Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Evan
Nico
Tough night.
Evan
I saw. You okay?
Nico
Getting there. Talk tomorrow.
I’d put my phone down and sat in my quiet apartment, thinking about how we were both having a hard time and neither of us knew how to reach the other through it anymore.
Friday morning, I got another email.
Evan, we’ve decided to take our marketing strategy in a different direction and will be working with a different consultant moving forward. We appreciate your work on the initial phase of the project.
I closed my laptop.
Five clients in two weeks. My business wasn’t just struggling; it was actively falling apart while I sat in my apartment monitoring browser tabs and avoiding grocery stores.
I got up and made myself open the blinds. Sunlight flooded my office, too bright after two weeks of keeping everything dim.
My phone buzzed.
Nico
Practice just wrapped up. Can I come over?
Evan
Yeah. I’m here.
Nico
Be there in 30.
I scanned my apartment and tried to see it the way Nico would when he walked in.
Laundry scattered across the couch, clean but wrinkled from sitting unfolded.
Mail piled on the kitchen counter, unopened.
Blinds I’d just opened for the first time in two weeks, letting in light that made everything look worse, not better.
The evidence of someone who wasn’t okay, no matter how many times I said I was fine.
I hid the laundry in my closet and recycled the junk mail. It didn’t help much.
Nico showed up thirty minutes later, looking better than he had in days. More energetic. The tightness around his jaw was gone, and he was smiling before I’d even fully opened the door.
“Hey.” He kissed me, quick but real, his hand warm on my jaw for just a moment. “I have an idea.”
“Okay.”
“For tomorrow.” He pulled me toward the couch. “Let’s go to Santa Cruz. Get out of the city for a few hours. Beach, wharf, lunch somewhere with a view. Just… get away from all this.”
I searched his face. The hopefulness in his eyes, the way he was already planning it in his head.
“Nico—”
“I know you’ve been stuck inside. I know it’s been hard. But maybe getting out, being somewhere different, would help. We could just… try.”
Leaving my apartment felt like exposing myself to threats I couldn’t predict or control. But Nico was trying so hard to find a way through. If I kept saying no to everything, I’d lose him.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah. Let’s try.”
Something in him relaxed, like he’d been holding his breath and hadn’t realized it. He kissed me again, and for a moment it felt easy. Like maybe this could work. Like maybe getting away from my apartment and the constant monitoring would actually help.
Then he pulled back. “I just want a good day with you,” he said. “Away from all of it. Just us.”
The wanting in his voice was the hardest part. I nodded, said okay, and tried not to think about how much was riding on an afternoon in Santa Cruz.
We ordered sandwiches and ate at the coffee table. “Another client terminated their contract today,” I said. “Fifth one.”
His expression moved through surprise to frustration to that look he got when he was already forming a plan. “Okay. Neil knows people who need marketing consultants. We could get you new clients—”
“Nico.”
“Or maybe you could pivot for a while. Smaller companies, or—”
“I don’t need you to fix this right now.”
He went still. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I know. But I just needed to tell you. I didn’t need solutions.”
“Then what do you need?”
I looked at him. The question wasn’t impatient—it was genuine. He really wanted to know, and I really didn’t have a clean answer. We’d been having this same exchange in different forms for two weeks.
“I needed you to know how bad it is,” I said. “That’s all.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he moved closer and pulled me against him. “I’m sorry. I know I do that—jump to fixing things instead of just listening.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I’m working on it.”
We sat there in the quiet, and I let myself lean into him. Let his steadiness calm the anxiety that had been running through me for two weeks.
This was why I kept trying. Not just because I cared about him, though I did, more than I’d expected to care about anyone after Ryan.
But because being with Nico had reminded me what it felt like to be seen.
Not as a cautionary tale, or a PR problem, or an accessory to someone else’s life. Just as myself.
And sitting here in the wreckage of my professional life, he was still here. Not fixing it—because I’d asked him not to—but here. Present. Trying.
That was worth fighting for.
“Tomorrow will be good,” he said against my hair. “Fresh start. Just us and the ocean.”
I wanted to believe him. I went to bed telling myself I did.
Saturday, Nico picked me up at noon.
“Ready?” he asked when I got into his SUV.
“Ready.”
He smiled and pulled out of the parking garage. I watched my apartment building disappear in the side mirror. The familiar streets of Milpitas gave way to the freeway heading south.
The drive took about an hour. Nico made conversation—asked about my week, told me about practice, mentioned that André had been asking about me. I responded when I needed to, but mostly I looked out the window and tried to let the distance from my apartment feel like something other than exposure.
“You okay?” Nico asked somewhere around Los Gatos.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
“We don’t have to stay long if you don’t want to. Just a few hours. Get lunch, walk around.”
“No, it’s good. I want to.”
I did want to. I wanted to be the person who could go on a spontaneous day trip without my chest feeling tight the entire drive. I just didn’t know if wanting it was enough to make it true.
Santa Cruz was beautiful, the sun sparkling off the water.
Nico parked near the wharf, and we walked toward the beach. Clear sky, warm for early March. He reached for my hand as we walked, and I let him take it.
But I couldn’t stop scanning. Every phone that came out, every group of people who might recognize us.
“This is nice,” Nico said, looking out at the water.
“Yeah.” I wanted it to be nice. I kept my eyes on the horizon and tried to stay in the moment.
We walked along the beach for a while without talking much. Objectively, everything about this should have been good. But I felt like I was watching it happen instead of being in it. Like I was observing myself on a date with Nico rather than actually being there.
We ended up on the wharf. Found a place with outdoor seating and a view of the ocean.
“Better than your apartment?” Nico asked, smiling.
“The apartment doesn’t have seagulls, so…” The corner of my mouth tipped—not quite a smile, but something next to one. “It’s better.”
“See? Good idea.”
Before I could respond, a man walking past our table slowed.
“Hey—aren’t you Nicolás Briggs?”
My whole body tensed.
Nico looked up, shifting into that public version of himself—friendly, open, professional. “Yeah. Hey.”
The guy smiled. “Just wanted to say congrats, man. Coming out—that took guts. Really cool to see.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Good luck with the rest of the season.”
“Thanks.”
He walked away. Twenty seconds, start to finish. He hadn’t asked for a photo. Hadn’t invaded our space. Was genuinely kind.
And I was already spiraling.
“You okay?” Nico asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” My hands were shaking slightly. My heart was going too fast. All I could think about was how easy it had been. How we were sitting outside at a table where anyone could see us, could photograph us, could document where we were and post it before we’d finished our coffee.
Nico reached across the table and took my hand. “He was nice.”
“I know.”
“And he’s gone. It’s okay.”
I nodded. Tried to breathe. But the anxiety had already settled in, and I knew from experience it wasn’t going anywhere just because I wanted it to.
Nico waited. That was what he did. He held my hand and waited, without making it a thing, until I came back to something resembling okay. It took longer than it should have.
We had lunch at a seafood place with a view of the bay. Nico ordered fish tacos; I got clam chowder I barely touched.
Halfway through the meal, I noticed a woman at a nearby table with her phone angled toward us.
“Nico,” I whispered.
“Hmm?”
“That woman. She’s taking pictures.”
He glanced over casually. “People take pictures at the wharf all the time.”
“Of us.”
“You don’t know that.” He said it quietly, like he was talking me back from an edge rather than contradicting me.
But I did. I’d gotten good at recognizing the angle, the deliberate positioning, the way she kept glancing our way while pretending not to.
“Even if she is,” Nico said. “I know that’s scary. But we’re just having lunch.”
“We’re having lunch and in an hour it’ll be online with our location tagged.
Five clients have already dropped me because of photos taken without my knowledge.
A neighbor talked to a gossip site about my daily routine.
I couldn’t go to your charity dinner because I can’t be in a room full of press cameras.
” I pulled my hand back. “I can’t sit here knowing someone’s documenting us right now. ”
“Okay.” He leaned forward slightly. “So we leave. We’ll find somewhere else.”
“There isn’t somewhere else, Nico. This is what it’s like everywhere.”
His phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it, and his expression shifted.
He turned the phone toward me.
An Instagram notification. Someone had tagged him in a photo of the two of us at this table, taken maybe ten minutes ago. Spotted: Nicolás Briggs having lunch with his boyfriend in Santa Cruz. Already thirty reposts. Comments rolling in.
The air left my lungs. “It’s already out there.”
“Yeah.” He put the phone face down on the table.
We looked at each other across the table, the food between us going cold.
“Let’s go,” he said quietly.
He stood, put cash on the table, and I followed him out in silence.
We walked back toward the car, and I could feel the argument coming before either of us said a word.
“It’s not fair,” I said when we reached the beach. “None of this is fair.”
“I know it’s not fair.” He turned to face me.
“It’s not fair that someone took our picture without asking.
It’s not fair that your clients dropped you.
It’s not fair that a neighbor sold your routine to a gossip site.
But it’s what we’re dealing with.” He paused.
“And I need to know if you can deal with it, or if you’re going to keep waiting for it to stop. ”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Then tell me what you are doing. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re waiting for a version of this that isn’t coming.”
I looked at him—frustrated, hurt, and still trying to find a way through. That was what kept me here. Nico didn’t give up. He showed up. He fought for things.
He was fighting for us right now. Even angry, he was fighting.
“Tell me how we make this work,” he said. “Not ‘I’m trying.’ Tell me what it looks like.”
“I don’t know.” The words came out before I could dress them up. “I’m trying, but I don’t know if trying is enough when I keep failing at it.”
He stared at me. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m in love with you, and I still don’t know if that’s enough when everything else about this is impossible.”
He froze.
I realized what I’d said. The first time either of us had used that word, and I’d said it in the middle of an argument on a beach, attached to but I don’t know if it’s enough.
It was true. Somewhere between the secrets and the confession and all the weeks after, I’d fallen in love with him. With his persistence. With the way he’d chosen honesty even when it cost him. With how hard he kept trying, even when I made it difficult.
But loving him didn’t make me less afraid. If anything, it made it worse, because now I had something real to lose, and I still didn’t know how to keep it without losing myself in the process.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’m in love with you.”
“And it’s not enough.”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he turned and walked toward the parking lot.
“Nico—”
“Let’s just go home.” He said it without looking at me, carefully modulated, the voice of someone keeping something very controlled.
The drive back was silent.
Not the comfortable silence we used to share. This was the weighted silence of damage done. Of words that couldn’t be taken back and questions that didn’t have answers yet.
Somewhere around Campbell, my phone buzzed. Danny.
Danny
Did you go to Santa Cruz today?
I opened social media.
The lunch photo had blown up. Three hundred shares, picked up by the same accounts that had run the parking lot photos. Nicolás Briggs and boyfriend spotted in Santa Cruz was already the top result when you searched his name.
I showed him.
He glanced over, then looked back at the road and said nothing.
“This is what I mean,” I said. “We can’t go anywhere without it becoming—”
“Yeah. I got it.” His voice was flat. “You’ve made that clear.”
The accusation was quiet, but it landed. And he wasn’t wrong. I had made it clear—over and over, in different ways, for two weeks. What I hadn’t made clear was what I wanted instead. What I was willing to do. Whether there was a version of this I could actually live with.
I’d given him the problem every time without ever getting close to an answer.
The rest of the drive passed in silence.
Nico pulled into my parking garage just after eight.
There was a car parked two slots away with someone sitting in it, holding a camera.
“Fuck,” Nico said quietly.
“Is that—”
“Paparazzo. Yeah.”
We sat there in his car, both staring at the person who was now obviously photographing us through the windshield.
“They saw the social media posts,” I said. “Figured out when we’d be getting back.”
Nico’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“You can’t get out,” I said. “If you do they’ll get photos of that too. It’ll be a whole thing.”
“So I just drop you off and leave?”
“Yeah.”
He stared out the windshield. “I can’t even walk you to your door.”
“I know.”
“I can’t come inside. Can’t…” He ran a hand through his hair. “And you don’t know if you can live with this.”
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t have one yet. And saying I don’t know one more time felt like the cruelest possible thing to offer him right now.
“I should go,” he said. “Game tomorrow. I need to rest.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us moved.
Finally, I opened the door and got out.
Nico didn’t look at me.
I closed the door and watched his car disappear around the corner, the paparazzo’s camera clicking behind me.