Chapter 30
“Where are you from, anyway?” She trudged ahead, her flip-flops smacking the sidewalk at a pace that did not seem possible.
“Why do you want to know?”
Her only answer was a glare.
“Are you asking because of the accent?”
“You don’t really have much of one, but you occasionally say words differently.
It reminds me of my mom. She’s been in the US since she was six, but the Irish lilt comes out when she’s mad.
But no, that’s not why I asked. You said your mom’s American.
People who are American don’t usually say it that way. American is the default.”
“Touché.”
He had always hated that question though.
His father would say he was Dutch, but his extended family on that side was as nomadic as his father.
They were Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and German.
Nicky’s mother’s family was Serbian, Spanish, and English, but had been in America for several generations.
Nicky had never lived anywhere long enough to have a good answer. What did home mean, anyway?
He told his father as much when dear old Dad had shown up at Yale during his finals week.
He had barely flinched when his father slapped him across the face.
“You’d rather spend summer in some American backcountry provincial nowhere than the new home I found for us?
” His dad had sent photos of the marble staircase and the elegant spaces for entertaining in the new rental in Brussels.
“I want you to know those people. Your future is there with me. Your home is there.”
Nicky had touched the spot on his cheek, still hot from his father’s hand. In retrospect, his response had been both petulant and insufferably elitist, but his father always brought out the worst side of him. Nicky had openly laughed and said, “Nullus est locus simlis domui.”
It took his father a second to work out the poorly translated film idiom, but as soon as he did, his face screwed up in disgust. “There’s no place like home?” he replied in English, but it sounded more preposterous. “If you were really my son, you’d know what respect is. Your mother never taught—”
“If you were really my father, I’d have a fucking clue what home felt like.”
The next several blows involved a closed fist and a trip to the closest New Haven hospital, along with the necessary lies so that the commander wouldn’t have his mistakes follow him back to Europe. Nicky could lie in five languages too.
“I’m sorry.”
“What?” Nicky’s mind jolted back to where he was walking down a shitty street in Kansas with a red-haired self-proclaimed wicked angel.
They’d ended up at a dumpy courtyard. A dumpy courtyard he recognized.
It was the first place Courtney had brought him after landing.
The stone building next to an old—by American standards, anyway—church that wasn’t a church anymore.
“I said I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? For what?”
“I had a crummy night, and I took it out on you because you are very pretty and Bianca was pretty, and I felt stupid watching her go off to fuck some dude with sideburns in the woods, and decided to wreck my shins trying to save a tree after, and so basically, pretty people can kiss my ass tonight. And I took all that out on you. I was judgy and mean and rude. And it seems like you’re going through some shit too, so I’m sorry. ”
When he recovered from the novelty of someone apologizing to him for something as innocuous as snark, he processed the rest of what she had said. “Sideburns?” He bit his lip to keep from smiling. “And I forgive you.”
“Thanks.”
“So, you think I’m pretty?”
“Shit, my keys.” She pressed her hand against the area of her dress over her thighs.
“You said you had really deep pockets. Aren’t the keys in there?”
“They must have fallen out when I got into the dumpster. Shit.”
“You kept hold of the pepper spray but not the thing that gave you access to your house?”
“Well, I was more worried about getting attacked by an axe murderer at the time.”
“How many axe murderers are around Kansas that this is such a pervasive fear?”
She shrugged. “Aunt Jeannie will be here in a few hours to open the shop. I’ll be fine. Thanks for walking me and Fanny home.”
“Who’s Fanny?”
“The fig tree,” he answered his question at the same time that she did. “Obviously.”
She smirked, her eyes fiery from the streetlights. “You’re keeping up. Good job.”
“Will you put Fanny on the plant’s tombstone?”
She stamped her flip-flop. “I’m going to fix her.”
“Sure.”
“Give me a year. She’ll have a few leaves. If she lives, I’ll even let you keep her. I won’t even ask for your fancy jeans in exchange for my labor. I’ll release my rehabilitated fiddle-leaf into your very well-maintained hands for simply the victorious pride of being right and proving you wrong.”
“Seems like a lot of trust for someone you were threatening with pepper spray forty-five minutes ago.”
She pulled a piece of paper and a pen out from somewhere. Seriously, where the fuck was she hiding these pockets?
“Turn around,” she said with a swirling flick of her fingers.
He turned without hesitation. She rested the paper on his back.
The cool sweep of her breath on his neck made him wish he could lean back closer.
After a quick scratchy sound and scribbling pressure between his shoulder blades, she hopped in front of him.
She lifted his hand, coaxed his fist open, and then smacked the paper into his waiting palm.
He read the paper aloud. “‘I, Felicity Gallagher, solemnly swear that if I keep Fanny the fiddle-leaf fig tree alive for one year from May first, Fanny’s ownership will hereby transfer to the boy his mother calls Nicky because I can’t remember any of those other names.’”
Adorable.
She gestured that he should continue reading.
“That’s not how you spell hereby.”
“It’s almost three o’clock in the morning, and I’m covered in garbage stink. Even English majors are allowed to suck at spelling, and what are you, some kind of lawyer?”
“Um…” He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I mean, eventually I’ll be a lawyer. Two more years and then I’ll start law school.”
“No.”
“What’s wrong with being a lawyer?”
Felicity Gallagher. He knew her name now.
She walked along the side of the church toward a tall iron gate at the back.
She undid a combination lock better suited for a bike rack and the gate creaked open.
She didn’t ask him to follow her, but she didn’t tell him not to either.
There were stairs up to a small balcony off the back of the old stone church building.
It was essentially a fire escape. Beneath the lowest stairs, there was a hammock with several old blankets on top of it.
The grass was cold with early-morning dew.
He looked over and was startled to see she was shivering.
How long had she been shivering? Of course she’s shivering, you jackass.
All she was wearing was a thin cotton dress.
He was wearing a sweater and a button-down beneath it.
He probably should have asked first, but he pulled off his sweater and slipped it over her head, sending another wave of that bonfire smell over him.
“Thank you.”
“I should’ve done it before.”
“I was okay.”
“Your lips are blue.”
“Makeup trends are weird nowadays. I blame Tumblr.” She rubbed her arms and handed him one of the quilts, wrapping the other over her shoulders.
He thought she would sit on the wrought-iron bench, but she didn’t.
She wove through the maze of raised plots over to a patch of grass in the exact center.
She opened the quilt with a flick of her hands and lay down on top of it.
Again, he mirrored her. She was still shaking, so he did the only thing that made sense.
He pulled her close, and she nestled into the crook of his neck.
After a few minutes, her trembling stopped, and she exhaled.
Her arm draped over him and the weight of her body melted against his.
He let himself breathe in her burnt-ember smell just once. Any more would have been creepy.
“Sorry, I’m sure I stink.”
“You don’t, actually.” He cleared his throat. “I really am sorry about the girl. And the sideburns.”
“It’s okay. Not sure she’s what I should be looking for.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Right now? Probably an even hotter, equally flexible Irish dancer willing to fuck me in the woods after a bonfire dance.”
He snorted. “Who could blame you for that?”
“But eventually. When I’m old and slightly busted, and I’ve sown a lot of wild oats. Like tons. Like I’ve kept that Quaker guy in business with all the oats my lady parts have sown.”
“I get it.” He tightened his arm. “So, after all of your lady part oats are sown?”
“Someone who starts as a friend. But the kind where watching them light up makes you light up. The kind of friend who makes you laugh even when things aren’t funny because watching them laugh makes the world seem better.
I want lame-ass matching Halloween costumes and Christmas traditions.
French toast in bed on my birthday. The stupid shit.
Someone who will watch trash TV with me and warm my feet when the heat goes out. ”
“Sounds too platonic for my tastes.”
“I think you can connect that way and still want to bone each other.”
“Bone each other.” He choked from how hard he was laughing.
“I plan on making whoever they are come quite regularly, but I think it’s gotta be more than that.
The person who can see you through the bad shit and doesn’t think you’re a burden.
That’s how my parents are. Someone who can help you pick up the pieces when stuff really turns to shit.
The person who feels lucky to be the one who gets to be my home. ”