The Hard Count (29 page)

“It’s just because I’m more mature than you are,” Nico says, leading me by my hand now out to the center of the bridge where we stop. He turns to face me. “When is your birthday anyhow?”

“September,” I say.

“October,” he says, his mouth grimacing.

“Ha!” I poke his chest with my finger. “I’m older! Your excuse fails, Nico Medina. Your use of the word
slacks
is just weird.”

“Fine,” he says, the bend in his mouth a sexy kind of smile that draws me close. “You win the first argument against me ever. How does it feel?”

“It feels like maybe you gave in because you wanted me to be happy, which, as you pointed out once, isn’t really selfless at all,” I tease.

“This is true,” Nico says, pulling me close, his nose brushing against mine. “I take pleasure in seeing you happy.”

The breeze blows my skirt about my knees, and my hair flies wild around my shoulders as Nico pushes his hands into my hair on either side of my head, his forehead resting on mine briefly until he tilts my chin up enough to dust his lips across mine. I want more, to feel his lips stronger against mine, but he gives me this small taste and pulls away. He doesn’t let go of my hand, but he turns, his other hand gripping the metal grate that walls us in and protects us from the cars and trucks speeding beneath us.

“So this is your place, huh?” I ask, watching the lights blur below.

Nico sighs, his weight sinking into the bridge wall as he rests his arm in front and leans his head into it.

“I used to come here with Sasha, on our bikes. There’s a cool park over there,” he says, gesturing to the neighborhood we parked in.

“I know that park!” I say, pulling myself up to stand tall, leaning into the gate. I can just see the lights over the trees in the distance. “My brother played football there.”

I look back to Nico and catch him smiling at the same view.

“So did we…but…not on the same field of course,” he smirks.

“Off to the side, in the dark, I presume,” I chuckle.

Nico nods slowly, his head rolling and his eyes hitting mine.

“They don’t really have lighted parks in West End, and in the summer, it was too hot to play out in the day, so we’d grab our bikes and pedal over this bridge to play where the light was barely enough,” he says. “We did that for three summers in a row, until Sasha moved, and my bike was stolen. I walked a few times, but my mom didn’t really like me out late on foot. I didn’t like it either. We stuck to the streets then, until the shootings got everyone freaked out.”

“Shootings?” My stomach tightens.

Nico nods, shuffling his feet and turning to lean his shoulder against the metal, reaching to take both of my hands. He plays with my fingers, working his around mine. It’s sweet how he’s both comfortable and familiar.

“There were a few, when the gangs got kinda bad. It was really only a couple incidents, but there were some drive-bys—before the drug houses got busted. Everyone got really freaked out, and a lot of people moved. Mom made sure we were always inside before dark,” he says.

“Your brother, too?” I ask, my instincts telling me before Nico.

“Not always. He was older, so he…he would hang out. It was mostly the money that enticed him. I think he wanted to help out Mom, maybe buy some nice things. It got outta hand, though. The danger…the violence. I don’t think my brother ever expected the violence, and I know it scared him.”

I lean into him, snuggling against his chest, then moving my arms around his neck, my chin resting on his shoulder as I look out over the other side of the bridge.

“It’s two different worlds,” I say, noticing how quickly the landscape becomes dark on the other side. A block or two of businesses have lights, and then it’s nothing. Only, I’ve driven there—I know it’s not the case.

“I still came here. Sometimes, I’d sneak out—my mom only caught me once. I would always ride my board back before she was awake, but I’d just come here to sit. I liked to watch the traffic,” he says, glancing down at our feet as he kicks the grating near his heel. “I would sit on that side and stare through this one, watching. I wanted to know what life was like…over there.”

I pull back to look at him, our eyes meeting instantly. His mouth falls into line, and I can tell he hates to admit that out loud—that he wishes sometimes that he were somewhere else.

“Life wasn’t so grand over here, either,” I say, though I know that the weight in my world is far lighter than that carried on Nico’s side of the highway. “Your side sells the drugs; my side…we buy them.”

Nico’s head falls, and his eyes get softer. We’ve talked about Noah, about how he stepped in. Nico played it off, but I think that was for my benefit—I don’t think he wants me to have a visual of how bad that night probably really was, how close to danger Noah had come.

“It’s one fucked-up ecosystem, isn’t it?” Nico says, and I laugh out a breath, reaching my fingers through the fence next to me and looking down at the rush of traffic.

“Yeah…it is,” I say.

He looks on with me, and we stand together while a few cars honk as they pass below us, each driver probably thinking he’s clever or disrupting our intimacy. What’s strange, though, is how incredibly intimate it is right here. We’re on display for most of the city, at least the portion on the road at this time of the night, yet we’re so alone.

“So why this place?” I ask him finally. “You wanted to bring me here…why?”

Nico’s expression slips into an excited one, and he reaches into his pocket, grinning at me. He holds a lock out in his palm then reaches into the opposite pocket for a pen, showing it to me.

“We’re going to plan our next bike ride and you want to be prepared so you…brought a lock?” I shake my head as I stare at the lock in his hand, my lips pulled in on one side. “Sorry…I don’t get it,” I say, giving up and shrugging.

“Come here,” Nico says, leading me farther across the bridge.

I start to notice metal pieces attached to the fence as we move closer to the West End side, and when we’re right upon one of them, I stop, pulling it in my hand and tugging. Dozens upon dozens of locks, some key and some combination, are hooked onto the bridge, some dangling from dangerous locations. Each lock has something either written on it in ink or scratched into it. Most of the messages are love notes—a girl loves a boy, a boy loves a girl, and then the date. A few of them are clumped together with dates spread a year apart, and I can tell they mark an anniversary. Some of the anniversaries are happy, some are hopeful. Others…
tragic.

“These are amazing,” I say, running my fingers over some of the larger locks.

“They just started showing up here one day. Sasha and I were riding our bikes across, and he stopped, thinking someone had left their lock there. He tried to break the code at first, but I noticed the writing, and I got him to stop. The next day, a few more locks were here. The collection grew two or three at a time over several months, and now…”

“There must be hundreds,” I say, my eyes focusing and realizing just how many speckle the fence that stretches to the other side of the highway.

“The city or state or whoever owns the bridge has cleaned them off before, but they always come back. I think they just gave up eventually, and now they’re like this organic art kind of thing. They’re people’s stories, and I thought…”

“You want to put our story up here, too,” I finish for him.

He nods, and his bashful smile dents his cheek.

“What do we write?” I ask, my heart picking up and my nerves surprising me. I haven’t felt this uneasy rush with Nico in a while, and it’s unsettling, mostly because I’m scared. I think maybe he means a lot to me, and maybe I want to tell him, but what if…what if he’s somewhere different with us?

“I had an idea,” he starts, putting the cap of the marker in his mouth and pulling the pen free. He speaks with the lid in his mouth, and it makes him talk crooked. It’s adorable, and I can’t help but giggle. “I’ll write on one side, and you write on the other,” he mumbles, shooting me a glare when I laugh at his speech. He spits the cap to the ground. “I only have two hands, you bully.”

“You’re right; I’m sorry,” I say, bending down and picking the cap up.

Nico holds the lock in his hands, tilting it from my view, and he writes out a short note that only takes him seconds. His eyes flit to mine a few times before he declares that he’s done, then hands the pen to me.

“Okay,” I say, exhaling harder than I mean, too.

“Don’t make it so hard. Just write…whatever you want to say. Whatever’s on your mind and you’re willing to put here permanently,” he says. “Oh…and preferably about me, because otherwise my side is going to sound really stupid.”

I bite my lip and look at him while my mind searches for courage. A dozen adjectives, and as many words for feelings dart around my head, the phrases coming and going fast. After a few seconds, I feel like I’m playing a game of Scrabble, searching for the best word to score the most points.

“You’re making this hard,” he says.

“Okay, okay…just…give me a minute!” I scold him, my eyes intense on the lock in my hand, my fingers squeezing the pen hard.

There’s one thought—one thing I could write—that I keep thinking. This one sentence plays on repeat, and it scares me and tempts me to look at the other side. I feel my fingers twitch to spin the lock in my palm, but I won’t cheat. I would never. My eyes move up to Nico’s, which are waiting for me. The smirk on his lips is almost like a poker player’s bluff, and I don’t know if I should call it. I look back down to the lock, my teeth sawing at my lip, and I hold my breath as I write.

The words are short and sweet. I put the pen back in the cap when I’m done, and hold the lock between my fingers—Nico’s message on the other side.

“So do we…turn it? Or…how does this work?” I ask.

Nico takes the lock from me, then tugs it loose, like a hook. He leans his head toward the fence, and I realize he’s asking me to pick a spot. I find one that’s at both of our height, and it’s a place where the metal is melted into an odd thickness—the only place where the latticework is uneven. I like that it isn’t perfect, and if I’m tethering myself to something, I think it should look a little amiss. There’s comfort in imperfection.

“Okay then,” he says, looping the lock in place and pushing it in until it clicks, his thumb rubbing along the bottom until the combination is scrambled.

“Do you know how to take it off?” I ask.

“No idea. I threw the combination away,” he says, his eyes never once leaving mine while I continue to look from him to the lock, nervously. “Go on…read it,” he says, finally, and I practically lunge at it, twisting it upside down so I can read what Nico wrote on his side.

Me, too.

I let my thumb run over the words, the ink now dry, and my lips curve up as I do. His note…it couldn’t be any more perfect.

“What’d you say?” he says, his hand sliding around my waist and along my stomach, his chin resting on my shoulder as he holds me from behind.

“I said…” I pause, my mouth suddenly dry. My eyes fall closed and I let go of the lock, turning in his arms until my back is against the bridge’s wall, next to our lock, and Nico has me caged between his arms. “I said, ‘I’m falling for you.’”

His mouth curves as mine did, and his forehead tilts until it rests against mine.

“You are, huh?” he says, the words tickling my lips. I love it when he speaks against my mouth. I wish we could have all conversations just like this.

“I am,” I say, stopping to take his bottom lip into my mouth.

“Kiss me,” he demands. “You take charge, kissing me like you want. I want to know what you want from me, how you feel. Show me,” he says, his expression not arrogant or cocky, but rather desperate perhaps, like he needs to know what I want and feel.

Though my nerves fire up, I do as he asks, because I’ve never wanted to kiss him more. My hands slide up both sides of his face, and I step up on my tippy-toes, turning my head just enough that we fit together perfectly, my mouth opening to take his, to taste him. I kiss his top lip first, letting my teeth graze over him, then I nibble at his bottom. When he smiles against me, I do the same, letting my right hand move into his hair, feeling it soft and thick between my fingers.

I begin to kiss him harder, my tongue entering his mouth and meeting the resistance of his quickly. It’s with this touch that Nico can no longer be passive. His hands slide behind my back and he pulls me into him, turning me away from the gate and walking me backward to the large concrete pillar at the center of the bridge. My back against the coolness of it, Nico moves forward until he has one foot resting on either side of both of mine, his body pressed against me, his hands sliding down my hips, inching slowly until they finally grip my ass.

My breath hitches as his fingers clutch at the fabric of my dress, bringing it up only an inch or two with the raw hunger of his need. He lets go, sliding his hands up my sides, his thumbs running over the curves of my breasts, coming close to places I’ve never been touched, but suddenly desperately want to be. His fingers trace along my bare shoulder, and his head dips down, his mouth taking my neck, tasting my collar bone, the rough edge of his teeth scratching against my bare skin. His hands trail lower, along my arms, until he reaches my wrists, and he grabs them in his hands, lifting them and holding them above my head against the concrete as he leans into me and kisses my mouth raw. He holds me there for a few seconds before letting go and moving to cup my face again, letting me free from the wall and pulling me to him until we’re standing in the center of the bridge, the only light from the cars below and the sliver of moon above.

When he releases me, I’m dizzy and breathless, and I let my head rest against his chest.

“I have never been kissed like that,” I say.

“Me neither,” Nico says, his mouth coming down to the top of my head.

Somehow, I didn’t believe that to be true, but I let him get away with it. I let him because it makes him happy to make me happy, and that thought—the idea that I’m his girl,
the
girl for him? That makes me deliriously happy.