Chapter 22
I don’t even know what time it is when I stumble back to the B and B.
I walked around aimlessly for hours, crying and distraught.
This is the last place I want to be, but I have nowhere else to go now that my backup plan is suddenly off the table.
The lobby is dim when I enter. There is no sign of Nico or his mom. No sign of anyone.
There’s that tiny bell on the counter for emergencies, but the last thing I want to do is sound the alarm and explain why I look like I just emerged from a swamp.
But I cannot even fathom going back to the room I share with my potentially former best friends.
How do I always find myself in these situations?
The waterfall starts up again. There is no least-worst option that I can think of.
I sink down into one of the tiny lobby couches, hugging my knees tightly to my chest. How do I screw everything up, always?
I couldn’t even get into a reputable college.
I’ve let my family down, and now I’ve done the same to my friends.
I don’t doubt that as I go on living, I will continue to let absolutely everyone down.
This entire trip was my idea and now it is completely ruined.
I bulldozed Anya and Mari into where we went, where we stayed, all to meet up with Wes.
Wes, who would choose passing out in a bathtub over responding to my texts.
I keep dropping everything to give him chances when he’s never done the same for me.
“Hey…” Nico’s soft voice pulls me from my pity party. “Are you okay?” He kneels to catch my eye. “Are you hurt?”
“Not physically,” I say.
“Hold tight.” Nico stands up. “Let me call Anya and Mari. I think they’re in.”
“No!” I panic. “You can’t. We had a huge fight. Everything’s ruined. Everything.” That’s all I’m able to offer through my sobs.
“Okay.” Nico stands there, studying me, hands in his pockets. He too looks like he’s at a complete loss, and after a minute, he simply walks away.
It only makes my tears flow faster. I can’t really blame him. I wouldn’t want to deal with me in this state either. But soon he returns with a glass of water and a warm, damp towel.
“For your face,” he says. “Um. There’s some makeup…” He swirls his hand around, which does a sufficient job of describing the mess that is likely smeared over my face.
“Thank you.” I take the towel and mop up my face, then glug down the water as he sits quietly next to me. I don’t know if you can get dehydrated from crying, but I’m parched. Eventually, enough time passes that my crying calms.
“I’d offer you a room for the night, but the empty ones are still being renovated.” Nico looks around, considering. “You’re welcome to stay on the couch if you want?”
It’s such a kind gesture, but the sofa is smack in the middle of the lobby.
I’d be fully on display. I don’t know if I can handle that level of humiliation on top of everything else—the thought of people streaming through, whispering at the sight of me.
“Thank you so much, Nico, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.
Don’t worry about me. I can figure something out. ”
Nico snaps his fingers. “Hold on.” He disappears behind the front desk. A couple of minutes later, he emerges with a pile of bedding. “Do you like camping?”
“I like s’mores.”
Nico’s face scrunches in confusion. “S’mores? Never heard of this.”
He leads me to the small courtyard, beneath the open sky. “Thoughts? It’s private. You can stare up at the stars. Listen to the birds.”
There are large leafy plants that would shield me from view, and Nico ties a hammock strategically between two trees so it’s hidden under large fern leaves.
It’s private and secluded and while it’s not ideal, it’s an escape from what surely awaits in the hotel room.
Nico stuffs two pillows on one side, lays out a thin sheet, then folds up a blanket to cover the rest of the length of the hammock.
“Nico… you’re a lifesaver. For real.”
“It’s nothing.” But he doesn’t stop with my hammock. It takes me a minute to realize he’s tying a second one on the other side of the courtyard about ten feet away. Once he’s attached it to the trees, he tests the structural integrity by lying down, swinging from side to side.
“Wait… you’re sleeping out here too?”
“I can’t leave you out here by yourself, Sora. I’m your host. It wouldn’t be good manners.” Nico says this like it’s the simplest decision ever.
“You can’t. You have an actual bed waiting for you. Don’t be dumb.” But secretly, it’s a huge relief, knowing that I won’t be alone.
“Are you going to try it out?” Nico glances over, his eyes sparkling as he ignores my weak attempt to talk him back inside.
I resign myself to his stubbornness and comply, wiggling my way in until I find my balance. The midnight is pierced by thousands of stars, so big and bright and beautiful. No matter what, they are still shining. “This is really nice. Thank you, Nico.”
“You’re welcome.” A thick silence hangs in the air.
Crickets are chirping, mixing together with the sound of faint music coming from the direction of the beach.
There’s a wide-open space between us, but it’s not one that’s begging to be filled or waiting with some expectation. It’s nice, that lack of pressure.
“We can talk about it if you want,” Nico finally says.
I don’t, at first. How would I even explain things so that he won’t think I’m completely unhinged? But it’s been so long, and so hard, and now I’m realizing that I haven’t even had Wes to be honest to about any of it. I let out a long exhale. “It’s just such a mess.”
“How so?”
“Well, you were right about the Italian romance thing. It just… didn’t start in Italy.”
“Really?” Nico raises his eyebrows.
“Yes.” And then I spill it all: our complete history, what happened at prom, how I planned this trip to align with Wes’s, and lastly, how Mari and Anya have said they would rather I date Vladimir Putin than Wes.
“Putin? That seems a little bit of a stretch. There are outstanding charges against him. War crimes.” Nico sits up, suddenly alert. “Is this Wes a criminal too?”
“No.” I smile, before turning contemplative. “Not that I know of, at least. I think they were just being dramatic.” But then I think about how much they do actually hate Wes and realize it could go either way.
“I see.” Nico reclines back, really considering the Putin angle. “So Wes—I ask only because I’m genuinely trying to understand—why do you like him so much?”
“I guess there are lots of reasons.”
“Like?”
I bite my lip, wondering where to start.
“Well, he’s super hot, for one. Like stupid hot.
All the girls at school would die to date him.
He was homecoming king. I don’t think anyone else even got a vote.
” I stare up at the night sky as I try to put words to my feelings.
“He’s also funny, charming, and very sweet when he wants to be. ”
“Those are a lot of reasons,” Nico says.
And then I think of the reason I’ve never really wanted to admit. To myself, to anyone. But here Nico is, willing to accept these as good-enough answers, and I realize that I don’t want him to think that I’m the kind of girl who only likes people because they’re hot.
“I think… I think it’s how I feel when all his attention is on me.
Like it is validating somehow? It’s dumb, but I never had many guys interested in me, especially one as sought-after as Wes.
Before him, I was invisible.” Being on the receiving end of envy was the biggest clue I had nabbed something worth holding on to, and so I held on.
“No one even asked me to a dance until my junior year. Like, I’d fight with my parents, begging them to let me go to dances with boys, but then no one would even ask.
I would go with Anya and Mari instead, and we’d stand in the corner doing dorky dances, pretending we were having fun.
Wes changed all that. It’s like he saw value in me, worth.
It felt like the sun.” I turn to Nico, though I can’t see him in the darkness.
“Have you ever felt like that?” I flush as soon as the words are out of my mouth.
Of course he hasn’t—I think back to Nico’s gorgeous girlfriend from the beach.
His abs. He’s probably never struggled to find a date to anything.
It’s quiet for a beat. “Not exactly. But I think I understand.” He pauses, and I can faintly hear him breathing. Four rounds of breath come and go before he asks a follow-up question. “Do you really think you’re invisible?”
“I don’t know.” I sit there in my thoughts for a while.
“I guess I used to. Or maybe it was more that I felt like I didn’t matter, that things would never happen for me the way they would for other people.
That I’d have to make them happen or they never would.
Like if I didn’t try, no one would notice.
” I swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s what’s so great about Wes.
I get to have his attention without needing to work so hard for it. ”
“Hmm,” Nico says.
“What?”
“It just sounds like, from what you describe, you do have to work really hard. You planned the first part of your vacation around him, and he couldn’t even text you back.”
Nico’s trying to let me down easy, but it still stings.
“The thing about love is that you don’t have to be so worried about losing it. Love should never make you feel undeserving of it. Like you have to prove yourself for it.” Nico pauses. “True love, at least.”
“Yeah,” I say, because he’s right, of course. I lie there, swaying from side to side. It’s quiet then, apart from the crickets. Nico doesn’t ask any more questions, which is good because I’m not prepared to answer any, afraid of receiving responses that I don’t want to hear.
“Good night, Sora,” Nico finally says.
“Good night, Nico.”
I stare up at the night sky, counting the stars until I fall asleep.