You Complete Me - 17. Chapter 17 - War on the Horizon

Luke released Nic once they were outside, and Nic, worried for Joey, immediately made a mad dash for the door. His fingers just grazed the handle before Luke snatched him up again and flattened him against the nearest wall, his hands on Nic’s shoulders to pin him in place. Now forced nose-to-nose with his cousin, Nic was startled into stillness.

Luke was panting and his eyes were bright with fury. “You need to get a grip,” he growled.

“But—”

“No, shut up and listen for once. Do you want Joey to come with us or not?”

Nic pressed his lips together, silent.

“Then you’ll stop acting insane and let my mom handle it. All right?” Nic rolled his head up to the ceiling with an angry groan, so Luke shook him a little. “Do you understand?” he demanded.

“Yes! Let me go.”

Luke was clearly skeptical, but he began to loosen his grip anyway. Nic didn’t move, so Luke let him ago and held his hands up in a peacekeeping gesture. “Sorry. I know you don’t like being touched, but you were out of control.”

Beyond the point of arguing, Nic just shook his head. He brushed past Luke and jogged downstairs, where he crouched on the bottom step and held his head in his shaking hands. He waited to feel scared and panicked, but he was just too angry to have room for anything else and he wasn’t sure if that was any better.

After a breath, Luke joined him, settling a few steps above him to maintain a safe distance. Other residents that had been drawn out by the previous commotion gave them curious looks as they passed by, but no one approached them or seemed to care that much. Midmorning quickly approached, and the sun that came with it grew ever hotter, even under the shade. Neither of the cousins said anything for many minutes.

Finally, Luke had had enough. “We should wait in the car,” he said. “I’m dying out here.”

Nic didn’t comment, so Luke got to his feet and started down the sidewalk towards his car. He didn’t look back, as though he didn’t care if Nic chose to follow. Nic stared after him, wanting to stay close to the apartment, but the sweat continuously sliding down his back was ultimately what changed his mind.

Luke sat in the driver’s seat, massaging a spot on his chest and wincing. Nic climbed into the passenger’s side. “Sorry,” he mumbled, keeping his eyes facing forward. “For, um, hitting you.”

Luke just grunted in acknowledgment, so Nic knew he probably owed him more than just a half-sincere apology. “And thanks...for trying to help.”

“You say that like you don’t think this is going to work.” Luke stopped rubbing his chest and rested his hands on the steering wheel. He gazed out of the windshield wistfully, as if he were imagining driving away. “Were you trying to kill yourself when you OD’d?”

Nic blinked, unsure if he heard Luke correctly at first. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

Luke shrugged. “Just always wondered. After what just happened...I’d get it, you know? I won’t be mad if that’s what you were trying to do.”

Nic was tempted to snap at him again just to end the conversation, but he’d already apologized once and they were of limited supply. He stewed over it for a moment as if he hadn’t analyzed every detail a hundred times before. “No. At least...not directly. I just wanted peace, and I didn’t care how I got it.”

Luke mulled that over as he drummed his fingers along the steering wheel. “I wish you’d never felt that way.”

Nic didn’t know what to say to that, so he changed the subject. “The things Anus said – they weren’t all lies, you know that, right? I was a fuck-up. I still am.”

Luke shrugged. “You had your reasons. You’re better now.”

“But I’m not…dramatic, am I?”

“Uh, besides trying to kill your stepdad?” Luke joked, chuckling nervously. “I guess, most of the time, you’re a pretty stoic person. Why do you ask?”

Nic nodded, staring down at his lap. “I was just – I don’t know. The guy that...attacked me, I wasn’t flirting with him. I don’t think I was.” Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. The details leading up the event were blurry, and that was before he’d ever started taking drugs.

“It doesn’t matter whether you were or weren’t.”

“I know, I just felt like you should know that. I didn’t ask – ”

“Stop it, Nic,” Luke demanded, gently. “You’re getting worked up again.”

Nic focused on his hands, which had started shaking again. He was out of spare cigarettes, so fresh air would have to be the next best thing. “Yeah. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for a response, Nic hopped back out into the sweltering heat outside.

Aimless walking took Nic back to that flowering tree for the second time today. He escaped from the sun by crouching under its shady limbs, tucking his knees up to his chest as he leaned against the trunk. Nic checked his phone: it had been twenty minutes since he’d been thrown out of his own home. He wasn’t sure how long negotiating should take or even what the adults were talking about, but that felt like a bad sign.

He couldn’t stop thinking of the way Joey looked before they left. It agonized Nic that he couldn’t blame that horrified expression on Amos this time. For years now, Nic prided himself on being the lesser of two evils in his brother’s eyes, but for the first time, he wondered if that was still true. It hadn’t been a question before Amos kindly reminded him of the unstable wreck he was.

His namesake, Nic the Beetle, crawled listlessly around in its container next to him. Nic tapped on the walls a few times to get a reaction out of it, but to no avail; perhaps the insect sensed that its time with the Mathesons was coming to an end, one way or another. Nic placed a handful of leaves and white petals from the tree inside the container, figuring the beetle was probably missing its old home. At least Amos would never be as invested in Joey’s passion projects.

Eventually, Nic decided he had sulked for long enough. Taking the container with him, he trudged back to Luke’s car. His cousin didn’t even question his guest, and the two of them resumed the wait.

Minutes stretched by, slowly approaching an hour. Luke turned the car off a few times, complaining about wasting gas, so the boys opened the doors and suffered between ignitions. Nic’s eyes remained fixed on his apartment door at the top of the stairs for most of the wait, and he was on the verge of running up and banging on it when it opened. Aunt April walked out of it.

And Joey was close behind.

Nic didn’t say anything, but his immense relief must have been all over his face. Luke punched his shoulder. “What’d I tell you?”

April was carrying a duffle bag in one hand and held onto Joey with the other as they continued along the sidewalk to Luke’s car, but at the halfway point Joey broke away and jogged the rest of the way. Nic was tempted to wrap him up as if he hadn’t seen the kid in years, but he managed to control himself.

Joey didn’t seem any worse for wear, but he seemed confused. “Aunt April said we’re staying with them for a few days.”

A few days? Nic looked over Joey’s head to look a question at April, but she was busy tucking the duffle bag in the trunk. “Yeah, that’s right. An...extended sleepover at the cabin.”

Joey nodded absently, more interested in his pet beetle in the backseat. “Mom said I have to stay in the big house, though.”

April heard that as she circled back around the car and she gave Nic a sympathetic look. “Sorry, Nic. That’s the only way they’d agree to let him go.”

Everyone else had gotten into the car, clearly eager to leave. Nic was as well, but he still wanted answers. He stubbornly remained standing outside. “I don’t understand.”

April frowned at him through the open window. “I told your mother that we’ll watch you two while she and Amos...work things out.”

“What’s there to work out?”

She looked back at Joey, who was letting the beetle crawl all over his hands, oblivious to the tension. “We’ll talk about it at the house, okay? Just trust me, Nic.”

Trust: one thing that Nic did not give easily. He looked past his aunt to Luke in the driver’s seat, who seemed to be silently begging Nic to cooperate. Joey finally noticed that Nic still hadn’t joined them and was now gazing quizzically at his brother. Nic sighed; he didn’t like caveats, and there seemed to be a big one here. But what choice did he have?

He gestured at his own car a few parking spaces away. “I’ll get my stuff.”

***

True to his character, Jake put off looking into Orrinshire University until Sunday evening, and once he did, he fretted about it late into the night. It was a small school located in a mid-size town an hour from London, his only point of a reference for the entire country. Their rugby team was reputable, though, with a number of members going on to playing professionally.

If that wasn’t intimidating enough, their scholarship program required applicants to have a 3.0 GPA or higher to be considered. Jake had put a lot of effort into getting his grades up over the last year, but he remained just shy of that number. After that abysmal first chemistry exam, his hopes of escaping Greendale began to dwindle.

Ellie hadn’t seemed too worried when he vented to her about it. “Dad will sell his soul to get the best tutor in the country if that’s what you need,” she had reminded him.

But the best tutor in the country wasn’t what Jake needed. Jazzy was who he needed, but she was still avoiding him like the plague. She didn’t study at the library anymore and she and Luke often ate off campus together. Jake had been giving her space for both their sakes and knew that the best way to negotiate with her was probably through Luke, but he was too anxious to wait until Monday morning.

Under the bright glow of his laptop screen, still open to OU’s website, Jake called Jazzy. It rang and rang, and he almost hung up by the time she finally answered.

“Jake?” Her voice was scratchy. “It’s eleven on a school night.”

It was just like her to be more annoyed about being contacted on a school night than being randomly contacted by him at all. Jake scrambled for a sales pitch, having lost his nerve now that he was speaking to her for the first time in a week. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he began. “But it’s kind of an emergency.”

There was a rustle of fabric on the other end, and when Jazzy spoke again, she sounded much more alert. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s not bad news, exactly.” He went on to explain the game, meeting Darin, and Orrinshire.

Once he’d finished, Jazzy was confused. “Um...that’s great news. So, what’s the emergency?”

Jake sighed impatiently. “I’m going to need you to tutor me again if I have any chance of getting in. Just tell me what I have to do to get people to stop talking about us, and I’ll do it.”

She was quiet for a long time. “Actually, I found out how Meg got a picture of my journal.”

Jake slowly closed his laptop. “Oh yeah?”

“I’m working on getting someone to admit she sent it to her, but I think she’ll crack soon.” She yawned loudly. “I can tell you and Luke all about it tomorrow.”

“You’re really going to leave me on a cliffhanger?”

“Consider it payback for waking me up on a school night,” she snapped. “Good night, Jake.”

The called ended before Jake could retort. He glared indignantly at the blank screen, wondering what happened to the mousy, shy girl that had been almost too afraid to speak to him in sophomore year. Luke was probably to blame for giving her a backbone lately.

With nothing else to do but try to sleep, Jake finally went to bed. Two hours and lots of tossing and turning later, he gave up on that plan and went back to his phone. Even when he wasn’t stressed, sleep rarely came easily to him – it was hard to shut his brain off on a good day.

Though the rumors were beginning to die down, he was still brought up regularly on Twitter. Praise for his Saturday performance was interspersed with nasty comments, and of course Jake could only focus on the negatives. Fully awake now, he went to the safer space of Instagram, watching reels of car restorations and enjoying the profiles of various models.

Breaking one of his own rules, he even casually messaged Nic: you make it home from the game alright? He never texted Nic first, having always assumed it would go ignored until Nic felt like talking to him. But after spontaneously making out with him, Jake figured they were on good enough terms to have friendly conversations every once in a while. He didn’t even expect the other boy to be awake, but over an hour later, just as he finally began to nod off, Jake got an answer.

Set an appt for 12 tomorrow so you can stop nagging me.

Jake smirked sleepily at his phone, hearing Nic’s sulkiness through the words. He wrote back, That’s not even what I asked.

Nic’s next message came quickly: But it’s what you really wanted to know.

Jake couldn’t really deny that, so he didn’t bother trying. Changing the subject, he wrote: So I won’t see you at lunch? Sucks

Again, Nic answered right away. He must have been feeling charitable tonight. God, you'll bitch about anything

I don’t bitch about nudes, Jake wrote back, only half in jest. His message was read, but went unanswered long enough for him to start falling asleep again. Another buzz woke him up, this time from an image. It was of Nic was in bed, and the picture was taken from overhead so that most of his body from the nose down was in frame. He was lying on his back, completely naked, with two fingers between his lips. As Jake took it in, another picture came through – this time, those same fingers were between his legs.

Jake bit his own lip as his sleepy cock began to stir. He reached into his boxers, bringing it to full hardness within a few tugs. He held it up so it was pointed at the ceiling and aimed his phone at it, making sure he got his abs in frame. Along with the picture, he typed a message one-handed as he stroked with the other: This is what you do to me, beautiful.

It was sent right before Jake began to regret his wording. Beautiful? Did he really just say that? He rarely even called girls beautiful; it was such a cheesy, dramatic word, reserved for poetry and romantic films. But...nothing else really fit Nic’s looks, either. He wasn’t handsome in the classic sense, too provocative to be pretty, and too unconventional to be hot. Beautiful was the best way to describe his vivid eyes and perky ass. Or his pillow-soft lips and smooth, pale skin...Jake shuddered audibly as he came, painting his stomach with the orgasm that he had been denied the night before.

He lay there as he returned to earth, that last message still burning in his mind. Nic hadn’t responded, and the minutes dragged as the cum cooled against his skin. Jake took a picture of the aftermath and sent it, hoping it would spur Nic to say something and ideally not about what Jake had said before.

It worked. Hope you enjoyed that cuz we’re not fucking again until the results come in.

What? Just because he called him ‘beautiful’? Jake typed and erased several times before settling on, You trying to punish me?

No. You said you were tired of condoms, Nic replied.

Did he say that? Jake tried to relay the conversation in his head, but his memory got kind of foggy after Nic had kissed him. Sounded like him, though. Whatever. He’d gone longer than a week without sex before – barely – and he could do it again. He grabbed a handful of tissues off his nightstand and wiped up the mess before writing: I can wait.

***

By morning, Jake wasn’t so sure. What little sleep he got was fitful, and his admittedly pleasant dreams after talking to Nic resulted in morning wood. Nothing killed his libido faster than Adderall, though, and it would help wake him up.

The pill bottle felt unusually light when Jake pulled it out of the medicine cabinet. He opened it and frowned at the little orange capsules inside; it seemed a little early for a refill, especially since he didn’t take them as regularly as he should. Shrugging, Jake popped one and finished getting ready.

By the time Jake arrived at school, a familiar rush of energy had washed over him and he was practically skipping through the metal detector. That was the only part of being on meds that he liked, but it usually only got him through the first few classes before he crashed. Until then, it certainly made him more alert than Luke, who was yawning outside their classroom when Jake joined him.

“No coffee this morning?” Jake asked.

Luke shook his head. “That, and I was up half the night gaming with my cousin.”

Jake, if possible, perked up even more. “Nic?”

“No, the younger one, Joey, but they’re both staying at the house for a while.” Before Jake could ask any burning questions, Luke quickly changed the subject. “Jazzy said she had some news for you, right?”

Jake was still very curious about this new living arrangement, but he didn’t know how to casually press for more. “Um, right—wait, what did you say?”

The question and the incredulous anger behind it wasn’t directed at Luke, but at the large crowd of students that had gathered by a neighboring classroom behind him. They abruptly stopped chattering and exchanged guilty looks between them, so Jake prompted them again: “Repeat what you just said.”

Again, there was an awkward pause, until Lisa Schwartz– a pig-nosed girl that was one of Meg’s designated fat friends – stepped forward with a sneer on her face. “I was just wondering if it’s true that your mom’s a mail-order bride.”

Luke put his hand on Jake’s arm in warning, but he shrugged him off. He took a few steps closer to the crowd, his heart thundering in his ears. “No, but she’s fucking dead, Lisa. Or did Meg forget to tell you that part?”

The girl paled and her friends looked properly chastised as they seemed to shrink away from her. Lisa’s boyfriend of the week, Paul, was the only one that came to her defense. “Hey, man, she didn’t know that, so maybe you should lay off.”

Jake stared Paul down. “You going to make me?” Paul froze, apparently trying to decide if Lisa was worth answering that question, and Jake scoffed. “That’s what I thought.” He turned around sharply, dismissing the entire group, and set his sights on someone else.

The students that were outside their own classroom were quiet as Jake walked right up to Meg. She was as beautiful as always, though she’d lost her confident edge. Her eyes were wide, and for the first time, she seemed small and unsure. “Jake—”

“Save it. There’s no line you won’t cross, is there?”

“I didn’t know she was going to run her mouth about it!”

“But you knew there was a chance.”

Meg was quiet. Jake gave her one last look of disgust and walked into the now-open classroom with the rest of the students. He heard Luke mutter, “Cunt,” in Meg’s general direction as he followed him, and couldn’t agree more.

***

Jake’s father’s side of the family was very affluent and very white – Ivy League and six-figure incomes kind of affluent, and “rap is not music” kind of white. When Samwell decided to marry a middle-class waitress ten years his junior that he met while vacationing in Venezuela, they were confused at best. They were disapproving at worst. After a particularly frosty Thanksgiving many years ago, Jake asked his recently-widowed father what a mail order bride was, having heard it from one of his cousins. Samwell became very red and Jake never got his answer, but they stopped having Thanksgivings with the Fergusons for several years after that.

Jake eventually figured out what his cousin had been talking about, and over time it had become something of an inside joke between himself and Ellie, just another addition to the long list of awkward interactions they’d had with the Fergusons at every family gathering. It certainly hadn’t been funny at the time, but that’s how they learned to cope with it. Jake had once thought that Meg would also see it that way, as worthy of an eye-roll because the notion was so ridiculous. Restructuring the story as if it were fact, and subsequently spreading it around the school, told him that maybe she didn’t find it so unbelievable. Evidently, she wasn’t the only one, and that was a hard pill to swallow.

Luckily, Jake had never told Meg many specific details about Ellie, or he’d be worrying about hearing exaggerated tales of his sister’s struggles all over the hallways. Nothing seemed to be off limits anymore, and he didn’t know if there was an end to Meg’s wrath. “I don’t think I can go about ignoring her anymore,” he admitted at lunch later that day.

He had been uncharacteristically quiet the entire period, so Luke peered up from his plate with surprise. “It doesn’t seem to be working,” he said, carefully.

Jake shook his head. “I can deal with the lies about everything else. Eventually people will get over it. But bringing my family into it, especially my mom…” He trailed off, fearing that if he kept talking his voice might crack. He let out a sigh and gave up on eating, his appetite long gone.

It was quiet for a moment, and then Jazzy piped up. “She’s not going to stop unless someone takes her down a peg.”

Jake would have expected her to be the voice of reason, but he also hadn’t forgotten that she’d been hurt by Meg as well. “I agree.”

Luke smiled uncertainly. “I feel like this is too good to be true, but it sounds like we’re about to come up with a revenge plan. So what should we do? Key her car? Mess with her shampoo?”

Jazzy scoffed. “Can’t be that simple, and she’d know it was one of us right way. We have to handle it the way she does, by targeting people close to us to find out things no one else should know.”

Jake quirked an eyebrow at her. “Is that how she got your note?”

She nodded, her nose wrinkling. “My sister. There’s no one else that could have gotten to my diary, and I finally squeezed the truth out of her. She’s going into ninth grade next year, and Meg promised to get her on the cheerleading squad if she sent her pictures of it.”

Luke sat back, impressed. “Well, you’ve already done all the heavy lifting. We just prove she’s a liar and there goes all her credibility.”

Jazzy didn’t seem as excited. “I made her release some tweets about it, but who’s going to care about a middle schooler? I still wrote it.” She peered guiltily at Jake from under her lashes. “The damage is already done. We have to aim lower.”

Luke squeezed her hand and turned to Jake. “You were with her for months. I’m sure you’ve got something on her.”

Jake chuckled bitterly. “Nothing that people don’t already know. She’s a bitch in private, too.” It occurred to him that he could make up lies in retaliation, but he wasn’t as good at it as Meg was.

“I seriously don’t know what you saw in her.”

Over the past few weeks – possibly even months – Jake had been asking himself the same thing. He’d liked Meg’s fire, her lack of a filter, and her abrasiveness could be funny at times. When he thought about it, those were qualities that she shared with Nic, but the two lacked any other commonalities. Meg talked a lot of shit behind closed doors, but Nic was the type to say what he wanted to your face – something that could be both irritating and endearing. Of course, he couldn’t say any of that to Luke, so he just shrugged helplessly.

“What if you fucked one of her friends?” Luke suggested.

Jake could tell that he was only half-kidding, and from the way Jazzy rolled her eyes, she realized it, too. He made a noncommittal grunt. “No thanks. Most of them are almost as bad.”

They brainstormed for the rest of the period, but other than releasing some texts Jake had of Meg talking rudely about her friends, they didn’t have anything concrete. Jake wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of attaching his name to any further scandals, either; whatever they did, he didn’t want to be at the center of it. They separated with only fantasies brewing, but Jake left lunch feeling a lot less alone in his ongoing war with his ex.

***

After enduring a headache that lasted for three hours and forced him to skip practice, Jake decided to also skip his second dose that afternoon. His mind returned to being as scattered as always, which made doing homework take longer. However, the meds wearing off meant that his dick started working again, which he discovered after Nic DM’d him some racy pictures as he was settling into bed that night.

Once Jake had finished…appreciating them, he wrote: This mean you’re DTF again?

Nope. Just bored. PP takes at least a week.

Ah, Planned Parenthood. Jake usually went to his own doctor for screens, so the last time he’d set foot in one of those clinics was a few years ago, to get a morning-after pill with his fling at the time. It hadn’t been a fun experience, and Jake shuddered at the old memory. As he became lost in his thoughts, his phone vibrated again.

By the way, Nic wrote.

He continued typing for a while, and Jake got impatient. Yeah?

Luke told me that people are saying stuff about your mom.

Luke and his big mouth. Jake groaned as he texted, Just a dumb rumor.

I know. Just wanted to say that it’s messed up and I’m sorry. You’re annoying, but you don’t deserve that.

Jake stared at the lines of text for a long moment. He knew that Meg had gone too far, and his other friends thought so, too, but hearing it from Nic – his frenemy-with-benefits – just resonated in a different way. Even if he also found Jake “annoying.” Jake left a heart reaction on the last DM before writing: Thanks. That’s sweet of you. I think.

Nic again took his time answering, typing and erasing a number of times before he finally sent: I know something about Meg that could help you get back at her.