43. Nick
FORTY-THREE
NICK
I jerk out of sleep. My eyes fly open, and I look around blearily. I’m on my couch, where I clearly dozed off at some point.
One could probably say I have too much on my plate. Three clients. Culinary school applications. Business plans. Endless paperwork.
Then again, not having all that won’t work. I need the distraction, even if it means I haven’t gotten a full night of sleep in years.
I sit up and rub my face.
It takes me a moment to realize that the pounding noise isn’t because my fucking neighbors have started redecorating. No, the increasingly unhinged pounding is coming from my front door.
I stomp to my hallway and yank it open.
And then I clamp my mouth shut when I see who it is.
Saying he’s pissed feels like a massive understatement. I’m pretty sure there’s a fifty-fifty chance of me getting murdered, and if that happens, I’ll be the first to tell you I deserve it.
Blue shoves his phone in my face.
“Did you do this?”
I glance at the email on the screen. “Yes.”
I can’t do this again. I can’t be near him. There’s temptation and then there’s whatever this irresistible pull Blue has always had on me is. I can already feel it. This instinctive shift inside me when he’s near. I can already map out how it will happen.
In relatively small, feels-innocent-at-first steps.
My attention going to him against my will. Eyes tracking him automatically. Being aware of where he is, what he’s doing, whether he’s upset, whether he’s smiling. Whether he’s looking at me.
And God help me when he does look at me. It will feel like stepping too close to the edge of a high cliff.
Six years should have killed this.
It should have been buried.
Gone and forgotten.
Instead, it’s still alive somewhere. Alive and vicious and humiliatingly eager to ruin me.
Because it’s still Blue.
Still him.
Still the boy who used to sneak out of the house at dawn to go out on the bay with me.
The boy I spent countless hours sitting on the roof with.
Still the boy who used to laugh with his whole body.
The boy who used to fall asleep in my arms, feet tangled with mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He’s still the boy I loved so deeply that when all was said and done, I was nothing but broken shards.
He’s not the boy I love anymore.
He’s the man I survived.
I can’t do this again. I don’t want this. Not after everything.
There’s a wall between us. I built it. Put it up brick by brick. It’s crucial that it stays intact.
I’ll take his anger for my weakness. It’s a fair trade.
I welcome it.
Come on, Blue. Tell me I’m an asshole. Tell me I’m a coward. Tell me you hate me.
He doesn’t.
Instead, his shoulders drop and his hands fall limp at his sides. Even his face changes. All the fight drains out of him so fast that suddenly he just looks pale and tired. Bone-deep tired. He looks down at the hand still holding the phone and then away with a faraway look in his eyes.
“Okay,” he says.
I frown. “Blue—”
“No, it’s fine. I get it. And you don’t have to look at me like I’m a puppy caught in a rainstorm. I have other options.” He looks at me, finally, an empty smile on his face. “You should be happy. I hope you will be.”
With those words, he leaves me standing in my hallway with an almost unbearable urge to go after him.
Karma catches up to me a few hours later when my phone starts to vibrate somewhere between my couch cushions. I spend a minute digging it out and then suppress a groan when I see Bridget’s name on my screen.
I’m surprised it took this long.
“Bridget,” I say when I lift the phone to my ear.
“Oh, good, you’re still up.” She sounds genuinely relieved. That’s not the greeting I was expecting. Kind of expected there to be more cursing and insults, to be honest.
“I am,” I say carefully.
“I need you to pick up Go.”
I turn around and glance out the window into the darkness. I really don’t think I’m Blue’s first choice for a ride right now.
“And why does Go need picking up?”
She sighs. “He didn’t come home, and I was getting worried, so I called him. He’s at some kind of club, and Dia is in New York, and I’m headed to the airport. I’m taking a redeye to Miami, so…”
The pause carries a lot of meaning.
“I’ll text you the address,” she says. “Judging by how he sounded on the phone, he passed drunk a while ago.”