Chapter Seventeen: "The Awkward Police."

WHEN I SAW Nikko the following Sunday, he wasn't dressed to go for a run.

He wasn't even wearing running shoes. He had on snow boots, a black scarf, and a hat that covered his thick hair. He was bundled up in a heavy jacket that reminded me how broad his shoulders were as if we were going to stay outside for longer than expected.

In his hand was a large bag that seemed to contain blankets. When I approached him, my eyebrows rose when I noticed something else peeking out of them. "Did you—"

"I couldn't find plain pistachio ice cream," His lips went up in that way of his which made me linger on the action longer than normal. "But the store had pistachio and almond. Is that okay?"

More than okay, but I couldn't help my eyebrows from furrowing. This looked like a date.

"What's going on?"

That rare seriousness I had seen a week before came through the light once again. "We need to talk. About everything that we said we were going to talk about. Are you going to run?"

That was a loaded question.

But I didn't feel my toes shift within my sneakers. I didn't want to push my way past him onto the trail, sprinting with the hopes that he wouldn't catch up to me. I'd trained with Nikko for a while now. I knew him.

He'd always manage to catch up to me.

So, no. I was not going to run. There was no point.

"I'm going to go change."

"You don't have to," He assured me. "I'd suggest getting a warmer jacket though."

Don't have to change my ass. I practically ran back inside the house. Speeding past Jaime who was sitting in the living room on the way in, my friend, who had a blanket wrapped around her body followed me. She stared at me from the threshold of my bedroom as I went through the clothes in my closet. As the pile on the ground got bigger and bigger before I settled throwing jeans over my leggings, Jay asked the question: "What the hell are you doing?"

"I think I have a date with Nikko."

"A what?"

"A date." I rushed out, wiggling out of my clothes. I shrugged a shirt on as I went through my options in my head. Sweater. Cute sweater. Sifting for it within the pile of clothes on the ground, I said. "I think. He's down the street right now."

"No warning? Nothing?"

I glanced up at her. "Nope."

"He's either impulsive or spontaneous."

"I think he's both," I admitted, turning to face her as I wiggled into jeans. "He has my favourite ice cream and blankets. Does that sound datey?"

"Kind of. Just play it out in case it isn't," I hummed in agreement. "Besides, you found out about the pink hair band and he's not seeing anybody."

"Three different people had to tell me that," I muttered. 

Liya, who kept apologizing for blurting it out to Victor throughout the night until I assured her that it was okay, knew. Victor knew. Cori knew. Rhett knew and even yesterday at practice in the afternoon he made a sly comment mentioning that my partner wasn't there.

Victor knowing likely confirmed that Nikko was fully aware of how I felt but honestly, it didn't even matter. Liya and Rhett were right. It was painfully obvious. I looked at him longer than I should have. I probably laughed at his jokes harder than one should have. Now it was out there. It'd been out there since that one summer, maybe even before that.

"I think he likes you too," Jaime added.

I blinked at her, shrugging on a shirt before digging through my pile on the floor to look for a cute sweater. No matter what was going to happen in the next ten minutes, I was going to make sure that I had on a cute sweater. "We don't know that."

"You'll find out today." I didn't like that her words decided to send my heart into overdrive.

I went over to my desk, grabbing my moisturizer with one hand and searching through my makeup drawer with the other. Jaime stared at me. "You are not going to do a full glam when he's literally outside."

I could do it fast and decent but even that was too far-fetched for me and I didn't like the idea of keeping someone waiting. "No, no, no." Light makeup was applied in less than five minutes and Jaime sat on my bed, watching it all.

I got up, putting my hands on my hips as I faced her. "Okay, how do I look?"

"Pretty as always."

I bent down, pressing a kiss to her cheek. "You're my favourite."

"Don't tell Yas and Mari you said that."

"Lucky for them, they're my favourites too." I beamed, shrugging my winter jacket on, my hat, and gloves before rushing back to the trail.

Calm. Calm. Stay calm. 

Nikko was standing where I had left him, with the bag in his hand and looking down at his phone with the other. When he heard the sound of my footsteps, his head raised and he shot me a warming smile.

It was one that told me that I had nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, my body didn't work that way. My heart hadn't settled since he said we were going to talk about everything.

He kept it on his face as we walked in silence. He led us over to a part of the trail ten minutes away, next to a local park. The playground nearby was frosted over and abandoned for the season but we didn't go near it. Instead, he stopped at a nearby picnic table dusted with snow. 

Nikko brought out a blanket, placing it on the bench I was going to take a seat on and another on his side. I raised my eyebrows but shot him a grateful look for my butt not getting cold as we took a seat across from each other. 

Nikko placed our small ice cream cartons on the table and put plastic spoons on top of our respective lids. "I told you ice cream in the winter is the best."

"I didn't think you meant that we would be eating it outside in the cold." I pointed out, opening the carton.

Before he opened up his carton, he froze. "Wait, are you cold? I got an extra blanket in h--"

"I'm okay," I assured him, starting to eat. While today's weather was in the negatives, I wasn't freezing at this moment. The only sign of the temperature was the white gusts that left our mouths with each word.

Did eating ice cream like this even count as a date? I think it did. Maybe not to him, though. This could be a simple, casual--Stop. 

To distract him from his concern and myself from not playing this out as Jay suggested, I glanced up, pointing at a passing cloud, "Three."

"Two." He added.

"One."

"Someone's side profile."

"A duck."

We both groaned at the same time before the sound fizzled out into light laughter. This happened more times than it should have. As he opened the lid of his carton, I said.  "You weren't at the party." 

"You told me you weren't going," He reminded me. "That you were busy."

"I changed my mind," I said. "Why weren't you at the party?"

He scooped some ice cream onto his spoon. "I changed my mind."

I swear my breathing stopped. He didn't stay at his own house, where the party was being held, because I said I wasn't going to go.

"Why'd you go home?" I asked instead. "So soon after Reading Week?"

"Because of Justin," He admitted. "During Reading week, he said he was going to go back to his old job. But, I don't know. My cousins were getting dinner and he started telling Eric about starting a new business and I guess everyone lost it on him. Eric, Justin's wife, and even my other cousin, Amy. But with Eric, it was the worst."

Nikko sighed. "The conversation got really heated and no one wanted to involve our parents in this so Amy, who didn't think she could de-escalate the situation called me, saying I should talk to them." 

"Are you the person that usually does that?" I asked. "Acts as the peacemaker?" 

"Most times, yeah," He said. "We've been close forever. I know Eric and Justin when they're heated. The way Amy made their argument seem was as if they might end up saying things to each other that there was no coming back from. So when Amy asked if I could talk to them on the phone, I went home because I thought that might be more effective.  Besides, there wasn't anything keeping here outside of practice, which I got out of, and you said you were busy so I went home."

He said the last sentence so casually like it wouldn't make my breathing go manual. As if he took other options because I wasn't present all the time. The pistachio flavor melted in my mouth as I focused on the matter at hand. "And how did the talk go?"

"No one is at the other's throats anymore so good for now," He murmured. "I just need him to have his head on straight, you know? He doesn't have to have it all figured out but he needs to be stable in some aspect of his life and making these random business choices? Everyone advised him to keep his job for now until he has a solid plan."

His attention drifted to the table. Clearly, the situation bothered him more than he put out there. Underneath the table, his leg was bouncing but he switched the conversation. "I heard you had a good time on Friday night."

"I did," I admitted. A lot of talking, singing, and dancing—which I was terrible at. I think the night, which ended up with me, Jaime, and Liya sitting at a 24-hour Mcdonald's at 3 AM made me and Liya closer. When we saw each other at practice yesterday, we couldn't stop talking as if we hadn't spoken well into the previous night.

"Victor told me that you asked where I was," Nikko suddenly said. His voice dropped a bit. "Why? Did you miss me?"

I froze. I did.

Yet my response was to shovel ice cream into my mouth. He only seemed entertained by my lack of an answer. "You can't make this awkward now."

"Says who?" I muttered. "Are you the awkward police?"

"We already established you're a criminal," His voice was light. "You don't have to be awkward with me. You know that."

I did. "So did Victor tell you anything else?"

"He said that you were wondering if I was seeing someone."

Immediately, my cheeks heated up. Unintentionally, my attention flickered down to the pink hair tie staring back at me on his exposed wrist. Nikko followed my gaze and for some reason, his own cheeks went pink. "It was this? This is what made you think...?"

I nodded and he cursed under his breath. "Fuck. No. This is my cousin's. Rowan."

"I know that now," I mumbled. "Cori told me."

"Yeah, Cori and Rowan were like best friends when she was here. Still are," He sighed. "When Rowan left HU to work overseas, I knew it'd be a while until we saw her again. I wear it 'cause I miss her. She's like my little sister. The youngest of us all."

Nikko suddenly narrowed his eyes. "You thought I had a girlfriend this whole time?"

I wanted to groan out loud, growing annoyed at him for repeating the question and at myself for everything. But the grin on his face only made me more irritated at how hard it was to be truly annoyed with him. "With what evidence?" He asked. 

My ability to overthink. That was the evidence. 

"I--" Frustration crept into my voice. "Well, you weren't at the party."

His lips parted in surprise but his eyes were twinkling with mischief. "So that led you to think that I was hanging out with my imaginary girlfriend?"

Nikko shook his head but unlike me, who was growing more annoyed at myself with this conversation, he only seemed amused. "L, why didn't you ask me?"

"Because it wasn't my business," I said under my breath, sticking my plastic spoon in the center of the ice cream carton. I sat there seething in silence before I heard a sound.

He was laughing.

He was laughing.

I huffed. "Stop."

"Sorry." He proceeded to continue snickering, his hand over his mouth.

I nudged his bouncing leg with my foot beneath the table. "Stop. I'm an idiot."

"You're not an idiot," He said gently while planting his spoon in the center of his own carton as well. "You didn't ask me if I was seeing someone else because it wasn't any of your business?"He didn't believe those words for a second. 

"Because I didn't want confirmation," I confessed. "I'd never seen you with someone else. I didn't want it to be true."

We fell into silence. There it was. All of it was out there on the table. The cards were in his hands while I took my spoon out, eating the cold dessert on a cold day, trying not to seem like the conversation of how I could have simply asked him didn't bother me. It pissed me off. 

Nikko knew that because as he searched my face, the amusement not leaving his expression as he shook his head. "Look at you. You're getting so angry at yourself."

"I'm embarrassed," I said lowly. "I don't like being embarrassed."

"No one does. Is there anything I can say that'll make you feel less like that?"I shrugged helplessly, putting ice cream into my mouth. "If it's any consolation, you look really nice."

"Thanks, but I'm only wearing a jacket," I said. He couldn't even see my cute sweater. 

"I know." He said softly. 

My face must have gone up in flames because he started snickering again. "You're not doing a good job of making me feel less embarrassed," I complained. 

Nikko paused, thinking as I placed more attention on my ice cream. "You wanna know one of the first things I thought when I saw you for the first time?"

I looked up at him. "You remember the first time we met?"

"Of course," What did 'of course' mean? I remembered the first time we met even when I shouldn't have reminisced on it. I thought about it for too long. Was it the same for him? "I thought, 'why the hell did this girl look so annoyed at the information board'?"

What? "I wasn't annoyed," I exclaimed.

"You looked annoyed. It took me a moment to realize that you were concentrating on what you were reading," He chuckled. "You make the same face at practice. When you first met Liya, she thought you didn't like her."

"She did?" 

"At first, but then she realized you had your game face on," Nikko grinned while I crossed my arms. "Besides, you don't have that look on your face all of the time. It takes a second for people to realize that you can show other emotions."

"Outside of my resting bitch face?" I deadpanned. 

His mouth did that thing as he held in his amusement. The one where it twisted to the side and I wanted to kiss the action off of him. Every single time. Especially now when he was doing exactly what he intended to do, make me feel less annoyed at myself.  "When I talked to you and realized that you weren't mad at everyone that crosses your path—"

"I'm not," I muttered. What if everyone else in the universe had very joyful faces and my annoyed-looking face was the normal one? What about that as an option?

"My second thought about you was that you seem like the sun." He concluded.

The sun? "It was the hair, wasn't it?" That had to be the only conclusion. Out of all my friends, I think I was least likely to be considered the epitome of the sun. I'd like to believe that they had rays of sunshine in them. Yasmeen. Jaiyesimi. Mariam. Optimistic in their own ways.

"No, it was your laugh," I met his eyes. The sincerity in them made my heart hammer harder than his words did. "It was one of the things I thought when you laughed at something I said. I thought your laugh was so bright and happy that it was like the sun and I thought about it for a while. Like it made me think that if there was an audiobook of the dictionary and someone searched up the sun, your laugh would be the first definition."

Oh.

If I didn't feel something for Nikko Zhou before, I definitely did now. How the hell did someone say something like that? Without any hesitation, as if it was the most natural thing to ever slip out of their mouth. As if his brain was wired, circuited to say things that made my head rush. That made my feet never want to bolt from where they were planted but stay right here, wanting to hear whatever else he wanted to say. About me. Even if I was in a state of complete and utter disbelief that he said that out loud, that he had those thoughts. 

"Just screw the fact that it's a flaming ball in the sky, huh?" I said, not hiding the fact that I was openly staring at him; at the hat on his head to his dark eyes, his lips, and his neck. I couldn't stop roaming.  

"That definition got booted down to number two when I met you," He chuckled. "I thought a lot of different things about you, but your laugh stuck out the most to me." He beamed so brightly, I couldn't stop myself from matching it, ice cream forgotten. "Why are you smiling now?"

"I don't know." I groaned, putting my face in my hands as he burst out laughing, the sound jolting straight down my body. "You have this—I don't know. You do this thing."

"You mean when I smile?" He grinned even wider, and I slightly pushed his arm on the table. "My third thought was mixed with my first thought about you."

"That you thought I looked annoyed?"

"No, that I thought you were pretty, even when you seemed annoyed."

My cheeks heated up again. While my ego was soaring through the roof, another part of me wanted to put my face into my hands. This was a lot. This was too much. "You have to stop."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not..." I sighed. "I'm not used to it."

He paused. "How long do you think it'll take you to get used to it?"

So it was going to happen more? I shrugged. "I don't know. Are you going to keep giving me compliments?"

He didn't hesitate. "Yes."

Despite the sudden shyness, I did like compliments. He knew that when it came to squash but outside of it? That was going to take some getting used to. 

"I'll try to adjust then." I said. "When I first met you, I thought 'he's really friendly'. And at the same time I thought about what I first told you during that phone call that summer."

That he was insanely attractive to me. 

"Did you?" I nodded, unable to meet his eyes. Nope. Still not ready to fully dive into that conversation. 

"Another thing I noticed was that when you smile, it's contagious."

"Like a disease?" He joked as he ate ice cream. 

"Exactly," I said, twisting my spoon in my hands. "The Nikko variant of the smile virus."

"You have a random story up in there all about it, huh?"

He knew me a little too well. I probably did. "It's kind of funny you thought my laugh was sunshiney--"

"I still think it." He admitted.

I sucked in a deep breath, pushing my next words out there. "--when I feel like you're that for most of the time. But I got to know you and you're still that to me but with a lot of other things. Like how you really care for your family. Or how you don't show that you're nervous between matches but sometimes it shows because of you have a habit of biting your nails and bouncing your leg." 

His leg stopped beneath the table. 

"You're a little anxious about this conversation?" I had to ask.

"I was a little nervous when I was buying the ice cream but I think we need to really talk about all of this. Us," He said. I liked the way he said 'us'. That this was confirmation that there was the possibility of us. 

"About that call from that summer," He continued. My heart skipped a beat. "You told me—"

"No, no, no," I put my hands up, hovering around his mouth as he snickered behind them. "We don't have to relive the entire conversation."

"Words were exchanged," He paused, waiting to see if I approved. I put my hands down, gesturing for him to continue. "You said a few things that caused you to avoid me again. Sometimes I'd even see you on campus or at a different party and you somehow leave or hide before I could say anything."

"Why did you even want to say anything?"

"Because I wanted to speak to you." He admitted. "When I saw you at the info meeting for squash, somewhere you knew I'd be, I was thinking to myself 'finally'. Because it meant you weren't avoiding me anymore. And I knew you avoided me because you were embarrassed," He observed. "Of not only the phone call but even before that. The night that you and Benny broke up and what he said, right?"

I nodded, happy I didn't have to be the one to say the words out loud. He understood where I was coming from, what had been going on in my head and that's what mattered. Millions of fake stories up there and yet he was able to decipher the truth within them all.

"It was humiliating," I said.  

"I understand," He said, "That night didn't make me see you in that negative light. All it did was make me see how shitty of a person Benny was. It wasn't only me who thought that when he said those things about you. But you know he was wrong. You're not boring," Nikko continued. "Not in any single way."

I knew that. I was many things. Some--Yasmeen--might say complicated. But boring? That was something made up. And I knew made-up things firsthand. "I know. It was how it all happened."  

"So you started avoiding me. You didn't text me back the day after that happened." He recalled. "You didn't text me back after your drunk confession over that summer." 

"You texted me that night?" I racked my brain for more of that night. A lot of it was a blur after I threw up but I did remember deleting my message thread with him out of embarrassment later that night before Jaime and I had gone to bed.

"Shit," I cursed softly. "I deleted our messages before reading what you had sent." 

Judging by the sincerity on his face, he wasn't lying about sending those texts but my irritation was crawling back up again. 

"It's okay," He said with a shrug. "But those texts were the reason why I didn't text you after our last tournament. You didn't want to talk. Not after that night. Not after that night with you and Benny. Back then, I didn't even want an explanation. All I wanted to know was if you were okay."

I took out my phone while yanking off one of my gloves. Pulling up our message thread, I typed out words and sent my message to him. He took his phone out of his pocket, reading the message ago. A light smile played upon his lips. "I'm glad you're okay now. From the aftermath of all that."

"Me too," I whispered.

"Good," He said. "And for the record, I was glad that you told me what you told me on that phone call."

20-year-old me and current me both froze at his words. 

"The message I sent to you later that night?" He deep a took breath. His leg under the table shifted as if he was doing everything he could to keep it from bouncing. "I asked if you were okay and I asked if you wanted to talk but it was 3 AM and I assumed you had fallen asleep. I was going to tell you that I felt the same way. About everything you said."

My breath caught in my throat. For some reason, I had lost the ability to breathe and to move because I was staring at him, unable to say a thing. I was staring at him, unable to pull together my thoughts except for one thing.

But Nikko cut through my mind as he quietly asked: "Is how you felt back then still the same as right now?"

I shook my head, noting that the hope in his expression had dimmed. Then I confessed: "More."

Back then I didn't know him as well yet there was still something between us. Something that made me nervous but not as nervous right now. That made me hyper-aware of where he was but not as much as right now as he analyzed me for my every reaction, wondering and scorching me with his gaze. 

I put my spoon back into the carton, looking up at him properly for the first time, hoping to keep that smile rising on his face right there. "It's more," I repeated. 

"How red in the face are you going to go if I told you it's more for me now than it's—"

He started chuckling again as I glanced up at the sky to find another cloud. Unfortunately, the sky decided now to be cloudless, making me look right back into his heartfelt face, unable to hold back a grin of my own. 

It was more for him now. I didn't even know what the baseline had been but it didn't matter. 

Nikko Zhou liked me. No, he likes me. 

He liked me despite how irritated I got with myself. Despite how I acted after losing a game and the history behind it. He still liked me after hearing what I told him last Sunday. After how long I had avoided him. 

This could've been happening almost a year and a half ago. Possibly even long before that. On the day we met. 

"I'm sorry," I blurted out.

"Stop apologizing," He said in a soft voice as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. His tone was so light. So patient. "Stop saying sorry when you have nothing to be sorry for." 

"But this conversation could have happened forever ago." 

"I'm just happy it's actually happening," He said, letting out a long breath as he looked at me. This time I didn't shy away from his gaze. Especially not when he said: "I want you to know that there isn't another person. No secret girlfriend. No headband or bracelet or necklace with a secret meaning. Is there another person you're involved wi—"

"No." My answer came out too fast, causing me to flush for the hundredth time in the past hour. "There isn't another person." There hasn't been for a long time other than the man in front of me.

He seemed pleased. "We're finally on the same page, aren't we?"

I matched his delight. "Seems like it."

"Then we'll see how this goes?"' He suggested. "Slow. Not as fast as you can run. That way you can used to the new compliments. Is that okay?"

My lips tilted upward. Fast was the only speed I knew but I was in agreement. My head was dizzy in the best way, I had my favorite ice cream in my hands, and Nikko Zhou likes me. "Slow is good."