3
Nick had managed to find a pillow and a comforter—well, a duvet, with a cover—and even a set of sheets. He was pretty proud. He’d been spectacularly out of it that first day. But he had walked into a store and trudged up and down the aisles until he found bedding, and even managed not to fuck up the pin-and-chip thing at checkout.
And now he had a bed he could actually sleep in, a brand-spanking-new student ID, a set of classes to attend, and it was all very confusing, but he was okay with that.
Because he was in London.
Now that it had been three days and he was no longer a zombie dragging a giant suitcase behind him with a dead arm, he could appreciate that fact. The city wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting, he supposed. Maybe he just hadn’t found the parts of it that would meet his expectations. Then again, if your expectations were more or less created by watching British romantic comedies with your mother and sister, he supposed those would be difficult to live up to. No Colin Firth, for one. The streets seemed both narrower than he’d expected and wider in scope. It was more pedestrian and more wondrous than he could ever have predicted.
It was weird, the things he found fascinating. Like how the windows opened outward instead of up and down like in Ann Arbor. The stores carried brands he’d never seen before, and the milk was packaged differently from home. He’d had to figure out his food situation, so he’d walked into the nearest Tesco and probably looked like a complete idiot, just staring at all the stuff that was new to him. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen butter before. But it came in tubs here, and some of it was actually Irish, and he had grinned as he grabbed it. Then he’d gone searching for anything else he might reasonably be able to cook for himself, which largely consisted of eggs (which weren’t in the refrigerator section, he noted), cheese, bread, and various cold cuts.
It was a loose definition of “cook.”
He’d spent a while perusing the juice section, attempting to figure out what the hell Ribena could be, and then he’d bought out half of the chocolate section and all the Earl Grey he could carry.
Then he’d gone back to the dorm and investigated the kitchen situation, at which point he’d realized he would need, like, cooking implements.
He’d even figured out his phone solution, and now had access to data and voice that wouldn’t cost him an arm and a leg. His mom called once every day, as she woke up.
Now he sat on the bed and dialed Zoya’s number.
“Bratishka, wazzzuuuuuuuup!”
God, she was embarrassing.
It was sort of easier for them to speak in English nowadays, even though she had been older than him when they left. Whenever Mom caught them at it, she’d give them her most disappointed look over the rim of her glasses and they’d immediately switch, but she wasn’t here, so after Nick’s initial “privet,” they went straight to English.
“Have you acquired life necessities yet?” Her familiar accent set him at ease. He could hear other voices in the background. She was always surrounded by people. It had been like that back in Moscow, and it was the same now in Ann Arbor. Nick had never understood her ability to simply walk into any social situation and stay afloat.
Even when they’d started American school, she’d been fine. It was Nick who’d fallen apart.
“I have everything a growing boy might need,” he told her. “I even bought a frying pan.”
“You have no idea how to cook. Like, literally, you’ve never cooked a single thing in your life.”
“Hey, I can learn. I learn things.” He thought about it. “I’ve made you eggs before.”
“Mmm-hmm, ’kay. Well, just don’t starve. Have you had fish and chips yet? What about haddock? Trifle? Scones? Oooh, a nice spotted dick?”
She was on a roll of amusing herself, so Nick let her tire herself out, then said, “I bought Irish butter, does that count?”
“Why is Irish butter so adorable?”
“It is, right?” Nick laughed, feeling weirdly light.
She giggled, then went quiet for a bit. “Hey, uh, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, but I ran into Lenka yesterday.”
“Oh.” Nick looked down. His left sock was getting a hole straight through the big toe.
“Yeah, she actually stopped to talk to me. Said … to say hi.” A clearing of a throat. “To you.”
Nick shrugged, then realized she wouldn’t see him. “Thanks.”
“Yeah. Maybe she thought it was safe now you’re out of the country.” She sounded tentative, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to make jokes yet or not.
Nick kept picking at his sock.
“Sorry, I just thought maybe you should know,” she rushed on. “Eto nichego?”
“Nichego, Zoykin.”
“You know,” she said after a while, the voices in the background receding. “You never really said what happened there … I mean, one minute everything seems fine, and then I get back from California and you’ve broken up…”
“I…” He sighed. Words refused to get past his throat. “Can we not … right now?”
She huffed out a breath, but he knew it wasn’t really annoyance. “Fine. It’s all right. I’ll get it out of you eventually.”
“That’s fine. Eventually’s fine.” It wasn’t. She would never get it out of him.
“Good.”
“Fine.”
“Shut the hell up.” She laughed, sounding just a tad too forced. “Anyway, sorry. What else you got for me? Meet any cool people yet?”
Nick sucked in his lower lip as he thought. “Sort of … a couple. I dunno.”
“You don’t know what, if they’re people?”
“Shut up. No, just … I went to this international night, I guess, for those who are, you know…”
“I am guessing international.”
“Right, so I went and left pretty quickly.” He waited to see if she’d say anything, but she was just listening, so he went on. “But there were a few people I talked to.” One was a guy from LA who hadn’t held Nick’s interest in any way, then an Italian boy named Antonio who made every head turn as he walked by. Nick couldn’t tell if Antonio had noticed this himself, but he’d had that glow about him. The sort of glow that marked someone out as a higher class of human than the rest. Nick didn’t talk to him for long. It had been loud, and Antonio’s accent had been hard for Nick to catch in the din. The entire time Nick talked to him, he’d had this sneaking suspicion that he was being indulged. Nick hated being indulged.
And then there’d been the English girl who seemed to be the one running everything. She’d been wearing a floppy black hat that should have looked stupid but didn’t on her, and she’d come up to Nick and completely caught him off guard by asking for his number and texting him before he could say, “No, thank you.” Not that he would have said no, necessarily, but it had felt a bit like being railroaded by a very pretty, full-figured redheaded train in a short black dress.
Or something.
Anyway, he had a text from her on his phone to meet her at the union tonight at eight. Nick had no idea why.
“Aaaaand?”
“And what? It’s been three days, give me a break.”
“God, you’re difficult.” Nick heard Jake’s voice calling her name. “Hang on, it’s Nick,” she called back. “Sorry. We’re going to brunch, and waffles wait for no man or whatever.”
“Jake does love his waffles.” Nick sort of wanted to get off the phone and felt a bit bad about it.
“He can wait. Anyway, what else should I ask you?”
She always said this. It was a family habit, and if he took the time to think about it, which he sometimes did, Nick realized that it was a truly weird way of asking someone about their life.
He shrugged. “Nothing more, honestly. Just settling in.”
“Hmm. All right.” She sounded dubious, but like she was conceding the point. “I’ll call in a few days. Maybe we can Skype, too? I’m going over to Mom’s on Sunday.”
Nick agreed on a time, and then he sat on his bed and considered the insane notion of going out with people he’d never even had a single conversation with.
+
“Oh good, you came!”
Nick was incredibly grateful that in her railroading, the girl had saved her number on his phone with her name—Izzy—and he didn’t have to use awkward maneuvers to get it out of her. He felt furiously self-conscious in a way he hadn’t in ages. His eyes had been itchy with allergies all day, so he’d been forced to wear his glasses, and while he’d kind of made an effort with the rest of his outfit, it was also close to what he’d worn the other night. Like a uniform. He probably looked like a total dweeb, but a lifetime of dweebdom had at least instilled in him a certain ability to move on after the first five minutes of feeling awkward and stupid.
“Um, thanks for the invite,” he said, and instantly felt ridiculous again. He smiled to cover it up. He had no idea where they were even going, or why.
“My pleasure!” She beamed at him in return and then nearly gave him a heart attack by grabbing his arm and hooking her hand in his elbow like she’d been doing it all her life. She turned them decidedly away from the Student Union and toward the street. “You looked like a cool dude, and I love meeting new people. So, Nick, right?”
“Uh, right.” Cool? Nick?
“Whereabouts in America are you from?”
“Michigan,” Nick supplied as they power-walked down the street. Maybe it was because she had long legs and was wearing four-inch heels, but Nick was barely keeping up.
“Ohhh, don’t know that I know much about Michigan. What cities does it have that I might’ve heard of?”
Nick thought about it. “Detroit, probably.”
Izzy made a knowing “ooooh” sound.
“But I’m from Ann Arbor. It’s nice, I guess … Small. Ish. College town.” He sounded like a tool. “The state looks like a mitten.” Even worse.
Beside him, Izzy giggled. She leaned so close against him as she did it that her hair tickled his cheek. A tiny bit of panic shivered through him. “A mitten? For real?”
Nick shoved the panic down and forced himself to smile, looking at her a bit sideways. “Yeah, I can show you. It’s stupid. Just a locals thing.” He held up his hand in front of them to demonstrate. “That’s what the state sort of looks like.”
“That’s both ridiculous and endearing.” She led the two of them down the street past all the places Nick had already seen but was only now starting to get used to. He’d come from that corner on his first day, and he’d walked down that side street in search of a grocery store. London was slowly solidifying around him.
She made him nervous. He never did well with people who were so in control of their lives. He could barely tie his own shoes, metaphorically speaking.
“Well, we’re here,” she declared. They’d walked up to a place called the King’s Arms. It had a red door and flowers overflowing from pots hung above the windows. Giddiness swelled up in Nick despite the nerves. A pub! He was going to have his first pub experience. He braced himself. “All right, c’mon,” Izzy said as she ushered them swiftly through the door.
Inside was dim and decidedly warm. Nick felt itchy all over as his eyes adjusted, but he barely had any time to think before Izzy was grabbing his hand and leading him toward a back booth already filled with people. They all turned as Izzy and Nick approached and erupted into various greetings. Nick had to scramble to keep his glasses on his nose because he was so sweaty they’d slid down.
Jesus, this was a lot of people, and it was a lot of people all at once. He gave a vague hand wave, only just stopping himself from hiding behind Izzy. She towered over him. He could have easily done it.
“Right, everyone, this is Nick! Nick’s an international student, he’s American, and I wanted him to be our friend. Nick, this is everyone!”
Again, Nick gave a small hand lift and smiled, unable to force his tongue to even say hi. Zoya once told him, If you smile, even if you don’t feel like smiling, you’ll feel better. Try it, and then made him stand there in the middle of a school event and smile until he felt less shaky. It sort of helped then, and it was sort of helping now. He scanned the faces around him as Izzy talked.
“So, this is Natali.” She pointed to an Indian girl with a punk sort of haircut. She was thin and what his mom referred to as angular, with her pronounced shoulders and collarbones. She wore a ribbed tank top under a flannel shirt and had gauges in her ears along with a bullring piercing in her nose. Nick nearly cowed beneath her intense and curious gaze but managed to hold it more or less steadily.
“Over there is Alex.” Alex was a black guy with short-cropped hair and the sort of face that you don’t expect to see on a human being in person, pretty much ever. Nick theoretically knew that models and actors and such were actual people who existed in the world and were photographed and walked among peons like Nick, but Jesus. He got a hold of himself and gave Alex what he hoped was just a regular, friendly sort of nod.
“This is Steph.” Izzy pointed to the girl sitting next to Alex. Nick almost jumped—it was the girl who’d greeted him at the dorm on his first day. How had he not noticed her until now?
She gave him a happy grin over her beer glass. “Hiya, mate. Good to see you again.”
“This grumpy dude here is called Dex.” Nick half-smiled and gave an aborted hand wave and realized he recognized this boy, too. He’d been at International Night, and when Nick had caught a brief glimpse of him, he’d been looking at Nick.
At the time, he hadn’t had enough time to process it before the boy looked away, and now he was sort of starting to wish he’d look away again. If Natali and Alex intimidated him, Dex made Nick feel like he shouldn’t be there at all. Nick made every effort not to bolt, and just barely stood his ground. For a brief second, he wanted nothing more than to be back on his bed watching Downton Abbey. He pulled himself together.
Grumpy, maybe, but—pretty. Dex was black, too, his face framed by neat dreads, all dark except for the occasional green, blue, and purple. Wide brown eyes watched Nick from under intense eyebrows. It was hard to imagine his full, chiseled mouth relaxed into a smile. Nick broke eye contact and looked at Izzy again, because at least she wasn’t making him feel like he was intruding on what had been a perfectly nice time up until now.
“And, finally, this is Jonny,” she said breezily, pointing to a blond boy with the kind of face it was hard to picture looking unhappy. He was leaned back in the booth, one arm slung across the back of it, holding a beer in the other hand.
“Hey, there,” he said. His voice was sweet and slow like molasses, and Nick liked him immediately.
“Hey.” He nodded and vowed to just ignore Grumpy Dex as much as he could.
Nick might not have been a people person, precisely, but Izzy had invited him, and he didn’t want to let her down.
“Right.” Izzy clapped her hands. “Nat, shove over and let Nick sit, and I’ll go get us drinks. Nick, what do you fancy? Lager, ale, cider? Wine, something stronger?”
Nick’s mind went blank. Somehow, in all this time, he hadn’t even considered he’d have to make a convincingly informed choice of drink. He wasn’t twenty-one, and outside of family gatherings and an occasional beer with Lena, he barely drank. He would have rather gnawed his hand off than admit it, though, so he just said, “Oh, lager is fine,” and hoped that whatever that was, he’d be able to choke it down.
“Cool.” She grinned, then bounded off toward the bar.
Which left Nick alone to sit down among five strangers. He clasped his hands between his knees and smiled at the table in general, hoping the conversation would happen around him and allow him to melt into the booth a bit. It was crowded, and he was pressed up against Natali in a way that was a bit too intimate for a first meeting, but she didn’t seem to mind, so Nick willed himself to relax. Deep breaths. He felt his face getting warm but tried to ignore that, too.
“So, Nick, how did you meet Izzy? Was it International Night?” Steph asked.
“Yep.” Nick nodded, giving her another smile. He really wanted that drink now.
“Cool.” She smiled back.
“And where are you from, exactly?”
This came from Natali, and Nick had to tilt his head at an awkward angle to respond. He gave her the short story. “Michigan.”
“Nick’s also Russian,” Steph supplied from across the table, and everyone turned toward her. “Aren’t you?” she said in an encouraging sort of way.
“How the hell do you know?” Alex asked, while Nick felt the uncomfortable pressure in his belly, that familiar bracing for questions.
“I checked him into his hall.” Steph shrugged. “He’s got a Russian first name. Well, and last, too.”
“Go on,” Natali prompted, nudging Nick with her shoulder, and he ducked his head, wrinkling his nose. “What is it? Does it have a million syllables, like Dostoevsky or summat?”
“C’mon, give the people what they want.” Alex grinned, and Nick couldn’t help smiling back at him.
“All right, it’s Nikolay. Melnikov.”
Nick could never decide if “the people” wanted the full, authentic experience, so his accent always landed somewhere in between. Not Russian, not really American. Just an in-betweenie sort of place where it sounded neither. Sounded fake.
“Ohhh, cool. But you haven’t got an accent? I mean, not a Russian one, I don’t think,” Alex said.
Nick ventured a glance across everyone at the table. They were all watching him with what looked to be genuine interest. All apart from Dex, who was busy scratching at a spot at the table with the sort of intensity usually reserved for people who were paid to clean those tables for a living.
Nick shrugged. “It’s been ten years. I guess I got lucky. They say that if you’re immersed in a language before you’re twelve, you won’t have an accent.” He paused and shrugged again. “I was ten. My sister was fourteen, so she has a bit of one, still.”
“Wow,” Steph said, watching him with her face propped on her hand. “Ten years old—what was that like?”
“Um, weird, I guess?”
“Fuck’s sake, he just got here and we’re already pestering him for his deepest stories?”
Nick’s gaze flew to Dex, who was now staring into his own drink like it had personally offended him. Everyone else was staring at Dex.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Steph’s gaze skittered between them, looking genuinely distressed. Nick felt just a little bad for her, but Dex had kind of saved him, however unwittingly. “I should have thought … Sorry.”
“It’s totally fine.” Nick glanced over at Dex, and this time their gazes caught. Dex was the first to look away, taking a deep gulp of his drink. Nick looked back at Steph, who still appeared a bit embarrassed. “Really, don’t worry about it. It’s probably the most interesting thing about me.”
“Pffft, right.” She sent a small grin his way before taking a sip of her drink. “Oh, hey, what are you studying, by the way?”
Nick pushed his glasses back up his nose. His armpits itched. “Um, history.”
Steph looked on the verge of asking more, but then a giant glass of amber beer appeared under Nick’s face. “All right, there we are.” Izzy dragged a chair over and placed herself next to Nick. “Now, what have I missed?”
“Steph asked too many questions.” Steph shot Alex a dirty look, which looked sort of funny on her friendly face.
“And Nick is Russian,” Natali offered. Since she was smiling at him, he decided not to take offense and smiled back. What a whole lot of smiling he was doing. He took an exploratory sip of his drink.
Hmm. Not bad. Only a little bitter aftertaste.
“Are you really?” Izzy asked. “How cool is that? So much cooler than just being boring old American.”
Nick snorted and wound up with beer foam under his nose. He wiped it away hastily and laughed despite himself.
“Izzy!” Steph sounded scandalized, but she was laughing, too.
“What? It’s true—Russia’s so much more mysterious than America.”
Nick was still laughing. “That’s one word for it.”
Izzy grinned over at him. “At least it’s got a history, right?”
“True,” he agreed. “That it does.”
Izzy clinked glasses with him and took a long pull. Nick followed suit.
+
The rest of the night Nick spent listening and drinking and asking the occasional question, especially once the beer in his glass began to disappear.
He was warm and a little sleepy in a way he hadn’t felt in a while. After the third time Izzy sent Dex what looked to be a mock glare after Dex had made some smart-ass comment, Nick took a sip of beer, leaned back in the booth, and asked, bold as hell, “How did you guys all meet?”
“Oh, I know, I got this!” Natali bounced beside him, honest-to-God hand raised in the air. She brushed her bangs from her eyes and said, “Well, these two”—she pointed at Alex and Dex with her Corona—“met in their ubernerd lectures. Biochem majors, can you believe this shit?”
Alex and Dex instantly gave them identical winning smiles. Nick flushed for no good reason.
“Right, and Dex lived in halls with this harlot.” Natali reached around Nick to poke at Izzy, who just stuck her tongue out at her. “They met when Dex was attempting to make an American-style grilled cheese sandwich on the hob and nearly set the kitchen on fire.”
“It was so not even close to being on fire,” Dex protested like someone tired of pointing it out.
“Excuse me, it actually went up in flame?” Izzy said, flicking a coaster across the table. She turned to Nick. “There was a perfectly usable toastie maker right there, too.”
Dex went on like she hadn’t spoken. “It was a contained grilled-cheese flame that barely even triggered the smoke alarm.”
“But it did, actually, trigger it,” Natali corrected. “Anyway, Izzy had apparently just wandered into the kitchen in her bra and pants—”
“Oi!”
“Excuse me, in her teeny tiny pajamas,” Natali continued. “And Dex wound up burning his eyebrows off.” She paused. “From what I understand.”
When all eyes turned to Dex, he was looking at the ceiling, calmly sipping his drink. His initial bout of grumpiness was hard not to take personally, because as soon as Nick was no longer the center of attention, Dex visibly relaxed. Nick had at first thought it was hard to imagine those stern lips ever smiling, but he knew better now. Dex smiled easily. It dimpled his cheeks and made him look boyish, younger than the rest of them.
The thing was, Nick had a problem with staring. Zoya had pointed it out to him enough times that he’d more or less learned to curb the impulse, but it was hard with so many new people around. They all seemed so easy around each other, so familiar together, that Nick felt himself relaxing alongside them, which led to him studying each of them, one by one.
He tried not to study Dex as much as the others for fear of the grumpy dude returning, but when Dex smiled it was hard to look away.
Now, with everyone else watching Dex, too, Nick had implicit permission. He also had a question he couldn’t contain. “You burned your eyebrows?”
Dex sighed and frowned as he looked down. “No.”
“Dexter,” Izzy said tonelessly beside Nick.
“Ugh, fine.” He threw Nick a dubious sort of look. “Yes, I singed my eyebrows a bit. Was just startled, is all.”
“It was epic, man,” Alex cut in, laughing. “He shows up at the lab looking like he’d already experimented a bit too much, and it hadn’t even been anything but fucking cheese.” Alex was shaking with laughter, infecting everyone at the table with it. Nick felt almost euphoric, giggling alongside the others. “A grilled cheese sandwich and a half-naked Izzy were a deadly combination, apparently.”
“I hate you,” Dex said, but even Nick couldn’t perceive any real heat behind it. “Anyway, Izzy and Nat met at some get-together or other, and Steph and Jonny we picked up—”
“Right here in this pub!” Jonny interrupted, lifting his glass. “Steph was determined to make friends despite being a shy young thing.”
“Was not,” Steph mumbled, pink-cheeked. Watching her gave Nick a similar feeling to walking through his own front door. She put Nick at ease. He smiled at her when she caught him staring, and she smiled back. “I mean, I was, but whatever, this was two years ago.”
“Shyness is not a character flaw, babe,” Natali said. “Anyway, Jonny and Steph met at freshers week stuff, and Jonny took her under his wing, being older and wiser than the rest of us because … well, blah blah, and then we came across them both, and blah blah friendship blah.” She gave Nick a smile and finished off her Corona in the next go.
“I mean, it’s not like we’re a cult. We do know other people,” Izzy offered. “I meet people all the time.” She pointed to Nick with her glass.
“Izzy likes to pick up strays,” Dex added, and just like that, Nick’s newly found euphoria popped like a balloon. He hoped his expression hadn’t changed, but he knew better. He’d been called an open book by Zoya enough times.
“What the hell?” Natali protested. Nick looked down at his drink, wondering how to extricate himself to get another. He’d never gone up to a bar before in his life. And he didn’t even know what he was drinking.
“What?” Dex asked, then said, “Oh. Oh, shit. Sorry, Nick. That wasn’t—sorry.”
Nick glanced up at him. For some reason, hearing Dex say his name startled Nick, and he shrugged in an attempt to cover it up. Dex actually did look apologetic.
“Oh, it’s fine, I didn’t even…” He seized the moment. “I was just gonna get another drink, actually. Um…” He steeled himself. “Can I get anyone else anything?”
“Ohhh, yes, please!” Steph raised her glass. “It’s the Stella. Cheers, mate.”
Nick nodded, repeating Stella in his head, and waited for Izzy to move her chair so he could get out.
“Can you grab me another Corona?” Natali asked, and Nick gave her a nod, as well. Right. Three drinks. He could do three drinks.
“Oh, and a cider here,” Alex piped up, finishing his glass off in one gulp. Nick got a little mesmerized by the movement of his Adam’s apple, then panicked. Four drinks. Okay. He could fight his way through the crowded pub with four drinks. His fingers were reasonably long and grabby.
“I’ll come up with you,” Izzy said decisively and grabbed his arm like she had earlier. “These lazy tossers,” she muttered. Nick tried not to look too relieved.
Once they managed to get through the throngs of drinkers, Izzy bellied up to the bar like she was paid to do it. All Nick could do was stand back and wonder at her ability to pull attention toward herself like she was lit by a spotlight. He noticed that the bartender all but flew over to where she was waiting, much to the annoyance of the dude who’d been craning his neck in an attempt to get attention.
“What’ll it be, Iz?” the bartender asked, leaning his elbows on the bar and giving her a crooked smile.
Of course he knew her. Nick hid a smile behind his hand while Izzy rattled off the drink orders. Nick remembered to grab his wallet just in time, shoving his card at the bartender. Who didn’t spare him a glance, fair enough. Standing next to Izzy was like a sparrow attempting to upstage a peacock.
“Don’t mind Dex, by the way,” Izzy said while they waited for drinks to be poured. “It’s not you.”
Nick shrugged, looking down at the smooth surface of the bar. “It’s fine.” His face was hot. There was a lot of humanity around him.
“Well, it’s not fine, him being a bit of a tosser, but he isn’t always like that.” When Nick looked up at her, she was biting the inside of her cheek like she was holding something back. Not for the first time, Nick wondered about those two. He wondered just what was sticking in Dex’s craw, and he especially wondered, with an uncomfortable, clawing-at-his-belly feeling, why Izzy had invited Nick out in the first place.
“Well, everyone else is really nice,” Nick offered.
“Oh, no,” Izzy smiled, shaking her hair back. “They’re also tossers, they’re just much cheerier about it. Oh, goody, here we go!” Three glasses and a Corona appeared beside them.
All in all, Nick was pretty proud of himself for not even spilling any beer as he slithered his way between people and set the glasses down on the table without any disasters.
“Cheers, mate,” Alex said, grabbing his and Steph’s drinks while Nick handed Natali her Corona.
Then he sat back down, took a long gulp of his own beer, and decided to ask no more questions.