Thomas and Niko in the City of Trees

Chapter 14 - Part 1

I wouldn't say Lexie got mad at me over what went down. But she did get pretty sad, and I think that's probably worse. We got back to her house and said goodbye in sort of a distant way, and I drove Thomas's car home. Later that night, as I lay on my bed just looking up at the ceiling, I got this feeling I haven't had in a long time. I was so uncertain of my next move, so afraid of what the fallout might be if I made one more wrong choice that I literally couldn't move. Even the act of reaching for my phone seemed too risky, so I didn't do it. I don't know how long I went on like that, just frozen in fear, but I do know that after a while I got pretty freaked out, at that turned into panic, and finally I yelled out a little bit and flipped over and punched my pillow many times until I calmed down.

I text him the next day, during the afternoon lull at work. I say, "Sorry for not talking yesterday."

"It's fine," he replies. "Didn't mean to interrupt your hangout with Lexie."

"How is the trip?"

For about five minutes, I don't get anything from him. Then he says: "Can I just call you?"

"Sure."

My phone rings immediately. I pick up and we're just kind of greeting each other and shooting the shit for a minute, and then it gets quiet, and I can hear him breathing in and out. And then he says this: "I can't stop thinking about you, Niko."

"I'm the same as I always was," I say. I lean my head out the serving window and I'm just taking in my surroundings, the greenest of greens and bluest of blues, and all that shit.

"I didn't know you could be this for me," he says.

"What's that mean?"

"I didn't know you could be this person."

"What person?"

"The person I can't stop thinking about."

I take a breath. I'm going to say it. Someone has to. "What about Madison? Have you thought about her?"

Thomas pauses. A long sigh crackles through. "Come on, man, why do you have to bring her up?"

"You know why."

Look, I don't know what the hell I'm doing, stirring up all this shit. I want this to be a nice phone call, where I get to listen to his voice and hear how he's taking to this big new place I can hardly imagine. But I'll tell you now, I just can't seem to let it go.

"Of course I've thought about her," he says. "How could I not?"

"Okay," I say. The call falls silent again. I can just about hear the buzzing of his thoughts on the other end.

"How's Lexie?" he says.

"Not good," I say. "She wanted to have some fun yesterday and I said no. I've never said no before."

"What the fuck did you do that for?"

"I don't know, man, I just—I couldn't." I pause. "We were in your car...and I guess everything was just sort of making me think of you...and I couldn't do it."

More silence. "I've been thinking of you, too," he finally says.

What a dumbass. I know that already. He fucking told me. "You're the one who said this could never lead anywhere, remember?"

"Yeah, I know," he says slowly. "That's been on my mind a lot."

I give him a moment, but he's not elaborating. "And?"

"And I just don't know how I feel, okay? I remember what I said. But that was before we..." He stops himself. "Come on, you let me put myself inside you, Niko. Jesus, dude, can you blame me for feeling a little different after that?"

Of course I don't blame him. He's not the only one who feels different. "I need to be honest," I say. "All of this stuff—how we keep trying to do both and all that...it's going to crash and burn. I don't know when, but I know it will."

"I know," he says.

"Then why are we still doing it?"

"I don't know, dude," he says. "I don't know."

"We have to choose," I say. "We can't have both." Shit, I'm really trying to keep it together all of a sudden. "What do you want?"

"Come on, man, it's you and me. We tried to stop...but we couldn't. Clearly it's what I want."

"Then we know what we have to do."

"Yeah," he says. "Lying to her all this time—it's been tearing me apart."

I don't say anything else at this point. I decide I'm just going to let him figure out how to wrap up this conversation. Just leave everything in his hands. All of it.

"Tell you what," he says. "We've got Markham's camping thing this weekend. Let's put all of this on hold until that's over. Then we'll just fucking deal with it. How's that sound?"

I don't answer him right away. It's not like I owe him a punctual answer at this point—that much is for sure. He can wait. I'm thinking about it for a minute. I'm thinking that he's right. it would help to at least know when the hell I can expect this mess to be cleaned up, to have some kind of timeline in mind. "Next week, we're dealing with it," I say.

"That's right, dude," he says. "It's all about next week." He's sounding so goddamn eager that I want to throw up. "We'll take care of this shit. I promise."

We don't say much else. I try to get a sense of how he's liking life in the city, but he doesn't have much to tell me about it. He says he's been spending most of his time with his cousins in the next town over.

Before hanging up, he says, "Try texting a little more often."

"Fuck you," I say. "You try texting a little more often."

He laughs. We say goodbye.