Growing Up and Other Tall Tales

Chapter 40

"So," I start. "Do you wanna order dumb, reasonably-priced shit online to feel better?"

Nick is lying on his back on the counseling couch, spooning my lavender and green tea scented embroidered couch pillow I had gotten after the car accident twisted my ankle and those frown lines aren't doing any wonders to his teenage emo phase. It's been a hot minute since he's done this.

"Like what?" he mutters

"Well," I say and then sat next to his woeful head with my laptop warming my thighs. "We can get..."

"Thank you," he turns to his side and smiles up at me, "But I'm okay."

"Are you?"

"No."

Nick doesn't elaborate. I sigh.

I relent, "The Girl Problem Ban is temporarily elevated."

Like waters behind a splintered dam, my ban being the dam, Nick's verbal tear glands almost explode at the sudden relief of pressure and I'm ghost-writing my will in my head.

"I don't know what to do anymore, Lye-Lye," he laments. "She's now escalated to ignoring me. No texts, no calls, no Insta updates—not even a 'Last seen x minutes ago' on Whatsapp. Andrew and Mena don't tell me anything no matter what. I'm too scared to try contact Aiden because pissing Aiden off is probably the last thing I will ever do."

Offended that Aiden is a greater threat to his wellbeing than I, I keep my mouth shut with herculean effort.

"It's like she pulled a Bourne Identity." Nick wails, "which isn't cool because that's exactly what I want to do right now and ugh."

"Once more, with gusto, with feeling."

"Ugghhhhh."

He shakes his head despondently at me because no, that did not make it better because apparently therapeutic screaming isn't for everyone.

I ruffle his hair. "To be fair, I'd be pretty mad too. If I were Amy."

He waits for me to continue by propping himself up on his elbows. Then rolls his eyes when I look at him carefully.

"Ah yes, the constitutional exclusion of information so I'm compelled to confront my tribulations by pleading you to expound," Nick drawls miserably. "What can you possibly mean, my dear old friend?"

I stare agape at him. "I knew trauma strong enough should get that brain working." And then slapped him. "Stop being a smartass. It's not an attractive look on you."

"I make it work." He grumbles massaging his arm

"Have you, in any of your grandiose and fantastical internal monologues, ever stopped to think that, maybe—just maybe—Amy might have seriously been giving you signals that she likes you, too?"

I stands to lean against the armchair of the couch, cards his fingers through Nick's mussed hair until Nick stops rubbing his dead face skin into Hye-Rin's deader grandmother's couch pillow. Still smells like old people.

"To be frank," I say, "I think she tried to kiss you."

Nick winces

"Then you pulled back."

Nick shrivels.

"And now she refuses to talk to you because she probably thinks you rejected her, and that you may have been interpreting this near-fictitiously long acquaintance as fully platonic, thereby rendering your relationship with Amy entirely, pitifully unrequited in Amy's disfavor."

Nick actually almost cries from the bandaid-rip narration.

"Based on these observations," I says, "This might be a case of Poor Communication Skills and Misunderstandings, chief. So sorry for your loss."

Nick flouts a bit and flops pathetically.

"I can give you Aiden's number," I offer. "Ask him. Amy is probably as miserable as you are." Nick snorts at 'probably' and I continue over him. "He'll talk."

"Questionable. Besides, I highly doubt that Aiden would help me." Then he looks at me. "He's got a heart somewhere, right? If not for me, then for you."

Yeah, questionable.

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I feel cornered.

I round up on Lyra, betrayed, and she stares at me before her eyes dart over my shoulders to look at Nick who stood up from his seat nervously the second he saw me walk into the café. He is standing there looking like a lost puppy, shifting from one foot to the other and wringing his hands together.

"Say that to him," Lyra mouths at me before greeting a customer. I fume silently before I blow up in front of Nick who looks like he would cry if I say hi. I nod at him feeling more than slightly unnerved by the way he is eyeing my take off my coat and sidle into the seat opposite him. He plops down in front of me.

"Amy and I just need to talk," Nick reasons, distraught. "She isn't answering my texts or calls. She leaves all her classes early. Hell, I thought of stopping by her place but I don't want to back her into a corner like that."

Jesus, won't you let a guy breathe?

"Please," Nick tries again. "We both keep letting misunderstandings happen because we don't talk. I mean, we do talk, a lot, which is nice, but we still haven't talked talked and it's driving both of us—"

"Bat shit. I know and I'm collateral," I interject exasperatedly. "Maybe Amy needs time to think and doesn't want to deal with your word vomit right now. I've talked to you for five minutes and I already feel like I ran a marathon."

Nick startles to apologize. "I'm sorry. I just," he heaves a sigh, "I panic easily. When it comes to Amy."

I stare at him.

A few seconds pass.

"Why are you bothering with this?" I offer him his olive branch

He's been playing the broken record player, throwing the same explanations he'd practiced before seeing me hoping that something—anything—sticks. If I'm going to even think about his doe eyed look, he has to have something coherent to say.

Nick could conjure something as superficial as wanting clear things up and Nick could voice out all the chicken-scratch attempts at expressing what he is so scared of, but it has to do more than impress me, it has to impress Amy. Easy escapes and half-cooked metaphors won't cut it. My gaze shifts almost immediately onto Lyra.

"I would tell you why," Nick says sweetly but cautiously, "But I'd like Amy to hear it first."

Fair enough.

Nick smiles when the tightness leaves my shoulders but I hold his gaze making him freeze. "Don't fuck up."