baggage claim // l.h

sixth • nina

It was undeniably awkward once Nina got into the car. Her brother hadn't probed her with questions, but he hadn't looked at her in the eyes either, and she couldn't decide which was worse. The tension was practically tangible, and Nina sat with her hands on her lap, playing with the hem of her coat. Her eyes were trained on the window and the world outside, and she thought it awfully ironic to be sitting in silence while the world outside was all noise.

His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, and she reckoned her jaw was clenched just as tight. There were so many unanswered questions clouding the air: where were you the past two years? Why did you run away? Why are you even back?

Nina could feel an interrogation coming soon, she just knew her brother was too weary now. She had just up and called so out of left field. She hadn't been going for shock value, but it was there nonetheless.

"So how have things been?" She tried, trying to ease the unbearable silence. It was deafening, maddening.

Her brothers knuckles turned white from gripping the wheel tighter, if that was even possible. Nina knew she'd hit a nerve by trying to act so nonchalant about the entire situation. "Really Nina? 'How have things been?'"

His tone was harsher than she'd expected. Nina sighed as the car crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge. To her shitty luck, traffic was brutal, a congested line of cars wrapping around the entire city. That was New York for you, although she wished she could get out of the car. At this point, tucking and rolling out of the moving car seemed a safer bet than her brother's volatile temper.

"Where the hell even were you?" His voice was barely a whisper and Nina felt a pang of guilt. The situation that led to her departure in the first place hadn't been easy on any of them.

Nina stared at her lap, feeling like a total stranger in the same passenger seat she'd sat in countless times just two years before. "London." She breathed out.

She turned to look at her brother, who wore a blank expression. She knew inside his head, he was probably trying to make sense of the reason, though they both knew it perfectly well.

"Running clearly didn't work, because here you are." Nina knew that he didn't mean to sound so accusing or bitter, it was just a given. Still, it made her feel colder inside than she'd felt in the London winter.

"Nick," she warned, her own patience was wearing thin, "don't."

Her brother sighed, admitting defeat. Nina knew he was trying his very best. They all were, had been at least, before she bought a one way ticket without letting another soul know; without looking back. The conversation was dropped, and another uncomfortable silence was wedged between them, albeit it was slightly less hostile. Nina would count that as progress.

The car seemed to move at an agonizingly slow pace, the bridge looking busier than Nina had ever remembered. Day old snow crunched under the cars, turning black from all the exhaust gas. Some things would never change. Still, the winter felt warmer and foreign than she remembered. Perhaps it was her time in London that changed her perception. It had been a cruelly cold winter, and even the pipes had frozen. It was the type of cold that got in through the microscopic holes in your clothes, through little openings and gaps, it crawled under your skin and chilled you to your very core.

Nina decided that although she no longer loved New York and renounced it as her home, she'd take the nippy winters any day.

It was a near half hour of more intense traffic before Nick made it to Brooklyn. The borough was mostly unchanged, although Nina knew that there was more than met the eye. New graffiti decorated one of the outside walls of her old high school, she observed as they drove past. There were new people everywhere, although Nina knew it was a daft observation. She knew New York was vast, and she was never too good with faces anyway. As Nick got closer to the house, Nina felt her breath grow short.