Cooper stared at him. “Those drugs are for anxiety, which you don’t have.”
Nico’s bottom lip curled, his voice cracking again, “I’d very much like to be sedated right now.”
The orange glow of the fire flickered over Nico’s face, and Cooper noticed tears caressing the other man’s cheek.
“Drowning your feelings right now isn’t going to help you long term. What happens when you stop,ifyou stop? You’re only delaying the inevitable.” Cooper sat back down and gestured for Nico to do the same. “Sooner or later, you’re going to crash. It’s better to break now when there’s nobody else around you.”
“I think I’d like to take you up on your offer of nottalking,” Nico said as he sat back down, pulling his arms tight around his body.
They both sat in silence for a while, but since Cooper’s phone was off, he had no idea how much time had passed. The boy sitting across from him stared blankly ahead, not at Cooper, but right past him. Cooper imagined the kind of battles going off in Nico’s mind and wanted to comfort him, but he needed to keep his promise—to shut the fuck up.
As the fire died down, Cooper got up and added another log to embers. “Are you hungry?”
Nico shook his head. Cooper was hungry himself, but he wasn’t going to set up the campfire kitchen he had purchased to make food for one. Instead, he grabbed a bag of chips and popped it open.
“Can you make me feel better?” Nico asked, his voice barely audible over the cracking of the fire.
It was a terrible time for his request too, as Cooper chomped down on a mouthful of wavy chips. He chewed as fast as he could and tongued the inside of his mouth. “I’m not going to comfort you by saying I know how you feel, because the truth is that I don’t know how you feel.”
“You’ve lost people.”
“Everyone loses people.” Cooper rolled up the bag of chips and placed them on a stone beside his chair. “We lose them in different ways and we grieve that loss differently. So no, I don’t know how you feel.”
“Empty.”
And Nico looked every bit of it, his face washed out and eyes that didn’t waver.
“Like there’s a piece of you missing?”
“I look at this life and I…” Nico stopped himself and exhaled. “What was the fucking point?”
“Of?”
“All of this.” Nico gestured outward as he rose to his feet. He began to pace back and forth. “The only reason I started playing football was because I felt like I needed to finish what my brother started. He was on the verge of going pro before it all went to shit. I’ve lived so much of my life filling the void he left behind that I don’t know who I am.”
“I’m going to ask you a question and I don’t want you getting mad at me,” Cooper said and waited for the other man to stop pacing. “Do you even like playing football?”
Nico twisted back to Cooper. “Of course I do. It’s what I’m good at.”
“I know you’re fucking good at it, but that wasn’t the question.”
“It wouldn’t have been my first choice in life, but it’s a little late to change direction.”
“It’s never too late to live the life you want to live.” Cooper knew his words of wisdom were more than a little hypocritical.
“And this is the life you want to live?”
It was a pointed question. One that Cooper could only respond to by changing the goalpost. “We’re not here to talk about me.”
“We don’t talk about what’s happened between us, like ever.” Nico stepped closer to the fire, as close as he could without walking right into it. The only thing that separated them was the forks of the fire that rose to their waists. “We don’t talk about that shrine in your bedroom. We don’t talkabout all the times we’ve gotten pissed off at each other and went months without talking. I want you to talk to me about these things so I don’t feel so fucking crazy.”
Cooper traveled all the way from Ohio to Florida to comfort Nico. He calculated how many miles he’d need to drive, how long those miles would take to travel, how many times he’d need to stop for gas, but he foolishly hadn’t calculated that comforting someone else often meant being vulnerable yourself. Honestly, what the fuck did he expect? He’d ride down to Orlando to save Nico like a knight in shining armor and they wouldn’t talk about the horrible way things ended the last time they saw each other?
Fuck.
Nico grew tired of waiting for Cooper to say anything and glided back into his chair. His fingers drummed on the edge of the arm of the camping chair. Cooper knew the look on Nico’s face all too well and he was about to start prying.
“What was Luke like?” Nico asked.
