I'm sitting outside with a cup of coffee by the time Nichole rolls her car around. She idles for a moment, staring at me through tinted windows before driving off to her place. A moment later, she comes walking my way dressed in a pencil skirt and a blue blouse, heels click-clacking against the cracked pavement.
She stops right in front of me. Her heels sink into the grass. "No beer?"
I shrug. "Not feeling it."
"And no cigarettes?"
"Dad's all out."
She stares at me for a long time. I stare back, taking occasional sips from my cup. When the silence becomes unbearable, I rest the cup on my lap and look down at the dark liquid, saying, "Did you just get back from work or something?"
"Yeah, it's my break. Are you just going to sit out here all day?"
"Probably." I let out a cold laugh. "Casper says he needs space. He's hanging out with Winston and another guy."
"You know, couples are allowed to hang out with their own friends."
"I know that."
"Then are you just bitter because you don't have any friends?"
Damn. The world is filled with cold people. "Fuck off," I say and take another sip, but Nichole doesn't budge. She smiles instead.
"You're growing up."
"Am I?"
"Your voice is deeper."
"I haven't noticed."
"Is that stubble I see?"
I give her a look. "Fat chance," I say, but my free hand still shoots to my face just to make sure. That makes her laugh.
"Alright, come on, get up. I'm taking you out for ice cream. You can always count on it to heal a pissy mood."
"Don't you have work?"
"I'll drop you off before I go back to the office. Now get up. You don't want me to change my mind, do you?"
I don't. I dump the coffee on the grass and make my way inside, carrying the lawn chair and cup with me. After shoving them in their rightful places, I follow Nichole all the way to her car and get strapped in the passenger seat. Getting in the car makes me feel a little bitter, to be honest. Her face keeps flashing in my mind, her eyes staring out this exact window.
Where are we going?
I blink. Nichole's staring at me, eyebrows furrowed. "I'm sorry, what?"
"I said, where are we going? Do you have a specific ice cream shop in mind?"
Oh. I shake my head, waving my hand in the air. "Anywhere is fine. I don't go out for ice cream anyway."
"You mean you and Casper never had an ice cream date?" She says it like it's some goddamn crime as she back out of the driveway. "Isn't that what teenagers do?"
The last thing I want to do is talk about him, so I stay quiet. It's not like I hate him or anything. I don't think it's even possible to hate someone like Casper. He just pisses me off from time to time, and one little thing would make me sour for weeks. Hell, sometimes I think he does it on purpose. I mean, he's always watching me. Like he's waiting for something I don't know about yet.
Despite my mood, countless of upbeat songs are playing on the radio. After each song the DJ would say something corny like, "Carpe diem, baby! Summer's almost ending! Get your last blast of fun before fall hits!"
Blast of fun. Who the fuck hired him? And it doesn't help that Nichole keeps drumming her fingers against the steering wheel, her head bobbing left to right as she hums offbeat to the sound of mainstream music. I'm trying to hold it in—I really am—but after another "Summer's almost ending!" from the DJ, I shut the radio off.
Nichole says nothing about it. She stops humming and tapping her fingers and moving her head all at once, like switching off the radio switched something off in her too. She doesn't look at me and we say nothing for the rest of the ride, not until we reach the ice cream parlour.
The place is jam packed, so much that once people get their ice cream, they have to linger outside to eat it. It takes about ten minutes to get to the front where I order plain chocolate. Nichole goes for mint. We wait another five minutes (I'm counting) and soon enough, we've got the cups in our hands and we're pushing our way through the crowd in hopes for an empty seat.
"There's one," Nichole says, and elbows through a bunch of guys for a table for two. It's pushed off to the corner and looks kind of ominous, but I'm all right with it.
The place is buzzing with chatter which makes my head hurt, but for the sake of Nichole I say, "Dad came back a few days ago. Did you speak to him?"
She looks uncomfortable now as she rubs at her arm. "Yeah."
"Are you guys good?"
She doesn't want to answer, but I can already see it in her eyes that they're not good. So I don't press further, and we sit in silence for a few minutes.
"Did you get sulkier or is it just me?" Nichole says, digging into her ice cream. I can't touch mine.
"Being seventeen is a tragedy."
"Worse than fourteen?"
I nod and stare down and the brown goop in my cup. "Way worse. You're always at the borderline of freedom, so close you can taste it, but you're not there yet. So you're forced to look through the window and see all the amazing things you could do at eighteen like a bystander. It's depressing."
She stares at me for a little. "I've got the feeling being seventeen isn't what's killing your mood. Is it Casper?"
It's always Casper. It's been about him since the fucking dawn of time. I lean back in my seat and sigh, pulling at my hair a little. "I don't want to talk about him."
"Well too bad. You're going to have to. I don't want you sulking all day because of it."
"I've got an overnight shift. I'll be busy."
"Quit feeding me bullshit, Holden. I've known you for a few years now. Now tell me, what's going on with you two? What's keeping you so down?"
Hell if I know. I can tell what's going on in the minds of everyone but him. Or maybe I know, but I just don't want to face it. Is he blocking me out? Or is it just my mind?
Nichole is staring at me expectantly, still shovelling more ice cream in her mouth. "He keeps trying to test me lately," I say, staring down at my cup. I can't look her in the eye. "Says little things that he knows will piss me off and waits for a reaction. I don't know what he wants to see. And sometimes when he kisses me, it's like he's trying to prove something to himself. He's always trying to prove something, and I don't know what the hell it is. I don't know what he wants from me."
"And today..."
"He said he needs space. It's always fucking space. Sometimes he'd push me away for days—weeks, maybe—and come back like nothing went wrong."
Nichole swirls her spoon around the ice cream, thinking for a moment until she says, "Have you asked him about it?"
"He won't tell me."
"No, I mean have you asked him about it?"
If someone were to listen into our conversation at the moment, they wouldn't be able to differentiate the two questions from each other. But I know what she means. I know exactly what she means, so the only answer I can give is to pick up the spoon from the half melted ice cream, keeping my mouth busy with it like a petty excuse. And I guess Nichole wasn't lying when she said she knew me because she says nothing; just sits there watching. She doesn't push for an answer because she already knows my answer.
After a while of sitting and watching, Nichole leans back in her seat and sighs, shaking her head. "You can be a sad kid sometimes, Holden."
"I've been told."
Jesus, I'm hoping she doesn't go off talking about the kind of kid I should be. It seems like everybody has an idea of who I should be and how I should behave, and they make it their goddamn mission to let me know about it. You need to open up more. Broaden your horizons—let people be your friend. Live a little. But what the hell is so bad with who I am right now? Why do I have to be the one to disguise who I've become?
Nichole doesn't say any of that stuff even though I know she really wants to. Her face is like an open book. We drop the conversation and go back to eating ice cream even though it makes my stomach churn, and after a while I think about telling her I've had enough of the place and the people and the damn noise.
But when I open my mouth, the words ready to slip out, Nichole's attention is elsewhere. She's staring past me towards the crowd, eyes wide and lips ajar. I think about asking her what's up but follow her line of vision instead, and after sifting through the crowd I finally see what has her stone cold.
The first thing I notice is this tall looking guy with a shirt, jeans, and hair like Dad's, and when I look closer I finally notice it is Dad. He's laughing and cracking jokes as he stands in line next to another lady—this pretty blonde with brown highlights and the longest lashes I've ever seen. You can tell they're not just friends by the way he's holding her. He's got his arm around her waist, dangerously close to her butt, and occasionally he'd lean in close and whisper something in her ear that would make her giggle like mad.
It's the same way he used to hold Nichole.
And then it clicks. Shit, what's Nichole supposed to do? I turn back to her, expecting a waterfall, but her face is blank. Eyes hollow. She goes back to her ice cream like she didn't see a thing. It scares me a little—the way she's so calm.
"Nichole—"
"You might want to finish up. I've got to head back to the office, remember?"
"Do you want to leave—?"
She looks at me then. "I was prepared."
I nod and swallow. She does the same.
"I was prepared," she repeats, and goes back to shoving more ice cream down her throat.