“What?”
“I don’t like fighting.” I surrendered with a sigh, leaning against the door frame of her room. “As I have so astutely been made aware by our mother.”
Nikki groaned as she sat up. “Me either.”
I walked over to the fuzzy pink beanbag chair in the corner of her room under the window and dropped into it. “I’m trying to understand what even happened. I thought you liked Brooklyn, but last night felt like emotional whiplash.”
“I do, I do.” Nikki pulled at the distressed sleeves of her butter-yellow crewneck. “I got a bad gut feeling, and I’m sorry if it came across as mean, I guess. I’m trying to look out for you.”
“I understand.” I sighed, wishing it all made less sense. Maybe that would make it all sting less. “And while I appreciate it, I promise things are fine.”
“How can you promise that?”
I groaned and threw my head back. “Because I am an all-seeing oracle.”
Nikki got up from her bed and threw herself on top of me, smothering me in forgiveness and the scent of her orange blossom perfume. When I hugged her, there were fewer harsh edges to her, and it didn’t feel like she’d crack in my arms if I squeezed too tightly.
Peoplewerecapable of fixing themselves, and I needed to remind myself of that more often.
“Now tell meeverythingabout last night. I want dirty details.”
“There are no details.”
“That is such a lie.” Nikki groaned, rolling off me and slinking to the floor. She sat up and leaned back against the chair. “You weren’t drunk, so Iknowyou remember what happened.”
“It’s not that I don’t remember,” I said. “Honestly, I’m still trying to process that it even happened. It’s not exactly like we’d planned it or anything.”
“That means that it either was limp fucking noodles or it was totally earth-shattering.”
“It wasn’t limp noodles,” I muttered. “It didn’t feel real. Like I was watching myself from a distance.”
“Nat, it’s only sex.” Nikki rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you had an out-of-body experience.”
But that was exactly what it was. Not the sweaty, scratching, moaning, dizzying, gut-unraveling part. It was after. It was the way he’d held me, almost like he could shield me from acid rain and falling stars.
My long silence prompted a snicker from Nikki.
“Oh my god, except you totally did.” She batted her eyelashes and put her hand to her chest. “That’s love.”
I scoffed. “Now who’s the dramatic one?”
“Doesn’t matter, I speak the truth,” Nikki replied.
>> <<
“I really can’t believe you’ve never seenTime Bandits.” Brooklyn shook the DVD box at me before loading it into his Xbox. “It’s a cult classic.”
Rolling over onto my stomach on Brooklyn’s bed, I placed our bowl of butter-drenched popcorn on the floor in front of me. It felt so much more familiar than the first time I had been here. I casually splayed out across his messy sheets, and I could honestly have fallen asleep here. “You say that about every movie you pick.”
“That’s because I happen to be a cult movie expert,” he said as he flopped down next to me.
Since neither of us had anything better to do on a Wednesday evening, we’d picked up two more movies from Film Press and were very determined to get through both of them this time.
Despite still reckoning with the night we’d shared last weekend, (even saying wehad sexseemed reductionist, because it was more than that) lying next to him on his bed now felt natural, like we’d been doing it for ages. I hadn’t given much thought to the text message I’d accidentally seen the next morning, but I told myself I wasn’t going to bring it up unless there was a seamless way to do so.
I also wouldn’t put it past myself to just be reading way too much into it.
“I won’t lie to you, I kind of hated that.” I got up from Brooklyn’s bed to stretch my legs after we finishedTime Bandits—which had an unexpectedly bleak ending that ruined the movie for me. This was a perfect example of why I rewatched the same things I enjoyed over and over again; no surprisingly bad endings to ruin things.
