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I nod. “So you’re really not going to let me in? Or go get him?”
Nick dips back inside briefly and emerges with a small red cooler. He checks the set of keys on his belt, then steps out, shutting the apartment door behind him. Closing away any glimpse I hoped to get of Henry. “Have you ever seen the Hollywood sign?”
* * *
I follow Nick up a staircase, past a door that reads Do Not Enter—Alarm Will Sound!, and out onto the roof. No alarm sounds. Scattered pebbles and satellite dishes aside, the rooftop of this building gives a panoramic view of the city. I see the Hollywood sign in plain view, and my breath skips. I turn to another side and see skyscrapers that must be downtown.
I follow Nick over to a couple of lawn chairs set up on one side of the roof. “This is incredible.”
He places the cooler down next to the chairs and kicks it open. He holds up two bottles of beer, a Stone IPA and a Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin. An offering. I never did grow to enjoy beer, perhaps a little traumatized from my first experience with it on the New York trip, but I nod and point to the Sculpin. Nick flips off the cap with an opener on his keys, then hands the cold bottle to me. He gestures for me to sit down on the low, neon green chair as he pops off the other cap, and I fumble to do so. He squats down onto the bright blue one, this motion seeming to be second nature for him.
“Do you know much about me?” Nick asks finally.
I shake my head. “I know you used to have a lot of sex on Henry’s couch? That…that’s about it.”
He grimaces, running a hand along his chest, revealing another tattoo of twisting vines just below the V neckline of his shirt.
“Never gonna move past that, is he?” Nick mutters. “Henry and I were roommates freshman year at UCLA. I didn’t get him for the longest time. He didn’t go out. Didn’t drink. A real nerd.” Nick laughs softly, and underneath, I can see all the affection he has for Henry. “Meanwhile, I was a complete mess, drunk on the freedom of being independent for the first time and way too many cheap-ass beers. We weren’t really buddies yet, but one night, he—” Nick pauses, gripping the neck of his bottle hard. “He helped me out. And that night changed everything.
“I’d just found out my parents were back together. Had a real on-again/off-again thing. They divorced when I was thirteen, and as soon as I left for college, they were back on. The whole shebang, all over again. When I mentioned this to Henry, his eyes fucking lit up. He had so many questions. How they got back together, all this stuff I didn’t know and didn’t want to think about. That was when I first learned about you. As soon as I knew that his moping was about a girl, it all made sense.”
I didn’t particularly remember Henry moping through the rest of high school, but I was also in a complete grief stupor and had made it a point to think about and engage with him as little as possible. So who knows.
Nick takes another sip of beer. “I was the one who had to break him out of this goddamn spell he’d been under. Drag him out with me. Make him make friends. Make him meet girls. He wouldn’t take a sip of booze until April of freshman year. April. He kept saying that the one time he drank in high school, he ruined everything. That first night I got him drunk, you know what he did? Started reciting calculus. Fucking derivatives. And then he got sad, and we were back to the girl next door who he’d never get over.
“And now here he is again, only this time it’s so much worse than when he was my scrawny nerd of a roommate. He’s a wreck, Norah. That’s why I can’t let you see him. I don’t trust you with him.”
He’s trying to protect Henry. From me.
“But your parents. They got back together.” I’m grasping at straws. Anything to crack this guy next to me open just a little bit.
Nick snorts, shakes his head. “They got divorced again eighteen months later, and now they hate each other so much they can’t stand to be in the same room, even if it’s filled with two hundred other people. Not even for my brother’s graduation. So forgive me if I have trouble believing it ever works out when it already failed once. Or twice.”
Not the response I was hoping for. Man, he really does not want me here. Yet he’s still sitting next to me, slowly sipping his IPA. So there must be a chance, however slim.
I pick at the label on the bottle of beer I’m barely drinking. “How long has he been here?”
“A month, maybe?”
“A month?”
“Yeah, he was in Chicago for a while, with your moms, but then he went back to New York for all of three days before he called me. He said being in his apartment was unbearable. That the city was suffocating. He had to get out. I told him he was lucky I never got another roommate when he moved east. Made his room a photo studio I barely ever use, and now it’s his again. For as long as he needs.”
“He’s lucky to have you” is all I can muster.
“There is no better man than Henry Cole,” he says. “I would do anything for that guy, and it still wouldn’t measure up to everything he’s done for me.” Nick doesn’t elaborate any further, but I feel the weight of his words heavy in my chest.
“No one better,” I say softly in agreement.
Nick gives me a tight-lipped half smile, which feels like we’re slowly inching toward progress.
“He knows I’m here?”
Nick nods.
“And he really doesn’t want to see me?”
The sun is starting to set, painting the Los Angeles sky with swirls of pink and purple. It’s the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen but it starts to blur, becoming more like a Monet piece, as the tears build behind my eyes.
