“Me? Why me?”
She shifted the freezing can to the other hand. “Because. There’s more to you than you let on. A lot more.”
Nick sucked in a breath. “Okay. I’ll admit, youaresurprising the shit out of me right now.”
They stood like that for long moments. His eyes looked so different than they had at school. She still couldn’t read them, exactly, but the hard wall had given way to something else,like he had a whole continent inside him, just waiting to be discovered.
“You said you write a lot,” she ventured. “What do you write? Stories?”
“Letters, mostly.” He swallowed. “To my mom.”
“Do you give them to her?”
“She’s dead. So, no.”
“Oh.” Aubrey deflated. “Damn. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged a bony shoulder. “It happens. I don’t even remember her, to be honest. Just snippets. I have these memories of... soft hands. Short fingers. This smell, like some kind of flower. And she used to tell me stories. She’d get up close to my ear and tell me the same few fairy tales, over and over. I remember that much, that they were always the same. I just wish I could remember what they were about.”
Her gut tightened. “Couldn’t you ask your dad?”
Nick shook his head. “He’s a dick. She might’ve been an angel, but the other half of me is pure, grade A asshole. For better or for worse.”
“That doesn’t makeyouan asshole, though.”
He grated out a laugh.
Silence welled. She couldn’t stop her attention from straying again. His leanness broke her heart, each sparse line a testament to scarcity.
Somehow, the fact that he’d let her see felt monumental. Not like he stood half naked in her kitchen, but as if he’d peeled back his skin to allow her a glimpse of the glistening bones beneath, the rhythmic squeeze of his heart.
“Are you hungry?” she heard herself say.
He chuckled without humor. “What, right now? Or always?”
“Both.”
“Yeah,” he said simply.
“Well, I’ve got plenty to eat.” She held out a hand for his sweatshirt. “I’ll clean that. You can help yourself.”
He nodded and moved to the fridge, the voltage in the air cooling to something resembling normality. Aubrey scrubbed at Nick’s sweatshirt in the sink. While she worked, he tore through three meals’ worth of leftovers. He didn’t bother to reheat anything, though a microwave sat in plain view.
The water ran pink, chilling her fingers. When she finished, she handed back the soaked shirt. “I’ll go grab something dry from my dad’s closet. You can bring it back to me at school.”
“Okay.” Nick carried his dishes to the sink. “Thanks.”
She mounted the stairs to her parents’ bedroom, where a quick search of her dad’s closet produced a checkered flannel.
Downstairs, she found the kitchen empty. Nick’s dishes had been dried and put away, so she continued into the living room. She found him by the coffee table, stuffing his wet sweatshirt into his backpack. The knobs of his vertebrae marched down his back.
She drew close, her pulse a wild tangle. He’d pulled out a few books and set his notebook on top with the cover folded back. Tight words crowded the page, not spaced out or bulleted, the way class notes would be.
Nick caught her looking and flipped the notebook shut.
“Can I read one?” She offered the flannel, which he pulled on. “Of your letters?”
He layered his bomber jacket over the borrowed shirt. “Not those. They’re for my mom. But I could write one for you, if you want.”
