9
Unfortunately, There Are Pancakes
Kylie
The diner on Beall has been open since before any of us were born and looks like nobody has cleaned the ceiling since.
The vinyl booths are a red gone brown at the edges.
The laminated menu has forty items on it, six of which are pancakes.
The waitress takes one look at seven people coming through the door at eleven at night and points at the big booth in the back without a word.
Koda gets there first and slides all the way in.
Paige goes in after him, which apparently makes them a unit now, four days after she got his number in a room full of people.
Kenzie and Bianca take the other side, and Rafe drops onto the end of their bench without asking, and they both shift over about four inches to make room they didn’t need to make.
There’s a table pulled up against the open end of the booth with two chairs. Nash takes one, which leaves me the other. I stand there holding my coat long enough that Kenzie says, “Kylie, sit,” and I sit down directly across from the asshole with a split lip and blood dried on his chin.
“Great,” I say.
Koda and Paige keep the table talking, or mostly the girls do, because I’m not saying a word, and neither is Rafe or Nash.
Rafe hands his menu back to the waitress without opening it.
He answers Bianca in one word, and then in one word again, and when she asks what year he is, he says, “Freshman,” and looks at the door.
He looks at the door twice in five minutes.
Kenzie keeps trying. She asks where he’s from, and he names a state.
She asks his major, and he says he hasn’t picked.
She asks if he likes Woodbury, and he says it’s fine, and that’s the end of it.
It isn’t shyness; I’ve seen shy. He doesn’t want to be in this diner.
He’s a jerk with an attitude, anyone can see that a mile away, but I don’t hate him.
The food comes fast: pancakes for Paige and Kenzie, a grilled cheese for Bianca, an omelet the size of a shoe for Koda, and coffee for Nash, which is an insane thing to order at eleven-fifteen at night.
Kenzie leans across the table with her fork. “Okay. Serious question. Do all hockey players have anger problems, or is it just Nash?”
“It’s just Nash,” says Koda, with his mouth full.
Nash doesn’t react.
“I don’t know,” Kenzie says. “I think all of you might have a temper.”
“Yeah, but he punched the guy who lived there,” Paige says.
“If you wanted the fake-nice version of hockey players, you should’ve stayed,” Koda says. “Greeley’s quite the host. Ask Blondie.”
Paige laughs into her water.
Kenzie stares at all three of them. “You’re all unwell.”
Nash doesn’t say anything at all. He’s drinking his coffee.
His lip is split at the corner and swelling, there’s dried blood still on his chin and more on the collar of his shirt, and two of his knuckles are open, but his hands are steady on the mug.
Forty minutes ago, he had a fistful of another guy’s shirt and blood in his mouth, and now he’s reading a laminated dessert menu like he’s considering pie.
I had one argument with my boyfriend in a parking lot and shook for two hours afterward.
“Are you okay?” Kenzie asks him.
“Yeah.”
“You’re still bleeding.”
“It stopped.”
She sets her fork down. “I’m pre-nursing. Let me look at it.”
I roll my eyes. She isn’t even in the nursing program yet.
“No,” Nash replies firmly.
“I’m not going to do anything,” she says. “I just want to see if—”
“No.” He sips his coffee.
“Okay, well, you’re dripping on the table,” Kenzie says, and goes back to her pancakes, unbothered, because Kenzie doesn’t care about rejection. I would have been offended.
I glance down, and he is dripping on the table, a spot of it next to his mug that he doesn’t look at. I pull four napkins out of the dispenser and shove them across to him. “You’re making a mess.”
He looks at the napkins, then at me. “Thanks.”
“Don’t talk to me.”
He presses one to the corner of his mouth and goes back to his coffee.
Koda points his fork at me across the booth. “Relax, Blondie. Three years with a guy who cheats on you, I’d be cranky too.”
The whole table goes still. I look at Koda, and then I look at Paige, who has suddenly found something fascinating in her water glass.
“You told them?” I say.
“It came up,” Paige says.
“When?”
“In the kitchen. Before.” She finally looks at me. “Kylie, I was explaining why you were—”
“Why I was what?”
She doesn’t finish. Koda goes back to his omelet. Across from me, Nash sets his mug down and doesn’t look at anybody. I fold my napkin in half, then in half again, and I let it sit, because the alternative is crying in a diner in front of three hockey players, and I’d rather die.
Paige tries to fix the mood the only way Paige knows how, which is to make it worse. “So Kylie got a number tonight,” she says, way too casually.
Kenzie says, “Paige.”
“What? It’s a fun fact.” Paige shrugs.
Kenzie just shakes her head at her. “Why are you like this?”
“Whose number?” Koda asks.
“The guy he punched,” Paige says, pointing at Nash.
The whole table stops again. Bianca’s glass goes down. Koda’s fork stops halfway. Rafe, who hasn’t looked at anything but the door since we sat down, turns his head and looks straight at me for the first time all night.
“Greeley?” Koda says.
“That’s his name?” I ask.
“That’s his name,” Koda says, and starts laughing, and it isn’t a nice laugh.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing! It’s great. It’s a great development.” He raises his eyebrows all the way at Nash. “Isn’t it, Kennebeck?”
Nash drinks his coffee.
“He was nice to me,” I say, and I hear how weird and defensive it sounds, and I say it anyway, because somebody at this table should.
Then I can’t help myself. I continue, “You want to know what happened tonight? My friend used my name to get a guy’s number, and then Koda announced it to an entire kitchen, and then everyone I came with stood there and watched me look like an idiot.
And apparently told you all my business on top of it.
The one person who came over and asked if I was okay was him.
He got me out of that kitchen. He took me to the back and got me a drink and asked me what my major was, like a normal human. ”
Kenzie says quietly, “That is pretty normal.”
Nash sets his mug down. “He’s not nice.”
It’s the first full sentence he’s directed at me all night, and it’s flat. He finally looks at me across the table, and he takes up the entire thing, honest to God.
I laugh at him. “Oh. Okay. Because he’s such a bad person, and that’s why you hit him.”
“Yeah.”
“Not because of some egotistical hockey shit you guys have going on with the team.” I don’t know where that comes from, but it comes out fast. Declan didn’t say a word to me about hockey, but it’s obvious that’s what it was about. “I sense that you’re the asshole in this situation.”
Something happens in his jaw.
“You’re gonna wanna take that back,” Koda says. “Nash isn’t the bad guy here.”
“I don’t care,” I say, glaring at him across the table.
“I’m serious,” Koda warns with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “You need to get your facts straight before you open your mouth.”
I snap, “Says the guy who just opened his mouth about my breakup.”
Koda grins like I’ve complimented him.
I turn my glare on Nash. “You’re not going to defend yourself?” I ask. “Because I’m right, aren’t I?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t care what you think.”
I laugh, and it isn’t pretty.
Nash picks his coffee back up.
That’s so annoying, so unsatisfying, and so deliberate that I’d rather he yelled at me. At least then I’d have something to do with my hands.
“It’s true what they say,” Paige says. “There are two sides to every story.”
“Well,” I snap, “it doesn’t matter to me.” I look at Nash and give him my most devilish grin. “He got you good, didn’t he?”
Nash sets his mug down, gets up, and walks out of the diner.
“Okay,” Koda says, changing the subject.
I watch the back of Nash disappear outside.
The girls start talking about what they’re doing later, and my phone buzzes face up on the table. It’s Evan. It rings, and I stand to take it.
Kenzie gives me a particular look that I ignore.
Nash is on the curb when I step out, sitting on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the diner with his forearms on his knees and a wad of bloody napkins in one hand. He looks up when the door closes behind me. The phone is still ringing. I walk out toward the parking lot and answer.
“Hi.”
“Hey.” Evan’s voice. “Hey. You picked up.”
“Yeah.”
“I know you said—I know what you said. I just—” He stops. “I thought I could do it, and I can’t. I can’t do the not-talking-to-you thing, Kylie.”
I stop walking and close my eyes. There’s traffic on Beall, and it’s cold, so I start pacing the sidewalk. Behind me, through the glass, Koda says something loud enough to hear through the wall, and all the girls laugh.
“Where are you?” Evan asks. “It’s loud.”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“A diner.”
“With who?”
I don’t want to tell him. The honest answer is stupid.
I don’t want to explain that a girl used my name to get a phone number on Tuesday, and then told everybody my business.
Evan would have an opinion on that. He’d make an entire thing out of it.
I don’t want to lie, but I don’t think I owe him the answer either.
“Some people from Corvin,” I say, which isn’t a whole lie.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“Why are you calling, Evan?”
“Right.” A breath. “Right. I’m sorry.”
Then neither of us says anything. I stand on the sidewalk with the phone against my ear listening to him not say anything, and it’s the loneliest I have ever felt.
“I have to go,” I finally say.
“Kylie—”
“Please don’t call me. I asked you not to fucking call,” I snap.
“Okay.”
“I meant it when I said it,” I yell at him.
“I know you did.” His voice cracks. “Okay. I’m sorry, Kylie. Bye.”
I hang up first, because that’s the only satisfying part of the entire call, and I stand there watching the cars go by. I put my phone in my pocket and press the heels of my hands into my eyes for one second before I remember I have makeup on.
Nash hasn’t moved. He’s still on the curb with his elbows on his knees, looking out at the street like I don’t exist, and that’s honestly fine.
I don’t want questions or pity or concern.
I’ve never in my life found comfort in somebody else’s silence.
I usually want to be asked if I’m okay or at least acknowledged, but Nash is so indifferent that I’m not even worried about having taken that call in front of him.
I watch him flex his knuckles. They’re raw, like he hit more than a body.
“Why did you hit him?” I hear myself ask, and I freeze, because I didn’t give him what he just gave me: no concern, no questions, no acknowledgment. I don’t like this guy. But I need something to take my mind off Evan before I start crying.
Nash doesn’t look up, and for a second, I think he’s going to ignore me, so I take a step toward the door.
“He said something,” Nash says.
I stop. “What did he say?” I’m doing it again. I close my eyes, annoyed with myself.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But it matters enough to hit him.”
He looks at the traffic and doesn’t answer.
“How are you so calm?” The words tumble out. I don’t mean to pry, but curiosity wins. “You were in a fistfight forty minutes ago. You have blood on your shirt. And you’re sitting on a curb like it’s nothing.”
He looks up at me for a second. “I’m not calm,” he says.
Then he stands up and walks straight past me. He goes back inside, and the door bangs shut behind him. I’m left standing on the sidewalk by myself with my ears ringing.
Life really can be lonely.
We leave at midnight. Koda pays for Paige’s pancakes, which she lets him do while pretending to argue about it.
Rafe leaves a twenty on the table for a meal he didn’t eat and is out the door before anybody else has a coat on.
Kenzie takes the last four napkins out of the dispenser and hands them to Nash on her way past, and he takes them.
The walk back is four blocks, and it’s cold.
Koda and Paige are twenty feet ahead of everybody, and she’s laughing at every word he says, like the diner never happened.
Kenzie and Bianca are behind them, talking at Rafe, who answers at a rate of about one syllable per block and doesn’t seem to mind them.
That leaves me and Nash at the back, six feet apart, walking at the same speed because we live in the same building and there’s only one way to get there.
Neither of us says anything for two blocks.
“Your friend’s something,” he says eventually.
“Which one?”
“The one who used your name.”
“Yeah.”
“You were mad,” he says.
I nod. “I was, yeah.” I still am. I’m mad she told them my business, and I’m mad I’m not going to say anything about it tonight, because she’s up there laughing, and I don’t want to be the reason she stops.
We walk another block.
“Your friends are assholes just like you,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, not denying it.
“Why is that?” I ask, right as my phone buzzes.
My heart sinks, thinking it’s Evan again. Nash hears it and doesn’t answer me. I pull out my phone and read the screen.
Declan: Hey. Tonight got weird. Did you get home ok?
Nash doesn’t bother to look over. He doesn’t even have a curious bone in his body. He keeps his eyes forward, his stride even, and keeps walking.
When we get to Corvin Hall, the rest of us wait for the elevator, and Nash takes the stairs.