Chapter 28
Nicky leaned on a lamppost, trying to remember where he had parked his car. He considered vomiting into the bushes, but the feeling passed. He might as well walk for a while.
He’d stayed in the US for his university break because he had enjoyed the look on his prick of a father’s face over Skype when he shared his plans—at least, that’s what Nicky had been telling himself.
His asshole father had demanded to know what could be better than traveling Europe and interning with the delegation.
“Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, and maybe if I’m lucky I’ll even get to see Kansas,” Nicky had answered in English, with that exaggerated Californian vocal fry that always drove the commander nuts. Yep, there was no joy in his life that compared to pissing off his dad.
Still, that wasn’t why he’d stayed.
Courtney was the most normal person in his extended family.
His second year at university had sucked without her.
Her mother was the only one of his mother’s sisters who had married another American instead of opting for European officials or members of the various dusty aristocracies.
His grandmother was a US congresswoman who became a powerful ambassador, and the family traveled all over the world and met all kinds of wealthy, well-connected people who were, allegedly, dazzled by how beautiful, brilliant, and talented his mother and her sisters were.
The idea that Courtney was “normal” was laughable, since she was a literal musical prodigy.
But she was the only blood relative close to his age who didn’t travel in an entourage of bulletproof vehicles.
Nicky thought he’d be spending the first month of summer at Courtney’s Malibu house pissing off her nutjob religious asshole husband by existing, in between surfing and dicking around with a few of his scattered school friends with family properties nearby.
They’d take the jet and spend a few short days in backwoods flyover Kansas on their way back to the relatively civilized East Coast, where she’d help Nicky move into his junior-year apartment before her next tour with the dickwad husband started.
But no, she hadn’t come to pick Nicky up at the airport like she said she would.
He had arrived to find her ghostly pale. She said there had been a change of plans. That they were road-tripping to Kansas immediately and would be spending the summer in a rental house near her former Yale roommate. Ugh.
If he loved Courtney less, there would’ve been no fucking way.
But two weeks ago, he’d jumped in that car with no questions asked.
If he were honest, Nicky didn’t hate it here in Kansas, despite everything.
Nothing could be worse than being home with his father.
The various boarding schools he’d been moved around to hadn’t been much better.
He’d done all of the international schools.
Even a private boarding school in London that had a reputation for breaking the most rebellious rich kids’ spirits.
Nothing stuck. A few months later, his father would hear from some admiral or prince from somewhere else how there was a program that could “make a man out of his homo son.” Well, the cruder version of that sentiment, anyway, said in either Dutch, Swedish, or German depending on where his father had been traveling most recently.
Fucker.
He’d first learned that word at five when his mother had said it about the same man.
Nicky could speak five languages passably, but he could call his father a dick in sixty-one.
Some kids collected stamps, but he collected a polyglot of obscene insults for his narcissistic, megalomaniac sperm donor.
The worst part about America was the legal drinking age. But the asshole’s cash bought fake IDs, and despite all the threats, Nicky hadn’t been financially cut off yet. That cash bought lots of things.
Something slammed into the side of an enormous construction dumpster nearby, making Nicky jolt and crack his head on the lamppost in an effort to escape whatever nuclear-sized rat was about to jump out at him.
But no vermin appeared.
“Fuckety fuck fuck that goddamn asshat,” said a squeaky voice. That same voice continued to bleat profanity worthy of Nicky’s mother.
Now, Nicky was pretty fucked up, but not so hammered that he wasn’t intrigued as to why a dumpster was swearing at him.
He climbed up to the top edge and squinted.
At first, he saw nothing but darkness, until a flash of copper in the corner caught his eye.
Out of the shadows stepped a girl. She wore a gauzy white dress that almost looked like a nightgown.
Her hair was wild, with bedraggled orangey curls, and she was holding what looked like a long stick with leaves stuck to it in a broken plastic pot behind her.
“Ew ew ew ew ew. You better be worth it. That goddamn fucking evil cockroach misogynist scum throwing you out—shit. Ouch. Fuck. Fuckety fuck fuck. Now I’m going to be stuck in a dumpster. Well, that’s just goddamn perfect.”
“Can I be of some assistance?”
She looked up at him. Her enormous eyes blinked several times, like she was trying to decide if Nicky was a figment of her imagination.
Nicky stared back, trying to figure out if she was a mythological forest creature who moonlighted in dumpster diving.
Or maybe he was a lot more fucked up than he thought.
“What do you want?” One of the yellowed leaves on the tree smacked her in the face and kind of ruined her defiantly confident tone.
“I asked if you needed help.”
“Oh. I thought you said … and no. I’m good. And just so’s you know, I have pepper spray.” The girl gave him a ferocious glare for good measure.
“You could also beat me to death with that dead stick if it comes to that.”
“This tree is not dead. Goddamn it.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you. It just looks like that could only be considered a tree in the most aspirational sense, but I’m no arborist.” He pushed a handful of his stringy sun-bleached blond curls out of his face.
His father hated his “feminine” hair, so he had decided to grow it as long as possible during the school term.
Usually, Nicky liked the way it hung in his face like a shield.
That way people wouldn’t notice his bloodshot eyes or the size of his pupils.
Grunting, the girl tried to get up out of the dumpster again, but between the impractical dress and the dead tree and her dollar store–quality flip-flops, she slipped again. She tried three more times. And loosed another politely muted but shrill yawp.
“Are you still up there?”
“Yep.”
She squinted and covered her eyes to block the glare of the light from the lamppost. He still couldn’t really see her face.
“Are your eyes okay?”
“My vision’s terrible. Night vision’s even worse. My stupid contacts fell out during the fire dance.” She took a step forward and the light gilded her hair.
Nicky almost lost his grip on the side of the dumpster. “A-are you real?”
“Are you real?”
He snorted. “I mean, are any of us really real? Two AM’s a little late for existential questions, but I think it was Kierkegaard who said once ‘you label me, you—’”
“God, just stop talking.” She shifted her grip on the “tree” but continued muttering in a carrying whisper he couldn’t miss even if he wanted to.
“Of all the people to meet in a dumpster, I end up with some prep school smart-ass who quotes Danish philosophers.” She sighed and looked around as if to assure herself that she had no other choice.
“Fine. Help me up. But no sudden moves, bucko.”
“Where exactly are you carrying the pepper spray?” He couldn’t help but be curious, especially since the thin white dress seemed to leave very few options available.
Her spun-copper hair was chaos. The bottom of the dress was black with dumpster muck. But she took one more step forward. Her defiant, pointed chin lifted, and the golden light finally lit her shadowed features.
“Oh, it has very deep pockets.” That incandescent grin could have knocked him over even if the bottle of tequila hadn’t already half done the job.
“Oh, g-good.” His voice cracked like he was fourteen again.
Her eyes narrowed.
Not like they had before, when she’d been genuinely trying to see where he was in the dim light, but as if, even without her contacts in, she could finally really see him.
“You swear you aren’t going to try to murder me.”
“You would trust a potential murderer’s word?”
“Fuck it. I’ll sleep here. Hobo Jim Bob usually starts pacing this area in the next few hours—maybe he’ll help me.”
Nicky scoffed. “I can’t believe you’d trust someone named Hobo Jim Bob over me. Hand me the definitely not dead beanstalk.”
“Fiddle-leaf fig, jackass.”
“Hand it up, angel.”
She pushed it toward him. As soon as it was out of her hands, she was able to find purchase to scramble up and over the side of the dumpster. She hopped down on the sidewalk beside him. “If you ever call me angel again, I will hit you with my flip-flop.”
“Those flip-flops belong in a biohazard bin. At least hit me with the stick instead.”
“You think I’d risk my tree on your dumb face?”
He chuckled. “What’s wrong with angel?”
“It upholds gross ideas about women being paragons of virtue or some bullshit, good Coventry Patmore Mr. Can-Quote-Kierkegaard. If I were an angel, I’d be a bad angel.
” She grimaced. “Bad angel sounds stupid though. Was that a TV show—no, that was Dark Angel with Jessica Alba … criminally underrated, if you ask me…”
“I think—”
“Wicked angel. That’s better.”
“That sounds like a strip club.”
She scowled at him. “It’s a good thing I don’t care what you think, then, isn’t it? To me, it sounds more like a 1980s British female hair band who initially used a lot of religious iconography in their music videos, but eventually ends up selling handbags or perfume on the Home Shopping Network.”
“That is unnecessarily specific.”