by Jessica Roe
“Ivy?” Nathan demands, growing more frustrated with every second. The laid back atmosphere from earlier has completely disappeared, and now things are tense and uncomfortable. Blair and Silver are watching on, unsure over whether or not they should involve themselves.
“Nate. . .”
He's always so easy going and cheery natured, despite growing up with such cold parents, that to see him pissed off is kind of unnerving. He's the jokester of our little group, the trickster, the trouble causer. So on the rare occasion that he's actually serious, it just. . .feels wrong. “If you two want to keep secrets, then whatever. But if it's something to do with me then you need to let me know right the fuck now because you're both driving me nuts.”
“Trust me, man,” Nash says. “You don't wanna go there.”
Nathan's face is tight now, and there's an almost crazy sheen to his eyes, as if deep down, he already knows what this concerns. Who this concerns. “Don't treat me like an ass. Don't you dare.”
I bite down hard on my bottom lip, unsure of what to do. Watching one of my friends as they hurt, it tears me up inside.
“Guys,” Nathan pleads, quieter this time. And then softly, “Is it her?”
On the other side of the room, Silver seems to have figured it out too. He whispers something in Blair's ear and she turns to watch Nathan sympathetically.
Nash's eyes meet mine and he nods slightly. There's no way we can keep this from Nathan, not now. It probably wasn't even fair of us to try.
“Yes,” I tell him, and he pales. “It was from Ophelia.”
His whole body freezes for just a moment, and then he lunges at the phone before I can stop him. He stands in the middle of the living room, his nostrils flaring as he stares down at the picture Ophelia sent me. “Who the hell is the guy she's with?” he asks, his voice shaky.
I wish, more than anything, that I didn't have to tell him this. “Her fiance.”
He says nothing, but his whole body stiffens in pain and he can't seem to tear his eyes away from the screen.
Ophelia was. . .she was his everything, once upon a time. She was a year younger than us, and grew up in the next town over. Her family and Nathan's, they had a terrible history. There was some epic hatred there, some seriously bad blood. Then Nathan and Ophelia had met when she was sixteen and he was seventeen and they'd fallen in love. It had been the kind of love that takes your breath away just to watch, like what Blair and Silver share. They'd managed to keep their relationship a secret for almost a year, and those of us in the know had thought the two of them would last forever. We'd been so naive. Eventually their parents had found out and they'd been furious. Ophelia had been shipped off to live with her aunt in Florida and she'd never returned, leaving Nathan behind, brokenhearted.
But I've always suspected there was more to the story than that. Because Nathan, he'd loved Ophelia with a wild, spontaneous, untamed passion. When it came to her he'd have done anything. Anything. Since he'd been eighteen when she'd been taken away, I'd expected him to follow right after her but he hadn't. And he didn't wait for her, nor did she wait for him. They just. . .moved on. It never made sense to me, but neither of them has ever been willing to talk about it. In fact, neither of them has ever been willing to talk about the other at all.
“I didn't know you and Phee kept in contact.” His voice is small, lost in memories, but he manages to sound accusatory. He still hasn't stopped gazing at that photo.
“We email sometimes,” I tell him apologetically. “Not often – usually just when the major things happen in our lives. You never liked when I mentioned her, and I didn't know what to say to you about it so I just. . .never did.”
“When did she get engaged?”
“A few weeks ago. I'm so sorry, I know I should've told you. I just couldn't stand to hurt you with this.”
That seems to snap something within him. He drops the phone to the table and it clatters, possibly broken, though I don't really care at this point. I only care about him. His shoulders roll back as he glances around at us all, one by one. He seems wired, like something explosive is rushing through his veins and could go off at any moment. We all watch him warily. “Why would it hurt me? Ophelia left almost a decade ago. I'm over it. I'm over her.”
But somehow, despite how long it's been, I don't think he is. I'm not sure it's the kind of love you can get over. He is hurt. It's killing him inside, I can tell. It's in the tone of his voice, in every inch of his rigid body, in the glistening sheen of his eyes that he's trying desperately to hide.
He snatches up his beer and chugs back the entire thing, then glances at the bottle in disgust. “We need stronger shit than this. I'm going out.”
“Nate-” Nash calls after him, but he's already gone, the door slamming loudly behind him. “Fuck.”
“We should go after him,” Blair says. “He didn't drive here, and it's going to rain soon.”
“Yeah,” Nash agrees. “We need to grab him before he gets his ass into trouble.”
+++
We decide there are only two places Nathan might have headed in his dark mood. The store, for more liquor, or to a bar. . .for more liquor. Silver and Blair take the bars, and Nash and I head towards the store. Having already had a couple of beers ourselves, we leave the cars behind and walk.
“This is all my fault,” I say sadly as the two of us amble down the empty streets. Most people, the sane ones, are tucked up at home with their families and friends, enjoying what's left of the holidays.
Nash shakes his head and throws an arm around my shoulders, rubbing his chin on my cheek until I squeal. He hasn't shaved in a couple of days, so his scruff scratches at my skin in a deliciously spine tingling way. “No, this is Phee's fault. Why did she send you that picture anyway? Did she want you to show him?”
“No!” I slap his shoulder, because despite how long it's been, Phee was our friend too and talking crap about her isn't cool. When she and Nathan had fallen in love she'd become one of us, one of the gang. “She sent me the picture because I'd asked her to a couple weeks ago. She must have only just gotten around to it; it's not like she knew I was gonna be with Nathan when I received it.”
“Why did you want a picture?”
“I told you, we email back and forth occasionally. She told me she was engaged and I wanted to see what the guy looks like. This is not on Phee.”
He tugs his gray beanie down more securely over his ears. “She never should've left him.”
“She was seventeen! She didn't have a choice, you big dummy.” We all loved Phee, but I think the fact that she and I were the only girls in our little group helped us bond, so I feel the need to stick up for her. As much as I love Nathan, I can't solely be on his side for this one. “Besides, you know we don't know the whole story about what happened back then. Neither of them would ever tell us.”
I shiver in the cold, so he wraps an arm around me again and tugs me close. “Can't believe all this Nathan/Ophelia drama is starting up again. I thought we were done with it a long time ago.”
“This'll blow over. It will have to. Nathan's here, Phee's in Florida and she's getting married. He's just reacting like this because of shock.”
“Still. . .”
“You know you missed her too when she left.” I hug him around his broad chest as we walk. “That's the only reason you're being such a grumpy a-hole about her.”
He grumbles, but it's not like he denies it.
Something wet splashes against my nose, and I glance up just as the rain begins to pour. It doesn't ease into it with a few casual drops or a thin spray, but instead buckets us with water the moment the clouds open up. I squeak, pointlessly trying to cover my head. Within seconds we're both soaked through. My flattened hair clings to my head, my clothes stick to my body, and water fills up my boots, making my cold toes squelch.
“We should find shelter!” Nash yells over the noise.
I laugh, because that's really the only thing I can do right now. Rai
nstorms have always brought out the child in me. “What's the point? We're already wet!” I hold my arm open and spin, my head back and my mouth wide open as I try to catch raindrops on my tongue.
“What the hell are you doing?” A muscle ticks in his cheek. It's his 'I Am Severely Unimpressed' face.
“Getting rained on!”
The rain is falling so fast that puddles are already beginning to form on the ground around us. Before Nash can stop me, I jump in one right next to him, splashing water all over his already wet jeans. His lips scrunch together like he can't decide whether he wants to laugh with me or throttle me. “You are such a little witch!”
Still stood in the middle of the puddle, I give him my most devious smirk before lifting my foot and stomping back down. This time he does laugh as the water washes over his ankles. “Right, that's it!” He comes towards me and I giggle as I try to dance away, but I'm not fast enough for him. He kicks the puddle at me, soaking my butt in water so cold it makes me screech. He laughs harder.
It becomes a competition then, to see who can find the biggest, deepest puddle to splash the other with. We run down the street like a pair of kids, giggling and yelling and kicking water at each other. People are probably watching us out of their windows, safe in their cozy, dry homes, but I don't care. I don't care because it's been so, so long since I've had so much fun, since I've felt so free. Soon we're both completely splattered with dirty puddle water, and I'm so wet I don't think I'll ever get dry, but I'm breathless from running and my chest aches from laughing and I don't even care that my cold fingers are probably about to drop off. The air around us is musty, that damp nature smell that never fails to bring back memories of being a child.
“Catch!” I shout, and then I run at Nash and jump. Landing in his arms, I wrap my legs around his waist as he spins us around and around, cackling.
He comes to a stop, his chest heaving up and down. “Aw man, I'm all out of breath.”
I grin down at him. “You're getting old.”
“Evil little Ivy.” He smiles up at me, so tenderly.
I become aware then of how hard I'm breathing, of how hard he is breathing, and I'm no longer sure it has anything to do with all the running. We keep looking at each other, and things just. . .they just change. Suddenly nothing seems so funny anymore. Our smiles fade away, and the look in his eyes is replaced by something. . .intense. He lets me slide down his body, his hands moving from my thighs to my butt and eventually stopping on my waist when my feet touch the ground. Something crackles in the air between us, something that wasn't there before. I feel lost, like the rain fell so hard that the water rose above our heads and now I'm swimming inside it, but I have no idea which direction is up.
We stand close together, too close together. So close that I can feel every hard inch of his body against my own. This is definitely the point that I should move away. It's past the point that I should move away. His hands are still gripping my waist tightly, holding me to him. My fingers, resting on his shoulders, twitch as a bolt of energy thrums through them.
His hands slip beneath my coat, beneath my top, and I gasp as his cold fingers touch my skin. The noise draws his attention to my lips, and his gaze grows heated. My lips, they throb as he studies them, as if he's committing them to memory.
I need. . .I need. . .something. I need him.
“Ivy,” he murmurs, and my eyes drop to his mouth. To that full bottom lip, slightly thicker than the top even when it's not swollen. To the tiny, barely visible white scar at the corner of his mouth from where he fell off his bike when he was eleven, before we were even friends. I want to touch that scar, to see how it feels beneath my lips. The force of my need sends a jolt of electricity rushing straight through my body.
Like he's in a trance, one of Nash's hands comes up to brush the damp strands of hair back from my face. I blink, because a simple gesture like that shouldn't make my stomach clench but it does. He swallows, as if he's just as affected by this. . .this thing between us as I am. Raindrops cling to his dark eyelashes. They drip from the edge of his hat and trickle over the tiny, permanent bump in his nose that he got defending me. I want to follow them, each and every one, as they discover his body and trace every inch of him.
I can't move. I couldn't move right now if I was struck by lightening and set on fire.
Our faces have drawn closer together. I can feel the heat of his breath of my lips. It's warm, such a contrast to the frigid air everywhere else.
And then it hits me like a slap to the face. I want him. This is Nash, my best friend, my oldest protector, my long term partner in crime. This is Nash, and I want him more than I can even understand.
I flash back to the last time he looked at me like this, the only time he ever looked at me like this. We'd been seventeen, camping by the lake, and fighting over something stupid. Ophelia and Nathan had disappeared into their own tent and Silver had vanished to go flirt with a couple of girls who'd been camping nearby. Nathan had crawled into my tent like he'd belonged there and nowhere else.
“I can't stand fighting with you,” he'd whispered when I'd tried to kick him out.
And I'd had to admit, though only to myself, that the reason I'd been so angry was because I'd been feeling things for him. At seventeen, feeling things for a guy had been the most important thing in the whole world. But feelings things for one of your best friends, it was the end of the whole world. At least as far as my dramatic self had been concerned.
Nash had looked at me then, the same way he looks at me now, like he was hungry for my lips. He'd kissed me, or I'd kissed him. It didn't matter who'd started it. We'd been wild, our hands roaming every inch of each other and our legs brushing as he'd pushed me back against the ground. His body had lain over mine, and we'd kissed for hours and hours until eventually we'd fallen asleep.
The next morning we'd awkwardly laughed it off and blamed the whole thing on alcohol, but I hadn't been drunk. Not even a little bit. And after that night, Nash had barely talked to me for a month. Had barely even looked at me, which had been torture. It had taken me a while to figure it out, but I'd finally realized that he must have guessed my feelings for him and he hadn't reciprocated. I'd never been more embarrassed in my whole life. So I'd forced myself to bury those stupid feelings and I'd never thought about them again. After a while we'd managed to get back to normal and the whole event had been swept under the rug.
Now here we are once more, on the very brink of ruining our friendship again because this, what's happening here. . . I don't know what it is, except unbelievably stupid.
Nash's eyes are hooded. He moves them from my lips to my eyes, searching for something within me. His fingers have stopped brushing away my hair and have stilled, his thumb resting on my cheek, right at the very corner of my lips. It makes my heart pound terrifying fast in my chest, so I know that now is the time to move away, before it becomes too late and things are ruined for good. I pull back and his hand slips from my face.
The spell breaks. Nash's eyes widen with clarity, as if he's only just realizing who we both are. His lips part in surprise. We release each other and jolt back, blinking, ignoring the cold rain running down our cheeks.
I want to say something, need to say something to relieve the awkward tension rising up between us like a wall, but I have no words inside my head. I have nothing inside my head except for him and his lips and our almost kiss and how, for a moment, I wanted it more than I've ever wanted anything. More than I've ever wanted anyone. Maybe even Lambert.
His mouth opens, then closes again quickly as he too realizes that there's really not much to say right now that could make this okay.
Thankfully his phone rings, startling the both of us, and he scrambles to claw it out of his back pocket. I think he's just as relived as I am at the interruption.
“Hey, Silver,” he answers, his voice coming out deep and gruff. His eyes meet mine, and my stomach twists itself into knots. “You found him? . . Yeah, take him back t
o my place. . . We'll be right there.”
Chapter 8
Nash
The apartment is silent and empty when we get home so Blair and Silver must not yet have returned with Nathan. Plates of food and bottles of beer still sit on the coffee table and floor, just where we left them.
The rainstorm died down into a gentle drizzle as Ivy and I walked back, and the quiet it left behind had been awkward, stilted.
Ivy heads to her room the second the door closes behind us, probably to dry off, but I'd bet my ass she's avoiding me too. I stand in the hallway, torn about what to do next and hating that I feel like I've been kicked repeatedly in the ribs.
What just happened between us out there. . . I don't get it. I don't get it, but it affected me more than I'd like to admit.
And worst of all, I have a nasty feeling that whatever it was might have screwed things up between us on an epic scale.
We were just fooling around, splashing and laughing and acting like kids; Ivy does that to me, she makes me feel lighter and freer and just happier. And then suddenly my arms had been around her and I'd become very, very aware of how much I'd liked the feel of her body against mine. I hadn't known what to do with it. I still don't know what to do with it.
I should probably leave it be, leave her be. Maybe go dry off and change clothes myself before I get sick. But I've never been known for doing the smart thing or for my tact, and letting a situation go just isn't in my nature. So I follow Ivy, not bothering to knock as I barge into her bedroom because as my mom likes to inform me every chance she gets, I have terrible manners.
“Nash!” Ivy protests when the door bangs open. She whips around, bringing the towel she was using to dry her hair down to cover her chest. Her jacket and sweater have been removed and thrown into a crumpled, damp heap on the floor. She's wearing a cami, but the thin, purple material is so wet that it clings to her skin and I can see every inch and outline of her slender stomach and even the curve of her breasts where the towel isn't quite hiding them. For a moment my mind empties of everything else but the utterly tempting view of her body that isn't even really on show. I'm a horny, hormonal fourteen year old boy again and I can't stop staring. “What the hell are you doing in here?”