Page 55 of Any Port in a Storm

I shrug. “I kept him at a distance. Kept myself busy with school; stayed a bit aloof when it came to his hockey stuff. I didn’t want an Alex Lindberg repeat.”

“Yeah.” Nick settles back against a cushion. “Sounds like that was pretty tough.”

“It was…” I don’t even have the words to articulate what it was like: to learn through the grapevine that the charming guitarist I’d fallen for at fifteen had started sleeping with his sister’s best friend, only two months after I’d lost my virginity to him in his parents’ basement.

We’d waited until the night of graduation to have sex, because I wanted to be sure all of the work my parents poured into me yielded at least one diploma before I toyed with the possibility of teen pregnancy.

I guess my tendencies to fixate on both my work and risk mitigation are nothing new.

I can’t find the words to explain any of it. That Alex promised his new lover he’d break up with me right away; that all of our friends had seen them hanging out over the holiday break: first at the movies, then at the mall. And that, in two months of sneaking around, he never managed to find a moment to tell me.

“It was bad,” I say at last. “I was in deep, and we were…intimate?” The way Nick’s looking at me now sends a rush of embarrassment to every last cell in my body. Close as we are, we don’t discuss our sex lives, and bringing up mine instantly calls to mind how I’d felt when I caught him kissing Alyssa in the quad last year. When he’d joked about what else they did for fun.

“I see,” he replies quietly, looking down at his knee. I guess this is just as uncomfortable for him as it is me.

“Anyway,” I divert. “The point is, I was really invested, and he wasn’t, and it destroyed me. And that’s why I promised myself I’d never get so emotionally involved that someone could break my heart.” I shake my head. “I never want to go through that again.”

He nods slowly. “So you kept Sam at a distance?”

“I suppose I did. Both for that reason, and because…” I sigh. “To be honest, I’m not sure he would have been enough for me if we were all in. I really did care about him, but there was no passion there. It felt very…”

“Safe?” Nick’s eyes are tight on me from across the couch.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “Exactly.”

He draws his lips into a line. “Unfortunately, I know exactly what you mean.”

“Anyway.” I open my textbook. “We should study. I need to memorize this material before break. My mom will kill me if I have to spend all of Thanksgiving working.”

“When do you leave?”

“Tuesday.” It hits me then that Nick probably won’t get a break; that he’ll spend the holiday weekend stuck here alone. It’s too short a window for him to fly back to Dublin, and his family wouldn’t be celebrating American Thanksgiving anyway.

“You should come home with me,” I offer before I can think better of it.

His mouth falls open. “What?”

“For Thanksgiving. Come to my parents’ house.” I force a nonchalant expression, trying to take the edge off the flush that’s creeping over his freckles. “My mom will make way too much food, and my dad will talk your ear off about the stock market, but it’s always a really cozy time.”

He seems to consider it. “I like cozy things.”

“See? You’ll have a great time.”

“Well, okay,” he says, setting down his mug. “That would be nice. You sure your parents won’t mind?”

“Please,” I scoff. “They’ll be thrilled. They’re always complaining that I don’t bring enough of my friends around.”

Nick’s lips tilt up. “Well, I’m honored to be among the chosen few.”

“As well you should be.”

We sit in comfortable silence for a moment, repeatedly looking up at each other and pretending we haven’t. I’m struggling to fight a shy smile when Nick asks, “Am I allowed to help with the food?”

“I doubt my parents will let you,” I tell him. “But you’d earn my undying affection if you made some more of these brownies. They’re delicious.”

“In that case,” he says, a glint in his eye as he takes another, “brownies it is.”

Nick drives us home for Thanksgiving, and we spend the entirety of the thirty-minute trip debating the merits of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.