I blink at him. “No! No, that’s not it at all.” Why would it be?
But Nico does something unexpected. He laughs. “I can’t believe I thought…” He shakes himself, pivots. “Sorry to break it to you, Sora, but a few summer food tours aren’t going to bring in enough to save this place. You can’t just come in and wave around that American can-do attitude like it’s going to fix everything, because it can’t. Some things just suck. I know you don’t believe it, but they do. Sometimes people can’t have it all.”
“Well, if you just explained what you need, I could—”
Nico puts his hands up and cuts me off. “Basta.”
“Fine! Fine. Just run away like you always do. Give up, accept defeat. Is that going to make you feel better?”
“Better than beating the same dead horse is going to make you! Do you think if you try it a third time it’s going to come to life again?”
I turn cold. “Excuse me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means… what did Wes have to say earlier?” Nico crosses his arms.
“Nothing. He apologized.” Why does it always,alwayscome back to Wes?
Nico is quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I wonder if heeven heard me. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, I hear Nico say, “You’re going to meet up with him again, aren’t you.”
He doesn’t even phrase it like a question, so I don’t know how to respond. Had I been going to agree? I don’t even know how to answer that for myself, much less to anyone else. It’s just not thateasy, no matter what Nico or Anya or Mari think, to cut yourself off from liking someone, just like that. I’ve liked Wes longer than I’ve even known him. Being with him feels easy, feels familiar, a life raft in a sea of change. I already know all the ways he can hurt me.
“You sound like you’ve already made up your mind about whether I am or not,” I say frostily. “So what does it matter how I answer? You’re not going to believe me anyway.”
Nico scoffs. “What are you doing, Soraya?”
“What do you mean what am I doing?” I stand up, dirty rag in hand, ready to defend myself.
“I thought you had more self-respect than this.”
It stings, the way he says it, like he’s disappointed. LikeI’vedisappointed him. And he sounds, in that moment, extraordinarily like the way Anya and Mari did whenever I asked them for advice, and they would shuffle me off with a pat,You know you’re better than this. Talking to me like I don’t know my own worth, like I’m stupid and pathetic for liking a boy. But Nico hasn’t finished.
“You go crawling back to this guy even when he’sshown you over and over what you mean to him, because you don’t want to let go. Even this B and B—you didn’t even know we existed two weeks ago.”
I hadn’t even agreed to go see Wes, but admitting that now feels like surrender. So I pull myself up to my full height and dig my heels in. “Wow, Nico. Wow. Self-respect. It’s so easy to point fingers at everyone else, but what about you? You’re going to slink around in your mom’s shadow for, what, ever? All while you keep telling yourself that there’s nothing better out there? Well, here’s a question—how would you even know? You’ve never left home! And now you claim you don’t like university even though we all see you, every day, burying your nose in your books because really, you’re just scared. And for someone who’s too scared to go live his own life, you sure have a lot of opinions about how I should live mine.”
Nico’s eyes flash with a mix of fury and hurt. His voice gets low and shaky. “The people who are close to you, they care about you. There’s a reason we all say the same thing. He seems like a bad guy.”
“Yeah, well. Why can’t you let me figure that out for myself? Instead of acting like you know so much better.” I spit his own words back at him. “You’re right. Two weeks ago, I didn’t know this B and B existed. Which means that two weeks ago, you didn’t know me, either. So don’t pretend like you care so much when we both know that all you care about is whether I leave a good review.”
Nico stands there, staring at me, like he can’t believewhat he’s hearing, and his face is as clear as a glass pane. He’s trying to decide how much I actually mean the things I’ve said, the things I regret almost immediately but can’t take back.
And then he says the worst thing he could say—not because it’s mean, but because I’ve never felt smaller: “Seems like you don’t know that much about me, either.”
I watch as he walks away. I’ve gotten really good at that—it’s practically a superpower by now. I want to tell him that I don’t really believe what I said. That I was only trying to hurt him because he hurt me. That I know he cares about me, because how could I not? That the last two weeks have felt closer to a lifetime. The door slams shut behind him.
I pick up my backpack, its sudden weight reminding me that I still have his thank-you gift. I pull it out and rip open the brown paper, revealing a large bag of the pistachio hazelnut chocolates I’ve been stealing from the front desk. He’d noticed after all, and never called me out on it, just let me go on enjoying them.
There’s something taped to the back of the chocolates. It’s a small rectangular packet—a tiny envelope. Nico has gifted me a pack of lemon seeds. On it, he’s writtenFor irritabile Soraya, for her lemon paradise. I nearly drop to my knees. Tears sting my nose before I choke them back.
It’s fine. Whatever. It’s just chocolate and lemon seeds. Anyone would have noticed that I devoured that bowl—I inhaled like twenty in one day. And Nico probablyhad that packet of seeds hanging around—threw them in since we talked about it. I should stop reading into any of this, because the truth is, I’ll never see Nico again after this week. Who knows if Anya and Mari want to stay in my life. What is sure—what is guaranteed—is that Wes and I will be at college together come fall. I take my phone from my pocket and pull up the familiar chat, still populated with our last messages, arranging to meet before everything had fallen to shit.
You’re right. It would be great to have a do-over. Can I come see you?
I’m in the mood to blow my entire life up.
CHAPTER 35
My least favorite part aboutfighting is that once I come down from all the anger, only sadness remains. I can’t even conjure up any righteousness to cling to, because he hadn’t really done anything for me to be upset with him about. He didn’t deserve what I said. My throat is clenched and my chin is wobbling and even now I feel tears stinging hotly in my eyes. I wish so badly to take back all those things I said. I keep thinking about how hurt he looked, how defeated he’d been when he walked away, and I wince every time the image flashes through my mind. I rummage through my bag until I find the pistachio chocolates, shoving them into my mouth by the handful, but all they taste like is guilt. Now even my favorite candy is ruined. I force down another handful, determined to eat as many as it takes for them to not taste terrible anymore. I walk to the address Wes texted as my mind spins and spins.
