29
For the Record, This Is Easy
Kylie
I’ve seen Nash in pieces all week. Tuesday at lunch, he sat down next to me because there was an empty chair, ate three of my tater tots without asking, and left for practice before I finished.
Wednesday, he passed me in the athletic building hallway with his hair still wet and his bag on his shoulder, caught me around the waist, kissed me once, and kept walking.
When I turned around at the end of the hall, he’d already turned around too.
That night he texted me a picture of a banana with the caption This is a banana, and I asked what exactly he was doing with a banana that late, and he came knocking to find out whether I could fit the whole thing in my mouth.
Poor Tessa had to witness it. I could not stop laughing.
It’s been a good week. I keep noticing how much I’m enjoying college, usually when I’m walking somewhere with my coffee and my earbuds in and nowhere I have to be.
After the breakup, I was so scared I wouldn’t find my place here, and I think I finally have.
It feels good to have a group of girls and a fuck buddy three doors down.
This week has been good and normal and easy.
I even signed up to volunteer at a nursing home ten minutes off campus, which was my mom’s idea and which I pretended to be annoyed about for one whole day.
My first shift isn’t for almost two weeks, and I’ve already looked up what to wear.
Thursday afternoon, Kenzie leans across our table in the library. “Theo’s having people over again tonight.”
“Scrabble?”
“Scrabble, but no Scrabble.” She shrugs. “His roommate’s inviting some people from his floor. Some of us. It’s not a party party. Just people.”
“I’m in. And I’m going to convince him to bring the Scrabble out.”
She nods and goes back to her reading, and I take my phone out without thinking about it very hard.
Me: Theo’s having people over tonight. Come with me.
Nash: Theo.
Me: Yes. Theo. You carried me out of his place. You know who Theo is.
Nash: What time?
Me: Nine?
Nash: Who’s going?
Me: Me.
The dots come up, stop, and come up again.
Nash: Ok.
I’m glad that’s enough. I slide the phone across the table out of my reach and go back to my reading, and Kenzie is looking at me over the top of her laptop.
“I invited Nash,” I say.
“Okay,” she says with a smile, and types something.
He knocks at ten to nine while I’m still doing my mascara.
“It’s open,” I yell, and he comes in and stands just inside the door with his hands in his jacket pockets.
Tessa goes still at her desk the way she always does, looks past him at the hallway for a second, then gives him a one-over and puts her headphones on.
Nash is in jeans and a black jacket, and he somehow already looks bored of Theo’s.
“You look thrilled,” I tell him in the mirror.
“I’m here.” He shows me his palms. “No banana.”
I smile. “No banana.” I do my other eye. “You don’t have to come, you know.”
“I know.”
He watches me put the mascara away and find my earrings. He doesn’t sit down. He just waits.
“You coming Saturday?” he says.
I look at him in the mirror. “To?”
“My game.”
“Are you inviting me?”
“Yeah.”
I turn around. “You want me there?”
He looks at me like it’s a stupid question. “I want you there.”
He’s said that before, about practice, weeks ago, when I still thought he was the most annoying person on the planet. It sounds different in my room with one earring half in. I don’t know why. It’s the same four words.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll come.”
I grab my jacket off the bed and the platter of sandwiches I made, and Nash opens the door for me.
Two steps into the hall, he takes the tray from me.
“Thank you.”
He wraps an arm around my neck, and we take the stairs.
By the time we get to Halloran, the door is propped open and the noise is coming down the hall.
It’s way more people than Scrabble night, fifteen or twenty moving between Theo’s suite and the common room at the end of the hall.
Somebody’s got a speaker on top of the fridge.
There are three couches that don’t match and nowhere near enough places to sit, so people are on the arms and the floor and the kitchen counter, and one girl is sitting inside an empty laundry basket.
Somebody brought a tray of cookies from the dining hall and somebody else a Costco tub of cheese balls, and both are already half gone.
Theo sees me from across the room and throws both arms up. “Kylie!” Then he sees who’s behind me, and his arms come down a little. “Oh. Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Nash says.
Theo looks at him, then at the sandwiches, then at me. “You made the sandwiches.” He points at the counter, sees it’s full, and starts clearing away empty trays. Nash sets ours down, and Theo grabs one immediately and talks around it. “Cool, cool, cool. Drinks are in the fridge. These are good.”
Nash picks one up while a girl from the other side of the counter takes another. “Thanks for making these again, Kylie.”
I smile at her.
Nash looks at the sandwich in his hand. He takes a bite. “This is good.”
I pull his hand down and take a bite out of it. “Mm. So good.”
I go find Kenzie on the floor by the coffee table with Bianca, and they both scream when they see me.
I sit down with them. Nash stays at the counter with his sandwich.
I ask Bianca about her grandma’s boyfriend and his boat.
She shows me pictures, and her grandma looks like one hell of a woman.
“Okay, grandma,” I say. “I see the vision.”
“She’d love you,” Bianca laughs.
“Maybe her boyfriend can come pick us up in the boat.”
Bianca starts belly-laughing, and I catch Nash’s eye across the room. He’s got a bottle of water now, and he’s watching me.
Kenzie knows everyone, so while Bianca shows me more pictures, Kenzie is on the couch complaining about a class with a group of people.
A guy from my Monday-Wednesday lecture recognizes me, and we spend ten minutes being outraged about the midterm.
I text Paige to ask where she is and check my phone a few minutes later.
Paige: Busy.
I get up off the floor and walk over to Nash. I reach for the water in his hand, and he holds it over my head. “Waterfall,” he says, uncapping it. “Open.”
Heat floods my stomach, because his eyes look exactly the way they did the night of the banana. I stand under him and open my mouth, and he pours gently.
I swallow and say, “Again.”
This time he holds my throat while he pours, and then he doesn’t let go. He brings my mouth to his and flicks his tongue against mine. I grab his arm to steady myself and kiss him back, and then I pull away and lick my lips. “Thanks.”
I walk back to Bianca, who watched the whole thing and is blushing on my behalf.
Nash caps the water and walks over to the window to talk to a guy he seems to know.
I watch him lean against the wall with one hand in his pocket and nod at whatever the guy is saying.
He’s fine. He doesn’t need anybody holding his hand at a party.
He also looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
I take a seat on the couch next to Kenzie while Bianca tells us about her roommate. My eyes keep drifting to Nash, because I can feel him looking. I shrug at him, like, what. He shakes his head once and keeps watching.
Bianca drags me down the hall to the common room to raid the cookies, because someone just made a fresh batch.
We take two each and giggle when a few people groan that they’re gone, and we’re walking back down the hall with our mouths full when I see Nash in the doorway with a new bottle of water.
My body remembers the look in his eyes when he held my throat.
I hold up the last piece of cookie and press it against his lips. “Open.”
He opens a little. I slip it into his mouth and lean in with my eyes on his. “Good boy.”
That’s when movement over his shoulder catches my eye, and I look past him into the room, and it’s Evan.
He’s near the kitchen with Brandon and two other people, laughing at something, and I know it’s his laugh before I know it’s him, the one where he sucks in first like he’s about to drown and then it comes out in two pieces.
He’s standing with his weight on his back foot and one knee bent, the way he stands when he’s been standing too long.
He’s wearing the gray hoodie with the bleach spot on the left cuff, the one from sophomore year that he said had character, with his hands pulled up inside the sleeves.
It’s so ordinary that something in my chest starts to lift before I catch it.
Then I see the girl next to him, holding a red cup in both hands.
She’s the one he cheated on me with. I’ve seen them across the quad.
And still, my whole body goes hot and then cold in a doorway.
Evan says something to Brandon and rubs the back of his neck.
He does that when he doesn’t know where to put himself.
Nash presses two fingers lightly to my cheek, like he’s asking me to look at him, and it brings me back to this moment. His eyes are hazel, green in the middle and gold around the rim. I don’t appreciate them enough.
Bianca keeps walking.
“My ex is here,” I murmur.
Nash looks over my head. It takes him maybe two seconds to find him, and he doesn’t ask which one. Then he looks back down at me, and he doesn’t say anything. He’s waiting to see what I’ll do.
“I’m gonna go say hi.”
His eyebrows pull in a fraction. “Why?”
“Because he’s going to see me anyway.”
I can tell he doesn’t get it at all. But he takes his hand off my face and steps out of the doorway, and I go. I’m doing it because the alternative is spending two hours pretending the room is bigger than it is.
His girlfriend sees me first, and her smile drops.
“Hi,” I say.
Brandon turns around. “Hey, Kylie.”
“Hey,” Evan says.