“You can’t take a rain check,” she said, scooting back and slipping her feet back through the railing. She stood, grabbing the top rail to steady herself as she did. “So what do you want?”
“You don’t have to kiss me.”
“What if I want to?”
His back against the railing, he slid closer and slipped an arm around her waist. Suddenly she was too aware that she was intoxicated, almost spinning with drunkenness. When he pulled her close, she was cold and sweating at the same time, and his breath was too warm against her neck, his arm too tight around her. She pushed away from his chest and took a breath of the cool night air. What was she doing? She couldn’t go back from a kiss. It was more than what had happened the other day, when she’d only suspected. This was real, even if it didn’t feel like it.
But maybe that’s what she needed. Maybe they could go back, if she told him the truth, that it was only a distraction, like the Bellini. That it only meant that much. She knew that if he kissed her now, and he was a good kisser, she was drunk enough that she wouldn’t stop. She could almost feel him already, pressing her into the bed, pushing inside her, making her think of anything but her deadbeat, dead father.
Nick tipped up her chin, and her eyes closed. She couldn’t look at him before he kissed her. His lips brushed her cheek, and a tingle of anticipation traveled from his lips across her skin, down her neck, raising chill bumps along her arms, all the way down her body, over her hip, down to her toes. But Nick’s arm retreated from around her, flitting across her hip, and then she was swaying on her own, anchorless on the balcony. She reached out and grasped the railing again, still trying to comprehend that he’d let her go. She’d been so ready.
“That’s it?” she asked. “That’s the kiss you wanted?”
He took a drink of beer and leaned his elbows on the railing, looking down into the street. “Yep.”
“You’ve kissed me on the cheek like a hundred times before. That’s all you want?”
“That’s all I want.”
Here she’d been so sure that he was the one who took the flirting more seriously. She didn’t think he was in love with her or anything, but she’d suspected he had a crush, that he was waiting for her to return it. That if she made a move, he’d be more than receptive. She was the one who always stopped the flirting, who always kept it from crossing the line she’d drawn in her mind where friendship ended and complication began. They’d both dated other people while they’d been friends, and they both knew about complication. But she’d always thought his flirting was at least partly serious.
This time, when she seated herself on the balcony, she pulled off her sandals before scooting forward and hanging her feet through the railing. After a minute, Nick joined her.
“I’m going to have to choose between my dad’s funeral and Europe,” she said. “You know that, right?”
“You can come back,” he said. “I’m sure you won’t lose your grant if you leave for a few days. Even a week. They’ll understand. It’s your dad.”
“It’s not that,” she said, slouching forward and pressing her forehead between the bars. “We don’t have the money. My mom can’t fly me home and back. It’s probably over a thousand dollars.”
“Europe will still be here,” he said. “It won’t be this trip, but you have your whole life to come back.”
“I don’t want to come back when I’m old and married,” she said, turning to him. “I want to be here now, and I want my dad to still be alive, and I don’t want to have to make this decision.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up a hand. “I wasn’t telling you to choose.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being a bitch tonight. I’m acting crazy. It’s not you.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”
“Right,” she said. “You have a crazy ex-girlfriend. Of course you understand.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She’d never met his ex, but she’d met him just after he moved to Arkansas from L.A. And she’d been there while the ex repeatedly wanted him back, then cheated, then wanted him back once again, then dumped him. That was part of the reason Cynthia didn’t want to be more than friends with him—she suspected that under the chill exterior lay a whole mess of screwed up, jaded, bitter insecurity. Compared to his ex, Cynthia probably wasn’t acting crazy at all.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I never talk to my dad anymore. I can’t remember the last time I even saw him. And last time we talked, he told me I was getting too big for my britches, and that I thought I was some hoity-toity, rich bitch, flitting off to Europe for a vacation. He actually said that to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said, resting a hand on her back. “You’re not. You know that.”
“I know. But it gets worse. I told him he was never my father, and to grow up and be a man or leave me alone.” She glanced sideways at Nick. “In somewhat more colorful language than that.”
Nick sipped his beer.
“And now this. It’s like he’s found a way to get the last word and prove me wrong for going on this trip. I know that’s stupid. Obviously he didn’t intentionally get crushed to death under his vehicle and die a slow and horrible death, only to be found more than twenty-four hours later, to prove a point. I know it’s not about me.”
He traced slow circles on her back with his knuckles. “No, it’s not,” he agreed. “And it’s not your fault. It’s just random.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” she said. “The whole thing is so random. I mean, sometimes I’ve thought about him dying. Not that I wanted him to, it’s just, he lives such a crazy life. Lived. He lived such crazy life. But I always thought he’d OD, or get shot, or something…dramatic, you know? And fast. Like one of those movies where, if he’d gotten in a car wreck when he was drunk, the cars would have blown up. He was the blaze-of-glory kind of guy. Not the slowly crushed to death kind.”
When she reached for the other beer, Nick held out his hand for it, and she gave it to him. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. “You’re not going to regret it tomorrow?”
“Regret what?” she asked. “Are you planning to take advantage of me when I’m drunk?”
“You know I’d never do that.” The genuine hurt in his voice twisted something inside her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was a really shitty thing to say. I know you’re not like that.”
After he stood to open her beer on the railing, he didn’t sit back down next to her, but handed her the beer and retreated to his corner of the balcony again. For a while, they sipped their beers and watched the city below. She couldn’t believe she might have to leave all this in a day or two. She had to answer her mother by the next morning, and the last thing she wanted to do was make a decision when she was drunk. That’s probably why she’d gotten drunk, she mused as she spotted a cat slinking along the side of the building.
“Cat,” she said. “I win. You have to kiss me wherever I want.”
“Bets are off now,” he said.
“Too bad,” she said. “Mine would have been much more exciting than yours.”
“Naturally.”
They watched the city transition below them. The last cars trickling home, and the beginning of the evening traffic trickling out. Not much on a Monday night, but more than she would have seen at home.
“Am I a horrible daughter because I don’t want to go home?” she asked, gripping two bars and shaking them, like she was someone in a bad prison movie trying to break free. “Because I don’t want to. I want to stay here and have fun. But if he’s dead, and I don’t go to his funeral, I’ll never be able to say goodbye. This is my last chance to make things right with him. If I don’t go home…”
“He’s already gone,” Nick said. “You can say goodbye, but he won’t hear you any better now than he will in a month.”
“I know. But it feels different. If I don’t go home now, it feels like I’m betray
ing him and his memory. He wasn’t all bad. Everyone has their faults. That’s what my mom always said. She never said a bad word against him, even after everything he did. She said it wasn’t her job to sway me one way or another. That I had to make up my own mind about him, because it was our relationship, not hers.”
“Smart lady.”
“And if I don’t go home, it just seems like, this is it. It will be too late. I’ll be saying I don’t care about his life as much as I care about having fun.”
“You’re not just having fun,” Nick said. “You’re here for school. You get credits for this. It’s a class.”
“I know. But how important is it? Is it more important than my dad’s life?” She rested her forehead against the cool metal bars that smelled like iron, like her dad’s toolbox that he used to send her to. “Get me the number nineteen wrench,” he’d say, and she’d have to get the right one. He never asked her about school, even when she’d been little. That wasn’t as important as knowing the difference between a crow bar and a pry bar. He wanted her to know useful, real-world skills, not the crap they’d teach her at college.
Nick sat down beside her again, this time resting his hand on her back. “You can’t save him by going home,” he said. “He’s already gone. And that’s terrible. But the only thing that changes if you go to his funeral is your life. Not his.”
Cynthia rested her head on Nick’s shoulder and sighed. “You’re right. But I don’t know how I want my life to go. Do I want to be the dutiful daughter who at least did the right thing after he died? Or keep being the one who didn’t want to see him when he was alive?”
“It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.” He slid his arm around her and squeezed her closer, then turned and kissed the top of her head.
“Maybe I have.”
A cool breeze moved across them, swaying her hair against her bare arm. A chill went through her, and she pressed closer to Nick. Maybe if she’d decided, if she was going home, it would be okay to take advantage of the last night here with him. Like he said, what happened in Rome could stay in Rome. She’d leave the next day, before any awkwardness, and he’d come home in five weeks, when they’d had a chance to put distance between themselves. It would be like a dream, like it had never happened.
She’d been drunk enough times to know that it was a mistake, that it was only her drunk mind telling her that. She’d hooked up when drunk before, and it had seemed like a dream later. Already she could feel her legs wrapping around him, the solid weight of his body on hers, real and alive and right here.
“Have you ever slept out here?” she asked.
“No.”
“You want to?”
“Right now?”
“Tonight,” she said. “Would your host parents care?”
“I seriously doubt it,” he said. “They’re very…European.”
“Sweet. Then I’ll stay.”
“Are you ready now?”
“When I finish my beer.”
“I don’t know if I can finish this,” he said. “I think I’m drunk.” He stood, putting out his hands for balance before carefully stepping in through the window. A few minutes later, he opened the curtain and started handing out pillows, then a blanket.
Cynthia laid them out, laughing and stumbling against the railing. She was definitely drunk. When she lay down, her stomach spun in a sickening motion. She lurched through the window and down the hall to his bathroom where she got sick. When she was sure she was finished, she rinsed her mouth with mouthwash three times before joining Nick on the balcony again. “I think I drank too much.”
He held open the blanket and she crawled inside, adjusting herself on the pillows until she was comfortably cocooned in Nick’s arms. She pressed her cheek to his chest and listened to his heartbeat. She’d slept with him once—but only slept—after his ex dumped him. He hadn’t tried anything, and when she woke up the next morning, he’d apologized, though she wasn’t quite sure what he was sorry about. Maybe that he knew he’d get back with his ex again, or maybe that he’d asked her to stay when she’d gotten up to leave the night before.
Now he tucked his hand under her body and pressed his nose into her hair. “We should do this every night,” he said, his voice slurry with beer and sleepiness. “I really, really, really like this.” He kissed her head again before he sighed and relaxed. “I like you.”
Her breath caught as she waited for something. She was still dizzy, but only a little now. While he went still, his arm growing heavier as he drifted off, she kept hearing those three words. It wasn’t like he’d said he loved her. But somehow, what he’d said was even more meaningful. She’d said she loved him before, and she thought he’d said it back, though she couldn’t exactly remember. It had been a friendly thing, casual and natural. Of course she loved her best friend.
But you didn’t tell your best friend you liked them. And she hadn’t said anything back.
At least he hadn’t tried to hook up, because she was too drunk for that. Too drunk to even think she could. Again, she found herself thinking that it was her last night in Rome. She could say that she’d come back, but she’d probably never do it. After giving up her grant, they wouldn’t give her another one. And when would she ever have that kind of money? Never.
She lay awake with the weight of all she hadn’t seen pressing down on her, all that she’d almost gotten to see. It had been within her reach, and now it was being ripped away. She still had so many things on her planner, so many amazing adventures that were now just dreams, just words on her planner that she’d have to erase. Which was a selfish thought when her father was dead, but one she couldn’t help thinking before falling asleep.
Chapter Five
Cynthia woke up with a pillow inside her head, her thoughts fuzzy and stuffed with fluff. She extracted herself from Nick’s arms and maneuvered through his open window as quietly as she could. On tiptoes, she raced to the bathroom to empty her bladder and splash her face with water until she felt almost human. Her head still felt like it was full of clouds, but she didn’t want to go back to sleep and wake up with Nick. It would be too awkward. So she grabbed her wallet and keys from his room and crept out the front door. For the first time since she’d arrived, a guy gave her a dirty look on the street. She couldn’t blame him—she had to look as bad as she felt. It was the walk of shame without the post-sex glow.
Her flat was empty, like usual. She took a shower before facing the computer.
“Are you okay?” her mom asked as soon as she connected. “I was worried about you. I wish I could be there.”
“I think I’m okay,” Cynthia said. “I thought about it last night, and this morning on my way here, and I think I should come home.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” her mom said. “Are you sure?”
“No,” Cynthia said. “But I’m sure I’ll feel bad about it for the rest of my life if I don’t.”
“I won’t tell you what to do,” her mother said. “You know it’s your decision. But this is your chance to be there, to see the world, sweetheart. Even your father would have wanted you to take that opportunity.”
“Mom,” Cynthia said. “You know that’s not true.”
“It is true,” Mom said. “Maybe he didn’t show it, but your father was very proud of you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“He was, sweetheart. And you coming back…it won’t change anything.”
“I know, Mom. But I can say goodbye…”
“He’ll still be here when you come home. You can still visit and bring flowers, talk to him.”
“I know.”
“I think you should stay,” her mom said. “Finish your class. See everything we talked about. That’s my opinion. But it’s not my decision to make.”
“God, Mom.” Cynthia dropped her forehead onto her keyboard, then picked it up to make sure she hadn’t hung up by accident.
“I’m sorry I had to tell you over the phone,” her mom said
. “I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know what else to do. If I hadn’t told you until you came home…”
“No, it’s fine,” Cynthia said. “You’re right. I would have been mad at you.” But a little part of her—maybe a big part—wished her mom hadn’t told her. If she was going to stay, she’d rather not know. She couldn’t have a good time knowing her dad was dead at home, that she was choosing fun over his funeral. When she’d started the call, she’d thought she knew. Now she was all mixed up again.
She told her mom she needed to think about it a little more. After they finished the call, she checked flights online. She’d have to email Professor McClain, too. When she opened her email, she found at least one from each of her friends. The night before, Maggie and Kristina had each emailed her once, asking if she was okay and if she needed anything. Even Rory had emailed to make sure she couldn’t do anything to help. That morning, Maggie and Kristina had each emailed again. And Nick had emailed.
“Guess you ducked out on me before I woke up. Hope you made it home okay. I’ll be at the café, halfway there, if you need me.”
Cynthia smiled, her eyes suddenly blurring with tears. How could she leave all these people? She’d known Nick for two years, but it felt like she’d always known him. From the day they met on the side of the road, she’d felt like she’d known him forever, like he was a kindred soul. And Rory, who she’d just met at the start of the trip, had checked in on her when she barely knew her. She’d had a couple classes with both Maggie and Kristina, but they’d never done more than study together before last semester. In a few short months, since they’d gotten together to talk about the trip, they’d become fast friends.
The kinds of friends she’d want to share these memories with, the kind she might keep around for years. The kinds of friends who planned things with her, included her and Nick, and wanted to share in all the adventures of a trip to Italy. The kinds of friends who checked in morning and night, even when she didn’t answer. If she left now, she’d never see Europe with these friends. Maybe she’d come back when she was older for a family trip. But this was her one chance to be young and single and wild and free, her chance to meet some hot Italian stranger, like Kristina had, and be swept off her feet.
When In Rome...Lose Control: Cynthia's Story Page 4