Chapter 11 #3
He swiped the blanket Dani had left on the floor and tossed it to Rick. “And I hope you know you can talk to me, too, right? About anything?” He pinched his fingers together and squinted. “I promise I’ll only be a little judgmental.”
Rick shoved the blanket to the side for now. “Sure, right, only a little.”
Vic laughed as he left the room, closing his door softly a second later.
Rick stared at his phone for a long moment. How could something so small be so terrifying?
He texted Martina first. Hey did Nika text you tonight?
Teeny: No. Ooooh, why?
Rick: She texted me. Wanted to know how we’re doing
Teeny: She wanted to know how you were doing, you mean. Yeeeeesssss! I told you. She wants your sweet ass
Rick: Please never use that sentence again
Teeny: You’re no fun. Fine. Tell her I’m fine. Then ask her out
His fingers hovered over his keyboard for a second, hesitating. Finally he replied, R u ok? Really?
Teeny: I don’t know. But I will be
Rick:
Teeny: Yes, yes, you love me. I love you too! Now go away! I’m busy!!
He took a deep breath. Let it out. He needed to stop overthinking it. He tapped out a quick message to Nika, seeing if she was up for a call. A second later, her name flashed on his screen. It was with an odd combination of nausea and pure, sweet elation that he picked up.
“Hey.” He smacked a palm against his forehead and closed his eyes. Great. Brilliant. Excellent start. You’re a wordsmith. Consider going into poetry. At least it wasn’t “hellody.”
“Hi,” Nika said, her voice squeaking. She cleared her throat, sounding normal again. “How are you doing?”
“Okay,” Rick said. “Martina said thanks for asking after her.” She hadn’t exactly said that, but Rick knew she’d meant it.
“Of course,” Nika said. “It must have been…awful.”
“Yeah.” Rick blew out a breath. It had been awful. But what to say beyond that? What to talk about now? The silence stretched, slowly passing slightly awkward and going so deep into uncomfortable territory that Rick thought he might need a machete to hack his way out.
Rick leaned his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes.
Did he trust Nika? He did. Not quite as much as Martina, but they had a friendship built in layers of time, like the different colored lines of sediment you saw on canyon walls sometimes.
He and Nika weren’t there yet, but they needed a foundation.
Something level and sturdy for them both to stand on.
Like the truth.
“Yeah.” Rick wanted to swallow back the fear—didn’t want to think about anything that had happened…but also knew he needed to let some of it out. “It was really awful. I’ve never seen a dead body before. Every time I think I know the worst part of it, I think of something new.”
“What’s the worst part right now?” Her voice was gentle, like she was trying to hug him through the phone.
Rick’s shoulders relaxed. “I touched his skin. Checking for a pulse, even though Martina already had. And you know what I thought?”
“What?”
“That I was pretty sure I’d never touched Bryce before.
We weren’t friends. I didn’t even like him.
But we’d gone to school together for years, and I don’t think I ever shook his hand or bumped him in the hall.
” He let out a jagged sigh. “The first time you touch someone shouldn’t be after they’re dead. ”
There was a slight pause, then the rustle of fabric, like she was changing positions. “That’s a lot to muddle through.”
Rick stared at the white ceiling above him as he tried to figure out how he was feeling and what to say. “It’s a weird thing to think, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s weird. Just a lot to handle.” Nika was quiet for a moment. “It’s just…death is huge, you know? It’s a big thought with big feelings. I don’t think we’re capable of handling it all at once. Humans are sort of…limited at times, while also being weirdly limitless. I don’t know.”
She went quiet again, and Rick could almost imagine her sitting in her room, thinking, even if he had no idea what her room looked like.
“Maybe I’m talking nonsense, but it makes sense to me that you’re having all these different thoughts hitting you at different times.
It’s a gigantic, complex thing, and so your brain is taking it apart and showing it to you in small bits.
Cutting it down into sizes you can handle. ”
“Huh.” Rick let that idea roll around in his head.
This time the silence between them wasn’t awkward.
Nika seemed to understand that he needed to think.
Rick cleared his throat. “When there’s a big problem with a car at work, something that’s complicated or we don’t know how to fix right away, sometimes we have to take it apart so we can figure it out before we can fix it and put it back together. ”
He rubbed a hand through his hair, suddenly feeling like he wasn’t good enough for this conversation.
Nika was saying smart things, and he was…
who he was, and since both Martina and Vic said that was good enough, he decided to at least temporarily believe them.
Besides, Nika would figure out who he was eventually. “Maybe that’s pathetic? I don’t know.”
“I don’t think that’s pathetic at all,” Nika said. “I think it actually makes a lot of sense.”
He wasn’t so sure he did make much sense, but Nika sounded sincere. “Death is a car engine,” Rick said, suddenly sounding tired, even to himself. “I should write a book.”
“I would read it.” Nika’s voice was soft and almost painfully gentle.
“Of course you would,” Rick said with a laugh. “I bet you read everything.”
“No,” Nika said, sounding a little defensive. “Not everything.”
“It wasn’t an insult. Tell you what,” Rick said. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you all about last night if you tell me what books you don’t like to read.”
“Deal.”
Rick felt a jolt of triumph at this, though he wasn’t entirely sure why, except it meant that she’d stay on the phone talking with him, even after he’d told her what she wanted to know. That maybe, just maybe, he was interesting to her beyond that terrible experience.
With that feeling pumping through his veins, Rick finally relaxed completely, opened his mouth, and spilled everything about last night to Nika Page.
When he was done, she told him about books, the conversation hopscotching from there to whatever topic came up.
And for the first time since he’d known her, Rick didn’t stress over every word.
He just talked, unedited, without thought, just tossing it all out there with the hopes that she would catch it.
And Nika listened to every word.