands and swipes the single tear away from my cheek.
“Listen to me, if you really like this guy, you keep seeing him you hear me? Your brother will just have to get over it.”
“It’s Nick,”
I splutter, swallowing the sobs.
“Oh,”
she breathes, her eyes widening for a beat before she blinks slowly.
“Well, what I said still stands.”
She leans in closer, “But maybe break it to your brother gently when the time is right. Him and Nick have been friends for a long time now and you know how he feels about you dating boys who don’t exactly have the best reputation with the ladies.”
“That’s the thing though,”
I sigh, “Nick isn’t like that, not really, it’s just a facade. He’s kind and caring and attentive to me. He listens, like really listens to me.”
I pause, wondering if I should say what’s on the tip of my tongue.
“I think I…I think I'm falling in love with him.”
My mum’s mouth turns into a smile, a soft, motherly smile that heats my heart like an apple pie.
“That’s great honey. I'm so proud for you, you deserve happiness.”
She kisses my forehead, tucks a curl behind my ear and heads back to the kitchen to likely smother her granddaughter with love.
I sit biting my nails and getting lost in my thoughts for the next half an hour.
Her words float through my mind on a loop, how I deserve to be happy, how she’s proud of me.
But also her words of warning about Sean serve to give me a stomach ache.
I jump when my phone pings in my hand.
Nick:
‘I miss you.’
The smile that cracks my face in half washes away any anxiety that was left about our date on Saturday.
Lois:
‘You literally saw me this morning. *laughing face emoji*’
Nick:
‘Exactly, that was six whole hours ago.’
My heart gallops in my chest, his words sinking deep into my heart and making their home there.
He misses me, which must mean he likes me right? The seed of doubt is still planted, but I choose to ignore it right now.
I just have to get through the rest of the week until I can see Nick again and we can spend an entire weekend without having to look over our shoulders.
I know whatever Nick has planned is going to make me fall so hard on my god damn face that I'm never going to get up again.