Nick doesn't hesitate; from the corner of my eye, I see him wave goodbye to my mom as he follows me to the front door.
"Stay out of my room." I remind the boys, giving them 'mom-eyes' so that they know to take me seriously. I haven't been the best role model for them the past year, but they grew up treating me like a second mother. I basically became one when my dad died.
"Have fun, sweetie!" Mom calls as I open the door, glancing back to wave her off. It's not exactly a 'fun' sort of scenario, butI guess I didn't tell her that. I just told her I was going out with Nick for a bit.
She uses a grip on Cici's tiny wrist to make her wave to me, and I can't fight it this time. I smile, already looking forward to coming back home and kissing her chubby cheeks.
Finding out that mom was pregnant at her age was a shock, not just because I'm newly-twenty, but because my dad has been dead for six years. I didn't know she was seeing anyone because apparently, she wasn't. It was completely casual, she explained, and the father wouldn't be involved. I still don't know who my sister's father is, and I don't expect I ever will, unless she one day decides to hunt him down. Mom claims he was just passing through, but we're not exactly a tourist location.
Church and Lakes, North Carolina isn't a place you go for fun. I mean, just say that name again.
Church and Lakes. Not only is it stupid, it'sliteral.
There's not much in this town besides, you guessed it, churches and lakes. During the summer, the lakes can be a nice destination for picnics or afternoon strolls, but they're nothing anyone is driving here just to see. During the winter, though, I suppose there's a certain draw.
Being a religious town, they tend to take Christmas pretty seriously. It's beautiful, I suppose. Everyone in my neighborhood dresses their house in lights and wreaths and lawn ornaments and life-size nativity scenes that are actually really fucking creepy when you look out the window at three a.m. and think you're seeing someone standing in your neighbor's yard watching you.
Even the people who tend to avoid church the majority of the year show up for Christmas Mass at one of the five churches in town, and everything else closes to allow for observance of the holiday. Literally, everything. If you have an emergency, you've got to drive thirty miles to the next nearest ER.
Now that I'm older, and no longer someone who attends church every single Sunday, I realize it's a bit culty, but I'd never tell that to my mom.
Nick, however, isn't free from me telling him how I feel about it all. Luckily, he seems to understand. His father's a preacher at the smallest church in town, and he was fully indoctrinated from birth. Once we were old enough to think for ourselves, he became pretty cynical of it all.
I slink into the passenger seat and wait for him to turn the car on before leaning forward to turn the heat up to the max.
"Really?" He teases, tossing his scarf onto the center console and stripping his gloves off by the fingers.
"You know I hate the cold." I remind him, crossing my arms for the little bit of heat it will provide me until the car gets toasty enough.
"I remember," he chuckles, tapping a button in between our seats. "Seat warmers." He explains with a soft smirk.
I relax into the warmth, feeling immediately better about going out tonight. Maybe it won't be that bad, after all.
Nick and I were best friends for years; surely I can make it through the car ride with him. It's just ten minutes to his father's church— the one where Noah killed himself.
As much as I'm dreading being back there again, a small part of me is actually looking forward to seeing the friends I haven't talked to in nearly a year.
"I've missed you, Nikki," Nick says. When I look at him, there's an easy grin on his lips, and he looks so much like the kid he used to be that I can almost feel my defenses failing.
The truth is I've missed him too. I lost my boyfriend and all of our other friends at the same time.
The truth is, he was the only one who stayed with me when they all left for schools in other parts of the country or towns far away.
But it's not their fault that they moved on. That's what we're supposed to do, right? Grow up and start families of our own, create our own futures, independent of where we came from. It's what Noah and I planned to do, even though I couldn't possibly move away and leave my mom to juggle all the kids herself.
When I told him on graduation day that I wasn't going anywhere, that I couldn't follow through on my acceptance to Penn State because it was too far, he decided to stay too.
He told me I was his future, and he was mine, but now he's gone.
And he took it from me.
Anger has been just as potent as grief this last year, and I'm not even sure I've forgiven him yet for the choice he made.
In a way, I guess he moved on too.
I'm the only one who's still stuck here, hoping for something more.
"Oh," Nick glances behind him, looking into the back seat, and the car begins to swerve into the next lane.
