Chapter Seven
I smell the smoke first.
Thick and heavy, wafting into my nostrils like a dark cloud of gasoline.
Then I hear him call my name.
Urgent, panicked.
Like there’s gravel stuck in his throat.
“Joonie? Joon, are you okay?”
My eyes flutter open. “Nico?”
The truck is nestled in a shallow ditch on the side of the road, all but totaled.
My head is resting on the airbag that has mushroomed in front of me, and my seat belt is seconds away from cutting off my circulation.
Nico sits next to me, a thin gash on his forehead. His eyes are wild with worry.
“Wh-what happened?” I ask.
My brain searches for answers, swimming against the current of pain. The faint throbbing in my temples. A churning in my gut, threatening to give way to waste.
We were arguing about the validity of romance as a genre.
Nico wouldn’t stop calling me kid.
I checked the ETA on the Waze app, and it said six hours.
What else?
“I think I’m concussed,” I mutter.
Great. I get so close to finding the love of my life, and this is how I go out: in a ditch in middle-of-nowhere rural Connecticut with only my nemesis at my deathbed.
“You don’t remember?” Nico’s eyes search my body, frantic, looking for injuries.
“Wait, it’s all coming back to me.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “There was a loud crash. A sound like the cymbals. Then a bright light. I can see it now. And you were there, dressed all in green. Like Kermit the Frog. And you were singing ‘Bananza’ by Akon…”
“Okay, you’re fine,” he snaps, but there’s a hint of something else in his voice as well.
Relief?
“That asshole just hit us and kept going,” Nico says. “Well, no. He paused for a second to make sure we were still alive. Then he kept going. God, I hope he steps on a Lego.”
I choke on a laugh. Is that some kind of Millennial version of go fuck yourself?
“Did you get his license plate number?” I ask, sniffing the air. Something smells like it’s on fire. Not the best sign.
Nico glares. “I was a little busy seeing double after hitting my head on the dashboard.”
“Hey, now, don’t take this out on me.” I throw up my hands. “And if I recall correctly, this little fender bender was not all that dude’s fault. You did kind of step on the brakes like you were playing DDR.”
“DDR?”
“Dance Dance Revolution,” I explain.
“Well, you had just shared some startling information. You know that you’re heading to New York to stalk a stranger.”
“Not stalk! Meet. It’s only stalking from a distance, I think.”
Nico just shakes his head. “Were we even just in the same car crash?”
Before I can come up with a clever comeback, I feel a vibration in my pocket. My phone’s buzzing.
Teymoor is calling, now of all times.
“Hold that lackluster thought,” I tell Nico.
Tey greets me, skipping the pleasantries. “Why haven’t you moved in the last twenty minutes?”
“What ever happened to hello, how are you?”
“Are you stuck in traffic? Was there an accident?” he asks, ignoring my question.
“Yeah, you could say there was an accident.” Shit. I haven’t even thought about how Tey’s going to react when he learns we fucked up his truck. “You don’t happen to, uh, have Triple A, do you? Or does Oliver, maybe? He’s, like, super boring and responsible, right?”
“Ollie always flies or takes the train when he visits. I’ll have to check with Baba, but I doubt he coughed up the money for that when he’s already insuring the truck.” He pauses. “Holy shit, Joonie. Did you—”
“Before you finish this sentence, just know that Nico was driving.”
“It was her fault!” Nico calls from beside me.
I narrow my eyes at him.
He smirks.
“Wait a second. How did you even know we were stalled?” I raise my voice a little in an attempt to sound intimidating. “Teymoor Saboonchi, are you still tracking my location?”
Silence on the other end.
Crickets.
“That’s it. I am so blocking you on Find My Friends!”
“Call a tow truck in case your phone dies and I can’t reach you,” Tey manages to say before I hang up.
Nico stares at me for a second, his eyes flitting between the frown lines on my forehead and my pursed lips. “He’s only looking out for you. You know that, right?”
“Shut up and call a tow truck.” I pause for a second and reconsider my words. “Wait, that was rude. Please shut up and call a tow truck.”
Nico straightens his clothes and opens the car door. “So polite. Fine. I’ll go assess the damage.”
I sigh, then kick up my feet up on the dashboard and busy myself by updating the group chat, then opening Find My Friends and turning off my location.
There. That will show Teymoor what happens when he insists on treating me like a child instead of the fully grown twenty-five-year-old teenage girl that I am.
I take in our surroundings. We’re on some sort of hidden path, a dirt road instead of the larger route that leads straight to the highway. An ill-conceived shortcut, no doubt.
Classic man. Always trying to find the easiest path forward. Forgetting that when something looks too good to be true, it usually is.
To the left of the road, there’s nothing but forest. Red maple trees taller than buildings, older than the majority of the houses in Mystic.
They’re starting to shed their leaves, baring their speckled spines before the harsh realities of winter.
To the right is abandoned farmland. Grass that’s brown and overgrown, mixed with dirt and debris.
A tumbleweed blows by, innocent to what it’s stumbled upon.
This is the last place anyone would want to be in an accident.
The odds of someone finding us feels like close to zero.
We could easily die out here from starvation or dehydration, whichever comes first.
That is, if one of us doesn’t kill the other first.
Nico knocks on my window, startling me. I roll it down an inch.
“Password?” I quirk a brow.
“Go ahead. Laugh it up. You won’t be smiling in a minute.”
My face falls. “That bad, huh?”
“Do you want the bad news or the bad news first?”
“Um.” I pretend to think about his question really, really hard. “The bad news, please.”
“The tailgate is dented and there’s something leaking from the bottom of the truck. We need to get it to a shop ASAP.”
My heart sinks. If this little fender bender takes more than a few hours to fix, we’ll have to look into alternate ways of getting into New York.
If we make it today at all.
“And the bad news?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
“We’re about an hour and a half from the closest body shop. The mechanic says it could take double that for a tow to show up. We could be waiting here for a while.”
I stick my head out the window and let out a primal yell. “Furnace, help me!” I shout. “Why did we break down in the middle of Guam?”
Nico scowls. “Next time, I’ll try to crash the car somewhere more convenient.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Preferably near a Starbucks or something.”
“Also,” he says. “Furnace?”
I roll my eyes. “ATOSAS reference,” I say. “Duh. Read a book.”
Nico studies me for a second. “Don’t worry, Joon. I’ll get you there. Promise.”
“Yeah, well…” I glare up at him. “Your promises don’t mean much to me these days.”
He stares at me for a beat, confusion etched into his forehead. Then he pulls out his phone and opens up an app before groaning softly. I watch as he refreshes it over and over again, to no avail.
“Do you have service?”
I check. “Only a single bar. Probably just enough to call someone, but not to Google or stream or whatever. How is that even possible? I literally just checked the ATOSAS message boards.”
“There must be an outage or something,” he says. “This is a nightmare. What are we supposed to do for three hours?”
“We could play I Spy.”
“No.”
“You could tell me your deepest, darkest secrets.”
“Tempting. But no.”
“I could read to you?”
The corner of his mouth ticks up at that suggestion. “You haven’t memorized those books of yours by now?”
“I could probably freestyle the first few chapters.”
He chuckles. Then his expression darkens, a shadow passing over it. “Can I ask you a question without you doing that thing where you get all mad?”
I roll my eyes. “That’s like saying, Don’t be offended, before saying something offensive.”
“Well, then, don’t be offended.”
The smoke outside of the truck begins to dissipate, wafting off into the forest. Nico sits back inside. He leans over in his seat, throwing an arm around the steering wheel. I try to ignore the way his biceps casually flex. The sight is practically NSFW.
Nico sucks, my brain reminds my body. We do not have dirty thoughts about Nico.
Unfortunately, it appears to not matter who the arm in question is attached to.
Sexy is sexy.
“Why are you going after this guy?” he asks.
And just like that, I’m dryer than the Coachella Valley.
“That’s none of your business,” I say, crossing my arms.
“You understand that thirsting over a fictional character isn’t the same thing as doing it in real life, right? Have we learned nothing from the Great Leviathans Incident of 2023?”
I glare. “We don’t talk about that. Besides, I have no plans to harass him. I would never make anyone uncomfortable or do something they don’t consent to. I just want to meet him.”
“Seriously, Joonie,” he pushes. “I never see you get sad after you break up with any of these dudes. You just get all businesslike. It’s like you dissociate or something. Cut your losses and move on as quickly as possible. Why don’t you take a break from dating instead?”
“Because,” is all I have to say.
“Because what?”
“Because.” My tone is biting, like a rabid dog.
“Everyone needs something to believe in, Nico. To give their life meaning. Some people believe in a god that I personally don’t think exists, but if that’s what gets you through the day without being hateful, who am I to judge?
Other folks believe in their favorite musician or astrology app.
But not me. I believe in love. In soul mates and happy endings—if you make an inappropriate joke right now, I’ll scream—and a great love, one that could bring the gods to their knees and spin the Earth off its axis.
That belief? It grounds me. It gives me purpose, something to live for when my thoughts get dark.
Do you think it’s been easy for our family, settling here?
In the, like, Vineyard Vines capital of America?
I need my faith, Nico. The few times I’ve come close to losing it—after the Sam drama in high school, after Kyle turned on me, after—” I almost say after you, but I cut myself off just in time.
“Anyway, I’ve very nearly lost myself before.
Do you get that? Giving up on love almost meant giving up on myself.
” My lower lip starts to wobble. “So no, I’m not going to take a break from dating.
I’m going to keep on believing that my one true love is out there waiting for me.
Call it eternal optimism or naivety or whatever.
But there is value in believing in love.
Power in the idea that I am worthy of someone who loves me for exactly who I am. ”
For a split second, Nico’s eyes carve a hole through my skull.
The air thrums between us, thick with tension.
The words I left unsaid hang around us like an unsung limerick.
The hint at the abuse I suffered.
The mark Sam left on me.
Nico’s own betrayal. Scabbed over, but still etched into my skin.
“Joonie,” Nico says. “You know you don’t have to be a romantic heroine to have a happily ever after, right?”
Don’t cry, I will myself. Not in front of Nico.
“I know that,” I whisper. “But it’s hard to heal a wound all alone when it’s in a place you can barely reach.”
“But you are already loved for exactly who you are. By so many people.”
We stare at each other for another moment, our breath intermingling and fogging up the windows. Nico swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple bob, and a shiver works its way down my spine.
“You’re cold,” he says.
“I guess.” I shrug. “Can we turn on the heat?”
He shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous to start the engine now.”
“Right,” I say, not bothering to correct him. “Want to snuggle for warmth?”
I expect him to hit me back with his usual I’d rather be skinned alive.
Instead, he gestures for me to come closer.
The moment my head hits his chest, every muscle in my body relaxes. He feels both hard and soft in all the right places, like a human Tempur-Pedic pillow. I inhale the scent of sawdust and sandalwood.
“Did you just sniff me?” He chokes on the accusation.
“Maybe,” I admit. “This is weird, right?”
“Can you not make it more awkward than it already is?” He groans. “I just can’t have you turn into a human ice sculpture on my watch. Teymoor would kill me. Believe me, I’d rather be anywhere but here.”
“Took the words right out my mouth,” I agree, choosing to ignore the way his body stiffens, then melts beneath mine in answer. “Let’s never acknowledge that this happened, okay?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Then I close my eyes for a second. Just one.