Chapter Seventeen September #2
Nick (6:05 p.m.)
yes???
Unknown Number (6:05 pm)
Brady’s Nick?
Okay, didn’t see that coming.
Nick (6:07 p.m.)
who is this?
Unknown Number (6:08 p.m.)
I’m Lucy, Brady’s sister
He’s talked about you before and I got your number from his phone
So are you the Nick he’s friends or whatever with or are you some other Nick??
He added the number to his phone under a new contact while he collected his thoughts.
Nick (6:11 p.m.)
yes i’m brady’s “friend or whatever”
he okay? he’s kinda been MIA the past few weeks…
i’ve been worried but he won’t answer my calls or text me back
i was kinda relieved when i saw your post on facebook, just glad to know he’s okay somewhere and not crashed in a ditch in virginia or something
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (6:15 p.m.)
Nope he’s alive and not in any ditches
Brady won’t talk to me, do you know what’s up with him??
I love him and all but it’s not like him to show up unannounced…
He’s been all mopey the past few days and enough’s enough y’know??
Any hints what I can do to help…?
He felt like they were beating around the bush, trying to get the other to admit that they both knew that Nick was the reason Brady had fled to Pittsburgh. He didn’t want to out Brady in case Jenna was right, but he wasn’t sure he could slowly circle around to the point.
Nick (6:20 p.m.)
i feel like you’re asking something super specific and i WANT to answer you, but i don’t know if it’s my place to
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (6:22 p.m.)
Okay pardon my French here but I know my brother likes dick so if you’re worried about offending or shocking me or whatever, save it
I’ve seen Brady this miserable before and I fucking hate it
The last time wasn’t his fault and there wasn’t shit I could do to fix it, but I’m under the impression that it’s at least a LITTLE his fault this time and maybe I CAN actually do something
So either you help me brainstorm how to fix this shit by using your words like a big boy or I gotta move on and work on a plan b
The circumstances kinda sucked, but Nick really liked Brady’s sister.
Nick (6:27 p.m.)
we’ve been sleeping together for a couple months and someone kinda called him my boyfriend and he freaked out and disappeared
It was agony waiting for an answer; he had to talk himself out of calling her.
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (6:28 p.m.)
Not gonna lie I was NOT expecting that
I mean I was 100% expecting to find out you guys were sleeping together I just wasn’t expecting an honest answer that quickly
That makes you about a million times more emotionally stable than Brady so there might actually be a chance to get you boys back on track
Nick (6:32 p.m.)
you’ll help???
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (6:33 p.m.)
Ofc I’ll help jfc I want my brother to be happy and he’s been happier since he’s met you than he’s been since like junior year of high school as sad as that sounds
Nick did not melt at that piece of info.
Nick (6:33 p.m.)
really??? do you think he misses me???
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (6:35 p.m.)
Look I could tell from pretty early on he had a crush on you
And I suspected you guys had F I N A L L Y gotten together bc he has actually seemed genuinely happy in a way I don’t see very often
So you can see why I’m now worried and protective instincts have made me want to kick your ass ever since he showed up
Nick (6:39 p.m.)
if it helps i’ve been beating myself up since The Incident (tm)
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (6:40 p.m.)
It does.
So he’s having a crisis bc someone said you’re boyfriends, so my first question is are you boyfriends??
Nick considered how to answer. It was a test, and he wanted to pass, but he didn’t know Lucy or what she wanted to hear from him.
While avoidance and gentle nudges had been his rule with Brady, he decided that wouldn’t get him anywhere with Lucy.
Not knowing any better, honesty was probably his best policy.
Nick (6:47 p.m.)
i don’t think we are boyfriends since we have never actually said the words ‘boyfriend’ or ‘relationship’ to each other.
from an outside perspective - and i say this with confidence bc i have several outsiders who have confirmed this - we LOOK like we’re dating.
we hang out with each other, we go out with each other, we have sex and spend the night with each other, we go to parties together…
prbly from the second i met him (okay maybe it was like the month and not the second, he’s hot but he’s the grumpy silent type y’know?), i wanted to hook up with your brother… and not long after that i realized what i actually wanted was to date him and have been doing my best since then
and seriously i’m sorry if i’ve made him miserable i really didn’t want to i have been trying to avoid that the whole time and i’ve been trying to fix it since it happened but he won’t talk to me and i don’t know what to do
so i’m kinda at your mercy right now
like srsly tell me what to do and i’ll do it. you say jump i’ll ask how high
The minutes ticked by, and he wondered if he’d failed. He looked over what he’d said, trying to find anything that could be interpreted badly or labeled him “Human Disaster: Do Not Allow Near Brother.”
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (7:06 p.m.)
Ok so imho you idiots need to talk in person
I would NOT recommend you drive to Pittsburgh to do that. Grand gesture that it might be, you’d just freak him out and make it worse
I’ll get him back in Maryland and I’ll put it into his head that he should talk to you
That’s what I can do on my end the rest is up to you. You gotta convince him that you’re boyfriend material
(And you might have to agree to be secret boyfriends I honestly don’t know what he can handle he’s not got a lot of dating experience and he shies away from the guy thing most of the time)
(Being publicly into guys has never gone well for him so keep that in mind)
So figure out what’s a deal-breaker for you, what you personally can handle, and be ready to put that out in the open and hash it out
He waited patiently to see if there was more coming before he responded. If he’d learned anything from Jenna over the years, it was not to interrupt when he was being given valuable information.
Nick (7:15 p.m.)
okay i’ll do my best
you sure you can get him to come back???
Lucy (Brady’s sister) (7:16 p.m.)
I’m a newlywed and my brother is sleeping on my couch. I’m pretty sure I can traumatize him into leaving. You let me handle that, you just figure out what you wanna say, k?
Good luck I’m rooting for you ??
But also if you hurt him and/or make this worse I’ll murder you in your sleep ??
Nick (7:20 p.m.)
honestly that’s fair
terrifying, but fair
*
If he were being completely honest, Nick was hurt when Brady didn’t reach out to him the next day.
Intellectually, he understood that even if Lucy had magic powers that would get Brady out of her house that night, he’d have to pack, drive back, and then presumably sleep before it’d be possible to see him.
That didn’t mean he felt any better about the continued radio silence for the next few days.
Lucy’s text warning him of Brady’s impending return helped ease his mind and made him nervous all over again.
He worked through practice conversations with Jenna, Terry, and Gail, all of whom did a terrible job of impersonating Brady but at least gave him a sounding board for trying out different things.
He did his best not to rehearse anything in particular.
He was practicing, but he wanted whatever he ended up saying to Brady to be real.
Memorizing a big speech about his feelings would never be the way to go.
With him and Brady, it’d always been better when they were flying by the seat of their pants.
Do I text him…? Call? Stop by unannounced? Try to time it so I run into him on the Metro? I know he’s back in town…
He was put out of his misery a day later when Brady texted him.
Brady Jensen (3:14 p.m.)
heading to Krazy Dan’s for dinner tonight
gonna try and watch a preseason game
Goosebumps rose on his arms, and it was all Nick could do not to go to the bar right now.
Mustering all the chill he possibly could (which admittedly wasn’t very much), he typed out a response with shaking fingers.
Nick (3:19 p.m.)
cool what time?
God he felt like he was in middle school again, talking to his first crush and trying to look cool and failing miserably.
Brady Jensen (3:20 p.m.)
game’s at seven
Nick (3:20 p.m.)
??
Normally he’d get there early and start their tab for the night. These weren’t normal circumstances, not by a long shot, so instead he set an alarm for 6:55 p.m. and would NOT let himself get ready a second before that.
It’d be an understatement to say he was a mess for the next few hours.
He tried to mindlessly lose himself in TV, in stick-handling, in video games, even in work for all the good it did, but nothing helped.
He’d blissfully forget for maybe five minutes if he was lucky, and then he’d tense up as his mind inevitably wandered to Brady.
He checked his phone at 6:32 p.m. He put it aside, pretended to care about whatever commercial was on TV, and checked it again.
6:34 p.m.
He paced back and forth across his living room, through his kitchen, looked out the back window at the bike path.
6:37 p.m.
He tried rearranging the items on his cluttered mantle, realized it was dusty, and decided now was as good a time as any to clean them off.
6:42 p.m.
He went upstairs and looked through his closet.
What was the appropriate outfit for a not-date with his not-boyfriend he hadn’t seen in a few weeks because his not-boyfriend had freaked the fuck out and ditched town?
He settled on the same faded shorts he’d been wearing all day.
He changed his shirt, though, since he’d sweated through it.
Caps shirt, superhero shirt, or something plain?
Something plain. Brady’d said he looked good in navy blue once, so he went with that.
6:54 p.m.