Thomas and Niko in the City of Trees

Chapter 6 - Part 1

For the whole entire weekend, Lexie and I hang out. And I mean it—other than going home to sleep, we're around each other all the time. When you're a couple, it's expected that you spend a lot of time together, and I'm feeling pretty good about making up for my recent absence. We have a lot of fun just smoking up, avoiding her parents, and doing some other things I won't mention here. It's the first time since Thomas quit talking to me that I've managed to forget about him.

Lexie is golden. After Thomas, she's my best friend in the world. Her insanely long hair, the way she throws her hips back and forth in an absent kind of way whenever music's playing, all of it is just so enchanting. She'll do the hip thing with her back to me, just going through her jewelry box as I'm lying there on her bed. The sunlight pours in through her open window after passing through the tree branches outside. It makes this complicated, shifting pattern on the floor that I could stare at for hours on end.

She passes Madison's updates along to me. Madison says he's just going through some stuff and he'll be fine. I don't ask for any more information than what Lexie shares with me.

It's Sunday night when we finally decide we'll do our own thing for a while. I've kind of been itching to check in with my mom, anyway. I get home around seven and she's not there. She usually doesn't leave early for work, so I text her. She texts back and says she's running some errands first. She normally spends a lot more time at home than this. I'm starting to wonder if she might be seeing someone. Don't ask me if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. I have no idea.

I kill time for an hour or two. It gets dark outside. It starts raining, of all things, but I guess it's technically still spring. I didn't even notice the clouds coming in.

I'm just lying there on the couch, about to put something on TV. I'm not really feeling much of anything, if I'm honest. All of a sudden my phone goes off, and I look at the screen and it's a text from Alfred Chu. It says: "Thomas is messed up. He won't come out of his room. He's been in there all weekend."

"Madison said he was fine," I text back.

Alfred texts: "I don't know. He seems messed up to me. Our dad just brings food in to him and that's it. He's got our dad thinking he's sick but I think that's some bullshit."

What the hell. I call him up. His greeting is just comically deep over the phone.

"Alfred, buddy," I say, "he really doesn't want to talk to me right now."

"He doesn't want to talk to anyone. But I know he'll talk to you. I know he will, if you try."

"I doubt it. We're uh...we're having some problems right now."

"Please, Niko. Something's wrong with him."

Shit, the kid sounds serious. "Try to put him on," I say.

"He'll kill me if I open his door right now. He'll kill me if he ever finds out we talked. Can you please just come over? I'm scared, Niko. I'm scared he might do something."

I can hear the kid choking up a little. Fuck. "I'm coming over," I say.

It's insanely warm outside, but it's raining kind of hard. On the way over, I'm just thinking about all the things I could possibly say, but I can only come up with one thing. It's not so much something to say, but just an attitude. I'm not going to let him take this friendship away. I'll do anything, say anything I can to make sure he doesn't.

I'm pretty soaked by the time I arrive at the Chu household. I let myself in and take off my shoes and go straight back to his bedroom. I open the door and find him in bed, on his phone. I think he's pretty surprised to see me standing there. I'm dripping wet, too, which sort of makes the whole thing appear more dramatic than I want it to be. He doesn't exactly act like he wants me to leave. He doesn't do much of anything at first, except turn so he's facing away from me. I roll his desk chair over so I'm kind of sitting next to him. He has his back turned to me. He pulls his blanket up so it's almost covering his head. His hair is greasy, but he's looking all right.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he says. His voice sounds calm, but I have no clue what the hell he's really thinking.

My problem is that I can't think of what to say, now that the moment has finally come. It feels like a lot is at stake, and I'm suddenly wondering if this was a terrible idea after all. "Don't you miss hanging out?" I say.

I just let the question rest there for a while. I hope he'll say something back, but a long time goes by and he doesn't say anything.

"Fuck, Thomas, I miss you so much."

At this point, you need to understand that I'm not afraid to lay it all on the line. I'm feeling like I don't have a lot to lose. Just knowing he's right here, listening to everything I'm saying...it's all starting to be too much for me. I know he can hear me getting emotional. "I'll do anything..." I'm looking at his big muscly shoulder, peeking up above the blanket. Goddamn. "I just need you to talk. Please."

"You know why we're not hanging out." He rolls onto his back. I'm surprised to see him teary-eyed. "Fuck, man, you know what all of this means. I know it's not just me. It's both of us."

I'm feeling like it would be so easy for me to say the wrong thing. But I want to be clear with him. "Are we still pretending it didn't happen?"

He shakes his head. "No."

"Then what are we doing?"

"I don't know." He slings an arm over his face. "I'm just feeling so fucking guilty, man." He's crying a little. "Later that night, that thing I did to you when I was drunk. I remember. That was so fucked up."

"Don't feel guilty for that," I say. "You didn't know what the fuck you were doing. I'm not worried about it."

"I knew exactly what I was doing," he says. "I was going after what I wanted."

He's making me super uncomfortable now. It's not that I don't feel the same way. I'm just not ready to be so bold about it all.

"I'm asking because I need to know," he says slowly. "When did you realize you had feelings for me?"

I'll tell you this much: I don't think I've ever been so caught off guard by one single question in my whole life. I'm just looking at him, alarmed, with nothing to say. Do I actually have feelings for Thomas? God, my mind is such a messed up place, I'm telling you. The proof is all there. Of course I do. I envy him now, because he's able to say aloud something I've barely ever let myself think about.

He's still waiting for an answer, and I still don't know what to say. I think about it as hard as I can. "When you were on top of me the other night," I say. "That's when I knew." I can hardly believe the words are mine.

He's looking at me now in the strangest way, like he doesn't know me very well. I'm freaked out by the expression on his face, to be honest. But he seems to compose himself a little. He looks back up at the ceiling. "Well I knew a long time before that."

I'm pretty shocked to hear him say it.

"That's how I know it's never going away," he says. "The older we get, the more I feel it." He turns to me again. "Now do you see why we can't hang out anymore?"

"No." I just say it. "No I don't, Thomas. Fuck, now that it's all out in the open, don't you think that'll make things easier?"

He thinks on it a minute. "I don't know."

"What's our other option? Never seeing each other again? Come on," I say. "That's so fucking stupid." I stop talking and he's just looking at me. His face is so beautiful. I know what he's trying to get me to say. I know I'm not the best a being honest with myself, and he can see right through it. He won't look away. He wants me to say I've always known. Well, fuck you, Thomas Chu. I'm not going to do it.

"I thought I could handle not seeing you," he says.

I look him up and down. "And now look at you. Fuck. What a mess."

"Shut the fuck up," he says. But he can't hide his smile.

"Let's just do our best," I say. "We'll see how things go." The ambiguity of the whole statement is hilarious, I know, but what else am I supposed to say?

"Let's hang tomorrow," he says. "You have work, right?"

"Yeah," I say. "I'll come by after."

"Cool," he says.