You Deserve Each Other(80)

I’m pretty sure I hear Harold say, “I’m not running even if a spaceship did take him.” He stalks back to the car, but Deborah stays put.

“This isn’t funny. I’ll only tell you one more time to go get my son.”

Nicholas sits up, deliberates for a moment, and then hollers, “I’m not home!”

“Nicky!” Deborah cries, pressing her hands together. He’s alive! “Nicky, is that you?”

He pops up next to me at the window. “No! You have the wrong address.”

“Nicky, I’m serious. Let me in.”

“Nicky is gone forever. A dinosaur ate him.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s a changeling.”

“Nicholas Benjamin Rose. I’m losing my patience and do not find this humorous. It’s freezing and I came here to speak to you like adults. I will give you until the count of three—”

“He’s been Raptured.”

“You do not talk to me this way! I am your MOTHER—

” Nicholas has never interrupted his mom before, and he’s making up for it now. “This whole time, he was never real. All along, it was … Shia LaBeouf! Method acting!”

Deborah’s figure is shadowy, but I can see her balled hands and jutting chin. When her voice emerges, it’s so guttural that it would make Lucifer lock his doors. “Nick—”

“I drop-kicked him out of a moving train and he’s at the bottom of a ravine somewhere, busy being extremely dead. There is nothing for you here, then, so go on and be banished.” He spreads his fingers wide and thrusts them outward like he’s casting a spell. “I banish thee!”

I think he might be losing his mind a bit, because his giddy laughter drowns out whatever Deborah’s down there squawking. She’s spitting mad, Nicholas has thrown all his fucks to the wind, and it’s glorious. The most beautiful display of childish behavior I’ve ever witnessed.

“Yeah, you tell her,” I say goadingly. I love seeing him brave enough to give that woman a fraction of the hell she’s owed. “You cast D-Money right out of here.”

“I cast you right out of here, D-Money!” he yells at the top of his lungs, and I. Completely. Lose it. I can’t breathe. Neither can Nicholas, who breaks down in the middle of his banishment chant and is laughing so hysterically that no sound escapes save for little gasping sobs. Tears stream down our faces.

“Look what you’ve done!” Deborah screams, shaking a finger at me. “You’ve corrupted my sweet boy! I know this is your fault, Naomi!”

I take a bow.

The spell is a success. Deborah gives up and stomps back to her car. Her tires squeal ominously when she tears off into the night, which is probably pretty close to the same sound she’s making twelve inches from Harold’s face right now.

I wipe the tears from my eyes and give him a high five. “Holy shit, dude!”

“I know!” He’s got a crazed grin, chest heaving deeply. “Unhinged” is my new favorite look on him. I think back to the conversation we had in the car after my stop-and-run fiasco at the traffic light in Beaufort, and how he said that messing with his parents could be fun as long as he was in on the joke, too. He really meant it.

I slide my palm over his cheek, matching his grin. “I’m proud of you. I wish I could see your mom’s face right now.”

“She’s going to kill me.” His smile freezes as he realizes what just happened. “Oh my god, she’s going to literally kill me.” He leans over, hands on his knees, breathing in through his nose and out his mouth like a woman in labor. I pat his back and a few anxious honking noises thump right out of him. “Did I seriously say all that? To my mom? Can we run off to an uninhabited island?”

“I like islands. Let’s go. We’ll have coconut pie every day.”

“I can’t believe I did that.” More honking. “I got a little carried away, didn’t I?”

“I want to see you get carried away all the time.” I get a zap of inspiration and tap the windowsill. “Hey, can you go down there and stand where your mom was standing? Just for a sec? I want to check something.”

He arches a brow at me but obliges. While he heads downstairs, I dash into my bedroom and fish a package of balloons out from under my bed, which I’d purchased when he and I were still sabotaging each other. I race into the bathroom, fill one up with water, and return to the window.

“Okay, I’m down here,” he says, voice drifting up with a coil of white breath. “What did you need to check?”

“This,” I say, letting the bomb drop. It doesn’t land on his head as planned, but splatters all over his shoes.

Nicholas jumps back, arms out, staring at the dark spots on his pants. A thrill chases up my spine. Slowly, slowly, he lifts his head and growls, “I’d run if I were you.”

With a gleeful scream, off I go.



I spend the weekend getting entirely too used to being on friendly terms with Nicholas. He teaches me how to drive Frankencar, which I’m initially resistant to out of nerves. But I get the hang of it pretty quickly and drive us to Beaufort to buy a canoe, which we strap to the roof of my car. We buy three oars and paddle out to rescue his wayward canoe. We spend Saturday on the pond, stabbing our oars at chunks of ice and playing bumper cars. Then we sit on the sofa in the drawing room, side by side, and watch the snow fall while we drink hot chocolate. He plays Nightjar (on my account, so that he can play God with my trident and exclaim, “Hey, you have to come look at this! I’m a unicorn! Look, Naomi, I have a horn!”) while I read Riverdale fan fiction on Tumblr, and it’s mellow and ordinary and achingly perfect. It makes me so sad that all the good parts in the story of us are rolling in right at the end.