13

"Good night," Stella mumbles, already half asleep, her head pressed deep into the pillow.

Valeria smiles, scooting closer to her friend. Soft snores escape Stella's lips as she tucks up the blankets close to her chin. "Night, El," she whispers softly.

Whilst unzipping the flap of the tent, Val hears movement outside, and her hand stills. Having travelled so far and wide and so often, she has formed an acute sense of foreboding, a knack for being careful in dark and quiet places. And so, Valeria opens the tent while taking great care about making noise.

She has just scuttled out, closing the flap behind her, when someone touches her shoulder.

Valeria screams.

She turns around, eyes wide, heart racing, hands raised so as to protect herself from any harm, only to find Nicholas standing behind her. His brows are quirked up in amusement, his cheeks flushed from the cold, the corners of his lips turned in a lop-sided smile.

"Wonderful technique there," he says, clearing his throat and gesturing toward Val's version of a karate pose. "Should scare the assailant right off."

For a second, Valeria is frozen in time, too embarrassed to move, but then warmth rushes back into her limbs and she stands straight. Her eyes remain downcast for a moment before she lifts them up to meet Nicholas' gaze, his features softening in return.

"Hey," Valeria says.

Nicholas lifts his hand and gives her a short wave in way of greeting.

Valeria tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "So, uh... you were out here because...?"

"Oh, yeah," Nick says, rubbing his nose, once. "I was just waiting for you, actually. Thought we might as well go together, you know. We have the same destination."

"Sure," Val says, nodding.

They don't make conversation while walking, both of them lost within their own train of thoughts — the silence is companionable.

When they're there and Nicholas says they should settle down, Valeria is momentarily shocked. She hadn't even noticed as to when they had crossed the stream which Nick had spotted earlier on their trek.

Beyond the stream, where Nick and Valeria have now stopped, resides a small clearing with a random spattering of boulders covered in moss. The air is humid, Val notices, as she sits down on one relatively moss-free boulder. It's chilly too, what with the slow breeze moving along the water-body, carrying a misty scent. She rubs a hand down her arms, glancing around, smiling to herself. She likes it just fine.

Then, no sooner than they've sat down, that Nicholas starts talking. It's as if he's had words building up inside of him since a long time — they haven't had a chance to sneak out for over a week now, considering how they are always too tired, worn to the bone, to do anything else but sleep every night after setting up camp and having dinner.

Nick talks swiftly. His voice is low, as if he doesn't want anyone to overhear him even though there's no one anywhere near them.

For some reason, Valeria can't quite catch his words. She hears separate syllables, the tone of his voice, the lilt, his face expressions and the movement of his jaw and his hands. She sees all of this and gets entirely too absorbed in Nicholas, inadvertently losing sight of what he's actually saying to her.

Anyways, she thinks, it seems like he just needs to get his thoughts out more so than wanting specifically for her to hear him and offer insight.

A while later he stops talking. Val notices this a moment too late — a moment in which she continues to drink him in, a moment in which he manages to catch her eye, his gaze intense.

"I, uh..." Valeria finds herself at a loss of words.

"Were you even listening?"

"Well," she pauses for a beat before finally deciding to go with the truth. She smiles sheepishly at him. "No, not really."

Unexpectedly, Nicholas laughs. Not an open-mouthed laugh, but still a genuine one, and Val feels herself getting entranced all over again.

Nick doesn't speak up after this, and after a while Valeria starts to get agitated. She'd caught on to some of his words — Richard, Keithia, pictures, strange, etc — but she doesn't really know the full string of his thought. She has two options now, she realises. She can either ask him to repeat himself, which she doubts he'll do, or she can ask him something else.

It doesn't take Valeria too long to decide.

"So," she prompts, gaining Nick's attention. "Tell me something."

"What?"

She fists her hand, prodding it up beneath her chin and over her thigh, crossing her legs. "Anything," she says. "Something about your life, maybe. Something about Lincoln." She smiles at him encouragingly, feeling confident.

Nicholas stares at her for a couple of seconds, considering her. He then wets his lips and sighs deeply.

Valeria gets the vibe that whatever he's about to tell her, he most probably hasn't ever talked about it with anyone else.

"My father, he," Nick begins and then breaks off. He takes in a deep breath. "My parents weren't married.

"They'd met and had struck up a close friendship. Dad would say that Sandra, my mum, was the closest he'd ever felt to someone."

Drawn into him once again, this time, Val chooses to drink in his words, too.

Nicholas smiles with nostalgia. "A couple of years in to their friendship, they thought of having a kid. They had both gone through uh... stuff, so they decided to adopt a child instead of trying to get pregnant." He points to himself, "Me. I think I was 3 when they got me."

He frowns, chewing on his bottom lip. "Anyways. I was uh, eleven? Yeah. I was eleven years old when Dad proposed Sandra. Said he wanted to marry her, you know. They were still friends, the best of friends actually. And they were living together. And they had me. So, Dad thought that they should make it official."

"He says he was..." Nicholas pauses. "He believed he'd fallen in love with her."

He sighs, looking at Val again. He takes off a ring from his right middle finger, a simple gold band which Valeria had never noticed before. "He had bought this for her," he says. "He couldn't afford a better ring. He was an unsuccessful musician working a small desk job at a firm."

Nick stares intensely at the ring for a couple of moments. Val watches how the moonlight gets caught on its edge as Nicholas slips the ring back on, folding his hand into a fist.

"She left him. Us." He chews his lip again. "She said that she couldn't go through with marrying someone."

He looks up at Valeria, a sort of sadness in his eyes that she has never seen before. "That was the last time I saw her."

"Nick," Val says, reaching out her hand to him. But he shakes his head and starts to talk again, and so she retracts her hand to her lap.

She doesn't know what to do with this information, not quite sure how to feel.

"A few years later Dad lost his job. After that he couldn't get a proper one again, relying on odd jobs over the city. During my A-levels I started to work too, pitching in whenever I could," he says, talking fast.

"And then," Nick stops and takes breathes out heavily. "He died six months ago."

"Oh Nicholas, I'm so—"

"Please don't say you're sorry," he interjects her.

Val stares at him for a moment, trying to catch his eye. When she manages to do so, she says, "I don't know what else to say."

Nicholas laughs sardonically, sadly, tiredly.

"No one ever does," he says. "And that's okay, I guess. But," his voice catches. He looks troubled, Val thinks, with his brows creased and his jaw ticking. She fidgets, uneasy, not knowing how to bring the Old Nick back.

"But when you think that I'm calculative, Val, it's because... I am! I'm calculative and that's because I don't how to be anything else."

His voice picks up pace and pitch. "Throughout my life Dad always taught me to be the best possible self I could be so that I would have a good life. Meaning that he was very strict. I'm not saying that he wasn't a good father, but he was strict. Rigid. Distant even. And that made me turn out to be timid and quiet and... and calculative."

Again, Val tries to reach out to him. "It is okay, Nick," but again he cuts her off, his tone urgent.

Valeria isn't entirely sure if she wants to see him this way. A part of her wants him to stop talking.

A bigger part, yet still, wants to know him more.

"And when," he gulps hurriedly, "When you think that I've got a grip on my future? You're wrong. I-Dad was the one who got me into studying Law. He believed that a happy future included having money and that being a Lawyer would help me be better-off.

"But now, when he's gone, I don't know what to do, Val." He looks at her with a veiled kind of desperation. "I don't know what to do. I've already wasted a part of my savings on this trip. And n-now I really don't know what I'll do once I get back."

Nicholas sighs heavily. "I feel helpless," he says finally, hunching over, stuffing his face in his hands.

Valeria thinks that she's at a loss of words, staring at Nick's hunched-over figure. But then, suddenly, she gets a new thought and she sits up straighter as if a pulse of electricity has run down her spine.

"Then get over it," she says, her face set in determination.

"What?" Nicholas asks.

"Get over it," Val says again, more firmly, enunciating each word. "Get over your helplessness and think about what you want to do." She gestures with her hands, "I mean, there must be something that you want to do with your life."

"Right," Nick says, slowly, sitting up straight. "Something that I want to do," he repeats.

He looks at Valeria and smiles.

A while later, as they're making their way back to camp, Nicholas speaks up, pulling Val out of her thoughts. "You know," he says, "You're not that helpless either. Your father doesn't own you." He gives her a meaningful look, sidling up closer to her so that their hands are touching.

Valeria glances down just as Nick takes her hand, and she finds herself giving his hand a quick squeeze in return.

"You're very much capable of deciding what to do with your future," Nicholas says, smiling at Val.

She smiles back, relishing in the warmth from their intertwined hands, exhilaratingly aware of the touch of his hand all the way back to camp.