by Unknown
Taryn takes a breath, sharp enough that he hears the inhale. When she lets it out her shoulders have dropped a good two inches, no longer at battle stations. “Sure,” she says after a beat, just quiet. “That’s—yeah. That’s fine. Whatever.”
Nick blinks, holding the front door open. He’d expected more of a fight. Now that it’s clear he won’t get one, he isn’t sure how to react.
Taryn shrugs, twisting under his wordless stare. “I fed Atlas half my egg sandwich through the mail slot earlier,” she adds, shoving her hands into her pockets. “I hope that’s okay.”
Nick opens his mouth. Closes it. “It’s okay,” he says.
They stand there for a minute longer, watching each other in the twilight. It’s a delicate, teetering kind of look. It goes on long enough that Atlas pads down the hall to investigate, snuffling around Nick’s legs to step outside and greet Taryn.
“Hi dude,” she says, breaking the eye contact to bend down. “You have to stay inside.”
Moment over then. Nick snags the dog’s collar from her, looking up and down the street. “You drive here?” he asks. It’s as instinctual as helping her up, how he wants to make sure he isn’t leaving her alone with no options. If she says no—
But Taryn nods, pointing down the street to where her car is parked. “I’m good,” she says. She walks backward to the edge of the porch, one hand on the railing for balance. “Night.” And then she’s gone, down the stairs and away. It’s her on-the-job walk, when the situation isn’t dire enough to run but she wants to look professional to civilians anyway.
Nick tugs a whining Atlas inside, closing the door. He stands there in the pitch-dark, not bothering with any lights. Atlas wiggles through his I have to pee dance three times before Nick gets his act together enough to reach for the leash.
“We’re going, boy,” he murmurs. “Relax.”
A couple of mornings later he hauls his aching, waking body up off the couch at four thirty and drives over to the diner in the dark. He texts Alexandra and tells her to go back to bed, but she hates cell phones and never checks hers, and she pulls up just as he does. “It’s definitely my day,” she informs him, rattling her keys in his direction.
“I know,” Nick mutters. It’s drizzling, the cool drip of it down the back of his neck and the splatter as it hits the sidewalk. He wipes a couple of drops off his face once they’re inside. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“That again.” Alexandra nods and flicks the lights on, a cheerful halogen flood and closed-diner smell of floor cleaner and stale coffee. The linoleum squeaks under his feet. They’re quiet for a while as she starts up a new pot and he takes the chairs down off the tables, Alexandra counting the cash in the drawer. “Is it over?” she asks, eyes on the stack of fives in her hand. Nick knows from experience she’s still counting in her head. “Between you and Taryn?”
Nick exhales. No point in lying about it, he supposes. “Yeah, actually,” he tells her. “You’ll be glad to know. It is.”
Alexandra looks up, startled. She places the fives neatly back in their drawer. “Is that what you think?” she asks, blinking. “You think I’m glad to know that?”
For fuck’s sake, he’s an asshole. There’s like a seventy percent chance he’s the stupidest man ever born. “I don’t know,” he says, backpedaling. “I don’t know what the hell I think.” Alexandra watches him across the counter, dark eyes like a mirror. “She wanted to fix it,” he finds himself admitting. “Taryn. She showed up at the house the other night, and—” Nick shakes his head. He hasn’t given up this kind of information to Alexandra in years and years, since he was twenty-five and needed to know how much to spend on an engagement ring. She shook her head, went upstairs and got the one that had belonged to their grandmother. “I sent her home.”
Now Alexandra takes their coffee mugs out from under the counter, fills them up and hands him his. “Look,” she says after a moment. “I loved Maddie like she was my daughter, all right? You know that. Too much, maybe. And I know that I gave you a hard time about—” She waves her hand like you know what I mean, an impatient gesture of their mom’s. If she and Bill had been able to have kids, they’d be in high school by now, maybe college. “I know that I gave you a hard time. I would have given you a hard time about anyone, probably. It’s just an adjustment.” She takes a sip of her coffee, like she’s gearing up for something. “But you seemed happy with her, Niko. You smiled a lot. You don’t smile a lot, as a general rule.”
Nick doesn’t smile at that either, though he lets out a breath that might pass for a laugh. “No?” he asks.
Alexandra shakes her head. “No. So I don’t know what happened with her, with Taryn, but.”
Nick wraps a hand around his mug, letting the warmth seep into his palm. He’s so goddamn exhausted. “But what?”
Alexandra purses her lips, frowning as she blows on her own cup. “Maybe you should give her the chance to fix it, is all I’m saying.” She leans up against the counter, the exact same spot where their father used to sit on his stool and chat with the regulars. “She’s young, you know.” At Nick’s face, she laughs. “Relax, Niko. My point is, a girl as young as that is bound to make some mistakes.”
Nick turns his mug around and around. Outside the front window, the sun is just starting to creep over the horizon. “So what, I just let her make them over and over?”
Alexandra looks at him. “She came back, didn’t she?”
Nick thinks about that, Taryn huddled on the porch and I was wrong, it’s not working. How he has absolutely no guarantee she won’t spook again, in exactly the same way, sometime down the road. How he already feels like shit.
I’m just like, waiting and waiting to not feel shitty and miserable anymore—
“I don’t know, Niko,” Alexandra says, shrugging. “Do what you want. I just liked seeing you happy for once.”
“I am happy,” Nick answers, like he always does when his sisters fuss, like he’s been saying for three long years. But he isn’t. Not really. Not anymore.
And that’s—
That’s sort of that, isn’t it?
“Either way,” Alexandra continues, taking a gulp of coffee and opening the cash drawer back up to finish counting the ones. “This isn’t your morning, so you should get on out of here. Take that dog for a walk. Something.” She licks a finger and starts paging through the bills, clever head bowed. Nick remembers snooping through her sock drawer looking for her diary. She used to make him cheese sandwiches when he got home from school. “Get out of my hair.”
“Sure,” he murmurs. According to the old wall clock, it’s coming up on five thirty. He leans full over the counter and pecks Alexandra on the cheek before he goes.
Chapter Twenty
Taryn’s been out on the roof for close to an hour when Caitlin wakes up and climbs through the window, her blonde head like a beacon as she picks her way across. “That’s three nights in a row,” she reports primly, voice like a hall monitor noting Taryn’s homeroom attendance. “Last night you didn’t come back in until four.”
Taryn can’t keep herself from smirking. “Didn’t realize you were keeping track.” Caitlin’s got a point though. It’s weird how Taryn keeps finding herself out here, night after night like some lonely old ghost. It’s not practical. Eventually she has to get over it, doesn’t she? Eventually she’s got to be able to move on. Eventually she’ll get to the point she got to so fast and easily with Pete—I thought this was going to happen, but it’s not, and that’s fine too.
It doesn’t feel fine, is the problem. It feels the opposite of fine, actually, but Nick’s been real fucking clear how he feels about do-overs, so now it’s Taryn’s job to live with it. Serves her right, she guesses. She was too sure of him from the very beginning, and she didn’t even try to hide it. Never once let him be sure of her back. And if she thought she saw a future there for a minute, if he made her think of fresh paint and houses built to last and whether his kids might have those same
dark, dark eyes—
Well. She was wrong, she guesses. She’s been wrong before. It’s a thing that happens.
“I’m fine,” she promises now, slipping her arm around Caitlin’s shoulders. It’s starting to get warm for real, coming on the second week of May, but all her sister’s wearing is a faded T-shirt and sweats cut into capri pants. “Let’s go inside.”
There’s regular life stuff that needs her attention, anyway. Rosemary’s counselor recommends she stays on at a halfway house in Boston for a while longer, so Taryn collects another round of coloring pages from Mikey plus a loose-leaf letter from Cait and sends them off in a yellow manila envelope. Connor still won’t sign his name. She spends an afternoon at the library, looking at two-bedroom apartments on Craigslist—there’s no way she’s going to get the mortgage current at this rate, and time is just about running out. Up until the last few weeks Taryn thought for sure she was going to come up with some clever last-minute solution, some way of making it all okay, but… Looks like she was wrong about that too. The bank has referred their loan to the foreclosure department, and pretty soon an attorney will be knocking down their door with a summons. The house is going up for sale, one way or the other.
Days pass. Jesse comes home with a black eye he refuses to explain to her. Caitlin gets a hundred and two on her social studies test. Doc writes her MCAT and breaks up with Ed the day after. “We’ll just be single together,” she tells Taryn, her eyes red but dry. Through it all, Taryn tries like hell to act like a normal human, to wash her face and answer questions and ignore the sensation she left her heart on the side of the highway someplace. She even goes with Doc to birthday drinks at Old Court for one of the other rookies, this stupidly affable kid named Jim who just started a couple of months ago and may or may not be into Emily. From what Taryn has gathered, Emily may or may not be into him too. At the very least, they’re in it for the long haul tonight, shots followed by a round. She’s digging some cash out of her pocket and trying to remember how to be a wingman when Nick walks in.
“Yikes,” Emily mutters, both hands curled around their second pitcher like she’s getting ready to heft. Couple of months ago, Taryn would’ve laughed at the very idea of Doc drinking watered-down beer, let alone busing it to their table. “Sorry, Tare, the guys swore he never came around here anymore. Want me to, like—” She tosses her head.
But Nick’s already heading toward them—toward the bar, Taryn corrects herself. “It’s fine,” she says, waving Emily off. “Go ahead.” God knows what kind of interference Doc would run anyway. If there’s going to be awkwardness, Taryn would rather handle it herself.
Emily narrows her eyes skeptically but she goes, weaving around Nick with a pointedness that almost makes Taryn smile. God knows where the protectiveness is coming from, considering; Doc knows exactly who left who.
She’s expecting Nick to ignore her—they haven’t seen each other since the night on his porch, still working opposite shifts—but he parks himself right beside her elbow, making and holding the eye contact. Even more surprising, he speaks. “Hi.”
At the sound of his voice, Taryn almost drops her twenty into a sticky puddle of beer. “Hi,” she stutters back, shoving the bill into the bartender’s hand. She hopes he makes change fast. Then, before she can stop herself, “I thought you said we weren’t doing this.” Even as she says it she winces, all this automatic bitchiness she can’t seem to help. Looking at Nick now, her body feels raw, like the new skin under a scab.
Nick rubs at his jaw. It’s rough again, Taryn notices, about a day’s worth of beard grown in. She wills her stomach not to swoop with wanting. “Guess I lied,” he says. His eyes are a flat, depthless dark that reminds her of river stones.
“Okay, well.” Taryn has no idea what to do with that, or with him period, so she takes her handful of bills from the bartender and makes to leave. As far as she’s concerned, polite avoidance was working just fine. “See you.”
“Wait.” Nick’s hand shoots out, almost, but not quite, within touching distance. “Have a drink with me.”
Oh, for the love of— “What the fuck are we going to talk about over drinks?” Taryn hears herself hiss, sharp and impatient. It’s not nice, her tone, but then again neither is what he’s doing, this ridiculous closure bullshit that belongs on Oprah and nowhere else. Taryn recognizes the hypocrisy, she does—Christ, not three weeks ago, she was the one trying to be pals—but now that the tables are turned her stomach is roiling.
“Falvey.” Nick does touch her then, just gently, long fingers curling a few inches above her elbow. His voice is low and private. His hand is very, very warm. “Hey.”
Oh, no. Taryn freezes. She can feel the contact everywhere, her stomach and spine, waves of it prickling up the back of her neck. She blinks. “Don’t,” she manages, shrill and panicky. Fuck the pitcher, fuck Birthday Jim—she is not not not going to let herself cry in front of Nick right now. Not about this. “I gotta go,” she mutters as she pushes past him, shoving her change into her jeans pocket and heading for the door. Doc will make something up to tell the others. Outside it’s not quite dark yet, the last smudges of twilight all whispery and blue.
“Taryn.” Nick follows. She’s surprised but also not, oddly, like maybe she hasn’t learned her lesson about being sure of him as well as she should have. Like somewhere in her bones she knew he’d come. He’s behind her in a minute, reaching for her hand and tugging until she turns around and faces him, standing in front of Old Court with his sleeves rolled halfway up his arms. “That was rude,” he says. For a crazy second she thinks he’s going to kiss her, like she kissed him all those months ago right at this spot, but in the end he only gazes at her. Taryn tries not to feel disappointed about that. “Look,” he tries after a moment. “I don’t want to do this anymore, okay? You run, and then I run, and then you run again. I don’t want to do that.”
And that—that’s not what Taryn’s expecting. She doesn’t understand what he’s after here, how sure he sounded at his house that day that he was totally and completely finished with her. He’s still holding on to her hand. “What do you want?” she asks him, once she trusts that her voice has steadied out.
Nick shakes his head. “You quit on me,” he tells her. “You just—you quit. And maybe I shouldn’t have gotten in between you and your brother that night, but—”
“You shouldn’t have,” Taryn interrupts him. “I was handling it, all right? I handle it every day. My whole life, I’m handling it, so you can’t just—”
“You can’t just do everything yourself.” Nick lets out a frustrated breath. “It can’t work that way. Not if we’re going to—” He breaks off, swallows. Shakes his head again.
Taryn feels herself get very, very quiet. “Not if we’re going to what?” she asks.
Nick stares. The hand on hers tightens for a second, her fingers engulfed by his warm palm. It’s achingly familiar, and all of a sudden all Taryn wants is to push herself inside his safe, steady body and stay there, protected by his rib cage like all the rest of his vulnerable organs.
“Do this,” Nick says, rubbing at her knuckles. “Not if we’re going to do this.”
Taryn exhales. Her face feels like it’s made of glass, like if she moves it even a quarter of an inch the wrong way it’ll shatter. “What’s this?” she asks, rattling their joined hands. “What are we doing?”
“You quit,” Nick repeats, sailing right over the question. Maybe his answer is contingent on this very conversation, what does Taryn know. “I need you to not do that again.”
Apparently it is contingent. Taryn sags. She’s a quitter, is the cold, hard truth. She quits, and then she runs. She doesn’t know how to be different. “Look,” she starts, “I can’t promise—”
But Nick’s shaking his dark head. Old Court’s doors open and close, spilling butter-yellow light across the pavement, and they both move out of range automatically. “You don’t quit on your family,” Nick points out once they’re s
ettled again. Night is falling for real now, smudging out the details of his face. “You’ve never done that.”
That brings Taryn up short. “Well, no,” she says, trying to keep the duh out of her voice. “They’re my family.”
Nick squeezes her hand. “Uh-huh.”
Taryn’s throat is thick with tears, happy or sad or both. She loves him, the immediacy of it like a knife in her side. “What are you saying?” she demands, rubbing at her dry, burning eyes. It’s private here, around the corner of the building. It’s dark. “That you want to be my—”
Nick leans into her space, crowding her up against the cracked brick. It’s cold now, goose bumps popping out along her spine. “I want to try, okay?” he says, cupping her face with both hands. “I want to help with the kids, and your brother, and whatever else you’ve got going on. I want to be there. And I want that not to be a bad thing.”
“It’s not,” Taryn promises, gasping. She’s crying just a little, she can’t help it. “I like it, I swear, I want you to help.” She covers his hands with hers then slides her chilly fingers down his arms, tucking them inside his rolled shirtsleeves. It’s not enough. She wants to map out every inch of his skin.
“And I’m sorry I jumped all over Jesse like that,” Nick continues, wiping at her cheekbones. “That wasn’t helping. I just don’t always know how to—”
“S’hard,” Taryn hiccups, shrugging underneath his hold. She thumbs at the dips of his elbows, embarrassed and also not. “My family’s hard.”
“Not that hard.” Nick gets close then, lowers his voice to a murmur so she has to strain to hear him. She can smell his familiar soap-skin smell. “You love each other, don’t you?”
Taryn nods. “Yeah,” she says. She is so, so tired. “We do.”
Nick looks at her hard in the darkness, hands dropping from her face down her neck to her shoulders. Keep touching me, she wants to tell him. Whatever you do, please just don’t stop. “So then,” he says.