Nico

Nico had expected to feel lighter the moment the apartment door closed behind him, like a balloon finally released into the sky. But instead, he felt like a stone skipping once across a lake and then sinking straight to the bottom. 

Outside, the car was waiting for him, gleaming under the streetlight. Its presence felt clinical.

Relief didn’t come. Not even close.

What did come was an absolutely deranged urge to turn around, bolt back up the stairs, and glue himself to Jordan’s living room couch like some sad, half-feral stray who’d wandered in, found warmth, and decided to stay forever out of pure desperation. The image made him want to gag. Pathetic didn’t even begin to cover it.

He’d had crushes before. The harmless, predictable kind. A boy in math class with great hair and crooked teeth that made him look like he was always smirking. A friend’s older brother who once passed him the TV remote with casual indifference, and for some reason, thirteen-year-old Nico had spent a week dissecting that tiny moment like it held cosmic meaning. Even Theo, for a hot minute, when they stayed up all night watching music videos and Theo fell asleep with his head on Nico’s shoulder. That one was embarrassing in retrospect, but also, if he was honest, kind of understandable.

Those feelings had rules. They fit neatly into categories he could make sense of. They were rooted in the real world, in familiarity. They faded on their own, like chalk on a sidewalk after the rain. Those had lived in his head, harmless things he could tuck away and daydream about when he was bored. 

This was nowhere close to his other crushes. Because this one wasn’t in his head. It was in his body. He could feel it, this tight, electric pressure under his ribs, like his chest didn’t have enough room to hold it. It wasn’t sweet, it wasn’t cute. It was a little terrifying, actually. Fast and sudden and so strong it made his fingers twitch.

It had only been a few hours. Just a sliver of time, carved out of the blur of an otherwise ordinary life. But somehow, his body had memorized the shape of Jordan’s living room, the stretch of the couch beneath his legs, the way the light shifted across the walls. And now Nico was acting like the universe had reached down and handed him some ancient missing piece. Like everything before had just been static, and suddenly he could hear the melody underneath.

It was unhinged. Nico knew that. But it didn’t matter.

His brain kept looping back to small things, spiraling through moments he didn’t even mean to hold onto. The way Jordan had looked while moving on top of Nico. The way he had smiled when Nico sang that ridiculous made-up song to him. His voice echoed in Nico’s head. The questions he asked, the answers he gave. That sense that Jordan knew exactly how much power he held, and had chosen, for some reason, to let Nico linger in it for a while. 

Nico scoffed under his breath and crossed his arms like that might keep his feelings from leaking out into the car. Like maybe if he just held himself tightly enough, he could keep all the heat in his chest from spilling into the space around him. 

He couldn’t stop imagining it; Jordan in a room full of people, all eyes drifting toward him like they couldn’t help themselves. He probably had to bat away admirers like mosquitoes in summer. Guys who were older, better dressed, more sure of themselves. Girls too. Gorgeous ones, the kind who knew how to laugh at the right moments and tucked their hair behind one ear like they’d practice it. 

And then, without warning, Nico thought of that girl. The one in the red dress he had seen that first night, back when Jordan was nothing more than a striking stranger across the bar. 

Jordan had called her a mistake.

If a girl that gorgeous didn’t leave a mark, if a girl that confident was a mistake, then what did that make Nico? 

Then, another realization struck him like a low punch. They hadn’t even exchanged numbers. Not once had it crossed Nico’s mind. He’d been too busy trying not to float off the ground. But for Jordan? It had probably been intentional. A clean break. No strings, no mess, no chance of anything lasting longer than the night. 

Uncomplicated. 

That... hurt. More than it should’ve. But that was okay. Nico wasn’t going to be that guy,  the one who built cathedrals out of one shared night and a few well-placed glances. Even if it felt like that kind of night. The moment had been delicate, almost translucent, like one of those snowflakes you try to catch before it melts on your skin. It had been short, and strange, and barely believable, but it had mattered. And Nico knew he’d carry it with him, tucked away in the same place you keep old songs and forgotten summer nights.

As the car rolled, Nico looked out the window and caught the first threads of sunrise unraveling over the city, pink and stupidly hopeful. The city slid by like it was half-asleep, buildings yawning under the blue-gray veil of dawn. People were still dreams in their beds. 

He leaned his forehead against the cold glass and let himself feel it. All of it. The absurdity. The ache. The wonder. 

He smiled despite himself. 

Because it was wonderful, wasn’t it? To feel this much, this fast. To sit in the backseat of a stranger’s car and feel like you were leaving something behind that you never really had, and still, somehow, feel thankful. What kind of person got lucky enough to feel this dumb? This full?

He didn’t understand the pull Jordan had on him. It was something stitched under the skin, like Jordan had pressed a thumbprint into a part of Nico he didn’t even know was there. 

He wasn’t in love. He wasn’t that delusional. But God, he could see how someone could get there, fast and hard. 

In the few hours he’d spent with Jordan, he had made Nico feel seen and invisible all at once. He gave nothing, and somehow Nico felt like he had walked away with everything. 

He told himself it wouldn’t matter if he never saw Jordan again. But of course it did. Just not in a way that would ruin him. Because for some reason, sitting here now, Nico felt more alive than he ever had. It was absurd, but Nico wasn’t ashamed of it. He didn’t want to kill the part of himself that let him feel this way. 

There was something brave in that, he thought. Letting yourself feel even when you knew it wouldn’t be returned. Letting the night bloom like a flower in your memory, even if it only opened once.

Maybe the point wasn’t to have it forever.

Some things, he thought, you only get once. And some people, you never really get at all. But that didn’t mean you couldn’t be glad they existed.