I’M SHITTING MYSELF.
There’s no point sugar-coating it or putting on a brave face; I am dreading the interaction I know is going to happen within the next few minutes and I have been since we passed the sign welcoming us to Carlton. I kept my gaze downcast after that, watching my fingers as they fiddled with the rips in the legs of my overalls—I figured seeing my old neighborhood was going to be triggering enough for today, I didn’t need a tour of the whole town.
They look the exact same, mine and Cass’ houses, two Tudor-style houses tucked side-by-side at the end of a cul-de-sac. I don’t know why I expected anything different—it’s not like it’s been a lifetime since I left, even if it feels like it has been. Maybe it’s because I’m so different compared to who I was when I left here.
I’m stalling at the end of Cass’ driveway, staring at my old house when someone bumps my shoulder gently. “You can go in, if you want.”
I grimace up at Nick, shaking my head—I have no interest in reliving any of the memories lurking in there. All the good ones live in the Morgans’ house, and one of them greets me as I force myself a few steps up the drive, Nick silently following close behind. Despite the apprehension bubbling in my gut, I can’t help but smile at the inscription permanently indented in the cement; C.M + A.H = BFF.
We’d gotten one hell of a lecture for that little antic. I think we were nine or ten and Lynn had gotten the driveway repaved after Cass and I destroyed the thing during a particularly vigorous paint fight. One look at the wet cement and we couldn’t resist the urge to immortalize our friendship.
I raise my gaze and I’m hit with another; from here, I can see the towering oak tree in Cass’ backward, the cause of more than one childhood injury. One competitive sister versus two wild older brothers meant many bruises bravely suffered so that little girl felt equal. The more I stare at the three, the more I swear I can see three fearless kids scaling the thing with reckless abandon, and the more the lump in my throat grows.
Calloused fingers gently brush the back of my hand. “Nervous?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“If it makes you feel any better, my mom likes you.”
Weirdly, it does. “Sorry.” I sigh, knuckling my eyes until the stinging behind them recedes. “I know I’m being silly.” A soft huff is Nick’s only reply. “What?”
“I’m just wondering how many times a day you apologize for shit that isn’t your fault.”
All the blood rushes to my cheeks until I swear I’m radiating heat. I mumble some non-descript answer that does nothing to ward off Nick. His pinky brushes mine a second before he hooks the digits together, tugging until I deign to look at him. He’s silent as he lets his gaze flit over my face intently, making me more and more flustered by the second, before he says with so much sincerity and softness, it buckles my knees a little, “You’re allowed to feel whatever you wanna feel, querida. If you wanna stay out here a little longer, that’s fine. If you wanna go in and rip the bandaid off, that’s fine too. If you wanna blow off some steam, there’s a punching bag in my shed. And if it’s all too much and you wanna leave, take my keys.”
Stop being so nice to me, I command silently. Stop it before I freaking fall in love with you.
It’s bad enough that I already have our earlier interaction on reply in my hopelessly romantic brain. I don’t need anything else to fuel the fantasies created against my will.
I’m not sweet.
You’re sweet to me.
Because I like you.
There was a moment, one reckless, idealistic flicker in time, when I thought he was going to kiss me. Touch me. Do something that would’ve erased the solid boundaries outlining our friendship. Honey eyes went molten as they dropped to my lips, and my insides followed suit. I was mere seconds away from becoming nothing more than a puddle at his feet.
Then the moment ended and I solidified.
I force myself to laugh, to joke, to act like my heart isn’t threatening to beat right out of my chest. “That mouth of yours is dangerous, you know?”
So slow is the positively filthy smile that twists his lips upward. “I’ve been told.”
I walked right into that one.
It’s a struggle to formulate a response that doesn’t involve me panting like a dog, and I’m an odd mixture of disappointed and relieved when it turns out I don’t have to. Nick drops my hand like it’s on fire when a holler rings out, a single word and voice that makes me simultaneously groan and smile.
“Tiny!” A man the spitting image of Cass materializes on the front porch, face split in a grin as he squints at me. “What, are you waiting for an invitation?”
My laugh becomes a squeal when James Morgan closes the distance between us in a handful of long strides and greets me the exact same way his younger brother did almost a month ago; by sweeping me up in his arms and squeezing the life out of me as he twirls us in a circle.
My relationship with the eldest Morgan sibling has always been different to my one with Cass, nowhere near as tightly-knit, the line between friend and sibling a lot less blurred. Vaguely, I remember having a teeny adolescent crush on him—he’s the kind of guy everyone has a crush on—but that died quickly, murdered by his obsession with calling me ‘kiddo.’ Regardless, he’s always, always, been part of my family, and I cling to him as tightly as I did Cass, sniffling a quiet greeting.
“Shit, kid, I’ve missed you.” James keeps me tucked beneath his arm as he sets me down, steering me towards the front door. “You were right, Nick. She grew up good.”
My head whips around, catching Nick as he raises his hands in a display of innocence that’s oddly unbecoming on him. “He’s shit-stirring. I never said anything.”
“Oh,” James hums, “so you don’t think she’s pretty?”
Golden eyes narrow. “Stop it.”
“Still breaking girls’ hearts I see.” James tuts playfully, shooting me a sly wink. “It’s okay, kiddo. You’re too good for him anyway.”
An hour ago, I didn’t think I’d be laughing as I crossed the threshold into the Morgans’ home for the first time in almost four years but I am, James’ joking doing a world of good in helping me forget my apprehension. I’m glad—it means when James is abruptly bowled aside and a different, curvier body collides with mine, there’s no guilt holding me back from reciprocating.
“Here’s my girl,” Lynn sobs in my ear as, for the second time in as many minutes, I’m robbed of breath. Not entirely because of the restricting hug. “Oh, sweetie, I missed you.”
I try to return the sentiment but I fear it’ll come out nothing more than a mangled blubber so I stay silent, hoping my bone-crushing grip speaks for me. Suddenly, I can’t believe there was ever a moment when I doubted Lynn. When I considered that she wouldn’t greet me with the same affection and love and ferocity as she always did. I should’ve known better.
Hovering beside us, Cass scoffs and whines, “Why didn’t I get a greeting like that?”
Lynn pulls back just enough to whack Cass upside the head. “I see you all the time. Let me have a moment with my only daughter.” It’s half a joke, half serious, and entirely tear-inducing.
I might’ve lost a biological mother all those years ago but I definitely never went without a mom. I found one in the form of Lynn, and no one could ever make me feel as loved as she does.
Like this house, Lynn looks exactly how I remember her. Smooth skin a couple of shades darker than her sons’, the same inky hair and eyes, and a smile that has always signified home to me.
The only mother I’ve ever really known smoothes her hands over my hair before cupping my cheeks, the two of us sniffling in unison. “Look at you,” she coos. “You look so beautiful, Amelia.”
“See, Nick.” Over Lynn’s shoulder, I watch James nail Nick in the ribs. “That’s how you compliment a woman.”
The rest of the day passes in a whirlwind of barely restrained emotions and words left unsaid.
I’m a mess as Lynn steers me towards the living room, a stiff wind away from crumpling when what Nick told me the night of his birthday rings true—the pictures of me scattered around the Morgans’ house have gone nowhere. With a breakdown imminent, I’m grateful when Cass’ dad, Tom, swoops in and snatches my attention, hugging me in that way only a dad can and whispering more sweet sentiments.
We don’t talk about it. The elephant in the room. The big why. It’s like we all make an unconscious, unanimous decision to ignore it. We don’t talk about the missing years either, treating it like a gateway drug. Like if we reminisce on the time we lost, the reason we lost it will inevitably come up. I don’t know about anyone else but I’m content with that decision, despite the palpable weight of it.
One weekend, one normal weekend with my family, is all I want and I’m going to do everything in my power to get it.
Well, with my family and Nick’s. Not that that’s a hardship; I freaking love Ana. She’s the type of person who instantly makes you feel welcome and comfortable and wanted—my favorite type of person. And Sofia, his little sister, is adorable. A mini version of her mother, pint-sized yet larger than life, zipping around and filling the whole house with tangible positive energy.
She attached herself to me pretty promptly, sitting next to me at dinner and snuggling beside me during the movie we all watched together and dragging me upstairs after, insisting she had to see my bedroom before they left. The spare room, technically, but it was always treated as mine, and it seems it still is. The same lilac comforter adorns the bed, the same ridiculously extravagant vanity that Tom built me for Christmas one year is still tucked in the corner, the same slightly wonky flowers Lynn and I spent an afternoon painting decorate the pastel walls. Perched on the edge of the bed, I trace them absently as the inquisitive eight-year-old pokes around at her leisure.
“Is Cass your boyfriend?” she asks at one point in that random way kids do.
I can’t help but snicker. “No. More like my brother.”
“I have a brother,” she states like I don’t already know, like I don’t spend a healthy chunk of my waking hours with the man. Not that she knows that. It’s cute, how she proudly puffs her chest out as she mentions Nick, her face aglow with unmistakable admiration. The same admiration he clearly has for her.
Honest to God, it could do a girl in, watching Nicolas Silva interact with children.
Sofia abandons the stack of books holding her attention—I was a Meg Cabot girl back in the day—and joins me on the bed, butt bouncing excitedly on the mattress. With eyes the same shade as her brother’s, she blinks up at me, so deceivingly innocent. “Is my brother your boyfriend?”
I choke on my next breath, spluttering a squeaky, “No!”
“Why not?”
Out of a hundred reasons, I lamely settle on, “We’re friends.”
Sofia hits me a look way too pointed, too wise and all-knowing, for a child. “My mom says my dad was her best friend.”
“That’s…” God, how do I respond to that? “Nice?”
“And they were in love. So-”
Before Sofia can spout whatever childlike logic that makes perfect sense to her, an overly loud cough interrupts us. I straighten up at the sight of Nick lazily leaning against the doorway, hands shoved in his pockets, simmering with amusement. “Minha anjinha,” he drawls and Sofia perks up. “Time to go.”
The little girl pins her brother with a wide-eyed, pouty-lipped expression I recognize as one I used to use on my brothers when trying to get my way. “Can’t I stay here?”
“Not tonight.” In anticipation of the protests brewing, he adds, “Tomorrow.”
I was pre-warned that the Silva’s tend to spend the night on Thanksgiving—I’ve yet to consider the reality of that.
Huffing, Sofia reluctantly stands, and I jolt in surprise when she throws her arms around my neck. The Silvas are a hugging family, I’ve learned. “Night, Tiny,” she sings in my ear before skipping out the door, Nick ruffling her hair as she passes.
“You coming?” she yells from the hallway when her brother fails to immediately follow her.
“Right behind you,” is his rumbled reply.
Her little footsteps thunder downstairs, punctuated by the sound of everyone issuing drawn-out goodbyes, and still, Nick doesn’t move. Well, he does—in the wrong direction. He enters my room, bringing with him the thick tension that seems to permanently exist between us, always out to make my heart thump a beat faster, my stomach tight, my hands clammy. I can’t put a name to it, or at least not one I want to admit it. It’s just there. Always. Alive and pulsating.
My eyelids feel heavy as I track his wandering, making like his sister and studying every inch of my old room. His lips quirk at the pile of teddies nestled among my old, frilly pillows, the shrine to the heartthrobs of my youth decorating a wall, the cactus sitting on the vanity that someone must’ve kept thriving over the years. All the obvious indications that I inhabited this room for a decade. “Makes sense,” he mutters beneath his breath, and I frown.
“What?”
“Your room at my house,” he starts to explain, jerking his head towards the place that oddly served as a home for both of us. “I remember thinking it didn’t look lived in. Because you lived here?”
The house next door was only my home by a technicality; I spent more days, more nights, here by a mile. But it feels like a betrayal to admit that. Like I’m doing my dad dirty, implying he was negligent when he wasn’t, he was busy.
Nick accepts my silence as an answer, fingers drumming against the solid white wood of the vanity. When they lift, aiming for the array of faded polaroids tucked in the frame of the mirror, I tense. And when he reaches for one in particular—I know what it is by placement alone, that’s how long I once spent starting at it, at the face immortalised in film yet painfully mortal in reality—I’m on my feet before I know it, across the room and gripping his wrist to halt his movements. “Don’t.”
Nick’s hand stills but his eyes don’t. They flick to the tiny bordered photo that causes bile to rise in my throat from thought alone. I can’t bare to look but I know what he sees; a red-haired teenager clinging to a boy with dirty blond hair, both of them smiling wide, so young and innocent and unaware. “Who is it?”
My grip tightens, his pulse fluttering beneath my fingertips. “Someone I’d rather not talk about.”
And that’s all I have to say. The only reason I need to give for him to drop it, to avert his gaze and move on. That’s one of the things I like most about Nick, I think; when it matters most, he doesn’t push.
As smoothly as he does most things in life, Nick changes the subject. He shakes me off so he can toy with the drawstrings of the hoodie I’ve long since claimed as my own. Even if no matter how many times I wash it, something distinctly Nick still lingers. “You sleep in this or something?”
My poor cheeks can’t catch a damn break. “Or something.”
A huffed laugh is hot as it wafts over my skin. Nick tugs on the string tangled around his index finger and the action draws me closer, just an inch but an inch is everything considering how close we already are. Always so close, like personal space becomes a distant memory the moment I’m in his vicinity.
At this proximity, his six-foot-four frame—I don’t know how Luna garnered that specific information, and I didn’t ask—challenges me, forcing me to crank my neck back to peer up at him, the opposite of how he dips his chin downward. “Thanks for letting Sofia hang out.”
“I didn’t mind,” I assure him, my pulse bordering on rapturous when his smile grows. “She’s a sweet kid.”
Nick hums his agreement. “You have a good day?”
Again, I answer. “I did.”
“Good.” With a satisfied nod that does weird things to my lower belly, Nick tugs one last time before releasing me, leaving me oddly bereft as he moves toward the door. “See you tomorrow, querida.”
I pray to every higher power in existence that when I issue my own goodbye, it isn’t actually as breathy as it sounds to my own ears, “Night, Nick.”
