“Fuck, Lind.” Micah sighs, leaning in—but I have to turn my head away just before our lips meet when my phone rings in my pocket.
“Why does this keep happening? You’re the only person I know who has their phone on loud.” Micah groans, but I just chuckle and reach up to hold a hand over his mouth while I glance at the screen.
“It’s Nicko,” I tell him, stretching up to peck his cheek, then accept the call.
“—uiet, I’m on the phone!”
“Yeah, Xan, be quiet, he’s on the phone!”
“You know very well he meant you, you—”
“Nicko!” I grin and wave at Micah, ducking through the door and down the stairs to my own room. “How are you? How was Amsterdam? And how’s New York?” I ask, letting myself fall onto my bed, turning on the video call, eager to hear about my best friend’s adventures.He already sent me a few pictures, but we haven’t had time to properly catch up.
Nicko turns on his video too, his pout morphing into that familiar grin. “Aw, you still haven’t put that olive tree outside, you big softie.”
“No.” I laugh. “We live in Vermont! I don’t want it to die.”
“Anyway, I ate so many Stroopwaffeln; it was awesome! And Xan got one hell of a sunburn the first day we were in Amsterdam,” Nicko says, lying back into some fluffed-up pillows.
For several minutes, he regales me with similar tales, making me laugh whenever he goes on longer about the food he ate rather than what sights they went to see or any museum he got dragged into by his boyfriend and brother. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to my best friend, but Nicko manages not to make me feel bad, giving me time to talk about my summer, too, askingme about the farm business, and then poking gentle fun when I admit he was right about Colin.
“Told you the guy’s an idiot,” he grouses.
“Yeah, but, uhm…without him, I might’ve never gotten with Micah.” I smile, laughing when Nicko sits up like I triggered a spring reflex, his green eyes big and round.
“Micah? Our Micah? Football Captain Micah?”
“Nicko! I wasn’t planning on all of New York knowing.” I snort but venture into a short retelling of my summer.
“Holy shit. Linden, you dog!”
“Don’t even!” I warn him with a smile, thinking about my plans later. It’s hard to comprehend how a few short weeks can turn my mind around so completely. By now, I cannot go back to understand why I ever thought agreeing to Colin’s plan was a good idea. Over the whole summer, I only got one text from him, not even asking how I was, just how far I’d gotten with experimenting.
And a picture of him lying on the beach.
Not that I was especially communicative either, but even the topics we would text about for hours are so distant now. When I let them pass, I realized we had spent a lot of time chatting about Europe and Colin’s travel plans. I’ve never even been there, and still I would look up all those place names, like I was going with him. It feels pathetic now.
I know I have to talk to Colin to clear things up, but I don’t want to do it over text. He’ll be back next week. Hopefully, by then I’ll know what to say to him.
When I focus back on my phone, I catch Nicko rubbing at his eyes.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Hm? Yeah, fine, just tired,” he says, running one hand through his hair, then tucks his arm behind his head.
Narrowing my eyes, I frown. Yes, Nicko looks exhausted, but there’s more to it. I can hear it in his voice, see it in the way his eyes dart around, looking at everything except his phone screen.
“C’mon, tell me,” I prompt, raising my eyebrows when Nicko opens his mouth to protest.
He sighs, then sinks back into his pillows. “Alright. We met with the team the other week and…you know how Xan and I wanted to tell them about us?”
I nod. Before the summer, Nicko had confided in me how nervous he was about that plan, but how he worried more about constantly living in fear of being discovered.
“And that didn’t go well?”
“Didn’t go at all,” Nicko grumbles. “The manager gave us a tour, and somehow ended up talking about some incident they had last year between a player and someone on the physician’s team. So now they have this anti-fraternization clause in all contracts.”
I blink. “So…so you can’t…”
