What If Three Days Meant Forever?

Like Us

Nico POV

"So tell me about yourself, Nico."

We just dispersed from Will and Rikki and are now about to find out about each other. Holly is sitting comfortably at the top of a slide while a kid sitting on a bench a few feet away sends us dirty looks.

I'm sitting at the bottom of the slide next to her and she's placed her bag at the top so that some kid won't come barreling down and kick me in the back. The California air is enough to make me wish I'd brought a light jacket at the very least. It's only about sixty-four degrees and a little windy.

Monique agreed to use the mist and hide the part of my arms that I'd prefer not to be seen but now I realize I could've saved her the trouble by just wearing a long sleeve shirt.

And of course, I get paired with Holly.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Holly, in fact, my first impression of her the day she first made herself known was that she was pretty chill. Now, suddenly she has all of this energy and it's really making me uncomfortable with how she never seems to break eye contact. Even with my sitting at the bottom of the slide, I can still feel her gaze burning holes into the back of my skull every time I make a movement, almost as if she's studying me in a lab, trying to figure out exactly what makes me tick.

Why couldn't I have been paired with Rikki?

I mean, we were having a nice conversation on the way here.

***

"Did you know male seahorses are the ones to get pregnant?"

"No." I shook my head with a smile on my face. "Also, that's really random."

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "Wonder what would happen if it was two male seahorses in the relationship. Do they both get pregnant?"

"What?" I laughed gently.

"I mean, the world is changing. Maybe it's changing for seahorses too." I shook my head once again at the silliness of the conversation. "Seahorses also mate for life. I wish humans could do that too."

"I guess." I said shortly.

"The guarantee of not being cheating on and all that. Soulmates are a cool thought all together. And you know? There are different kinds."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. Including a friendship one. Speaking of friendships, how is yours going?"

I scrunched my eyebrows together and looked up from the sidewalk. "What do you-"

"Let me guess." She cuts me off. "You're in the same boat as me with not wanting to do this double date?" I nod my head slowly. "Yeah, see, but that's what friends are for." She nudged my shoulder as I shrugged.

"I guess, yeah." I didn't mention that I wasn't all that used to friends. Sure I'd had them for a while now but I was pretty sure friends didn't do this to each other.

"I can tell you guys are close." She continues. "Will is probably feeling borderline awful about it. He's going to apologize soon enough."

***

And it's not like I'm mad.

Not really.

There are worse things he could've done.

"Not much to me." I reply, answering Holly's previous question.