Chapter 12 Annie
TWELVE
Annie
Back on the road, we settle into our appointed car roles. Nico drives and blasts music with the occasional podcast thrown in. I don’t mind in the slightest—because my role is to read, and when I read, it’s like stepping into a soundproof room and locking the door behind me.
As a kid, my parents never minded that I loved books.
What drove them bananas was the way I disappeared into them.
The Annie has turned into an inanimate object part.
I’d sink so deep into a story that the real world ceased to exist—chores forgotten, homework abandoned.
It would take several attempts to get my attention.
I wouldn’t come when called. I became a living gargoyle, curled in a ball in a corner somewhere, unblinking, unmoving, and utterly gone.
It seems that Nico doesn’t mind, though, because when I finally hear my name and look up, his eyes are laughing and his hand is on my knee, and it’s clear he’s been trying to get my attention for a while now.
“We’ve arrived at the flat little forest walk,” he says, squeezing my knee once.
This I feel like lightning shooting up my spine, and for a reason entirely unknown to me I feel almost heartbroken when he removes it. My nipples go on strike and start a picket line. Nico’s hands are a basic human right! their signs say.
I distract myself by looking around. We’re in a small lot at the trailhead in the middle of a thick forest of evergreen. There are no other cars around.
“The location you’ve chosen for my murder is tragically beautiful,” I announce. “Fitting for someone like myself.”
He laughs as he gets out of the car. “As someone who deserves to be murdered or as someone who is tragically beautiful?”
“Yes.” I climb out and take a deep inhale.
He gazes at me from the front of the car, eyes warm and alight. “Nice, right?”
I guzzle it all down, over and over again. “I don’t leave the city very much, but I’m getting addicted to this smell,” I tell him.
We start towards the trailhead.
“What smell?” he asks.
I take several more samples. “The smell of cool, dark, damp earth. Life,” I say.
“We’re both city kids, so you get it. I’ve always defined ‘life’ by the hum of traffic, the crush of people, the constant movement of millions of lives intersecting.
” I glance around, feeling something shift.
“But this… this is life in its rawest, most primitive form.”
I glance over, and Nico is looking at me, one corner of his mouth tipped up in a way that makes me want to lick it.
“Pretty,” he says.
Our flat little forest walk takes us deep into the trees, and I suddenly feel like a wolf with the way the scent deepens in here.
My head is clear, my heart rate a little elevated (the forest floor is not entirely flat, mind you, not to mention a little spongy, meaning it takes a little more effort than walking on pavement).
I get the urge to walk across a log like those Pacific Northwest influencers on social media with the beanies and the long and loose hair that seem entirely inappropriate for aerobic activity.
I find a suitable log and walk across the length of it. When I reach the end, I suppress the urge to squeal and throw my hands in the air. The smile gets out anyway, and Nico’s matches mine.
However, that was enough adventure for one day.
Luckily, the trees take this moment to part like a secret unfolding, revealing a sun-drenched clearing with soft beds of moss and tiny purple wildflowers.
I lean against a tree to take it all in.
The air is thick with the scent of earth and pine, the quiet only broken by the distant trill of birds and the rustling of leaves in the breeze.
It turns out there is truth to the trite captions under those aforementioned Instagram posts. I think of an overused one, “nature is healing,” right before blurting out some more truths to my worst enemy.
“I’m a hurricane of serious issues,” I tell Nico, who’s standing maybe twenty feet away in the middle of the clearing, drinking water and looking right at me, the brown of his eyes lighter in the sun.
He caps his bottle. “Annie—”
I interrupt him. “I went kind of wild after high school.”
“Everyone does,” he says, visibly frustrated. Why is he frustrated? He’s the one who said it. “Letting a bunch of freakin’ eighteen-year-olds out into the world on their own for the very first time will do that.”
“But most people are safely contained doing keg stands on campus. I was out doing it all in the middle of the wildest city in the world.” I shake my head. “And it didn’t stop after college. It got worse, in fact.”
He drags his fingers through his hair. “You looked comfortable last night. At least in the beginning.”
I nod. “That was nothing. That was just like a regular Tuesday night in the East Village when I was twenty-one. But Nico, I did it all. Warehouses, raves, clubs, sex clubs, alcohol, drugs. People. Dubious people. Groups of people. Groups of dubious people.”
He frowns at this. “Like Mark.”
“There were a lot of Marks, but he was like a monk compared to—”
Nico holds up both hands. “All right, I get it.”
I lean my head back on the tree. “It got to be a big issue,” I say quietly.
His handsome face is the perfect picture of concern.
“Not in like, an addiction way, but more in like, a sad Peter Pan way. Or actually, maybe in an addiction way—addicted to doing whatever the hell I wanted to do, and fuck everyone else. It was my say. Blacking out and waking up in my sister’s bed at two in the afternoon with a random person.
Dating a coke dealer for free coke and free tattoos, while he used me to be the hot little thing on his arm at parties.
” I let Nico see this ugly side of me, like the forest wants me to come completely clean.
Understanding shines in his eyes. He’s starting to get what happened last night. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s flowing out of me now.
“One night—or morning, I guess, I was at this stranger’s apartment in Williamsburg, in their living room, and I looked around and realized the person that I had come there with was gone and I didn’t know anyone there. But we were all so messed up it was like we were all the best of friends.”
Even through the emotional blunting, I found it strange to be squished onto a strange couch between strangers as the sun started to peek up over the horizon.
I was sitting on someone’s lap, his arm wrapped tightly around my waist. We were debating the twin telepathy thing.
The impersonality of this seemingly personal moment was jarring.
“I didn’t have any real friends. Everyone I surrounded myself with was someone I could use for something. But the worst part was that anyone else I actually did care about—and let me tell you this included maybe three people, one being May—I was so, so cruel to.”
May finding me in her bed, in the bathroom.
Once, in the lobby of our apartment building in Chinatown.
Not showing up for countless Sunday dinners at my parents’ house.
Not showing up for my grandmother’s grave sweeping because I was out until six in the morning.
Not showing up for my mother’s birthday several years in a row.
I look at Nico, who would never miss his mom’s birthday party. “I don’t think you’d get it. You’re like the Bensonhurst golden child. Valedictorian, Duke, PhD, postdoc, doing… whatever you’re doing now. Clearly like rich and successful—”
“I told you I’ve made some pretty fuckin’ dubious choices myself, Annie,” he interrupts.
I sigh, unwilling to pop this magical forest bubble of uneasy truces. “Okay,” I say simply. “Anyway, there it is. Some of Annie Li’s serious issues.” I confess this, and it’s out there.
Why did I just tell him that? I think, and then, I’m glad I just told him that.
Like a weight lifted off my shoulders is another one of those trite phrases from influencer Instagram, but I feel it here in this grand forest with this terribly handsome man who is currently radiating genuine care and concern.
Looking at me like I’m delicate, like I’m something to be treasured, tragically beautiful.
Maybe not a serious fucking hurricane of issues or a giant pain in his ass.
I smile despite the topic of conversation; let out a big breath.
“It felt good to tell you that,” I admit.
Something shifts with that confession. The air grows thick here in this sun-dappled clearing, surrounded by trees and wildflowers and the buzz of insects. The atmosphere hums with a low vibration, and time becomes suspended.
His answering smile is soft and careful, his eyes and body lazy.
The entire effect is ruinous, and I find that I can’t pry my eyes off him.
When did Nico Giannuzzi get this hot? Did that just happen?
Did he buy that shirt yesterday, pre-dampened with sweat, knowing it would drape over his chest like that?
A chest that seems even broader than it was two days ago, when I was on it?
Did it rise like proofing bread dough? I want to take a bite out of the meaty flesh over his heart. Really sink my teeth into it.
“What kept you doin’ all that for so long?” he wants to know.
I shake myself out of an image of worshipping the veins in his forearm using only my tongue. “I don’t actually know.” I’m not willing to get into high school right now; that’s a whole other emotional vomit, and I don’t think that’s what he’s asking, anyway.
Nico takes a step towards me. “I mean, something about it had to feel good.”
I trace the dips of his cupid’s bow with my eyes. Something about it makes me breathless. It’s hard to think. “It did feel good,” I admit.
“What felt good?” He’s a few inches closer.
“I guess… the adrenaline rush, maybe? The loss of control,” I say, heart starting to flutter at his proximity, increasing exponentially in beats per minute.