Chapter 6
Rick had an ice pack pressed to his face and was leaving the office when he bumped into someone in the hallway. “Sorry, sorry.” He reached out automatically to steady the person, his hand wrapping around their upper arm. He looked down into big brown eyes. “Nika!”
“Rick.” She blinked up at him, her surprise morphing into concern. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” He was not fine. At some point on the way to the office, his body had started helpfully pointing out bruised knees, skinned elbows, tiny pulses of pain that seemed to be spreading out with each heartbeat. His face throbbed in response.
Rick realized he was still holding Nika’s arm and yanked his hand back.
Her brow knitted together, and Rick had the odd impulse to put the ice pack there, like it would help.
“You don’t look okay,” she said slowly. She gingerly touched his chin, turning it so she could get a better look at his mouth, which thankfully had stopped bleeding. She winced. “You’re going to have a bruise.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just my face.” Rick was certain that somewhere, for reasons she wasn’t sure of, Martina Lopez just face-palmed.
Nika let go of his chin, and for the first time today, Rick wanted to cry. She had been touching his skin, and she’d stopped. That had hurt a lot more than hitting the ground.
She began digging through her messenger bag. “You should take some ibuprofen. That will help with the swelling.”
He leaned over, watching her progress. “You just happen to have that with you?”
Nika pulled out a slim plastic case and blinked up at him. “Of course. Don’t you?” She opened the case, revealing several Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, an even smaller container full of different medications, a couple of pads, and for some reason, two packets of fruit snacks.
Rick lowered his ice pack. “Everything makes sense to me except for the fruit snacks. Unless it’s a blood sugar thing?”
She gave her head a slight shake as she opened up the pill container, then handed him two brown pills and a packet of fruit snacks. “They’re for this, actually. You shouldn’t take ibuprofen on an empty stomach. It tears up the lining.” She saw his expression and added, “My dad’s a nurse.”
“Ah.” He started to put them in his pocket, but she stopped him.
“You should take those now.” Her kit went back into her bag as she fished out her water bottle, which was pink and covered in berry brambles with an adorable mouse climbing through them.
She held it out to Rick. “Sorry, this is all I have. I’ll understand if you don’t want to share.
I don’t think I’m sick, but you never know. ”
Rick traded her his ice pack and took the bottle.
“Fruit snacks first,” she reminded him, her expression intent as she watched him, and Rick thought, She could be handing me pure poison, and I’d take it right now.
He tossed the small handful of fruit snacks into his mouth and chewed, trying to think of anything to say to her. Anything at all. Come on, brain, make with the words. What came out was “Paxton had to put a tampon up his nose.”
He closed his eyes and internally cataloged the level of self-disgust he was feeling right now. Why. Out of all of the words that existed in the English language, why were those the ones he went with?
“Are you wishing you could sink into the floor right now?” Nika asked.
Rick opened his eyes. “Yeah.”
Her lips twitched into a smile. “I know that expression well. I’m constantly saying ridiculous things and wishing I had a better filter.”
“I like what you say,” Rick blurted.
“Thank you.” She gestured to the pills he was holding. “You can take those now.”
Rick popped them into his mouth and took a swig of her water before handing it back to her, grimacing a little at the pain drinking had caused.
“You, uh, might want to wash that. I was bleeding. With my face. My mouth! It was bleeding.” Rick would have buried his face in his hands out of embarrassment, but it would hurt too much.
“I will,” she said, trading the bottle for his ice pack.
He put it to his face and then it suddenly came to him what he must look like right now.
Not just bloodied and bruised, he’d also been running around the track.
His shirt was still damp with sweat. I’m trying to talk to Nika Page while doing a stellar impression of Swamp Thing after getting his ass kicked.
“I should probably get back to gym,” he said, edging away from her. “To change.”
“Okay.” She put away her water, then looked up at him with a smile. “I’ll walk you.”
Rick stumbled a little. “You don’t have to do that.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I was going that way anyway.”
Oh. That shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but Rick realized that despite his current state, he’d been a little elated that she’d wanted to spend that small piece of time with him. She probably wants to make sure you don’t trip and break more of your face.
“Okay,” he said, and started walking.
After a moment of silence, she cleared her throat. “Paxton needed a tampon?”
It took Rick a second to remember his earlier comment. He’d done so many boneheaded things in such a short time, and he was already trying to mentally block them out. “Uh, yeah. He had a nosebleed.”
She frowned at the linoleum.
“Tampons work well for them. Nosebleeds. Because of the shape. Not the big tampons, but the little ones. You only had pads. So those wouldn’t work.” His brain was screaming at him now. Shut up, mouth, shut up!
“I wouldn’t share tampons with Paxton Embry even if I had them,” she said darkly.
“But you’d share your tampons with me?” He sounded…hopeful? Which was probably sad. His brain quit screaming, throwing its hands up in the air and retreating to the back of his skull to hide. “Oh my fucking god, I’m going to stop talking now.”
Nika peered up at him. “Why?”
Rick didn’t have it in him to even try to be cool at this point. That ship had not only sailed but crashed into the harbor. “Because I can’t seem to stop mentioning period products. I shouldn’t be talking to you about them.”
She looked up at him, amused. “I have a uterus, Rick. I know all about them. You’re not exactly shocking me here.”
“It’s not…” He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. “I don’t know, polite? Maybe a little mansplainy?”
“It’s okay to talk openly about this stuff. Tampon isn’t a bad word, Rick.”
“I know, it’s just…” Well, it wasn’t exactly a romantic word, either, and it wasn’t the kind of witty banter he imagined having with Nika Page in his daydreams, but he didn’t want to say that out loud, so he gave up. He sighed. “Thanks.”
She paused in front of the entrance to the gym. “There was something I was going to talk to you about—”
The bell sounded, an annoyingly flat, buzzing kind of noise, interrupting her.
She scowled faintly at the sound. “I guess not.”
Rick’s gut dipped. The timing—nothing was going his way today, and he’d be wondering all day now what she’d wanted to talk to him about.
She dug in her bag again and then looked at him expectantly. “So I guess you’ll just have to give me your number.”
—
“She asked for your number?” Martina paused in the middle of the parking lot.
Rick had barely made it to English on time, so this was the first chance they’d had to catch up.
They hadn’t wanted to go to the cafeteria to eat while people stared at them or whispered about them, so Martina suggested they go hang out in the Beast instead.
Neither of them had much of an appetite anyway, and Rick was pretty sure he had a few sodas in his mini fridge.
“Yeah,” he said. “She asked for my number.”
Martina stared at him, wide-eyed. After several seconds, she let out an exasperated huff. “And?”
He shrugged. “I gave her my number.”
She continued to stare at him, rolling her hand in a come on gesture.
He started walking toward the Beast. “And then I immediately started to panic because now I have another way to say absolutely unhinged nonsense to her. I can fail on two different levels at the same time.”
“How unhinged?”
“Pretty sure I talked about tampons for several minutes.”
Martina dropped her chin to her chest and sighed. “Do I need to take your phone away from you?”
Rick shrugged. “Maybe.”
They stopped at the end of the row where the Beast was parked.
While Rick could admit that sometimes the Beast was a little rough around the edges, a bit of a work in progress, it wasn’t usually tilted.
He jogged around the side of his van, knowing even before he saw it what he was going to find.
The front left tire, the one pointing away from the school, was completely flat. So was the one behind it.
“How did you manage that?” Martina asked, coming up beside him. “Did we run over something this morning and not notice?”
Rick ran a hand through his hair. “I could see that happening with one tire, but both?”
“Do you have a spare?”
He looked at her. “Yeah, for one tire. Not two.” He put his hands on his hips, mentally calculating the money in his account. He’d had enough for gas this week. Barely. Tires were expensive. How was he going to get home? He had to be there when Dani got home from school and—
His brain hazed in panic. He didn’t have the money and he had so much to do and how was he going to fix this?
His sister was counting on him, his mother was counting on him.
This week just kept getting worse and adding, adding, adding and never taking things away, and he was so sick of not having enough.
He collapsed into a sitting position next to the van, crumpling like a stomped-on aluminum can. He wrapped his arms around his knees. “I can’t deal with this.”
Martina lowered herself down next to him, mimicking his position. “It’s a lot.”
“Yeah.”