Sober

After class the following day, I drive straight to the library to avoid being questioned by Deja. Still, I doubt she’d mind since she often invites friends over on Thursdays. They all claim it’s one big study date, but after fifteen minutes they’re blazed and amused by each other’s slapstick humor.

I had a giant to-do list regarding assignments for my dance classes so I was slightly inconvenienced, but I still had work for other classes where the library would come in handy. And I was surely inconveniencing my coworkers since I always worked during happy hour, but since I rarely took days off, my boss didn’t have an issue.

Around half past four, I run into the library to book a study room last minute. After closing the door, I get comfortable and start killing time on my laptop, and after many minutes of editing and turning in some work I was behind on for other classes, I text Nick. My first text to him, to be exact.

‘I’m in room 207. It’s by the color printers :)’

A few minutes pass, and then I get a read receipt. He doesn’t respond, but Nick never seemed like the type to reply urgently and elaborately to texts anyway. As I sit there, now distracted by my phone, a figure walks in, and I glance up, though it’s not who I was expecting.

“Hey!” Louis beams. “Won’t you get in trouble for keeping one of these to yourself?”

I snicker as he walks inside some more, and then I notice Nathan behind him. He wears all black, but due to the odd placement of the rips on his jeans, I can see the snake tattoo that runs down his leg.

I wave at him, and he quietly returns the gesture.

“I’m waiting for a friend,” I chuckle.

Louis grabs one of the chairs and sits on it backward. The strap of his tank top falls, but he ignores it.

“Oh cool! Can we join you?”

I scratch my neck. “Um… I mean, we kinda have a project to work on and are trying to limit distractions,” I lie.

Nathan leans against the door frame, not paying too much attention, yet his redheaded friend raises his eyebrows and then smiles. “It’s Nick, isn’t it?”

Nathan perks up. “Nick?”

I sigh. “Y-Yeah.”

The darker male places his hands in his pockets. “Hm. Haven’t talked to that kid in a while. How is he?”

Louis slams his hands on the table. “You see? This is why I said we all need to hang out! Nate now too!” He looks at his friend. “Right?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. He’s cool with me.”

I nod awkwardly. “Yeah, I’m fine with that, just not right now. Maybe this weekend could work, though.”

Nathan moves some of his hair out of his eyes. Last time I saw him, it was super straight and stopped above his ears whereas now it’s on his shoulders but thanks to the curls, it looks like it grew out instead of down. I wonder how he deals with that as well as all the frizz.

“You guys lookin’ for a party?”

Louis stands up. “Nah, maybe we can just get dinner.”

“I gotta say, the fights, binge drinking, and deafening music is starting to get to me,” I chuckle. 

“Real shit,” The redhead laughs. “Well, I’ll add you all to a group chat, and we’ll keep it in mind. But let’s try and keep Saturday evening open.”

We nod, and Nate, without hesitation, leaves the study room after perceiving the conversation as over. The redhead turns back to me, fiddling with his gauges.

“So, you crushin’ on Nick?” My face heats up and he grins. “Wait! I was joking—do you really?”

I lean on my hand. “N-No. We’re just friends.”

He gives me a weird look before shrugging me off. “Well, whatever you’re doing or saying to him, keep it up. I have chemistry with him and we shared some classes last semester, and this is the happiest I’ve seen him. Ever. I swear to God, he’s glowing,” Louis mutters to himself.

I smile a little. “Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah. I mean, despite being lab partners, he doesn’t talk to me much. He probably doesn’t remember me, now that I think about it,” He mumbles. “But he’s seriously lightened up this week.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear. I didn’t think I was making that much of a difference when we weren’t in the same proximity.”

 “Nah, it definitely is.” Louis stretches. “Well, imma get going. I’ll text you.” He says before waving and making his way out the room. 

As I check my calendar to make sure I’m free on Saturday, Nick quietly walks in, and instead of his hoodie, he has an oversized sweatshirt. He looks like he threw it on five minutes before class, although because it was him, it was still cute. 

He quietly greets me as he sits down and puts some of his stuff on the table.

“How were your classes?”

He shrugs. “They were fine until they weren’t, I guess.”

I sigh. “Well, what would you like me to help you with?”

He pulls two textbooks out of his backpack along with his computer. I stare at them blankly, confused as to how he fit them both in there and how he carried them around all day. Not to mention the cost.

“Um, I haven’t had much time to take notes in class, and I’ve been rushing to get everything down for both books. My computer has also been having issues, so I’ve been handwriting a lot of things,” He sighs while plugging in his Mac. “I mean, I’ve had it since high school, but I haven’t had any time to type up anything, and everything’s getting lost.”

I watch as he gets a bit frustrated with himself, but then he takes a deep breath and slides me a notebook, though I can’t help but stare in awe at how small and neat his handwriting is.

“Would you be willing to type up that stuff for me? And type up some stuff for a few chapters in this book. Then we can swipe that one to the side and I can finish this one,” He says and slides me the orange textbook, whereas the other was blue.

“Yeah, sure!”

“I just need to get all that stuff written down, and then I’ll finally be able to study. If…that’s alright with you.”

I open a new document on my computer and start trying to write down whatever seemed important. I had taken a business class back in my freshman year of high school, but this was way more detailed, not to mention I barely remembered anything from that class.

Though, this couldn’t hurt. It’s never bad to have a bit of business info in the back of your head. 

I finish way faster than Nick due to my ungodly typing speed, so I start doodling on one of the free pages in his notebook. I can’t help but smile as I glance at him. I’d never seen him in a work state where he’s concentrating and honestly, it’s kind of attractive. Only issue was his growing frustration.

“Hey, are you good?”

He nods.

“You sure?”

He nods again and continues writing in a smaller notebook since his computer is still on the fritz. In the meantime, I attempted to try and fix it, but it wouldn’t even turn on. And I wasn’t usually that bad at technology.

“Alright, I’m done.” He says, slamming the book shut after maybe fifteen minutes.

“So am I!” I exclaim and show him my screen. 

He grabs my laptop for a second and emails it to himself, but then he notices the notebook after I slid it back to him. 

He shows me one of the doodle pages and points to it. “Is this me?” 

“Yeah! It’s you in your giant sweatshirt. I sorta finished early and got bored, but I didn’t wanna ruin your train of thought.”

He continues to stare at it. “I like it, but why don’t I have eyes?”

I chuckle. “Your hair’s covering it, like usual!”

He scoffs and pushes all of his hair out his face, exposing his forehead and those beautiful green eyes that always hid from me.

“I still have eyes, though.”

I smile, and we stare at each other for a couple of seconds before he lets his hair back down. He continues to skim the page.

“Man, you drew me a lot.”

“You’re a good reference,” I state proudly.

He chuckles softly and then shows me one of the small scribbles at the bottom.

“This is us, right?”

I grin. “Yeah.”

He smiles at the drawing and stares at it for a little longer. I had doodled us in our outfits from yesterday since we were both overdressed for the occasion. Despite being an artsy kid, drawing had never been my thing so the poses weren’t very interesting. We were only standing, but Nick was smiling with a cup of tea, and I was holding his hand.

“This is adorable,” Nick says quietly.

I laugh. “You really think so?”

He nods, his face red, and brushes some hair out of his eyes. As he scans the page, I catch myself staring at him and avert my eyes, clearing my throat.

“A-Anyway, back on topic,” I grab my laptop. “Let’s see. I can upload some of this onto one of those quiz sites, so you have something to do while I type up the rest of these.”

He nods and goes to grab his computer, but remembers it’s jacked and curses under his breath.

“I think you can use your phone for it,” I add as I organize my notes and eventually text him the link.

He nods as I go back to typing, and then we sit in silence for a while. I keep glancing at him as I type, solely because he looks so nice sitting across from me. We were both alone in our little study room, just chilling. The room didn’t reek of alcohol, and there wasn’t any music blasting in the background where the bass would shake the whole floor. It was civilized, and I liked it. Just like yesterday.

I enjoyed sitting in those corners with him or dancing away from the other guests but knowing no one else would interrupt us was even better. I wasn’t too paranoid of someone noticing us through the glass pane on the door. That, or Zeke appearing out of nowhere, hence why Nick probably seemed more relaxed. Then again, maybe it was just because of me, but I wasn’t trying to inflate my ego.

“God, I’m starving,” Nick mumbles, laying on the table.

 as I email him the rest of the notes

I hadn’t really been paying attention to the time, but apparently, an hour had already passed by the time I finished typing his other notes. I chuckle at his posture and after emailing him the rest of the notes, grab my backpack and dump a ton of snacks onto the table.

“I came prepared!”

He starts laughing, and I grin in return. Seeing him smile always gives me butterflies. He grabs a bag of chips and quickly inhales them, immediately grabbing another afterward.

“So…what else can I help with?”

Nick ponders for a bit before standing up in a rush. “Shit! I left the last book in my dorm! And that’s the one I hate!”

He shoves a ton of chips in his mouth, grabs his keys, and then runs out of the room without really giving me time to respond. Though, I guess his dorm wasn’t as far as I assumed because he came back after five minutes. However, he’d completely lost his glow by the time he returned. Not only was he out of breath, but he looked pissed, which likely explains why he dropped the book on the table with a giant slam.

“Why the hell do you have so many textbooks?”

He sighs. “That’s most of them. My professor wanted us to have the physical copies.”

I roll my eyes. “What a nuisance.”

Nick sits beside me. “Worst thing is he doesn’t even go over all the topics in each one. He just picks random stuff to focus on because ‘this author explains in better.” The boy rolls his eyes.

“That sounds like a disorganized mess. No wonder you can’t keep up.”

Nick sifts through the table of contents before turning to the chapter he needs. “Exactly.”

I slide him my laptop. “Here, I’m gonna see if tech support can help with your computer.” 

“Mhm,” He mutters as I stand up and ruffle his hair.

I return to the first floor after leaving the study room and find one of the IT people. The guy at the counter looks up at me, but I’m quickly distracted by his afro sticking up through the top of his visor. The color even matches his shirt and some of his rings.

“What’s up?”

I scratch my neck. “Hey, I know your focus is probably the tech in the actual library, but my friend’s laptop is like, busted as hell,” I chuckle. “Apparently, it’s been like this for maybe a week now. I’m not sure what it was doing before, but now it won’t even turn on. I was…hoping you could look at it. I’m completely lost.”

I hand him the device, and he examines it. He flips it over, chuckling.

“Well, here’s your problem—the battery’s expanding. This is an old model, so it’s not that rare, especially if your friend’s been using it for a while, but they should probably either buy a replacement battery or send it in for repairs.”

The guys attempt to remove it without much luck. “I’d say repairs are better since…this is stuck. At this rate, it might be smart to just buy a new one altogether.”

I exhale. “Damn, alright.”

“Sorry I couldn’t get it working.”

“Nah, it’s cool! At least we know what the problem is now.”

The man adjusts his visor and smiles. “True, true. And if y’all need to print something, we always have a ton of computers here they could use in the meantime for studying and whatnot. They just lost portability.”

“Well, we can’t have it all,” I say and laugh. “Thanks again.”

He nods as I walk back upstairs to the room, sitting beside a panicked, oddly frustrated Nikki. I place his laptop down, watching as he types at top speed into the word document, which is filled with typos. He’s jittery despite looking half asleep as he punches in random stuff like he’s being timed. 

“Hey, Nikki, the library’s open all night. You don’t need to rush.”

He sighs. “I-I know, but I can’t be here all night. It’s already seven,” He mumbles.

Damn, I didn’t think it was already that late. Nonetheless, I scoot closer and wrap my arm around his waist, causing him to freeze up and stop typing.

“W-What? Let go of me,” He demands as his face turns bright red.

“Nikki, I want you to read over what you’ve been typing when I was gone and tell me if it makes sense. You’re not copying down your professor’s dialogue in the middle of class—you have time to take careful notes,” I tell him as I move my arm.

He sighs and looks at his work. “I don’t know what I’m doing…” He closes the laptop and places his head on the table, pulling on his hair. “I’m so tired of this shit. I didn’t think this class would be a breeze necessarily, but I didn’t think it’d be a clusterfuck! And in the beginning out of everything!” He yells as his voice cracks.

“Nikki?”

He sniffles, attempting to hold back his tears by placing his head in his hands.

“I don’t get why he’s setting us up for failure! If I can’t even handle the basics for my major, I’m doomed. I don’t even know what else I’d do as a substitute… But I feel like it’s just me! I’m just the outcast! Second year and  I still can’t live on my own. I can’t go back, but I don’t know what to do or say or who to talk to! I just wanna hide in my bedroom for the rest of my life until I die!” He sobs.

I shift my posture, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Nick don’t blame yourself! Your professor is the issue, not you! I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with him, but you’re strong, and I know you can do this!” I sigh. “Everyone gets stumped from time to time but…you have me. And I’ll help you—I want to! So please don’t beat yourself up!”

I wipe his face, and he places his hands over mine, keeping them there. He luckily stops crying, and as we stare at each other, I give him a sympathetic smile which, of course, makes him embarrassed and look away with his watery emerald eyes.

“Can…I have a hug?”

I nod with a smile and pull him into a soft embrace, but he cries again at my touch, clinging to my shirt.

“Kyler, I really can’t do this,” He manages to get out. “But if I drop the class, what degree will I get then? I’ll be broke, uneducated, and unemployed!”

I sigh and curl his hair with my finger. “Nick, you’ll get through this. Don’t give up just yet. Life has its hills. This will pass, just like anything else you may have gone through.” I let him go and wipe his face again. “Now, may I ask, what specifically are you studying for?”

“…He assigned some fifty-question quiz based off various info in those three books.”

“A fifty-question quiz?” I mutter. “That’s more like an exam. Is that your midterm?”

He shrugs and takes a deep breath, finally calming down.

“Okay, how about this? You keep studying the notes I already made for you on that website while I continue to copy down the rest of the stuff from this last book.”

Nick sighs. “No, Kyler, it’s my work and my class. You shouldn’t be doing this for me.”

“It’s fine. It’s about time you take a break. Not to mention your computer is messed up, and we can’t do anything about it right now.”

“What did the tech people say?” He asks with a sniffle.

“You, um…” I sigh. “You either need to send it in for repairs or get a new one because the battery’s expanding.”

He groans, his leg shaking. “Fuck…”

“But we don’t have to do that right now!” I reassure him. “Let’s just finish the notes and such.”

“Okay.” Nick cautiously grabs my hand. “Um, thank you for all you’re doing today. I didn’t mean to keep you so long.” He stares at our hands and begins to rub mine, causing me to smile a little. 

“Don’t mention it!”

I wait for him to get flustered and eventually let go, but he continues to hold me.

“Are you okay?”

Nick leans into me, cramming his face into my neck as I embrace him again, unsure what to do. His breathing is shaky, but at least he’s more collected than earlier.

“Isn’t this torture for you?” He asks after a long break of silence.

“What?” I chuckle. “Of course not, Nick.”

He pulls away from me with a frown, his eyes red, just like the rest of his face. I place my hand on his cheek after brushing some hair out of his eyes, yet as I do so, he closes them. He leans into my hand, but I fear he can hear my heartbeat.

I watch him doze against my hand for a few minutes, mesmerized by the softness and warmth of his face. I’d never held him for so long, but I was more satisfied finally touching a person I genuinely liked. Fake flirting with all those chicks was exhausting. Hell, I’d been doing it since high school.

I flash him a smile as he opens his eyes, though I question the sincerity of how calm he really is since he was just crying his eyes out. Eventually, he comes to and brushes my hand away with a red face, but as he leans over to grab his phone, I kiss him on the cheek. He freezes up for a good few seconds before exhaling and skimming the quiz site as if nothing had happened.

As I stare at him, he glances at me, frowning. “You’re a fucking weirdo.”

I grin and fluff all his hair. The old Nikki’s back! He swats me away as I open my computer back up with a grin.

We sit in silence for the rest of the time, the only contact being when our arms would randomly brush against each other, which I found quite pleasant.

By the time I was done, however, it was nearing ten, and I was about three seconds from passing out, whereas Nick had already done so. After cleaning up all the books and snacks, I kneel next to him and try to shake him awake.

“Nikki,” I nudge him lightly. “It’s time to go—I already packed up your stuff.”

He doesn’t budge, so I try again, this time by rapidly poking his cheek but once again, no response. He looks so cute and tame when he’s sleeping.

So…kissable.

I lean a little closer to him on the table and peck him on the cheek, and I swear he smiles.

“Nick?”

He stays quiet, and I chuckle to myself. I comb my fingers through his hair and kiss him a few more times, yet he continues to lay there asleep. It makes me wonder how many hours he gets a night.

“God, you’re so beautiful…” I mumble, gazing at his figure. I smile and continue watching him sleep for a little longer until my knees start to hurt.

“Nikki,” I say loudly. “It’s time to go, cutie pie.”

He slowly begins to sit up and stretches, glaring at me. “If you ever call me that again, I’ll strangle you.”

I laugh, handing him his backpack, which he quickly puts on. “Do you think you’re awake enough to drive?”

He yawns. “What? Oh, no I walked here. I mean, I don’t live off campus, so I only drive places on the weekends.”

“Oh, that makes sense. You did run back to get that other textbook,” I mutter. “Can I…walk you to your dorm?”

He shrugs. “Uh, okay.”

I smile at him, and we leave the library after checking out of the room. As we get outside, I grab his hand, and to my surprise, he doesn’t pull away.

“Thank you for all your help.” He smiles sleepily before yawning again.

I grin as he leans into me a little. “Ah yeah, of course!” I beam, yawning immediately afterward, thanks to him. “I enjoyed spending another evening with you.”

Nick nods, our arms swinging a bit as we move. 

“Also,” I begin. “Do you remember Louis from the party?”

“No…? Though there’s a ginger with that name in my chemistry class.”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” I snicker. “He proposed going out to dinner together Saturday. You down?”

Nick looks around before shrugging a bit. “Uh sure. I guess it’s better than drinking.”

I smile at him. “Alright, cool. He’s gonna add us to a group chat with Nathan so we can decide on a time and place. Whatever it is, I’ll pick you up.”

He nods again and then lets go of my hand as we reach his dorm. 

“Well, hopefully, I’ll see you then.” He sighs. “I need to go before I pass out on the pavement.”

I chuckle. “Yeah! And that’s fair. Good luck with your test!”

As Nick scans his ID and opens the door, he looks back at me. “Also, thanks for kissing me earlier,” He mumbles under his breath and then disappears inside.

I stand there, smiling. I fucking called it—I knew he wasn’t asleep! It was either him being flattered or smacking me in the face because of it, which finally confirmed my thoughts.

That kid definitely likes me.