Chapter 9 #2
For a raw moment, she mourned the obvious retreat. But he’d essentially just agreed to undress in front of her, which probably
counted for something. “Yeah. Sure. This way.”
In the kitchen, Nick shrugged off his bomber jacket and draped it over a chair. Aubrey delved into the fridge, shoving aside
various Tupperware containers and seizing a can of fizzy water from the back.
When she emerged, Nick had already stripped off his sweatshirt.
She froze. He could have covered himself, but instead, he stood straight-backed, his hands at his sides.
God, his bones. They stood out in stark relief, his sternum like a ship’s keel, each rib etched in shadow by the overhead
light. She wondered how he’d bested Gallant so effortlessly, yet the longer she looked, the more she read a hidden vitality
in those acres of sinew and bone. He was all bladed edges and pitiless lines, as if some inner fire had reduced him to a finely
honed weapon.
Her grip on the can tightened. “I . . . owe you an apology.”
“For?” he murmured.
“Thinking you didn’t speak.” Her voice echoed, husky in the stillness of the kitchen. “It was just that when you didn’t answer
me in class, or the hallway, I thought maybe you couldn’t.”
His lips quirked. “Because someone like me would never ignore the gorgeous cheerleader for any other reason?”
“I . . .” Blood rocketed into her cheeks. Which surprised her. Gallant complimented her looks all the time, and it never flushed
warmth through her like this. “. . . didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you did. Girls who look like you aren’t used to being ignored.”
The corners of her mouth ticked down. “That’s presumptuous.”
He huffed a chuckle. “Is it?”
“Yeah. I might not get ignored very often, but that doesn’t mean I’m not constantly misjudged.”
His lips thinned, but she sensed an invitation to continue.
She gestured at her uniform, on display now that she’d hung her parka in the front hall. “People see this and assume I only
care about hooking up with guys or screaming my head off every time Henderson wins a football game. Every time I talk about
math, they think I’m being delusional. Or trying to sound smarter than I am. But you of all people should see past that.”
“Me? Why me?”
She shifted the freezing can to the other hand. “Because. There’s more to you than you let on. A lot more.”
Nick sucked in a breath. “Okay. I’ll admit, you are surprising the shit out of me right now.”
They stood like that for long moments. His eyes looked so different than they had at school. She still couldn’t read them, exactly, but the hard wall had given way to something else, like he had a whole continent inside him, just waiting to be discovered.
“You said you write a lot,” she ventured. “What do you write? Stories?”
“Letters, mostly.” He swallowed. “To my mom.”
“Do you give them to her?”
“She’s dead. So, no.”
“Oh.” Aubrey deflated. “Damn. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged a bony shoulder. “It happens. I don’t even remember her, to be honest. Just snippets. I have these memories of . . .
soft hands. Short fingers. This smell, like some kind of flower. And she used to tell me stories. She’d get up close to my
ear and tell me the same few fairy tales, over and over. I remember that much, that they were always the same. I just wish
I could remember what they were about.”
Her gut tightened. “Couldn’t you ask your dad?”
Nick shook his head. “He’s a dick. She might’ve been an angel, but the other half of me is pure, grade A asshole. For better
or for worse.”
“That doesn’t make you an asshole, though.”
He grated out a laugh.
Silence welled. She couldn’t stop her attention from straying again. His leanness broke her heart, each sparse line a testament
to scarcity.
Somehow, the fact that he’d let her see felt monumental. Not like he stood half naked in her kitchen, but as if he’d peeled
back his skin to allow her a glimpse of the glistening bones beneath, the rhythmic squeeze of his heart.
“Are you hungry?” she heard herself say.
He chuckled without humor. “What, right now? Or always?”
“Both.”
“Yeah,” he said simply.
“Well, I’ve got plenty to eat.” She held out a hand for his sweatshirt. “I’ll clean that. You can help yourself.”
He nodded and moved to the fridge, the voltage in the air cooling to something resembling normality. Aubrey scrubbed at Nick’s
sweatshirt in the sink. While she worked, he tore through three meals’ worth of leftovers. He didn’t bother to reheat anything,
though a microwave sat in plain view.
The water ran pink, chilling her fingers. When she finished, she handed back the soaked shirt. “I’ll go grab something dry
from my dad’s closet. You can bring it back to me at school.”
“Okay.” Nick carried his dishes to the sink. “Thanks.”
She mounted the stairs to her parents’ bedroom, where a quick search of her dad’s closet produced a checkered flannel.
Downstairs, she found the kitchen empty. Nick’s dishes had been dried and put away, so she continued into the living room.
She found him by the coffee table, stuffing his wet sweatshirt into his backpack. The knobs of his vertebrae marched down
his back.
She drew close, her pulse a wild tangle. He’d pulled out a few books and set his notebook on top with the cover folded back.
Tight words crowded the page, not spaced out or bulleted, the way class notes would be.
Nick caught her looking and flipped the notebook shut.
“Can I read one?” She offered the flannel, which he pulled on. “Of your letters?”
He layered his bomber jacket over the borrowed shirt. “Not those. They’re for my mom. But I could write one for you, if you
want.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” He smiled faintly. It warmed his whole face, and she had the strangest desire to smooth a thumb across his split lip,
or maybe brush a curl from his eyes. She rubbed her fingers together until the itch faded.
“I think I owe you an apology, too,” he said.
“For what?”
“Being a dick. And misjudging you.” He shouldered his backpack and tucked the books under his arm. “The first is just habit.
But I don’t have any excuse for the second. Because you’re right. I should’ve known better. Anyway. Thanks. For everything.”
“No problem. Do you want a ride home?”
“Nah. I’ll walk. It’ll take longer.”
He made for the door. Aubrey trailed after him.
Out on the stoop, her uniform did nothing to block the January wind, but she hardly felt the cold. Nick made his way down
the creaking wooden steps, then turned. “You’re sure you want me to write to you? Absolutely positive?”
She measured the question. The way he searched her face made it seem like he was asking something else. Like she was standing
on some precipice with him behind her, his breath in her ear, asking if she wanted him to push.
“The thing is,” he continued, looking up at her, “words are more personal than numbers. A four is a four is a four, whether
it’s here or in Iran or on the moon. But words . . . Ten different people can use the same word to mean ten different things,
and the choice says as much about the message as it does about the person sending it. Words are like windows. They let you
see straight into whoever’s writing them. So when you ask for a letter, you’re asking to look. At me.”
Her breath thinned. “I know.”
Those black eyes bored into her, as if willing her to understand. “The thing is, you might regret seeing.”
She pondered that. “I might.”
Strangely, that seemed to satisfy him. He nodded once and turned away. The wind ruffled his curls like it was trying to pull
them off his head.
Even after he shrank to a speck, Aubrey still stood there.
She only went inside once she started to shiver.
The next day, Gallant showed up with two black eyes.
Aubrey had expected him to hide the proof of his defeat, but he came right up and leaned against her bank of lockers as if
it were just another day.
“Hey, MacLean.”
“Hey.” Pity softened her voice. “How’re you feeling?”
Gallant resorted to his usual cocksure grin. “Better than I look. I mean, the new kid’s clearly some kind of karate freak,
but at least everyone knows he cheated during our fight.”
“Cheated?” She busied herself with her combination lock, already regretting offering sympathy. “How would he have cheated?”
“Oh, come on, didn’t you see the way he . . .”
Whatever he said next turned to mush, because a sheet of notebook paper lay inside her locker. Someone had folded it into
thirds and pushed it through the slats.
She snatched at it, yanking it open so quickly it almost tore.
Dear Aubrey,
I couldn’t sleep last night. I wish I could say it was because I regretted, because as a rule, I don’t open up to people.
Especially not about the things I told you yesterday. Those were confessions I haven’t made to anyone in years. If ever.
But it wasn’t regret that kept me awake.
The thing is, before I came to Henderson, I assumed this town would be just like the last one. I expected fights, a constant battle to be left alone. I even expected to have to prove myself on my first day, because of course everyone would need to know where on the food chain I fell.
What I didn’t expect was you. A girl with a mind like a diamond and no hesitation about sharing it. But you came from nowhere
yesterday and just . . . shone for me. Like it was easy. Like you trusted me to see.
I won’t lie, I’d already dismissed you in English. I saw a cheerleading uniform and a waterfall of red hair and figured I’d
taken your measure.
But that hour with you at your house turned my assumptions upside down. Then, last night, your words swirled together in my
head again, a fever dream I wanted to crawl back into and live inside of.
I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t stop wondering if you would’ve let me kiss you.
It’s something I’ve never done before. Kiss someone, I mean. Not that I haven’t wanted to. I have. But there are myriad things
I’ve wished for and never gotten. Sometimes, it feels like that’s the natural state of my existence. Just . . . wanting. The
sheer power of craving hollows me out sometimes, carves an empty ache into my bones.
Which isn’t normal, I know. I’m not normal. Especially because sometimes, I can’t even name whatever it is I’m wishing for so fiercely. But last night, I
knew.
I wanted to kiss you. A fucking cheerleader, of all things. But not just that. A girl with perfect pink lips who looks at numbers and somehow sees god.
Would you kiss the same way you talk, I wonder? With all that passion?
I should clarify I’m not actually asking for that. I don’t have your faith that, given enough trying, I can have whatever
I want. I also know that after getting a letter like this, you’ll probably never speak to me again. I wouldn’t, if I were
you. But you asked me to write, so here it is, assuming I muster the courage to actually deliver this.
I think maybe what I’m really trying to say is thank you. The truth is I have surprisingly few afternoons like yesterday’s
in my collection, and that hour together meant something to me, regardless of whether it’s ever repeated.
So, thanks.
Nick.
PS—I told you you’d regret seeing.
Aubrey battled for breath. Gallant droned on, but her blood roared so loudly it drowned him out.
She mashed the letter against her chest and stepped back from her locker. From far away, down the hall, dark eyes collided with hers. Nick’s expression was pained, his jaw flexed, like a man whose fate had just been sealed at the gallows. A sea of people heaved between them.
She started toward him. She had no idea what she would say, only that he’d been right, holy shit he’d been right, there was a god in words, because the ones he’d written had rocketed straight into her, like stars imploding as they fell to earth.
Gallant called after her, but Aubrey barely heard.
But by the time she reached the spot where Nick had stood, he’d gone.