Chapter 8 Stan #3
Aside from access to the showers, the gym’s become storage for treadmills and weights. I’d work my feelings out, but I don’t trust my mind to focus on doing anything safe right now.
No one’s here. Which is perfect for me. I don’t feel like being the stand-up comedian on this Kys cruise tonight. Usually I don’t mind. But, after that heart-to-heart with Idris, I needed somewhere quiet where I could think without anyone expecting things from me.
So here I am. Sitting on a bench, eating my third protein bar instead of a proper dinner.
These bars taste like cardboard. But everything else on this ship comes with people, and I’m not up for people right now.
Idris told me I’m doing better than I think. Now I’m using some time to think better. But thinking sucks.
Right when I take a bite of granola that might actually be cardboard, someone walks in.
“Stan?”
Nil’s voice hits me like I got caught stealing something, when—let’s be real here—he’s the one stealing things from me. My breath. My heart. My soul.
He spots me on the bench and rushes over.
“Hey,” I say, waving my half-eaten granola.
He walks over. “Are you okay?”
“Define okay,” I say.
He checks my arms, my face, the protein bar in my hand. “Is that all you ate today?” he asks.
“I had three. They’re healthy.”
“Stan.” He sounds like he’s scolding me. I’m scarily into it. “I’ve seen you eat heaps of meat in one sitting. These aren’t enough.”
“That’s dramatic,” I mumble, taking a bite of the bar. “Even for me.”
“Could you just—?” Nil stops himself to let out a sigh. “You worried me. A lot.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just thinking. Bad idea, I know.”
“You weren’t in the room,” he says. “You didn’t come to lunch. Or dinner. And I didn’t know where you went.”
I lift my protein bar like it’s evidence. “I’ve been here.”
He looks around at the mirrors. “Why are you here?” he asks.
“Because nobody else is,” I confess. “I didn’t want to bother anyone.”
“You don’t ever bother me.”
My brain short-circuits a little. I act like it didn’t.
Nil sighs again and sits next to me. “You disappeared on me, Stan.”
“I do that sometimes.”
“Yeah, I get it.” He looks at me, but I don’t meet his eyes yet.
“It’s our M.O., I guess.”
“But you don’t have to hide from me,” he says quietly.
“I’m not hiding from you,” I say, chewing. “Just needed some space. I didn’t want to dump my feelings on you.”
“You don’t dump anything on me,” he says, his voice so soothing. “I don’t mind listening to you, Stan.”
Well, there goes my heart, sprinting out of my chest like it’s late for a meeting.
“You say that now,” I tell him. “But give it five minutes, and I’ll say something insane, then you’ll rethink everything and start writing your will.”
He actually smiles back to that. When he doesn’t hide how funny he thinks I am, it makes me believe in soulmates. For fucking real.
He nudges my knee with his own. A little bump. A nothing gesture that sends fireworks straight into my bloodstream. He doesn’t move away. I don’t either.
“I came looking for you,” he says.
My dumbass heart bumps around like it’s trying to find the emergency exits. There’s no way out.
“You left the MedBay so fast,” he says. “I thought something was wrong.”
“Something’s always wrong,” I say. “This morning, it was my brain. This afternoon, it was my heart. Right now, it’s this protein bar.”
“Stan.”
I look down at my hands because the mirrors are too honest, and Nil’s too honest too, and I’m sweating in a room that’s as cold as the sea outside. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” I admit.
“You don’t do that to me.”
“You sure? You turned cherry red, Nil.”
He lets out a groan. “I wasn’t uncomfortable. I was…taken aback.”
“Taken aback that your dumb roommate thinks your face is kissable?” I ask, trying to joke my way out of sweating through my shirt.
“You’re not dumb, Stan, and I wasn’t shocked about that.”
I blink at him, raising a brow. “Because we can blame Kys after?”
“No.” He scoots over closer, until I’m facing him.
He’s smiling. God, he’s smiling.
“I was shocked because you, of all people, ran away from me.”
I force myself to keep breathing before I do something embarrassing, like pass out or confess all of the feelings I’ve held back for the past half a year I’ve known him.
Nil’s fingers brush mine by accident. Or maybe not. Hard to tell when my body’s trying not to combust. Either way, his hand stays close to mine. All I’d have to do is tilt my pinky a little and we’d be touching.
“You didn’t have to run off,” Nil says. “I didn’t freak out.”
“Yeah, but I did,” I say.
“You don’t have to freak out,” he says. “Not over me.”
“Too late,” I whisper.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Oh, no, this is the start of something stupid or perfect or both.
I swallow hard. Damn granola drying up my throat. My voice comes out thin. “Ocean Eyes…”
He looks at me like he’s bracing for impact. “Yeah?”
I want to say something smart. Something smooth. Something that doesn’t sound like I’m begging for him. Except I probably will. And he probably knows.
“I wasn’t kidding about the kiss,” I say. “It wasn’t a joke, but the thing is…I wouldn’t blame it on Kys.”
His lips part. He sucks in a slow breath. “I know,” he says. “Me neither.”
That almost takes me out. Like, clinically. Shipwide emergency. Stan coded blue in the gym. “Really?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you’d take it seriously,” I say. “I thought you’d laugh or ignore it or, y’know, run screaming into the sea.”
“I wouldn’t,” he says.
My lungs stop working, I think. “Oh.”
He chuckles, more breath than laugh. “Yeah.”
We sit there, knees touching. The mirrors around us catch our reflections, like the universe is holding up a hundred angles of the same moment and daring us to do something with it.
“You should know…” I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “It won’t be just a kiss for me…”
Fuck consequences. I’m letting the other shoe drop. I’m mentioning the monster that ruined our lives. If this was still Ma’s world, every touch would be a transaction. But this is my choice now. So if I kiss him, it’s because I want him. Not because anyone told me to.
After another inhale, I let out a shaky sigh, still shutting my eyes from the world, from the mirrors, from him.
“I have serious feelings for you,” I confess with all my fucked-up heart, “so if you take me up on my offer, it means I want the real thing with you.”
I can’t open my eyes, even when I hear Nil breathe deep. If I blink my eyes open now, pretty sure I’ll cry.
“I’m sorry you had to hear this from the son of a bitch that took everything from you…” I whisper, shakier by the word. “I’m so sorry I didn’t—”
“Stan.” His hands are holding mine. I didn’t even realize I was trembling so hard until I relax a little under his touch. “Don’t you dare take the blame for what Clo did. She…”
Nil’s breath stalls like his lungs stopped working too. That fucking terrifies me.
I saw him fall. Watched the smoke in the sky. Saw the waves get stained red.
Blinking the tears away—embarrassment be damned—I cup his face, staring at him. Gotta make sure he’s breathing. Can’t have him leave me again.
“Hey…” I can’t hide the concern in my voice.
“I’m okay,” he says, looking back.
“You sure?” I whisper, wiping my tears with my other hand.
He grabs both of my hands. “Don’t worry about me, Stan. All I need you to do is hear me out.”
Like a miracle, I don’t talk. I let more tears spill. I let him catch them with his thumb. But I’m listening.
“Do you really think you had any say with what Clo did to me? To my sister? My family? The rest of the world?”
My eyes take in how serious he looks.
“Or to you?” he asks. “You think you could have done anything?”
Creasing my brows, I hear how weak my voice comes out. “I could’ve…stopped Kys, but I needed it.”
He hisses. “Stan, do you even know why you needed Kys?”
I think about it but come up short. So I shake my head.
“I read all her files,” Nil says, voice so vicious it almost stops my heart. “You were thirteen.”
All that granola’s sitting heavy in my stomach like rocks instead of grains.
“Thirteen,” Nil whispers, sounding so hurt. “That’s when she started putting Kys in your food. She’s your mother, and she fed you fucking drugs to shape you how she wanted. You never had a say.”
This time, it’s my throat that feels like it’s not working.
“You were groomed, Stan, to be another weapon for her,” Nil says, pained. “Another puppet.”
He sounds so pained that all I wanna do is take it away from him.
“She wanted you to be loyal to her.” Nil snarls. “Don’t you see? How can you blame yourself over what your mother forced you to be? You had no choice.”
For some reason, I can’t see him well. Not anymore. Not until I force a blink and feel more tears run down my face.
Fuck, I’m sobbing.
Full-on ugly sobbing.
I heave in heavy breaths. I don’t think I’ve taken in any oxygen that entire time.
“Stan,” Nil whispers, frowning and crying with me.
But he makes tears look so damn beautiful.
I close my eyes again, the flaming heat of being a failure rising up my stiff spine.
His hands grip mine. I grip them back.
“It was never your fault, Stan. Do you hear me?”
Nodding desperately, I latch onto his words like a lifeline. It feels as freeing as it is damning. Like Nil pried my chest open. I didn’t even know it was welded shut, and now everything’s spilling out, and I can’t stop any of it.
I’m trying to breathe. My breaths keep tripping over themselves.
“Stan, I need you to open your eyes,” he says. “Please look at me.”
I do, or I try to, even though it’s blurry, and my throat feels like it’s trying to close for business. His face comes into focus slowly. Red eyes. Wet lashes. Determined as hell. Breathtaking in a way that’s starting to make my heart misbehave again.
And then I realize how close we are.
His lips are practically right there. If I leaned in even a little, I’d hit skin. If he angled himself up a bit, we’d be…