GROUNDING 🏈 Nick Bosa

#ONE HUNDRED TWENTY THREE.

Once Nick gets home. I wait for him to take a shower. I give him some personal space and sit in the upstairs living room.

The entire time he was gone running, my brain was committing war on itself. What could possibly be going on?

I still wasn't convinced the whole, "I want to take things slow, thing."

"Hey." He says, coming around the corner fully dressed in a salmon colored shirt and black shorts. He looked good in that color.

"I just really need you to explain to me, Nick..."

He sits down beside me on the couch and nods. "I will try my best, okay?"

I nod back, silently.

His eyes point up for a moment as if he was trying to find the right words. "I want to fuck you, trust me." He pauses, before licking his lips and continues. "—But I'm really, fucking emotionally, scarred. Liliana, you have to believe me when I say this.... This has made me not want anything psychical." He breaths heavily. "Fuuck..." He groans. "It's bad."

"What's bad?" I don't let up. "Explain to me."

He rubs his eyes as if he were also, very tired of thinking about this. "I'll tell you something really embarrassing, okay?" He can barely look at me as he says this.

"Okay?" I hold my breath.

He laughs, awkwardly. "Alright, so.. when you left.. I—I couldn't..." He starts to trail off as if he were about to abort whatever he was saying.

"It's okay." I tell him, and softly touch his forearm. "I won't judge you."

"My dick wouldn't work." He finally, says.

"Wha—what? What do you mean wouldn't work?"

"I couldn't get hard.. unless I was looking at a picture of you, or thinking about you, it was really fucking, embarrassing, Lili..."

I giggle a little.

"Stop." He gives me a stern look. "I was living in a nightmare."

"Well." I try to stop myself from giggling more. "That's obviously, not the problem now. So what is it?"

"I can't let that happen, again." He says.

"It won't, because I'm not going anywhere." I smile at him.

"You like sex, a lot don't you?" He quietly, asks.

"Yes, with you."

"—And what will happen if you don't get it?"

"Nothing." I breath. "Clearly, nothing will happen, Nick. Why, do you think I'm going to run off and fuck someone? —Because I didn't the entire time we were broken up."

"You didn't have him around." He then says, coldly.

"Who's him?" I narrow my eyes on his, but I had an idea where this was going...

"You know who I am talking about." He replies as if he read my mind.

"Joey?" I breath out his name.

He nods.

My skin instantly, ignites with anger. "So what is this, then? You're torturing me, aren't you?—Because that's how you felt."

"No." He quickly, says.

I take a moment to think. "—Oh, you want to make sure I don't fuck your brother again?" I finally say, my jaw clenches at the end of my sentence.

How many times would we have to go over this?

"No, I just want to make sure I don't end up as broken as he is now." He says, flatly.

I let that sentence absorb before replying. "—So Joey is sad?"

"Well, yeah, but I don't think it's something we should focus on right now."

"—But maybe we should, maybe we need to address the elephant in the room."

Nick stands up from the couch and starts pacing around. This gave me an eerie sense of déjà vu.

"—Because, Lili, he tried to go behind my back again. That day at the pizza shop... that wasn't a coincidence. He called your dad, he knew you were going to be there, Liliana. And then he took you on his boat?! When he knew I was coming over?'!" He roughly breaths. "I don't feel sorry for him... I love him, because he is my brother, but I don't feel sorry for taking you back."

All this was brand new to me. My heart galloped out of control beneath my breast bone. "Mark never told me about any of this?" My head started to spin. "—Are you sure this happened?"

"Joey told me that it happened."

I bite my bottom lip hard and try to remember details. That mother fucker...

"Nick.." I stay sitting calmly on the couch. "He wants us to be together, he told me that, that night. Maybe you're wrong?"

"No." He roughly, says. "No, he fucking doesn't and that scares me how you don't see it."

Maybe he was right, but maybe he was punishing the wrong person.

"So, this is all about him, then?" I ask.

"No, Liliana.. it's not. It's about me going in-fucking-sane again. My life.. my career.. I can't let that happen.. not again."

"You're testing me, then." I blankly, say.

"I'm not!" He groans.

"You are." I nod. "—And if you need me to be a good little girl, Nick. I'll show you a good little girl, okay?"

"Lili..." He breaths.

"What, Nick?"

"I don't want it to be like last time."

"It won't be." I reassure, him. And it wouldn't be.

Not ever.

If what he said was true about Joey, that was just enough to keep my distance from him, that sneaky son of a bitch..

"Good, I hope you don't think I'm a pussy." He says, before pulling me in closer to him. His eyes seemed even more tired than before.

"No, I think I get it now." I tell him untruthfully, a bit still confused.

I might not be able to be alone with Joey in psychical form, but he never said I couldn't call him. And once I had the time to do so privately, I wasn't going to hold back on Joey..

No wonder he looked so upset. All of what Nick said must have been true, and that also, meant that I needed to have a talk with Mark. Why would he not tell me about Joey?

I might have been even more confused at this point. I needed to talk to Joey asap....

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