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Chapter Seven


Nick

I was still hiding out in the bathroom when I heard Jaymie talking in the other room on her phone. I stood listening to the sound of her voice rising and falling, almost tumbling over words. I ran water over my hands and splashed it into my face, my head aching. I closed my eyes. It was a sensation I’d become used to recently, but at some times it was worse than others. I opened the medicine cabinet and found some Excederin and downed a couple pills. As I was gulping back eight ounces of water, I heard Jaymie’s voice pitch loudly, the words she was shouting were muffled by the door, but I’m pretty sure I heard the word pilates.

I put down the glass and wiped my mouth and opened the door of the bathroom just as Jaymie hurled her cell phone across the room, narrowly missing me. Now if we were in a movie, the phone probably would’ve broke into a thousand pieces. But being that we are not a movie, the phone just hit the wall with a pathetic crunch of a sound and lay there. Really, it spoke wonders for the Otterbox company that Jaymie could chuck her phone so spectacularly and see no damage. I looked up at her, “Christ, warn me before you send cellular missiles,” I chided her.

She looked back at me, rage in her eyes, “Fuck you,” she said thickly, her voice heavy as she choked back emotion. I looked at the phone, then back at her.

“You already did that,” I teased.

Jaymie glowered at me. She was pulling on her sweatpants in an irritated fashion and, because her shirt was somewhere downstairs, she grabbed mine from the floor and yanked that on over her head, too, covering her boobs. That was unfortunate.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Are you okay?” I asked because I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re supposed to do when a chick freaks out.

Jaymie grabbed her phone off the floor. “Forget it,” she said. She wasn’t shouting anymore, her eyes were thick with the threat of tears, “Just - just nevermind. I’m gonna go.” She turned toward the door.

“Don’t go,” I said. Because I didn’t want to be alone. Not even for a moment. Especially not with my head feeling like this. I grabbed at her wrist as she started for the door anyways, “Jaymie please, don’t leave.” She stood still, staring at the door, refusing to look at me. She shook her head and started to struggle to pull away, but I tightened my grasp. “Jaymie, please.”

Jaymie turned to look at me, tears were streaming down her face, “Me crying is probably against the rules isn’t it?” she snapped.

I hated when girls cried. And she was right, it was one of the rules that we’d mentioned once. However, I didn’t wanna be alone enough that I was willing to overlook it. “I don’t want you to leave.”

Jaymie swallowed, snuffled, and stared at me through her wet, teary eyes.

“Please,” I repeated.

“Okay,” she said thickly. “Fine, I won’t leave.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I released my grip.

She nodded and pushed the hair out of her face slowly. And we stood there awkwardly for a moment by the door of the room, the bed sheets all messed up from our earlier escapades, the bathroom light streaming out across the room in a trapezoid of warm light. Jaymie looked down at her feet.

“So what’s wrong?” I asked.

Jaymie looked up at me, a frown on her face. “My father called,” she answered with a shrug.

I didn’t know much about her father, but the way she said it, I understood that it held the same basic weight as me saying that my father had called. My parents could teach a class: Emotional Turmoil 101. I’d be a Ph. D. in that program. I knew everything there was to know. I nodded. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Jaymie sighed and went over and sat down on the bed.

“Was he being an asshole?” I asked because I didn’t know what else to ask. It’s awkward, talking.

Jaymie was picking at her fingernails as she spoke. “Just asking if I’d been to his house lately,” she answered.

I laughed. “Wouldn’t he know? Since he lives there and all?”

She shrugged, “Well I might’ve broken in.”

I laughed again.

Jaymie looked up at me and her eyes were dead serious.

“You broke in?” I asked, serious now, “To your father’s house?”

“Well. Yeah, kinda. I only wanted my own stuff, though, I didn’t steal anything that wasn’t mine.”

I stared at her. Suddenly I pictured her like zip lining in skin tight leather with night vision goggles. “So why didn’t you just call?”

“Because they didn’t know I had stuff there still,” she said. “It was hidden. In a floor board. In my old room.” Jaymie took a deep breath, “Look, this is really just -- it’s stupid. And -- I… It’s… it’s personal.” She stood up and paced around the bed for a moment. “It’s really personal, that’s all. I didn’t want him to know about it.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Jaymie stopped pacing and looked at me, “Sorry?”

“For pressing you. I’m sorry for getting too personal.”

She resumed pacing.

“Do you wanna go watch a movie?” I asked because the air was thick and I couldn’t think of a damn other thing to say.

And she burst into tears.




Jaymie

I just stood there, in Nick Carter’s bedroom, crying my fucking eyes out like a little kid. He stood a couple feet away, looking utterly perplexed in the way guys usually do when a woman starts sobbing for what appears to be no reason in their eyes. I could barely breathe, my throat felt so tight from crying, I’m pretty sure I had snot and tears mixed together on my face. My knees went weak and I sat down on the floor, my back against the bed.

Nick was staring at me now the way someone might stare at a wounded animal they had to put out of its misery. I was the chipmunk under the wheel of the car.

“Are you a’ight?” Nick asked, his ghetto-ized English coming out.

“You can leave,” I said, addressing how uncomfortable he looked.

Nick hovered. I could tell he was kinda torn between wanting so much to run -- not walk, run -- away, and not wanting to look like a total asshole. To my surprise, he came over, lowered himself down next to me on the floor, and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest, “Hey,” he said, “It’s gonna be okay. Whatever is the matter will be okay soon.”

I shook my head, “No it won’t,” I answered.

“How can you be so sure?” he asked, “Everything is okay in the end. Always.”

I shook my head, “Don’t be so naive. You know better than that. There are some things that you can’t fix.”

“Tell him you’re sorry,” Nick suggested.

“I’m not sorry,” I replied.

Nick shrugged, “That doesn’t mean you can’t tell him you are.” I stared down at my hands, picturing apologizing to my father for taking what was mine out of the house, but I couldn’t. Pilates apparently had seen me after all, as I was slunking along to the car, and she’d become suspicious, seeing me being all sneaky around the house, and investigated and I’d dropped the bobby pin I’d used to break in outback by Rusty’s bowl on the porch. Plus, Rusty had tried like mad to get inside when she went out to investigate, finally knocking Pilates over, running through the house, tail shattering at least two vases, and up to the guest bedroom, where he’d snuffed the floor, walking in circles, tracking me, until my father got home and Pilates told him to get Rusty outside. Pilates then insisted that things were missing around the house and I owed them for damages for the two vases. “So,” Nick said, breaking a rather long pause that had settled between us, “What was worth breaking and entering for anyways?”

“One second.” I stood up, and, feeling kind of numb, like I was moving in slow motion, I went out to the apartment over the garage and got the cigar box from the shelf in my room and returned to Nick’s bedroom, where I sat back down beside him. He’d waited without moving, and stared up at me until I’d sat down. He looked over at the box.

“Cigars?”

I shook my head. “My grandfather smoked cigars, this was one of his boxes, but it doesn’t have cigars in it.” I opened the lid and inside was a motley collection of pure crap. A ring pop, still in it’s wrapper, and several origami-folded notes, a couple of baseball and hockey cards, a mix tape, and a small handful of Polaroid photos. “It’s a time capsule.”

Nick laughed and reached over. Part of me wanted to stop him, to swat his hand away, but I didn’t. He picked up the trading cards and inspected them. “Some of these are probably worth some money,” he said, waving them at me.

“I wouldn’t sell them for the world,” I answered.

“No?” Nick asked, picking up the Polaroids. “Why?”

“Because they belonged to Daniel,” I answered. Saying his name in front of Nick felt… so… strange. It’d been almost eighteen years since I met Nick. I’d been seeing him more than half of my life, off and on. And this was the first time that I’d spoke Daniel’s name to him.

Nick was staring at the Polaroids. Daniel and me on a swing set in the backyard when we were nine. Daniel and I on the beach with bologna sandwiches that tasted like sand. Daniel, my mother and I, reading a book on the couch. Daniel, teaching me how to fish. And the first-ever selfie, a picture of me and Daniel that he’d taken by holding the camera out as far away as he could to press the button. Nick licked his lips, “Twins?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Damn,” he said. He shuffled through the pictures again.

I busied myself putting the trading cards back in the order Daniel had left them in.

“So you broke in to stole the time capsule you and your brother made,” Nick laughed, “Why didn’t he help you break in?” I stared at the box, trying to gather words to say to explain. “Was he too chicken shit to join you?” Nick teased.

“He’s dead,” I snapped.

Nick looked bewildered, and he put the Polaroids back in the box quickly and I snapped the lid shut. We sat there in silence for a long time. It was a mistake, I thought, telling him this, getting so personal, telling him about Daniel. It wasn’t a part of our regulations and it would upset him and he’d end things, I thought. Where would I go, I realized, if he did decide to end things? I didn’t know. Clearly, home to my father and Pilates wasn’t an option.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said, breaking into my thoughts. “I know it’s hard to lose a sibling.”

That was the first time he’d ever brought up Leslie dying to me. In the year and a half it’d been since she’d been gone, he’d only mentioned her a couple times. Once, to tell me about it, obviously, and one other time, after he’d tried calling her on her birthday and gotten a notice that the number had been disconnected.

I’d understood that feeling all too well.

But I hadn’t told him about Daniel, even then.

“How’d he die?” Nick asked quietly.

“My parents were fighting one night. My mom had too much to drink. She went for a drive. Daniel didn’t want her to go alone, he was trying to talk her into letting him drive, so he went with her.” I closed my eyes. “You know what? I don’t think I wanna talk about this anymore.”

Nick was staring at me with the saddest eyes. And I couldn’t handle that -- that pity look.

I stood up and took the cigar box. “I’m gonna go lay down for awhile. Your toothbrush is downstairs on the counter. Milk’s in the fridge.” I left the room, pulling the door shut behind me so that when the sob that was building in my chest finally broke free, Nick might not hear it.