35. tallulah
TALLULAH
NERDS JUST LIKE YOU
Thirty minutes later, I was soaked in sweat, breathing hard as Nick helped me over a larger boulder protruding from the forest floor. “If we were in a book, you’d be giving cryptic clues and trying to kill me.”
“What the hell kind of books are you reading?” he snickered.
“Everything,” I said instantly. “I’m in a murder book kick at the moment. Anything with a dead body, I’m probably reading it.”
“What are you reading right now?”
“It’s about a biker gang.” I dropped my voice, flustered. “Of—erm—werewolves.”
“Did you say werewolves?”
“Dammit.”
Nick laughed, lifting up a tree branch to let me pass. “Do you and Zariah swap books? I swear I caught her reading some weird mermaid sex stuff on one of our hockey trips.”
“Zariah? Denali’s girlfriend?” I quickly shook my head. “I couldn’t swap books with her.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s so cool.”
Nick stopped at a cluster of trees. “Zariah? Zariah Contractor? Cool?”
“Uh, yeah. She’s this super cool person on campus—”
“There’s no such thing as ‘cool’ in college.”
“You would say that,” I mumbled under my breath. “You’re already part of the club.”
Nick snorted. “Bullshit. We go to a university with, like, forty-thousand students. If you asked half of them who Zariah is, they couldn’t tell you.”
“Well, Zariah belongs to that group of cool girls. You know the ones I’m talking about. Cleo, June, Willow—I’m so anxious around them.”
“You went to June’s sleepover,” he interjected. “You do writing sprints with Zariah at the library.”
“Because they have to hang out with me,” I admitted. “It’s not like they can kick me out of the group chats.”
Nick took the lead again, pinching his brow. “Oh my god.”
“And Zariah couldn’t do any writing sprints leading up to her trip, I’m sure I said something—”
“You didn’t say anything, Tallulah. She couldn’t because she was getting ready to go to Atlanta.”
“Maybe. I don’t know—”
I bit my lip, and bumped into him, not realizing he’d stopped. Nick gazed down at me, arms folded over his chest.
“What does anxiety do for you?” he asked suddenly.
“Um…gives me heartburn?” I suggested. “Helps my parents meet their deductible with my prescriptions?”
“Anxiety literally does nothing for you,” he said. “You’re petrified of a couple of college girls who are huge nerds just like you.”
“No, they’re not—”
“Willow’s private playlist is full of old-as-shit doo-wop songs. June and Bear play that kids’ zoo game until four o’clock in the morning. When Zariah gets drunk, she gets so excited about her favorite film—some fifties movie about killer nuns in the Himalayas—she bursts into tears about it.”
I couldn’t mask my surprise. “Really?”
“Yeah. They’re nerds. Just like you.” He searched my face. “Anxiety makes you think people don’t like you. That doesn’t make sense to me. First of all, why wouldn’t they like you? And second, you don’t even give those girls a chance to get to know you.”
“I guess…” I hesitated. “I'm nervous I’ll talk to them and say something wrong.”
“Am I good at talking to people?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Could probably strike up a conversation with anyone, right?”
I nodded, taking his hand when he offered it over a shallow creek bed.
“Do you think it’s always been like that for me? Like, I was a toddler asking my babysitter how her weekend was? No,” he said firmly. “It took practice.”
“You don’t have anxiety, Nick.”
“Okay, so it's harder for you. So what? Seriously, what's stopping you?”
I stepped carefully over a log, holding Nick’s hand, thinking of how to respond.
“My parents are big and loud and out there, and…I don’t know.
I was never like that. Because I was either compared to them or they…
talked over me. I guess.” I shrugged, not feeling good about what I said, and unable to take it back.
“I want things to be different. I want to be confident, spontaneous. Or at least stand up for myself. I thought going to college would push me to change.” I hesitated, chewing my bottom lip.
“It didn’t. I’m still me. And I’m worried I missed my chance to change. ”
“My mom says your life starts every day,” Nick remarked.
“Yeah?”
“You should see her kitchen. It’s covered in those wooden signs with corny sayings. She loves that shit.” He chuckled. “The older I get, the more I realize those sayings are true, I just had to get to a point where I understood them.”
“Your life starts every day…” I mused.
“Every day’s a new opportunity,” Nick agreed.
The way Nick explained things made me look at my fears in a new light.
Anxiety would always be with me, I couldn’t extinguish it.
But, even if it slowed me down, I didn’t have to let it stop me altogether.
My back straightened a little. Nick made me feel bolder.
Stronger. Able to tackle things head-on.
I loved talking to him about deeper stuff. He made me feel better about the things I usually held inside.
I only wished Nick would join in.
“You need to stop psychoanalyzing me,” I told him, half-teasing, “if you won’t let me do the same to you.”
His dark eyes flickered to mine, amused. “That sounds a lot like an accusation, Ms. Walker.”
“You don’t open up like I do.”
“Buuuullshit,” rang out of him.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Ask me anything. I’m an open book.”
The invitation was so tempting. “What role do you play in your family?”
“Hottest son.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” he chuckled. “Uh…joker. I’m good at telling a joke and smoothing things over.” He held back another branch for me. “Peacekeeper.”
“How often do you talk to your mom?”
“Texting? Every day. Calling? Probably once a week. And never around you because she has—” He pinched his lips, grinning. “No filter.”
“Why did your parents get a divorce?”
The sunshine through the trees cut streaks across his face, perfectly illuminating how quickly his grin faded. It was gone. No trace of it. His eyes darted to the trees beyond us. “We’re getting close to the surprise. Can you hear it?”
“Nick…”
He gave a sheepish smile. “Ah. Now I get it.”
“If you don’t want to talk about certain things, you can tell me,” I whispered. “I think I’d prefer that to the conversation changes.”
“I’m really good at dodging topics,” he admitted. “Sometimes I don’t mean to. It just happens.”
“That’s okay,” I said softly.
“Why did my parents get a divorce…?” he hummed. “My dad wanted a wife. So he found a woman that fit all of the wife-like qualities, and I don’t think he really gave a shit about her beyond that.”
“Oh.”
“They met in college, in New York. She was here on a scholarship from Brazil. My dad graduated early, convinced her to drop out of school, convinced her to move to Maryland where she didn’t know anyone, and pushed her to become a stay-at-home mom.
And then, after she had three kids, I think my dad realized that he loved having a wife, but he didn’t like this woman who was living in his house. ”
Nick’s face hardened, becoming stone.
“My dad didn’t do anything physically abusive.
” He took a deep breath. “But I saw my mom, this bubbly, fun woman, get sadder and sadder every year. She didn’t have her own car or a bank account.
No family, no friends.” A bitter laugh burst out of him.
“When she got into hiking, when she finally had something of her own, he panicked. Because my dad wanted his pet bird to stay in her cage.”
“Then…they divorced?”
“Yeah. I pushed my mom to go to counseling for years and she always said no. She refused to leave my dad before my brothers and I turned eighteen. No bank account, no ties to the community, she’s not from the US—she could’ve lost custody of us and she knew it.
” His jaw clenched. “For my eighteenth birthday, I drove her to one of those domestic abuse clinics. I’m the youngest, she didn’t have to worry about losing us anymore.
The counselors basically told her to pack her shit and hit the road.
I’m not even upset she didn’t listen to me say that, I’m just grateful she listened to somebody. ”
“She’s lucky to have you,” I whispered.
“No, I’m lucky to have her. You don’t understand, she did everything for me growing up.
And now I’ve got my mom back.” The stone cracked and underneath, the memories softened his features.
“She’s the happiest person in the world.
She lives in Newark to be close to my brother and his kids.
She’s got her own apartment, she’s back in school to get her degree, we travel all the time now that my dad’s not around to stop it—she has a pottery club with friends. Friends. My mom has friends.”
My question was hesitant. “What about your dad?”
“What about my dad?” Nick shrugged. “My dad’s my dad. He travels for some of my hockey games. He wears my jersey. Talks me up at work. He loves me. I love him. But sometimes he’ll say some shit about how he’ll never understand why my mom left and I just can’t listen to it.”
“That’s why you went back to Marrs early,” I realized. “During winter break.”
“Yep,” he confirmed, lips pursed. “When their divorce was finalized, my mom figured out that I wanted to go no-contact with him. She told me if I stopped talking to my dad, she’d never speak to me again. So I have to keep visiting him, but I can only take so much.”
I stared at him, my voice thick with disbelief. “Why would she say that?”
“Because she’s in love with him.”
“After everything?”
“Especially after everything. She sleeps with one of his shirts on her pillow. She has a framed photo of their wedding on her desk. He had to get his appendix removed and she took care of him for three weeks.”
“Why?”
“Love is fucked up, Tallulah. That’s the closest I’ll ever get to an explanation.”
“Nick? I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“No, but…it must’ve been hard to watch as a kid. I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.”
His eyes slid to mine. “Yeah. I bet you can’t. You have no idea what it’s like to watch someone accept less love than they deserve.”
I thought he would’ve added something else. He didn’t. In the silence, my face was suddenly warm. Nick was so close, gazing down at me.
This was what I’d been waiting for. The more we talked about these complicated feelings, the more my chest squeezed with the connections growing between us. I wanted to bridge that gap with him, to truly get to know him.
“I think that’s what I was scared of,” he admitted.
“Scared of?”
“Like someone could say they love me, have kids with me, build a life with me, but then, they don’t give a fuck about me. How horrible would that be? To have the one person you wish would know you, not give a fuck to understand you?”
My heart ached for him. It was why Nick had been a playboy and then celibate, two extreme sides of the spectrum. He was worried about trusting someone like that.
I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t alone. And…the thing he was so afraid of, that someone wouldn’t care about him, wasn’t true.
Anxiety flared inside, trying to hold me back. I couldn’t let that happen this time. I swallowed hard and touched his shoulder. “Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“That—that’s why I wanted to talk to you about these things. I like understanding you.”
His smile was warm, and lovely, my insides crumbled at the sight. My breath quickened as he dipped down, hovering over me. His lips caught mine for a kiss, pulling me into him.
“I like understanding you too,” he whispered against me.
I was dizzy from the kiss. “Oh.”
“I want to show you something.” Nick took my hand, leading me deeper into the forest. We were much closer now, he walked with me, his quick steps brimming with excitement. “Do you hear that?”
I followed his eyesight to the trees up ahead. “Hear…?”
There it was. I could hear something. A distant murmur.
I blinked. “What is that?”
“Why don’t we go check it out?”