We had to drive all the way across town to a specific pharmacy to fill the prescription for her pain medication, and it was almost dark by the time we made it home. Nikki and I didn’t directly speak the entire time, instead trading uneasy glances that I wasn’t entirely sure Mom caught onto, seeing as she was a little preoccupied with broken bones and all that.
“It’s really not a big deal.” Mom rubbed at her temples. “I’m clumsy sometimes, right? I wasn’t watching where I was going and I tripped.”
“Maybe now if you go and sell some paintings, people will feel bad for you and make pity purchases.” Nikki snickered while she helped Mom inside the house, as if things had gone completely back to normal. But I knew better.
After we set Mom up comfortably on the couch, Nikki immediately dashed for her room, and I nearly tripped up the stairs trying to get to her before she shut the door.
“Nikki, wait.” I reached for her wrist before she could cross the threshold of her bedroom.
“What?” She groaned, but lingered in the doorway, leaning against it as she looked at me with tired eyes.
“I want to apologize,” I said. “I didn’t mean what I said to come off as so cruel.”
She arched her eyebrows at me, expecting more, but I wasn’t sure what else I could say that didn’t sound like I was making excuses.
“Sure.” She turned to walk into her room, but I pressed my hand to the door to stop her from shutting it.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yeah. All good.”
This time I let her close the door on me, and I had to believe her, even though it was against my instincts to.
Twenty
“Your prince here to whisk you away in your carriage?”
Nikki leaned in the doorway of my bedroom, eyeing me as I sat at my desk, finishing applying my mascara.
I could tell Nikki was trying hard not to sound bitter. While we had “resolved” our argument from a few days ago, we tiptoed around each other and all the splintering cracks around us, like we were on thin ice that could give anywhere at any time.
“Princes are boring.” I offered her a faint grin. “Knights are better. They’re the ones with the swords and armor, and they do the fighting.”
“I guess that makes you a knight too.” Nikki shrugged. “Just don’t get too hung up in trying to save each other from trolls and dragons, or whatever it is that knights fight.”
The hint of comical smarm in her voice was her version of an olive branch. One time when we were in elementary school, she’d pushed me off the monkey bars because she wanted a turn, and at the time, skinning your elbows on concrete was pretty much the worst feeling in the world. I was beside myself for what felt like days. Instead of asking me for forgiveness, she drew me a picture of me with bandages on my arms and wrote (in very illegible five-year-old handwriting),sory you are no good at monke bars. Everything was fine after that.
“So wise.” I rolled my eyes. “Although I don’t think there are any trolls or dragons around here anyway.”
“True. Well, have a nice time.”
Nikki gave me one last smile, faint and fleeting like she was saying goodbye for what felt like more than one night, before leaving me to my own devices. Despite everything Brooklyn and I had done and had been through already, this was technically our first date, and it was still a little nerve-racking in its own way. I still felt like I was on the edge, but when I walked outside to see Brooklyn leaning against the door of his Jeep, I realized maybe it was an edge meant to be jumped off of.
A blast of the dipping sun in the oncoming dusk nearly blinded me, and Brooklyn’s bright-orange button-up shirt didn’t help. I smiled to myself at the wrinkles at the bottom hem of the shirt, as if he’d gone back and forth several times on whether to tuck it in or not. I knew he cleaned up well, but there was something about this version of him I liked better. The slight unruliness gave him a more unrefined attractiveness, and it made him more human.
“Are we going to direct traffic?” I joked.
He gave me a coy smile as he opened the passenger door for me. “I’m not giving anything away. You know, maybe I just like the color orange.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied.
He hopped into the driver’s seat, and the engine roared as he sped away down my street. The wind whipped through the car, and I silently thanked past me for a hairstyle that wouldn’t undo in the open air of the topless Jeep.
Brooklyn fiddled with the radio the way he always did, cranking the volume of his Deftones playlist to counteract the sound of the wind. It was moments like this when I wished I could stop time. We reallywerehappy, laughing and holding hands with the sun bathing our world in a golden light.
We hit the parkway, driving farther away from Dahlia Point than I’d been since living here. After enough speed and enough wind and more distance than I had been prepared to handle, Brooklyn pulled off at an exit and into a small town with one quiet main road, where a few pedestrians seemed to pay no mind to the one car driving down the street. He slowed to a stop in front of a tiny old brick building. I could barely make out the dark script imprinted on the front window.
“Villalobos,” Brooklyn told me. “It means Town of Wolves. My dad’s friend from college owns the place. It’s in the middle of nowhere—obviously—but they do killer business, and they have, in my unprofessional opinion, the best tacos on the East Coast.”
