The Hard Count(81)

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 f*cked-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.”