23. — all that is left. #2
Nico shrugged. “I mean, eventually. But right now, there’s no need, your father told me not to, and I don’t really mind. One less thing to deal with, honestly.”
“Oh.”
He peered down at her, curious.
“Why’d you say it like that? All sad and...sad.”
She chewed on her lip, trying to make sense of her own thoughts and feelings. “I just thought...”
“What?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Nothing you think is stupid to me, Frankie. When are you gonna figure that out?”
“Probably the same time I learn how to control my anger.”
Which was never, considering the way she handled everything recently.
He gave her a look. “Yeah, that’s another thing you forgot when I asked what we agreed on last night. Did you actually forget, or just—”
“I need to respect you like you respect me. I can’t be throwing shit at you or hitting you for any reason. If I do it again, we’re going to reevaluate what we want together.”
She didn’t know what reevaluating anything meant. But it scared her to death that it would end up with them not together. Which was fair—he had every right to make that call.
“I don’t want my kid to grow up knowing parents who yell and hit, not them or one another, and throw shit because they can’t deal,” he muttered thickly.
“I’m sorry.”
“They’re never going to know that between us. You promised.”
She nodded. “I do; I meant it.”
“I’m fucking holding you to it. I swear to God, I will hold you to that, Frankie.”
She couldn’t even ask what would happen if she failed. She couldn’t bear to hear him say it, whatever it would be. She just wouldn’t fail. That was the deal, one she made to herself, for him. For their baby.
“So, if you’re not telling your dad, does that mean I have to keep hiding it?” she asked quietly. “Because...that stupid thing I meant earlier...when do we get married?”
“Ah,” Nico vocalized.
It held the same confusion she felt.
“I think we need to have another conversation with your father to know about that side of things. This is bigger than us; it changes a lot, and I think he’s already got a lot going on. He just isn’t ready, or he can’t, share it yet.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be scared, baby, he loves you.”
“I don’t know why.”
She did awful things. Selfish things.
Her tears started anew.
“Oh, Frankie...don’t cry, please.”
She tried not to, but the only thing that finally made the tears dry up was when Nico got deep under those blankets with her, laid side by side, tangling their naked legs together, and his arms just swallowed her whole.
Her head found the safe spot under his chin where he always smelled like honeyed vanilla because of her perfume.
“He does everything for me, he gave me everything, and I just...said fuck it.”
“No, you didn’t,” Nico assured, “and he doesn’t see it that way.”
“You don’t know that.”
He held her tighter. “I don’t have to. He loves you.”
“Love doesn’t change what I did.”
“No, but it counts for a lot in the meantime. It softens the blow.”
“Did it ever soften your father’s blow?”
“That’s not love,” Nico whispered back, holding her tighter, “and I know that now.”
···
“How have you still not slept?” she asked Nico.
Reading a book where he sat against the headboard in nothing but boxer-briefs as it neared noon, Nico didn’t seem at all bothered by her question. “I can’t sleep.”
“You can any other night. You love naps with me.”
“I can’t sleep,” he repeated.
“Why not?”
Dragging a towel through her damp hair from an earlier shower, she waited for Nico to explain whatever troubled him.
“I haven’t been sleeping for the last couple of weeks,” he admitted then.
Frankie stilled, the towel still scrunched against her head and hair. “You haven’t?”
“You’ve been sleeping like a log. I just enjoy watching your face when you dream.”
“Nico...”
“Can you grab my jacket on the chair over there?” he asked, nodding at the item in question in the corner. “I need something in it.”
“Are you going to tell me why you’re not sleeping?”
“A couple of things, actually.”
“What?”
She couldn’t follow along that time.
“Sorry,” he muttered, “ADHD.”
“Oh-kay,” she drawled out when he offered nothing else in explanation.
“That’s why I’m not sleeping, too. Partly.”
She’d just picked up his jacket, but waited before tossing it to his outstretched hand to ask, “ADHD affects your sleeping habits?”
“It can for some people.”
“And for you?”
He shook his head. “No, but also yes. Can I have that, please?”
She tossed him the jacket. Nico dug in a pocket until something rattled. Something like pills.
Frankie tried not to be pissed. “What the hell was that?”
Nico arched an eyebrow her way as he pulled a yellow prescription bottle from the right pocket of the jacket.
Without a word, he popped the top off and tipped the bottle up to his mouth.
Lowering his hand, he opened his mouth so she could see, through fury, the one pill on his tongue that he promptly swallowed right back.
“Adderall,” he informed, then, before putting the pills back and tossing the jacket aside. “For the obvious.”
Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “What? Didn’t we fucking talk about pills and drugs because of Chicago?”
“Relax. I don’t say things I don’t mean and make promises I don’t intend to keep. I told you that wouldn’t ever happen again, and I wouldn’t do it again. My word means something.”
“Are you saying I didn’t just watch you swallow a fucking Adderall? I watched girls snort that shit in the locker room all the time, Nico. I know what that can do to somebody.”
“Yeah, someone who’s already level and even keeled.
Who doesn’t have ADHD. I took Adderall at a party when I was like thirteen.
I didn’t know why everybody else seemed to be having the greatest night of their lives.
It did nothing but make me want to go home and take apart my computer to rebuild it for the third time. ”
Then, he laughed.
“Which I did,” he added. “Best rebuild ever, by the way. Fuck, that played so smooth when I was done.”
She blinked. “Uh...”
“It’s a stimulant. And I need it to get my body and brain on the same wavelength so I can focus on shit sometimes.”
“Have you always been taking that? You just didn’t tell me, or what?”
“No, I started it two weeks ago. When I need it, if I need it, I contact my doctor, and he calls the script in. I haven’t taken Adderall since I first went to Miami and that was just new places and things. It was too much, and I couldn’t keep up with everything at first.”
“And you stopped taking it?”
“Yeah, when I leveled out and got back to managing myself.”
“So, why are you taking it again?”
“I stopped smoking. I had to go to Chicago for a whole month and be in places that bring back a lot of shit for me. Nicotine is a stimulant, too, Frankie. Usually, I’d smoke two or three, and that would help level me out for a bit.
Enough that I had shit under control and didn’t get overwhelmed by everything that I started losing focus.
I have to be able to focus. I can’t afford not to, especially now. ”
“You’re not telling me this to ask if you can start smoking again, are you?”
Nico snorted. “Get real, babe. First person to smoke around the baby is getting a smack upside the fucking head. No, I’m telling you because we made a deal.
No lying, no hiding. I wasn’t hiding it, but I didn’t want you to feel like I was, either.
Eventually, you’d see the meds, and maybe assume... ”
“You don’t know that.”
He gave her a look. Frankie just stared somewhere else.
“You kinda just did,” he told her, “and I didn’t want that. It’s not an issue, it helps me. You asked why I can’t sleep. Adderall. That’s why.”
“It’s a side-effect?”
“Amongst other things.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“Exhausted,” he replied, picking up the book he’d been reading once more, “but I’ll hit the bed soon and nothing’s waking me up for at least a day.
That’s how this shit usually rolls. It takes a while to get used to.
When I do start sleeping on Adderall, just know I talk a lot in my sleep.
I call it my Adderall dreams. They never make any damn sense.
Don’t worry about it, okay? It’s a normal thing for me. ”
“Okay.”
But she did worry. A little.
“How many days has it been since you slept? Like really slept, Nico.”
He swallowed hard. “Like three, or so. I get an hour here or there, but it takes nothing to wake me up.”
“And then it takes forever to get back to sleep, right?”
“Basically. Anyway, I had something else for—”
“Yeah, yeah. In a minute.”
Frankie crossed the room, climbing onto the foot of the bed and crawling up to him to settle between his bent legs. He eyed her curiously, a small smile playing at his lips while he slightly lowered the hardback copy of The Silent Patient that he’d brought home recently.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Three days ago,” Frankie informed him, “what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you slept. You said it was three days ago. And I thought about it, I remember. I couldn’t even get you up when the takeout came. So, what happened?”
Nico’s brow dipped lower. “I mean, I got back from a two-day trip to Chicago, got to your place, took you to bed because—”
“What happened in bed, Nico?”
His gaze darted sideways, and then slowly came back to her as the memory flooded back. “You...”
Frankie leaned her head against his thigh, kissing just below the hem of his black boxer-briefs. His skin tasted like the soap from the shower earlier, and him. Always him. “Me, what, Nico?”
He reached down to push her wet hair back from her face. “Babe.”
Her arm curled around his thigh, fingers stroking and teasing. Her other hand drew circles along his lower stomach.
“Hmm?” she asked. “What?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Knocks you out every time, doesn’t it?”
Nico’s voice came out thick; deliciously dark. “It does something to me.”
“Something you need.”
He didn’t reply.
Again, she kissed his inner thigh. He’d started getting hard the moment she found herself between his legs, but now his erection strained prominently against the fabric of his boxer-briefs.