Nixon
Snow.
Who knew it’d disrupt my life so badly.
I was an LA boy, used to blue skies and sunshine.
But there I was in JFK Airport, New York, hampered by piles of snow.
Did I seriously want to live there?
That was the big question, the one that brought bile surging up my throat whenever I thought about it. Mom said it was just nerves, and she was right. She told me I’d never been great with change.
“When you were a boy, we had to give you warnings about everything. You were so nervous and jumpy. You always felt safest when you knew the plan.” She laughed whenever she said those things to me, like the memories were sweet treasures to hold on to. Then her eyes would mist over and I knew she was thinking about my older sister, Reagan. She’d been nothing like timid little me. Impulsive was more her style—impulsive, bullheaded and insane.
I tried to shrug off the morose thoughts and focus on problem-solving my way back home, but the idea of how Reagan would handle the situation niggled at the back of my mind. She wouldn’t have been irritated by the snow. Hell, she would have seen it as a challenge. Something else to conquer. Knowing her, she would have dragged our butts back to the city to live it up for the night—party until the flights resumed again. Or worse yet, she would have chatted up some random strangers and found us a ride home—one vehicle after another.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pinched the bridge of my nose and played a round of dodge ’em with my brain.
My sister had only been sixteen when she died. I’d been thirteen at the time and it shattered me. It shattered everyone.
It was like the lights in our house went off all of a sudden, and no one knew how to switch them back on.
Mom spent the next year wavering between numb sadness, angry outbursts, and tearful despair. I didn’t know how to handle it, so when she cried, I’d give her a hug. She’d hold me tight and whisper, “What would I do without you?”
Dad had never been good with tears, which made him quiet and grumpy. Since he couldn’t control Mom’s fluctuating emotions, he set out to control every other aspect of his life. He was desperate to fix things, to return some sense of normalcy to our home.
But how did we make things normal again when the loudest, most vibrant member of the family had been ripped out of our lives without warning?
When I wasn’t trying to comfort Mom, I shut out the world, withdrawing from everyone at school so I didn’t have to talk about my sister and her tragic end.
Thinking about her hurt. We hadn’t been best buds or anything, but I still missed her. She was sunshine and laughter…just like another girl I knew.
The one who saved me.
My eyes shot open and I shook my head.
Don’t frickin’ go there, man.
The pain of losing her was worse than mourning Reagan.
I needed to get the hell home and back to the safety of my stable, uncomplicated life. The one where I knew what was coming and didn’t have to worry about people disappearing or letting me down.
Sure, I was restless some days, but at least I knew where I stood. My life had been mapped out, charted carefully, and Columbia Law School was next on the agenda.
Everybody was happy about that.
I nodded, reminding myself that I was too.
It was a good plan.
But one random springtime blizzard was going to change all of that.
“Spring,” I muttered, staring up at the flight board and cursing the word CANCELED. “It’s not supposed to snow in spring.”
Flustered travelers buzzed around me—pulling suitcases, calming partners and whining children, making unwanted phone calls.
Yanking out my phone, I hovered my thumb over the screen, already dreading the one call I had to make. She’d be pissed. It was out of my control, but she’d still be pissed. Well, not pissed…disappointed.
I was supposed to spend spring break with my girlfriend. Get some one-on-one couple time just hanging out together. I’d promised her. I’d specially caught the red-eye flights so I could be in New York City for the shortest amount of time possible.
If life was fair, I’d be checking in and hanging around for my 10pm flight back to Los Angeles.
I’d been in the Big Apple for less than twenty-four hours, and my body was hating me for it.
Sleeping on a plane was impossible.
I’d arrived blurry-eyed to meet up with a law professor buddy of my dad’s. Having finished my online interviews, my parents thought it’d be a good idea to check out the school in person. So to save myself weeks of nagging from the ones I loved, I jumped at the first chance of getting a personal tour from one of Columbia Law School’s most highly regarded professors. He was friendly and seemed impressed with my UCLA grades, but stayed pretty tight-lipped when I tried to find out if I had a shot at getting in to the prestigious East Coast college.
God help me if I don’t.
My shoulders were aching under the weight of expectation. Between my girlfriend, Shayna, and my parents, they had me pretty well covered. I was the golden son and the perfect boyfriend. Because that’s what they needed me to be.
So I kept pushing. Kept being what I was supposed to. Kept making them proud.
I grimaced. Pride would not be in the cards after I made this phone call.
With a reluctant sigh, I pulled up Shayna’s number and pressed the green circle on my screen. I raised the phone to my ear and looked across the agitated crowd while I listened to the ring.
And my world stopped moving.
Like a mirage from the back recesses of my memory banks, she stood before me.
Charlie Watson.
My best friend from high school. The girl with the wacky sense of fashion and a personality so big it could barely fit into a room.
My eyes traveled down her body, quickly capturing the checkered skinny jeans, bright purple Doc Marten boots, and the fitted Snoopy sweater. She had a big camera slung across her body, resting against her hip like it always did.
Man, she hadn’t changed a bit.
The only difference was the blue dye at the ends of her long brown hair. It was a vibrant royal blue that made me grin. She always liked to make a statement.
Flicking the long strands over her shoulder, she stared at the flight board with a glum smile, then turned to her left and spotted me.
She froze. Her lips parted and her hazel eyes rounded in surprise. Then her chest jerked like she was choking on something, her face bunching with a powerful sadness. For a second, I thought she was going to burst into tears, but then she started blinking really fast and this shaky laugh popped out of her mouth.
I didn’t know what to do, except hang up the phone and slip it into my pocket. The world around me dissolved as everything but Charlie became a blur.
She’d always had that effect on me.
The one person I could never let myself think about was suddenly the only thing I could see.
With a quivering smile, she hid her face behind her camera and snapped a photo of my stunned expression, then let out a low chuckle that reminded me of the girl I once knew.
She started closing the gap between us.
I wasn’t sure how to feel at first. When she reached me, did I wrap my arms around her? Or did I push her away because she’d hurt me so bad?
Four years of radio silence.
I’d accepted the fact that I’d never see her again.
Yet there she was, weaving her way towards me.
One step closer.
Then another.
And she was near enough to touch.
I swallowed and let out this breathy kind of laugh, trapped in the surreal moment with no way out.
Was I dreaming?
“Hey, Nix,” she whispered, her eyes glassy as she stepped forward and took me back to high school.
Her blue hair tickled my face as her slender arms wrapped around my neck and her black-painted fingernails clutched my sweater. Her trembling breath whistled against my ear, and in spite of all the unanswered questions, the deep bruising that I thought would never heal, I could do nothing else but wind my arms around her waist and hold on tight.