Page 31 of Into the Deep Blue

Nick’s dad’s truck is in the driveway when we pull in. The crater-sized dent seems to punctuate it like an exclamation point. Even Nick’s accidents tell a story. It looks worse under the high noon sun than it did yesterday.

I turn off the car, but Nick doesn’t move.

“You ready?” I ask.

He stares straight ahead. I’m not sure what to do. Leaving him feels wrong, so I get out of the car.

He turns my way.

“What are you doing?”

I duck my head through the open window.

“Being supportive?”

“Fi, this is my mess. You should go.”

It’s the first time he hasn’t asked me to stay, but I don’t think he means it.

“He can’t kill you if there’s a witness.”

He gets out of the car, looking beyond ridiculous in my pants.

“Unless he kills both of us, and it’s a solid possibility.”

“I’m staying.”

The walk up the driveway is a quiet one, mostly because of the pain Nick’s in.

He didn’t eat the Eggo.

He couldn’t be in worse shape for a fight. His shoulders sag, and his face is resigned like he’s already gone through the argument in his head a million times, and now he has to go through it in real-time.

He pulls open the screen door, and it lets out a piercing squeak to announce us.

His dad’s feet thud against the ceiling where his room is and stop when the door closes. Nick tenses. He drops his backpack on the floor, and I follow him into the kitchen. He pulls a couple of Cokes from the fridge.

His dad comes downstairs. “.”

He acknowledges me with a curt nod, not surprised to see me, before turning to Nick.

“You think we’re not going to have this conversation if she’s here.”

Nick opens the can.

“What conversation?”

“What the hell happened to my truck?”

“I was sideswiped.”

“By what? A lamp post? Cost me eighty bucks for an Uber out there. Plus the damages. You know you’re paying for it! All of it.”

Nick bites his lip and keeps his eyes on the floor.

“Yeah, I figured.”

“I heard you were drinking.”

Nick meets my eyes as if I’m the one who asked the question.

“Not while I was driving.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

His dad pushes past us and moves deeper into the kitchen, sorting through a folder of contracts on the counter.

“Yeah, Dad. You are.”

“Convenient, isn’t it? Hiding out at your girlfriend’s all night and having her dad cover for you.”

It’s the dragging Dad into it that gets me.

“He’s telling the truth.”

Mr. Bennet scoffs.

“And how would you know? You said you didn’t know where he was on the phone.”

“Because I trust him. And I figured it out, which is kind of like your one job.”

Nick darts his head toward me. Mr. Bennet gives me a contemptuous smirk, but I don’t care. I’m so sick of the way he treats me, and I can’t imagine how Nick feels living with him.

“She has a point,”

Nick says with a shrug.

“Trust is earned.”

Mr. Bennet grabs his blazer from the chair.

“When is this going to end, Nick?”

He softens, a hint of humanity coming through.

“What more can I possibly do? Do you think I forced her to stay? I didn’t lock her up in the basement!”

“No, you would have to be home to do that.”

“She didn’t want me to be home! She didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Yeah, because you’re an asshole!”

Mr. Bennet sighs.

“Why am I the asshole? Because I’m trying to live some kind of life? Because I’m not moping around, wrecking cars?”

“Dad, you were cheating on her for years!”

“She knew!”

“Why didn’t you just get divorced?”

“She didn’t want that, either!”

“You bought her the plane ticket!”

Nick yells.

The room goes quiet. If a bush was nearby, I’d slowly back into it. His dad straightens like those were the words he was waiting to hear.

“So, I killed her? Is that what this is? You need me to be the one who killed her? I didn’t make her take that trip.”

“But you bought the ticket,”

Nick repeats. It’s barely a whisper.

His dad shifts his gaze between us.

“You two think you’re so smart. Yeah? Give it time. One day, you’ll be the assholes. Funny how that works. There’s accountability. Nobody killed her. She wasn’t Mother Teresa. She knew what she was doing.”

His voice grows louder.

“And I’m sick of this! It’s time to get your shit together. Move on! Stop this deferring bullshit! Do something with your life. I’m not going to keep enabling this . . . you know what? You’re fired!”

“You’re firing me?”

Nick’s eyes are wide in disbelief.

“Yeah, that’s right. I thought therapy was helping. I thought you were better.”

Nick’s eyes flutter in astonishment. Therapy isn’t a magic eraser for loss. There is no better, only better than yesterday, but his dad doesn’t get it.

He grabs his wallet from the table.

“Well, this asshole has an appointment. We’ll finish this later.”

“Say hi to Brooklyn!”

His dad throws open the screen door, and it bounces off the porch railing before slamming behind him. His truck tears out of the driveway.

Nick buries his face in his hands.

“Thanksgiving will be a blast this year.”

I look at him.

“Don’t do that. It’s not funny.”

“I know!”

“He has a point, you know.”

He straightens, narrowing his eyes at me. “What?”

“Did you even think about how wildly irresponsible and dangerous that was?”

“No! Did you when you rock jumped into the middle of the ocean?”

“No! But that was different.”

His eyes widen.

“How was it different? Oh, right,”

he says, snapping his fingers.

“because your dad didn’t find out, so you still get to be ‘perfect .’”

“I didn’t break the law.”

He tilts his head to the side.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure you did. But I didn’t!”

“You were wasted! Big difference.”

“Not while I was driving.”

He directs a pointed finger at me, his voice firm.

“And you’re being such a hypocrite. I was with you the whole weekend for your thing.”

He says it like he was held at gunpoint. Like it was another duty to cross off the court-mandated checklist.

“Wow. I’m so sorry you had to suffer through that.”

He steps toward me and stops when I back away.

“Why do you get to have a thing, but when I need one ounce of support, you come at me instead?”

I pretend to check a watch I’m not wearing.

“Look at that. Took two minutes for your dad’s prophecy to come true.”

It takes a second for him to get it. He starts to slow clap.

“Wow. Well done. Pretty sure it was assholes—plural.”

I roll my eyes.

“And my thing was about healing and moving on.”

“Oh. So you’re grieving better than me?”

“Yours was destruction and chaos.”

He squints at me.

“Because I was drunk?”

“More than drunk.”

“And that’s the great qualifier of appropriate healing? You’re just pissed because you had to hike for five miles!”

“Ten,”

I yell.

“Ten miles!”

“I spent ten hours in a car with you, driving to Monterey.”

“Yeah, ten hours sitting in a car. I hiked for you—in the woods full of serial killers!”

He flutters his eyes as if it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard.

“There are no serial killers in the woods, !”

“That’s where they all are! And I thought you wanted to go to Monterey.”

My head is spinning. This went from zero to a hundred, and I need to get out of here. I fly out the screen door and run down the stairs.

Nick bursts out behind me. He’s shouting.

“For you. To be with you.”

He grabs my arm and swings in front of me.

“What are we even arguing about?”

“What happened to the truck? That wasn’t a sideswipe.”

He takes a step back.

“Fine. I went to the gym, okay? I knew you were working and wanted to talk to you, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to go in there and mess things up for you anymore, so I paced around, and when I finally took off, I hit one of those stupid metal barriers. That’s what happened to the truck.”

I close my eyes. I know it’s true.

“Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?”

“Because I felt like a loser! And a bad influence, and . . . ”

He blinks.

“And an asshole, I guess.”

“What would have happened—”

I can barely get out the words. Tears pool in my eyes, and they’re burning because only I would have tears that burn.

“If I hadn’t shown up?”

Nick deflates at the sight. He wipes his eyes.

“When I saw the truck, I didn’t know what I’d find.”

My voice breaks.

“And I couldn’t find you, and I didn’t know what to do.”

I thought I’d lost him forever.

“Ten stupid waterfalls.” The tears win. They raise their victory flag. Ugly sobs escape me.

Nick pulls me into his chest.

“I’m sorry.”

He wraps his arms around me, holding me until his shirt is wet from my tears. When my crying stops, we just hold each other for a while. I raise my face to his.

And he kisses me.

It’s careful, his lips, soft and warm, but quickly the kiss becomes a riptide of want. Reality becomes a distant memory. All that matters is this feeling, but then some part of my subconscious kicks in, and I push him away. My mind is racing. I’m so confused. All I can think is No. Nononono.

This. Us. We can’t be an us. I wipe my eyes and collected takes over.

“It’s the grief.”

He closes his eyes.

“It’s not the grief.”

“This isn’t real.”

“Bullshit,” he says.

“You think you’re feeling things for me, but you’re not. I’ve seen it on TikTok.”

I can’t fill this void that he has. I don’t want to.

“Do you honestly believe that? What about Monterey? Are you telling me you didn’t feel something?”

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. With him hung over and us fighting in his driveway.

My gaze shifts to the ground.

“I felt the tequila.”

He steps away from me.

“So that’s what it takes to be into me?”

“No! That’s not what I mean. You’re a great guy!”

“Oh my god. Stop.”

He sweeps his hand through his hair.

“I guess that explains the night at my house, too? And what about Starbucks, when I touched you, it was what? The sugar high?”

Of course, he knew. He searches my eyes as if he can pull some kind of feeling from me, but the harder he tries, the more my fortress walls grow. I can be his friend. I can love him like that, but this is too much, so I give him nothing.

“It’s fucked up, don’t you think?”

he says.

“Whatever this is. It’s mutated into some whole other thing, and I know you know that. You have to know that, right? What are we doing, Fi?”

“You just feel obligated to be here for me . . . ”

He paces in front of me.

“I know how I feel.”

Then it comes to me. The real reason he cares so much.

“Maybe you just want to protect me—”

He shakes his head as if everything I’m saying is nonsense. “No.”

“Because you couldn’t protect her.”

He stiffens and tilts his head as if a gear has clicked into place inside of him. He slides his hands down his face.

“Wow. What the hell?”

He can deny it all he wants, but the idea takes root and multiplies behind his eyes. It tells me I’m right, and it sucks because I didn’t want to be.

“That’s all this is.”

For once, I get the checkmate. Maybe now he’ll understand that these feelings are about our baggage as much as us.

He leans against my car, folds his arms, and squints toward the maple tree in his yard, where a bird chirps. Then he looks at me.

“Fi, this was never about saving you. It was about supporting you—supporting each other. This isn’t a fairy tale.”

He stops and stares at the driveway. When he looks up again, there’s a calmness behind his eyes.

“All this other bullshit—sounds like it’s what you want to believe. Yeah, I have regrets, but this,”

he waves a hand between us.

“has always been about you and me. Not my mother, yours, or anybody else, and I’m real clear on that. I don’t feel any obligation, I just care about you. I . . . ” His eyes close, and he stops himself from saying the words I know are meant to follow.

But Nick can’t love me. I’m hollow inside.

“I’m not projecting. And this needs to stop. I can’t do it anymore.”

He pushes away from my car.

“I think we should stop seeing each other—for a while, anyway.”

“Yeah,”

I agree, doubling down on this horrible decision.

I already miss him, and he’s right in front of me. I need to get out of here.

In the movies, the girl gets in her car, drives away, and races back a minute later to profess her love. But I don’t do any of that.

I get in my car and back out of the driveway. I don’t even say goodbye. I commit to my bullshit and leave. At least I can commit to something.