by Liz Jacobs
“He’d been working in his lab, and his heart just … gave out.” Nick’s voice was rusty. He swallowed. “The ambulance got there too late, and I guess they couldn’t have done anything even if they’d been there a second after, he—” Died. Between one second and the next, his dad was gone. Massive coronary. Nick hadn’t known at the time that his dad hadn’t seen a doctor since coming to the States. They’d all had a check-up or two when they first immigrated. Got their shots just in case, had their first dental cleanings. After that, his parents were religious about Nick and Zoya’s physicals. But no one had looked after Dad. And then it was way too late.
“Christ, Nick.”
Nick looked up, and their gazes caught. He felt the tears pricking at his eyes, hot and unbearable. He attempted a smile, realized his nails were digging into his palms. “Is this too much information? Sorry, I shouldn’t—”
“Of course you should, it’s fine.” Dex stood up and walked over to him. He dropped down to his haunches. The sight of him so close, looking up at Nick with a soft expression, made a light-headed sensation go all through Nick. He told himself to snap out of it. “What happened is … I can’t even imagine.” Nick couldn’t make himself look away. Dex’s face was mesmerizing. “God, you must have been Albert’s age.” He paused. “Sorry, my baby brother. He’s fourteen.”
“I was fifteen.” His shoulders lifted in a self-conscious shrug, then froze somewhere around his ears. “You have a brother?”
“Al, yeah. Good kid, but a pain in my arse at the moment.”
“I have a sister, but she’s older. Four years.”
“What’s she called?”
“Zoya.” It was always strange to say her name out loud in his American accent. There shouldn’t really have been a difference in how he pronounced it language to language, but it permeated his tongue anyway. Made everything Russian sound just a little bit alien. “She didn’t want to change her name either.”
“She shouldn’t, it’s pretty.” Dex smiled.
Nick fell silent. He’d never considered if Zoyka’s name was pretty. It was just her name.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Dex said after a while, shifting a little. Nick wondered just how he was managing to stay crouched like that without going numb. It was probably painful. “With your dad, and tonight, too. That looked … bad. I mean, hard.”
Nick squirmed. “It’s stupid, though.”
“You clearly hadn’t meant to.” Nick sucked in a tiny breath when Dex laid one cool, dry hand over his. “Don’t beat yourself up over something you can’t control. Anyway, they’ll understand, if you wanna tell them?”
Nick looked up at the bit of a starless sky he could make out through the trees. Breathed in. “I should, right?” He didn’t know how. Forcing the words out to Dex back at the pub had been punishing enough. “Or I’ll just look like a crazy person. Or a real dick.” Dex looked like he wanted to laugh but was holding back. Nick, emboldened, nudged him with his foot. “Like a dick, right? It’s cool, you can tell me.”
“Nah, man.” He did laugh, though. It sounded warm, not mean at all. “Maybe just a tiny bit of a dick.”
Nick grimaced.
“Seriously, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Dex caught his gaze, looking serious again. “Anyway, if you want, I guess I could tell them. Short story. Just the reason.”
Nick knew it would be an easy out. Well, he’d always been the Cowardly Lion anyway. “Maybe. If you wouldn’t mind.”
Dex finally unfolded himself, not quite as steadily as Nick would have expected. Well, he’d been down there for a while. Nick didn’t want to look any smaller than he already did in comparison and stood up, too. Dex hadn’t stepped away yet, and just like that they were mere inches apart, Nick’s eyes level with the hollow of Dex’s throat. When he looked up, Dex’s expression was unreadable in the dark. Nick had nowhere to go because the bench was at his back, and it felt like a small eternity before Dex took a backward step and did a twisty turn in silent indication for them to get back onto the street. Like nothing had ever happened.
Nick followed, his heart sounding hollow as a drum in his ears.
You can’t, he told himself. He pictured his mom’s face. Not for you.
+
Dex must have done his part, because Nick had a text from Izzy when he left class the next day.
Hope you’re okay babe. Sorry about last night. Here if you want to talk x
Usually Izzy’s texts were written with so many shortcuts, Nick sometimes couldn’t tell on the first read if they were English. This was—different. Sweet. He wasn’t sure how to respond, because he wasn’t okay. She had nothing to be sorry for. And he didn’t want to talk.
Thank you & I’m sorry x was his final response.
Class had taken every brain cell he had just to sit through it, and he wasn’t even sure why. He found the British university system challenging, for sure, but not impossible. His advisor back home had warned him that it would be a lot more independent study and self-discipline, and so far Nick was just fine with that. Being a gigantic nerd had its advantages. The only time he felt like a real idiot was when he was told to show up to a tutor session at half two and showed up at one-thirty, twiddling his thumbs for an hour.
But yesterday had been so surreal, he couldn’t concentrate on his professor’s droning even a little. It was like words immediately escaped his brain before he could grasp their meaning. He heard everything and could recall nothing. He would look down at his notes and see spirals and boxes filling the margins of the page. He was just glad he hadn’t been called on to respond to some assertion or other. It was just not the day to perform any sort of mental tasks.
All day, he had a headache, like a panic hangover, and no amount of caffeine he applied to it did a damn thing.
He decided to skip his last tutorial and disconnect from the world via napping, but sleep wouldn’t come. He found himself running his hand over the short hair on his nape and going through the previous day in his mind. He tortured himself over and over by remembering everything he said to Dex, every moment where he could have stopped himself. He could have begged off coming with Izzy, he could have not told Dex the truth, he could have controlled himself and not fallen apart in front of his friends, he could have literally done anything but what he did, and now he was curled up under his blanket, digging his nails into his palms. Dex had to think he was an idiot, or at least pathetic. Izzy was so sweet, but she had to wonder why she’d become friends with him, didn’t she? He just wasn’t normal. He wasn’t okay.
And Dex. Fuck. Fuck.
How honest could you get with yourself? He’d often asked himself this question when skating a little too close to unapproachable things. Not very was his usual response. Don’t think it, and it won’t come true. Don’t let yourself, and you won’t have to.
When he had sat on Lena’s bed, running his hands over the familiar pattern of her flowered comforter, and forced himself to tell her that he didn’t think a long-distance relationship between them would work, he’d almost believed himself that it was the long-distance part that wouldn’t work. When he missed her in the days after the breakup, he believed that he was missing all of her. Her voice, her confidence, her smile. Her scent, her small breasts that fit so neatly into the palms of his hands. It was getting harder and harder to believe these days.
He was nearly four thousand miles away, and he still felt all of his fears like ghosts over his shoulder.
How honest could you get with yourself?
Not very, he thought, pushing away the memory of how Dex’s hand had felt on top of his. Not very honest at all.
+
Nick spent the next week wondering how Jonny was doing and simultaneously avoiding any human contact that he could. He went to classes. He went to the library. He watched Netflix on his laptop, propped up on his thin pillow and eating digestives from a packet. It was strange how they reminded him of his childhood, something about the ta
ste and texture instantly bringing him back to the pecheniya his parents always had for tea.
Luckily, he did have an essay that was due the following week on the Tudors, which he happily used as an excuse to get out of making plans. It was a big enough campus. He didn’t run into anyone, and the longest conversation he had was with a guy whose room was across from his and who Nick found putting a sign on the shared fridge that said, IF YOU ARE STEALING ALL MY CHEESE I WILL CATCH YOU AND I WILL END YOU, with a frowny face and a knife drawn on the bottom of it.
And then on Saturday night, as he was leaving the library, his essay triumphantly finished a full twenty-four hours before it was due, he found Izzy chilling on the library stairs, smoking a cigarette.
“Hiya!” she said, with absolutely zero surprise at seeing him.
Nick looked around, just to see if maybe she was waiting for someone else, but she laughed and extended her hand. “C’mere, stranger. Been a while.”
Nick took the last few steps and sank down next to her. “Hey.” How had she found him? Now that she was here, he felt stupid and guilty. He hugged his bag to his chest. “Sorry I’ve been … you know…”
“It’s cool, I get it. Just thought you might want some company. Alex mentioned he saw you in the reading room a few hours back, so I took a chance. Since you never respond to your texts anymore.”
Nick felt his face flushing and fumbled for his phone. He had two texts from Izzy and a missed call from his mom. Jesus, he’d forgotten his phone even existed. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I wanted to finish this paper. Guess I got distracted.”
Izzy took a drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke away from his face. She held the cigarette in her right hand, and Nick knew she was a lefty like him. He thought about how her exuberance sometimes overshadowed the small ways in which she showed her kindness. “Want to get a drink? It doesn’t have to be everybody. It can just be us.”
Nick shivered with the wind and zipped up his jacket all the way up to his chin. “I do,” he said. Surprised himself by finding that he’d missed her.
“Cool.” She smiled and threw her cigarette to the ground, stomped her booted heel over it.
He was aware of how close she was. He recalled watching her in the mirror as she cut his hair the week before. All concentration, accentuated by the precise metallic snipping of her scissors and the toneless buzz of the clippers. You need a cut, babe, she’d said, and he’d laughed and said, I know. But money.
I’ll do you for free had been her response, and that was that.
“Dex is working, so let’s go say hi,” she said now as she heaved herself up, then extended her hand to him. Nick took it.
10
Dex was well used to seeing his mates walking through the pub door, but it was still a bit of a shock when he looked up from mixing a vodka cranberry for a purple-haired girl to see Izzy stride in with Nick in tow. He was wearing those glasses that made it both easier and harder to look at him, because they hid his pretty eyes from Dex’s view a bit, but also they just looked good on him. Dex was past denying anything.
Last Sunday had been a long fucking day for him, and a longer night. After they left the park, they’d walked back to Nick’s building in silence. Dex was fairly certain he had never been more obvious in his life. He might as well have got a plane to write WILL YOU LET ME KISS IT ALL BETTER in the sky for him. As if that would have helped anything, especially a confused kid who’d lost his dad at fifteen. And after he’d dropped Nick off, he and Jonny had stayed up way too late talking. Necessary, but Dex had felt like milk gone off the whole next day.
The bar was pretty full, but Izzy was Izzy, which meant that she managed to squeeze in between two dudes with very little effort. She had once joked that it paid to be a bigger girl, but it wasn’t that, Dex knew. Izzy would have been a whirlwind at a size negative zero. Surely she had to see how she turned everyone’s heads just by being so very, very Izzy. He’d singed off his eyebrows at the sight of her, and he didn’t even swing that way.
Dex finished ringing up the purple-haired cran vodka girl, then took two more orders and made four more drinks before he could reasonably say hello and bring Izzy and Nick their beers.
“Hey babe.” Izzy leaned up until she could land a kiss on Dex’s cheek. Nick smiled at him, looking a bit shy. Dex could relate. He waved Nick off when Nick made to put down a tenner.
“On the house, mate.” He made a mental note to remember to put some money in the till before closing out. “So what’s happening?”
“Nick here has spent the whole day writing a paper, if you can believe that, so he needs to be celebrated.”
“On a Saturday? Mate, you’re worse than me.” Dex smiled, pleasure blooming in his belly.
“It’s the nerd life,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s the first big assignment for this class. I just didn’t know what to expect.”
“Whatever, I bet it’s amazing,” Izzy said with a wave of her hand. “Oh, D, you missed this—Nick called his mum on the way over here, and I have now heard him speaking Russian. Brilliant.”
“Oh yeah, my brilliant Russian.” Nick made air quotes around brilliant. “Half the conversation was my mom correcting me.”
“Well, it’s better than mine,” Izzy laughed.
“So d’you speak it at home, then?”
“Yeah, my mom would disown us if we didn’t. She and my dad were always all about preserving our language and all of that.”
“Do you think in it?” Dex asked curiously.
Nick shook his head and propped his chin on his hand. “Not anymore. It’s weird, I actually can’t remember when that happened. But it’s mostly English now.”
“Huh.”
“Uh, mate, hello? Are you on or what?”
Dex sighed and went to an irritated guy seeking attention. Fair enough—Dex’s job wasn’t to moon over guys he was unlikely ever to get, but to make money. He went about it pretty consistently for the next while, catching glimpses of Nick and Izzy now and again as they managed to actually grab two seats at the bar. From what Dex could tell, it was largely Izzy talking and Nick listening, but both looked pretty happy about it.
When he had a moment to breathe, he sidled over to them and used the excuse of throwing glasses in the dishwasher to eavesdrop.
“It wasn’t until Nat’s uncle got us a deal on the flat that we even considered it, though, isn’t that right, Dexter?”
Dex looked up. “What’s that?”
“Us moving into a real-people place instead of halls. Nick was just telling me about some of the people on his floor. Don’t miss it, to be honest.”
“You do remember I was one of those people, right?”
“Yeah, but you’re all right, aren’t you? Shit bartender, though, where’s my next one?”
Dex grabbed her empty glass and pulled her another Stella. “Here you go, princess.”
“I don’t rate a new glass?” She raised an eyebrow. “Good thing you don’t work for tips.”
Dex flipped her off, then noticed Nick’s glass was nearly empty, too. “Another?”
Nick smiled and nodded, extending his glass. “Please.”
Dex did as asked, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. He managed to tip the glass too forward when he noticed Nick watching him and wound up with half a pint of foam. Great. Wordlessly he tipped it out. “Here, sorry about that.”
“Yeah,” Izzy said, taking a sip. “Nobody wants too much head, am I right, boys?”
Nick visibly choked on his beer while Dex glared at her. “Must you always go for the obvious?”
“Only when it’s staring me right in the face.” She indicated Nick with a glance. Subtle she was not. Dex attempted to glare.
“Uh.” Nick wiped some foam from his mouth, which had the unfortunate side effect of pulling Dex’s attention directly to that part of his face. God, his lips were pretty. Dex had to get a hold of himself, it wasn’t that long since last he’d pulled. “I wanted
to, uh, I wanted to ask, how is Jonny?”
Dex sagged down onto the bar. He had to tread carefully here. “He’s all right, I guess.” He grabbed a towel and wiped away the mess he’d made with Nick’s beer. “Went home, got back yesterday. His dad’s not bad. The surgery went well. So he’ll make it.”
“Good.” Nick sounded … normal. Good.
Dex smiled at him despite himself. “Yeah. It is.”
“What about his mom?”
Izzy made a noise of disgust. “She’s a cunt, that’s what she is.”
“Iz.”
“What, am I wrong? No, I am not.”
Dex caught Nick watching them like he couldn’t figure out where the trouble was.
“She’s still refusing to talk to him,” Izzy went on, turning to Nick. “He missed all his lectures, has so much shit to make up, and she couldn’t even be bothered to speak to him like a human being.”
“That really sucks.”
“It fucking does,” Izzy said viciously. “Anyway, he got to stay with his cousin, who’s pretty cool. She drove him to and from the hospital, that kind of thing.”
“He doesn’t have any siblings?”
“Only child. So, you know. Guess they took it extra hard when he came out.”
“Whatever. He’s still their kid.”
“That he is,” Dex agreed. “Anyway, guess he’s with Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee tonight—sorry, that’s what I call Niall and Lance,” he added. “I shouldn’t. I know. They’re just sort of idiots.”
“Well, Niall’s not a complete idiot,” Izzy laughed. “Anyway, Lance has got his heart in the right place. He’s just a bit much.”
“Is he the Marxist?” Nick asked, and Dex burst out laughing.
“If only, man—he thinks he gets it, but he really doesn’t.” Even as Dex said it, he felt guilty. Jonny actually did appear to like the guy, which had to say something about Lance, right?
Nick cracked a sardonic smile. “No, probably not.”
“Does it—sorry, this is probably a stupid question, but did he offend you?” Izzy asked. “I mean, I know Russia’s not been Communist in a while, but—”