The Nice Boxset

by Jasinda Wilder

  Now…I’m alive. So alive. And I like dirty words.

  I’m shameless. And I like it. Partially because the guilt of what we’re doing is a new kind of pain, and pain centers me.

  Back to his cock. It’s…glorious. I just…oh, god. I felt it, before. But seeing it all, every thick inch coming for me…I forget to breathe and bite my lip.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.” His voice is so, so tender.

  He thought I was afraid, I think. And suddenly, with that realization, I am. I’m terrified. Scared shitless. Another realization washes over me, and it brings wave after wave of pain, guilt, shame, and tears.

  “Nell? What is it? Why are you crying?” He falls to the side of me and nuzzles my face with his nose. “Shit. Shit. I did this. Too much. God…damn it.” He presses his palm to his forehead.

  “No…” I choke the word out past gut-racking sobs. “No. Not you…”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, yeah.” I breathe deep and claw my nails down my forearm. The pain does its job and calms me. “It’s you, but not…not what you’re thinking.”

  “Make sense, damn it,” he growls.

  “Sorry. Sorry.” I gulp air and tug at my hair, pulling until it hurts. “You’re just so much. So much. So much more than…anyone. So much more than—than Kyle.” And with that last word I’m sobbing again.

  “Fuck.” He’s over me, on an elbow and gazing down at me, but I can barely see him through the blurry burn of salt in my eyes. “Nell, I’m just me. I know I said last chance, but…it’s done. Okay? Don’t…don’t be afraid. Don’t…god. I’m such a fucking dick. Look, this is about you, okay? I’m sorry I pushed you into this.”

  I laugh past sobs. “You’re such an idiot,” I manage.

  At which he tenses, frozen stiff.

  “What? What did you call me?” His voice is deadly cold.

  I twist to look at him, and I see that he’s livid, jaw hard and tensed, neck muscles corded. “Colton, I—I just meant that I wasn’t afraid, not of you. And I said you’re an idiot because you’re acting like you pushed me into this. You didn’t. I pushed you into this.” He’s shaking, he’s so mad, and I’m confused and terrified. “I’m sorry—I’m—I didn’t mean it…please…I—”

  “Shut up for a second and let me calm down, ’kay?”

  I nod and hold absolutely still.

  After a few minutes, he speaks in a much calmer voice. “I have an issue with that word. With being called an idiot, or stupid. Or anything like that. Retard, dumbass, shit like that…it’s a button for me. Don’t say it. Not ever, not even in a joke. Got it?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I got it. I’m sorry. You’re not an idiot. You’re amazing. You’re…so much. That’s my point. It’s—”

  “No need to go overboard trying to make up for it,” Colton interrupts.

  I can’t help snapping my gaze to his, searching him, wondering what happened to him to make that such an issue for him. Obviously, someone used to insult his intelligence regularly. For it to be such a huge problem for Colton, there’s only really one probable source. I just can’t see Mr. and Mrs. Calloway doing that. They were always so supportive of Kyle, so loving, so kind. Strict, at times, especially as it came to making sure any publicity was positive, but that’s understandable.

  “I wasn’t,” I say quietly. “I was explaining why I suddenly started bawling like girl.”

  “You are a girl,” he points out.

  “Yeah,” I say. “But until you badgered me into talking about things, I hadn’t cried at all. I mean…at all.”

  Colton shifts on the bed to look at me. “You never cried about what happened to Kyle?”

  “No.”

  “You never grieved?” He sounds almost incredulous.

  “Grieved?” The idea seems foreign. He says it like it’s expected.

  He lifts up his head to stare at me. “Yeah. Grieved. Went through the stages.” He flops back, rubbing between his eyes with his fingers. “Of course you didn’t. Probably why you’re so fucked up about it.”

  I throw an arm over my face to hide my irritation and hurt and the onset of stinging eyes. “He died. I dealt with it.”

  Colton snorts. “No. You didn’t deal with shit. You’re a cutter, Nell.”

  “I haven’t done that in weeks.” I’m aware that I’m rubbing the scars with my thumb, but I can’t help it.

  He takes my hands and forces them apart, traces the pattern of white lines with a fingertip. It’s a tender gesture that sears my heart, makes my jaw tremble. His eyes are mournful.

  “Good,” he says. His eyes meet mine, and they turn firm, hard. “If you ever cut yourself again, I’ll be mad. Like, really really pissed. You don’t want to see that.”

  No, I sure as hell don’t. I don’t answer him, though. I can’t promise that. I’ve managed to not cut in a while, simply because I’ve had Colton on the brain, and that’s enough confusion to take my mind off the urge to bleed myself numb.

  Colton isn’t fooled. He takes my chin in two strong fingers and turns my head to face him. “Promise me, Nell.” His eyes are cerulean intensity. “Fucking promise me. No more cutting. You feel the urge, you call me. You get me, we deal together, okay?”

  I wish I could make that promise. I can’t. He doesn’t understand how deep the need is. I hate it, I really do. I always feel even more guilty after I’ve cut, which makes the problem even worse. It’s like this habit I can’t shake, but it’s not just a habit, like an addiction I’m ashamed of, smoking or pill popping or whatever. I know he gets the need to cut, but he doesn’t realize how embedded in me the urge is.

  I haven’t answered. I’m staring at the ceiling, shaking. I want to promise him. I want to be healed, to never want to score lines of pain into my wrists, my forearms again.

  Colton sits up, and he’s still naked, not hard anymore, and I’m fascinated by his not-erect cock. It’s a distraction, and only momentary. Colton grabs me, lifts me, and I’m on his lap, in his arms, forced to meet his angry glare.

  “Fucking promise, Nell.”

  “No!” I wrench myself free, scramble away, off the bed, away from his hot skin and hard muscles and angry, piercing eyes. “No! You can’t say that to me, you can’t demand that of me. You don’t understand! You can’t just appear in my life and try to change it like this.”

  “Yes, I can.” His voice is calm but intense.

  He’s still on the bed, watching me. I’m hunting the pile of clothes on the floor for mine, but I can’t find my shirt or my panties, so I settle for a T-shirt of Colton’s. It hangs to mid-thigh, and it’s soft and it smells like him, which is confusing and comforting and incredible.

  “No. You can’t. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I went through. You don’t know how I feel.”

  “You’re right. But I’m trying to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you should never have been left alone to deal. You should never have been allowed to bury it all and let it fester. Kyle’s death is an open wound inside you. It’s never healed, never scabbed over. It’s all fucking nasty and gangrenous, Nell. It’s rotting. You need to let someone in. You need to let me in.”

  “I can’t…I can’t…” I’m running, now. Out of his room, into the kitchen.

  It’s drink or cut. He’s bringing it all up, forcing all the shit I’ve buried to the surface. He knows it, and he’s doing it on purpose.

  I’ve kept it all down for so long, and whenever it threatened to come up, come out, I’d drink until it settled back down, or I’d cut and bleed it out rather than feel it, rather than cry or scream or be angry.

  I know he has whiskey somewhere, but I can’t find it. It’s not in the fridge, and I can’t reach high enough to look in the cupboard above the fridge where I know it must be. I climb on the counter, reach for it, and lose my balance. I fall, slamming hard into the floor, and the breath is knocked out of me.

  It’s coming up. It came up when he forced me
into tears, when he made me admit I killed Kyle. The guilt came up and out, and that hurt, like knives shredding my heart.

  This?

  This is the grief. The loss. The knowledge that Kyle is gone. Of course he’s gone, I’ve known that. But this is the grief. The hurt. The loneliness. It’s worse than the guilt. I always knew the guilt was wrong and misplaced. The guilt I can’t justify away, can’t shift or explain or bury any longer.

  I’m fighting sobs, fighting the clenching in my stomach and heart.

  No.

  No.

  I won’t let it out.

  He forced out the guilt. He can’t force out the grief. I don’t want it. It’s too much. It’ll shred me.

  A drawer slams open, silverware rattles. I’m not aware of moving, but it’s me digging in the drawer for a knife. Let him be mad. I don’t care. I hear his feet stomping now. He’d been giving me space to calm down, I guess, but now he knows what I’m doing.

  He’s too late.

  The pain is a blessed relief. I watch in guilty satisfaction as a thin line of red wells up on my forearm. The knife wasn’t very sharp, so I had to press. It’s a deep cut.

  “What the fuck?” Colton, wearing shorts, rushing at me, angry, scared. “Nell…what the fuck?”

  I don’t bother answering. I’m dizzy. Bleeding. I look down and see the spreading red, and it’s too much. I cut deep. Too deep. Good. The grief slides away and slicks across the scratched laminate floor.

  I’m in his arms, and there’s pressure around my arm. A white towel, turning pink-to-crimson. He’s squeezing my arm so hard it hurts past the cut-pain. The towel is wrapped around my arm, and then a belt cinched tight.

  I’m between his knees, my back to his front. I feel his hard chest and his frantic, panting breath, his arms around my shoulders. He’s holding the belt in one hand, my wrist in the other. His face is pressed to the top of my head. His breath huffs loud in my ear, on my hair.

  “Goddamn it, Nell. Why?”

  I find my voice. The hurt in his words is palpable, as if I’d cut him rather than myself, and I want to soothe it. Odd. I want to soothe his pain, the hurt over my cut.

  “I can’t take it,” I whisper, because a whisper is all I can manage. “It’s too much. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back. My fault or not…he’s gone. He’s dead. He’s bones in a wood box, a fading memory. Nothing stops that pain. Not even time.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t.” The last word is growled, rabid. “You weren’t there. You’re not in my head. You don’t know.”

  “He was my baby brother, Nell.” His voice sounds almost as broken as mine.

  “But…you left when we were eleven. You never even came back to visit.” That was something that Kyle and I never talked about, but I knew it confused him, hurt him. His parents wouldn’t talk about Colton.

  “Yeah, well…I didn’t have much choice. I was barely surviving. I missed him every single day. I wrote a thousand letters to him in my head while I tried to fall asleep on park benches and in boxes in alleys, covered in newspapers. A thousand letters I’d never be able to write, couldn’t write. I couldn’t afford food or shelter, much less a bus ticket back to Detroit.”

  Something in what he said strikes me as odd, but I’m dizzy and weak and foggy and can’t place what.

  He lets go the pressure of the makeshift tourniquet, gingerly lifts the towel away. Blood seeps out slowly, but sluggishly. I’m lifted and carried, and I let my head flop against his broad chest. He sets me on the bed, vanishes, comes back with a roll of gauze, medical tape, and a tube of Neosporin.

  “You probably should have stitches,” he says, folding a bandage and placing it over the cut and rolling gauze tightly around my arm. “But I know you won’t get them. So this’ll have to work.”

  “How do you know I won’t?” I ask.

  “Will you?”

  “Hell, no. But how’d you know?” I watch as he tapes the edges down.

  “I wouldn’t have, if it were me. There’d be questions and social services and psychologists and the psych ward. Worst of all, they’d call your parents.” He puts two fingers beneath my chin, a thumb along my jaw. “Which is what you’ll get if this shit happens again. I’ll rush you to the fucking ER and I’ll call your goddamn parents myself, like I should this time, but won’t.”

  “Why not?” I whisper.

  “Because they’d get it all wrong. It’s not a cry for attention or any of that psychobabble bullshit.” He tips his forehead to touch mine. “Because I can help you, if you’ll let me. We can get you through this.”

  ‘We’? Shit. Shit. My eyes still and my lip trembles and my chest heaves. My instinct is to cause pain to stop the tears. Colton knows this by now, gathers me close and holds me against his chest. He’s determined to do this, to be all supportive and loving. Which is exactly what I’ve always been terrified of admitting I want so so badly. Except he’s tenacious about not letting me hide or lie or retreat or pretend, and he knows all my tricks.

  “Let…it…go,” he whispers, his voice a fierce, harsh sound in my hair.

  “No. No!” The last word is screamed.

  “You have to. You can’t bleed it out. You can’t keep pretending, drinking it down.”

  A shudder, a tremble, my teeth clamping down on my lower lip. My fingers claw into the hard slab of muscle that is his pectoral. I’m not sobbing. I’m not.

  Goddamnit, yes, I am.

  “It hurts so fucking bad, Colton…” The words are nearly lost in a sea of choking sobs and shuddering, body-wracking gasps for breath. “I want him back! I don’t want to watch him die anymore.”

  I sob and sob, and he just holds me. Eventually I pull myself together and let words pour out of me. “Over and over I see it. Every time I close my eyes, I see him die. I know it’s not my fault, I always did. I convinced myself it was my fault because that was better than the pain of him being gone.”

  “He’s gone. You have to accept it.”

  “I know. It just hurts.” Now comes the hardest admission of all. “I find myself forgetting him. I see him dying over and over, but I can’t remember what he smelled like. What his arms felt like holding me. What sex with him felt like. What kissing him felt like. I can’t remember him. And I wonder sometimes if I ever really loved him. If it was just teenage infatuation. Thinking I loved him because he was my first. Because we’d fucked. I don’t know. I don’t remember. And now there’s you, and you’re…better than he was. Stronger. You turn me on in a way I don’t remember with him. You make me feel things he never did. The way you kiss me, it’s better than I remember his kisses being. When you made me come, I realized I’d never felt anything like it, ever. Ever. Not in all the times I was with Kyle in the two years we were together.”

  A scream of raw impotent pain and self-loathing and anger and grief tears out my throat; Colton clutches me tighter and lets me scream. Doesn’t shush me or quiet me or whisper anything or tell me it’s okay.

  “I’ve forgotten him, Colton! I never even loved him, and he’s gone! And I’ll never get him back, and I’ll never be okay!”

  “Forgetting is the mind’s way of helping you heal. Helping you move on. You did love him, Nell. He was your first. Your best friend before that. I know that much about you two. You were inseparable from birth. You did love him. Yeah, he’s gone, and it fucking sucks more than anything. He was taken from you too soon, from all of us. I can’t make that okay. But you have to be okay. You have to let yourself heal and move on. You’re stuck in the moment of his death, right now. Locked into a cycle with no way out. You have to break the cycle.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Feel. Grieve. Let yourself feel all the anger at the fact that he was taken from you. Feel the loss of him. Feel the sadness and the missing him. Don’t block it out, don’t cut so it stops, don’t drink yourself numb. Just sit and let it all rip you apart. And then get up and keep breathing. One breath at a time. One day at
a time. Wake up, and be shredded. Cry for a while. Then stop crying and go about your day. You’re not okay, but you’re alive, and you will be okay, someday.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “Fuck no, it’s not easy. It’s the hardest thing ever. But it’s the only way. What you’re doing is gonna kill you.”

  I hear the personal knowledge of this in his voice. “You’ve done this.”

  He sighs. “Yeah. More than once.”

  “Kyle?”

  “Him, too.”

  “Who else?”

  He breathes out again, a long frustrated breath. “Friends. Brothers. A girl I…someone I loved.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Fuck. Really? You want to hear this now?” I nod, and he growls in his chest. “Fine. The first one was one of my best buddies, Split’s and mine. T-Shawn. Split grew up next to him. T-Shawn and Split started the Five-One Bishops together. There was a rumble on a basketball court, a turf thing. Fists mainly, a few chains, one asshole had a bat. Then it escalated. One of the other guys pulled a knife. Stabbed T in the fucking throat. I watched—watched him bleed out all over my hands, my arms. I watched T die, held him in my fucking arms as he bled out…and then I killed the motherfucker. Crushed his goddamn head against the court until I saw brains. Couldn’t stop myself. T was a good guy. A good friend. A gentle guy, really. But he had the bad luck to be born in the ghetto. Ain’t much you can do but what you gotta do to keep breathing. It ain’t even really a choice, for most. It’s just life. Life in the hood. How shit works. T was smart, man. Could have gone to college, written some smart shit, been someone, if he’d have had the opportunity. Didn’t. Now he’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then another brother got shot. Lil Shady. We weren’t friends at first. His girl had a thing for me, which he didn’t like. I never did nothing with her, but…he didn’t like me for it. Eventually we got past that shit, and had each other’s backs when things got ugly. Shady took a slug to the head. Didn’t see that shit, thank god. But he was gone, and it sucked. Just…gone. I’d smoked a blunt with him an hour before he died, you know? And then Split and Mo were banging in my door, carrying Shady, yelling about some other gang doing a drive-by.” He’s gone, his eyes vacant, seeing the past. “Couple others through the years, same shit, different day. None as close as Shady and T, though.” He trails off, and I realize he’s lost in the memory.