She’d invaded his house; she could apologize.
On the other hand, Nick couldn’t deal with any more hassle than he was dealing with right now. Maybe it would be simpler to go and smooth her down.
He left Jamie washing up and went upstairs to the room that Mae and Jamie shared, the room that used to be his, and found Mae on the bed that used to be his.
She was crying.
Nick was appalled.
“I’ll get Alan,” he said, taking a smart step back.
He had the door almost shut when Mae said, “No, don’t!”
With great reluctance, he opened the door again. There she was, huddled on the bed with her arms around her knees, face red under her pink hair, rumpled and ridiculous-looking.
“I’ll get Jamie,” he proposed, and what he really meant was, I’ll get out of here.
“No,” Mae repeated. “Don’t.” She was starting to look angry again; all things considered, Nick found that soothing. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand and added, “I don’t want him to see me cry.”
“I don’t want to see you cry either,” Nick said.
Her face softened slightly, and he realized she’d taken that the wrong way. Nick imagined spending the next five minutes explaining to her that actually she could cry all the time if she liked, he just didn’t want to see it, and then shut his mouth.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Mae asked, her voice a little gruff with crying. She scrubbed at her wet cheeks with her sleeve and looked embarrassed.
Nick chose his words carefully. “Jamie said I should come and apologize.”
“Oh,” Mae said. “Okay. Apology accepted, I guess. It’s not really you I’m mad at, anyway. I’m just — I’m scared, and that makes me angry, you know?”
“Not really,” Nick answered, leaning against the door frame. “I don’t recall ever being scared.”
Mae looked taken aback.
“Fear’s useless,” he tried to explain. “Either something bad happens or it doesn’t: If it doesn’t, you’ve wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you’ve wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons.”
Mae stared at him for a while.
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” she said eventually. “Because you’re kind of creepy.”
Nick grinned at her. “It’s a vibe that works for me.”
It was much more comfortable to flirt with her than see her cry. He risked a few steps into her room and she didn’t immediately burst into tears, so he looked around. Jamie made his bed, he noticed; Mae left her underwear on the floor.
“Hey,” Mae said sharply, and he looked away from her underwear and raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve never been scared,” he said, conceding her something. “But I’ve been angry, all right.”
“Oh really,” Mae said. “You come off as so Zen.”
Nick grinned at her again, standing beside her bed. She smiled back and wiped a final fierce time at any tears still lingering on her cheeks.
Mae took a deep breath and seemed to be done with crying. “It’s just — he’s all I have. Even before they split up, Mum and Dad spent more time at the tennis club than with us. We used to play dolls together for hours when we were little.”
“Oh,” Nick said. “Well, me and Alan did too. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Mae echoed, smiling.
“If by dolls you meant knife practice.”
“Maybe you can understand,” Mae allowed. “You do have a brother.”
Guarded in case this was a womanly plot to make him talk about his feelings, Nick nevertheless let himself relax a bit more and said, “I do have a brother.”
“He’s my little brother,” Mae continued. “I have to — I should be able to protect him, and I can’t. I didn’t. And I always did before. He’s my little brother,” she repeated insistently, speaking more to the universe than Nick, and then she took another deep breath. “I guess you can understand that. Alan must look after you.”
“When I was small,” Nick conceded, and shrugged. “I don’t need much looking after these days.”
He almost smiled as he thought about being small, before Alan had been hurt, when he’d never imagined it was possible for Alan to be hurt. Alan had taught him to read and told him pointless bedtime stories and insisted on holding his hand when they crossed the street.
It was different now. They looked out for each other. They were a team. Or that was how it had been; Nick didn’t see how keeping secrets was looking out for him.
“What’s wrong?” Mae inquired.
He looked down at her and saw her frowning. He reached out, wrapped a strand of that silly pink hair around his wrist, and smiled at her slowly, drawing a smile from her in return.
“What could be wrong?” he asked.
He knew where this was going, and from the calm look in her eyes she did too. It was solid ground in the midst of his home being invaded, Alan lying, girls crying, and boys talking to him about empathy. It was good to be sure of something again.
“So,” Mae said, uncurling from the tight ball of misery she’d been in and stretching a little. “You don’t get scared.”
“No.”
“Ever get lonely?” She smiled as she spoke, her dimple showing as she brought out the line.
He stooped toward the dimple, and then remembered Alan.
He let go of her hair, and it fell from around his wrist. “No,” he said, his voice cold. “I have my brother.”
Mae looked puzzled, as if she was trying to work out what had inspired this change of behavior rather than getting ready to weep again. Nick was a little relieved, but mostly he just wanted out. He didn’t want to see girls cry, and he didn’t want anything that Alan might want for himself.
“Wait,” Mae said as he headed for the door. He glanced back at her. “Thanks for coming up,” she said. “I thought — Alan said you might want help with your homework.”
She looked at him questioningly, and he was glad she wasn’t making a scene. He supposed he should have predicted this. It would take more than demon hunting to make Alan stop nagging him to do his homework.
He shrugged and said, “Sure.”
A few minutes later he found himself in the sitting room and on the floor, hunching over the small table like a grouchy vulture. The teachers had assigned him an essay on a stupid book about some idiot girl whose problems were too small to really count and whose life had happened too long ago to matter. Alan usually helped him with this kind of thing; the fact that Alan was somewhere upstairs, doing God knew what, made Nick feel even more annoyed by the book girl.
Nick was already wrestling with the girl’s love life when Mae joined him. She came over to the table, sat crosslegged, and took the book in her hands.
“What are you having trouble with?”
The answer was everything, but Nick decided to be more specific. “The stupid girl goes back to the man who lied to her. She’ll never be able to trust him. What am I supposed to write about that?”
Mae leaned back thoughtfully, arching her spine a little. “Maybe she doesn’t want to completely trust him. Maybe she’s looking for an element of danger.”
“Maybe she’s stupid,” Nick said. “Still doesn’t give me much to write about.”
“You might find things slightly clearer if I read out some important bits,” Mae suggested, and did so. Her voice was calm and sweet.
She obviously had very specific ideas about which were the important bits. She’d worked out, after three days, that Nick didn’t like to read. She might run away to raves all the time, but she was smart, in the same way Alan was smart.
When the low light fell on her ridiculous hair that way, it looked a pale rose color. She lifted her gaze from the book to meet his, and shadows quivered in her dark eyes.
“Right,” Nick said. “Thanks.”
Mae smiled slowly. “You’re welcome.”
