NANOWRIMO 2020

11.16 Smiles to Go

Nick smiled.

He'd been doing it all his life, but he never realized how difficult it was when all he wanted to do was deadpan with fish eyes and dry lips. Someone would smile at him and he could feel the muscles in his face crank into panic mode, stiffening and forcing out a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, that didn't seem all that genuine.

It was always a give and take. A smile in exchange for a smile. And he was tired of having to pay it forward.

Nick smiled. His eyes twinkled and his laugh lines creased his face in familiar ways that currently felt foreign to him. His face felt numb and he wished his hair was long enough to hang in long, greasy threads down the front of his face so he wouldn't have to look at anyone. At least not right now, not when he didn't want anyone to see him.

"You doing okay?" Nick looked up. Bryan was sitting down across from him, large thermos of either vodka or coffee in his hand and his slim laptop in the other.

Nick smiled again and closed his eyes. "Tired." He placed his head down on the table and let the sound of Bryan settling in across from him meld into the mellow coffee shop ambiance. "Real tired."

He could hear Bryan pop the lid of the thermos and the god awful smell of coffee and vodka assaulted his nostrils. He crinkled his nose and brought his heavy head up to glare at Bryan who shrugged indifferently. "Everyone handles stress differently," Bryan took a deep swig of his drink. He made a face and swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing back and forth in a deepthroat of disgust but he still smiled, albeit painfully, at Nick. "Delicious."

Nick felt a smirk tug at his face and felt an overwhelming warmth and surprise in his chest. That felt weird. That felt out of place.

His face immediately fell back into his scowl and he poked his pen at his notes and scratch paper, drawing loops around the margins and little gladiator swords and shields in the field of penmanship. He didn't like how weird he felt.

He didn't like how weird smiling felt and he didn't realize how terrible faking it had made him feel.

Nick didn't feel like he was faking being happy, but if he had to be honest, it didn't feel great smiling in a group of his friends when all he wanted to do was sit in a puddle and let buckets of cold water fall on top of him in a never-ending sheet.

That wasn't something you shared with friends and it wasn't something he felt too comfortable talking about either. It sounded so lame thinking of how emo he was acting.

So what he wanted to hole up in his room and listen to My Chemical Romance? Who cared that he spent most of his days staring up at the poster on his ceiling of Bennet Jan and masturbating without a single feeling of release or happiness? What did it matter that he had lost all reason to smile and be happy?

Nick couldn't find a single reason to roll out of bed and fix his hair. He couldn't find the energy to brush his teeth or clean out his bathroom or do his laundry or make some breakfast. Everything felt monotonous and dragging that even the colors in the sky seemed muted and gray. The days passed by in a blur until he found himself back in his room, fully clothed but not a striking memory from the past eight hours to define his existence.

Absolute and utter emptiness. Time dripping through his fingers and pooling in his palm, but slithering out all the same once he tried to grasp at what little pieces of his life he could.

Somehow Nick had ended up at the Starducks on campus. Somehow he had made it through another round of classes and found himself seated at his usual spot with Bryan, plodding through the motions of his life like clockwork.

It took so much energy to sit up and turn his notes to a blank page and study that with fervent concentration.

Bryan continued to sip at his coffeedka. Nick dragged his pen across the page in painstaking nonsense, letters merging into words into sentences that held no meaning for him that he might as well have been writing notes in a different language.

One shape after the next, one inch forward and then another. Nick could feel his vision getting hazy and the weight of his pen exponentially increase in his hand so that it felt like he was dragging a cinder block across the lined pages.

Nick dropped his pen and placed his head onto his folded arms, sleeves rolled down and over his wrists. He sighed and Bryan peeked at him over top of his thermos.

"Do you want some of this?" Bryan asked, nudging his thermos towards Nick. "I only put eight shots in this one."

Nick laughed hallowly and waved him down. "I'm good," he said, his lips twitching up. "I'm good."

Nick smiled.