Chapter 4
FOUR
Annie
We all shut our mouths as she floats back to us.
“Nothing,” I say sweetly, quickly sitting back down. “Still discussing the flavor ‘blue.’ Nico just told us it’s the only icee flavor his cousin Vinny serves out of the cooler at the end of his driveway.”
Nico grumbles under his breath, but thankfully decides to keep his pretty lips sealed.
May looks at him.
I hold my breath and hope I’ve successfully deflected.
Her eyes light up, and I exhale in relief.
“Annie,” she says excitedly.
I blink. “Yes?”
“Nico’s driving down to the wedding. He’s doing a whole road trip the week before.”
Nico’s head whips up.
There is a sudden roaring in my ears. “Oh?”
“You should go with him!”
Entire civilizations rise and fall in the silence that follows. Empires are forged, coups are staged, alliances crumble. A medieval bard pens a tragic ballad about the pain currently tightening my spine. Somewhere, a tiny peasant child throws a tomato at a guillotine.
Until Tom breaks it with a laugh.
“I don’t think—” I start.
“No, May—” Nico tries.
She ignores him. Both of us. “It’ll be great!” she insists. “You two will get to hang out before the wedding,” she says with a smirk towards me, “and you don’t have a way to get there yet, Annie,” May says. Fuck. “Nico already has a car and lodging—”
“I’m not sharing a hotel room with—”
“He has rentals. I assume they have more than one bedroom.” May looks to Nico for confirmation.
“That’s not gonna work, May,” Nico attempts carefully, the tips of his ears even redder than before.
“You can help pay for gas, Annie. It’ll be less than the three thousand you would spend on a train ticket.”
“Honestly, I’d rather spend three million dollars than be trapped in a car with Joe Pesci for a week,” I mutter. My heart is pounding in my ears. I’m slowly devolving into panic.
Nico hears me. “Fuck off with that shit, Annie, and get off my dick about my accent,” he says, frustration evident despite his attempts to wrangle said accent into submission.
“Honestly, there’s no way I’m taking or paying for this miserable fuckin’ hurricane of serious issues who causes fuckin’ problems for everyone around her—”
“Hey,” May cuts in, a hair more forcefully.
I, on the other hand, am forced into a shocked silence. Of all the things that have come out of Nico’s mouth thus far, this is the only thing that manages to creep through my defenses and slice directly into my chest. I feel my ribcage collapsing around the wound. Flight is now activated.
“Don’t talk about my sister that way,” May warns. She says this quietly and calmly, but there is an undercurrent of a rarely seen danger and intensity.
Nico manages to look contrite. He scrubs his face with both hands, then drops them. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” he mumbles, then gets up and storms away.
I swallow the lump in my throat. Shove it down with all the other bad feelings that came up with it.
May isn’t looking at Nico; she’s looking at me. “I’m sorry,” May whispers. “I thought I was being helpful, and that—”
“What a terrible idea, May,” Tom cuts in.
May recoils slightly, then shrinks even more.
“Excuse you?” I growl. Did my teeth just get sharper? I run my tongue along the canines.
“—With her?” he continues. “We’re going to be reading our vows while she leaps into the seats and pummels Nico with a bouquet—”
“Not if I stuff it down your throat first,” I spit at him.
“—then sets the entire hotel on fire.”
“With you in it, hopefully,” I shoot back.
“—that’s a ridiculously stupid plan, May—”
I turn back to May, hoping—
I freeze.
The look on her face hits me like a gut punch.
That tight, apologetic twist of her mouth, the nervous knot in her brow, the way she tries to make herself smaller.
That’s the exact look from her engagement party, the look I’ve spent my whole life trying to protect her from.
Not sadness, exactly. Not even fear. Just…
that she’s not doing the right thing. That she might be wrong, or not enough. That she might hurt someone.
She doesn’t deserve to carry that. And for as long as I live, she will never carry that.
“May, you’re right,” I grind out.
So I do it again—I shoulder it before she can feel the weight.
“It’s the perfect solution to the problem.” My voice comes out cool and smooth. A little smile, practiced and polite, wraps around the words like ribbon around broken glass.
Tom’s lip curls.
“Annie—” May starts.
My jaw clenches, eyes flicking between May’s face and Nico’s retreating back.
“Fuck you, Tom. May is always right,” I grit.
“No—”
I stand up. “Wait,” I call out. Godfuckingdamnit.
I start moving, ignoring May’s protests.
“Nico,” I huff out, panting at the effort it takes to run over a few feet of sand. Damn, how do volleyball players do it? “Nico,” I try one more time, louder, and he takes me by surprise when he whirls around.
“No, Annie Li,” he tells me, pushing his stupid sunglasses up into his hair, which is frankly extremely overwhelming, because the now two times in fourteen years I’ve seen Nico’s eyes have been in the dark or behind sunglasses, and here, now, in the bright of the sun?
They are intense. A clear, rich brown, steady and bright throughout, with only a darker rim tracing the outer edge.
No flecks of gold or hazel, not a lighter brown in the middle, nothing.
The same pure brown all over. Warm and sure.
A pool of melted chocolate. Ready to sweep me away to an unfortunate end. Like one of those kids in Willy Wonka.
“Please, Nico,” I manage.
“Annie, I just fuckin’ got here and feel an overwhelming urge to get away from you.
And you know how fuckin’ long it takes the A train to get down here?
! I’d rather sit on that train for four hours than spend thirty minutes on the beach with you, on this gorgeous freakin’ day,” he rages.
“Not to mention, in the two times we’ve seen each other in fourteen years, we’ve set a bar on fire and scared away all the seagulls on the beach with our screaming.
How the hell could we ever manage three thousand miles inside the three cubic meters of a car? ”
“Well, technically, the fire was your fault—I mean, it was your cigarette, and I told you that smoking was disgusting, and seagulls are totally just beach rats, anyway—”
“Goodbye,” he says, turning on his heel and walking away.
I gnash my teeth together. Is this even worth it? This cannot, by any means, be worth it. I look back towards May, who’s curled into a tight ball and looking down at the sand while Tom rages, gesticulating wildly.
Damnit. “Nico!” I run after him and grab his arm (which has the audacity to be harder than it looks) and swing him back around.
I have to tear the next few words from my throat.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Maybe we can spend the trip learning not to kill each other at their wedding? ” I offer weakly.
“The wedding won’t matter, Annie, because we’ll kill each other before we even get there!”
“Not if we’re learning not to kill each other!”
He opens his mouth to say something else, but I cut him off.
“I’ll be good. I promise. Please, Nico. Please.”
His eyes flick to me on the second “please.” He chews on his lip, then sighs, looking past me towards the ocean.
“What are you thinking? Tell me,” I demand.
Nico cuts his eyes back to me. “I’m calculating a physics problem.”
“Huh?”
“Velocity.”
I rack my brain for high school level physics. “Velocity equals distance over time?”
He nods, only somewhat impressed.
“Velocity for…”
“The velocity I’d have when I launch myself into the ocean.”
“Ha.”
“Distance from here to the ocean?” he continues. “Maybe ninety meters.”
I smirk despite myself. “Time?”
“Dunno,” he shrugs. “ASAP.”
That gets him a smile—a real one, and I receive a look of surprise in response.
Nico shakes his head, blinking. “I really do have to work,” he says. His eyes dart all over my face in confusion. “The road trip is for work.”
“Doing what, exactly? I promise I won’t distract you from your urns and crucibles and elixirs.”
He frowns. “Are you… referring to alchemy?”
I wave my hand. “You won’t even realize I’m there, I promise. Just leave me at whatever rental you have while you go stir your vat of mercury.”
His mouth twitches.
Gotcha. I go in for the kill. Take a step closer. Push my shoulders back, flip my hair over my shoulder.
His eyes shoot down.
Annie, Sister Annie warns.
Ugh. Fine.
“I need to do this for May,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk. I’ll rein it in. This wedding means everything to her. I fucked up her engagement party. I’m doing this for her. Please.”
Nico blows out a slow breath, pushing the hair back from his face. It doesn’t listen to him and flops back down in a way that has me looking around for movie cameras. “How are you still ruining my life?”
Bullseye. I grin. “Ditto, Nico. It’s like we’re soulmates or something.”
“If by soulmates you mean we’re meant to eat each other’s souls.”
I agree. “Soulmates in hell.”
The open air of the beach consolidates into a small dome around us. We search each other’s eyes, and I’m acutely aware of my pulse beating in my neck. I glance back at May and swallow.
“Please, Nico.”
He bites the inside of his cheek and looks up at the sky as if someone there will help him. “If we die in a fiery accident, I’ll kill you,” he finally says.
“Done.”
He sucks his teeth. Shakes his head. “I’ll pick you up on Thursday.”
From: ali@
To: chef@
I had to rein her in. Ali went a little feral, and humanity had enough of her. But seriously, how dare you deprive humanity of years of regular access to what you’re packing?
I think we’ve reached that point in any normal, functioning relationship (not that either of us would know, clearly) where we get to the good stuff. So yeah. Yes, Chef. Give it to me. Fuck me up.
Here’s mine.
1. I think you should be proud of your job, because it’s cool and hot as fuck.
2. So hot, in fact, that I [Redacted for Work Email] to every one of your videos.
3. I’ve had several fulfilling and non-toxic relationships with amicable and respectful break-ups.