Chapter 16

"Nik. Nik? Nik!"

I was shaken awake by Tyler.

Our room was dark and I felt like I'd barely slept five seconds. I was beyond confused, looking around me, searching for some kind of threat.

"What? What?"

"My left arm hurts and I think my heartbeat is really irregular. Am I having a heart attack? Do I need to start chewing Aspirin?" Tyler asked, sitting on my bed beside me.

I sat up ready to freaking strangle him.

"Are you goddamn serious?" I snapped.

"Am I dying?"

I sighed, holding my head in my hands. "I'm going to kill you, so yeah, definitely dying."

"Come on, I'm serious."

I grabbed his hand, too sleepy to realize I really should stop indulging is little drama fits.

"Why am I even taking your goddamn pulse?" I mumbled. "You're completely fine. You drank Red Bull last night before going to bed so you could stay up later to study for your test tomorrow."

"My arm hurts."

"Yeah, because you're goddamn tired. Seriously Tyler, go back to bed and leave me alone."

"You're not very supporting. If I die of a heart attack, you'll regret saying this."

"Seriously? Seriously? Get off my bed."

I didn't know why I was more snappy than usual. Well, yeah, I knew, it was because he'd just woken me up in the middle of the night and he'd been annoying me all weekend long.

It wouldn't have made sense for me not to be annoyed with him. We lived in close quarters all the time. Even your favourite people could get on your nerves in this situation.

Tyler went back in his bed, and I laid back in mine.

I couldn't fall back asleep now.

I was mad. I was thinking about the fact that maybe I was just better off alone and without friends and without people pestering me all the time and I was spiraling into dark thoughts and dangerous territories and just being really toxic in my head, just for the sheer pleasure of making myself suffer apparently.

At six in the morning, I got out of bed, and left our room. I ate my breakfast slowly at the cafeteria and checked some things for assignments on my lap top.

I didn't want to deal with Tyler for now. I needed to cool off before I said something I would regret when I remembered he was my best friend and not just the idiot who woke me up in the middle of the night.

Finally, I grabbed the tallest cup of coffee I could get from a stand on campus and headed to my first class of the day.

I was actually the first in class, so I made my way to my usual table.

I basically hugged my cup of coffee, my hood over my head, slumped down on my seat, waiting for this day to be over so I could go back to bed.

I was going to go back to my apartment tonight. I didn't want Tyler to annoy me again.

Like, most of the time he was funny, but this time, he just really annoyed me.

Esther walked in class, and headed for our table, scooching behind me to get to her seat beside the wall.

"Good morning," she told me, with a little smile.

"Good morning," I replied, and tried to smile a little. It wasn't her fault if Tyler was an idiot. She shouldn't have to pay for his mistakes.

Also, being rude to Esther would make me feel like the biggest jerk on Earth.

"You look tired. Are you okay?" she asked me, frowning a little, as she took her notebook and pen out of her bag.

I shrugged, and yawned. "My roommate and former best friend as of this morning woke me up in the middle of the night because he thought he was having a heart attack. He was not, he's just a stupid hypochondriac."

I almost said goddamn hypochondriac but changed it right away, not wanting to offend her or anything.

Esther frowned. "He wanted you to take him to the emergency room?" she asked.

Oh right, if she didn't know a specific detail about my life, this would make less sense.

"He wanted me to be his personal doctor. I used to be pre-med, and well, I've studied medicine most of my life really. Family business," I explained.

"Oh, really?" Esther said, like I'd just told her a great and wonderful secret.

I chuckled. "Yeah, deceiving, aren't I?"

She smiled back. I blinked slowly. I must be more tired than I thought, I felt a little dizzy.

"Mysterious really," she said, smile still there. "Sudden knowledge of medicine, and secret name. Are you keeping your name secret because you're the heir to some fortune or like a prince?"

I chuckled again. She really had a nice voice. And she was amusing. I really wouldn't have thought that about her, from the first time I met her. I really was a jerk for judging the book by the cover, wasn't I? "Well, I guess I am a trust fund baby," I admitted.

And life insurance baby, but that might have been a little too heavy to get into at like eight in the morning.

"Not a struggling artist?"

"Not monetarily, but like everything else? Yeah, sure totally struggling," I answered, trying to make it sound like a joke, when it really wasn't. "What about you, did you always want to study art in university? Any big plans for your future," I asked, wanting to get the attention off of me.

I wasn't used to it, and I didn't particularly like it.

Esther shrugged a shoulder playing with her pen. "No big plans. Just little plans you know. Having good grades, maybe be able to study abroad if I can get a scholarship."

Little plans were good too. And these things weren't that hard to achieve if she really put her mind to it. She had less chances of being disappointed.

"Do you draw? Paint?" I asked her.

She was studying art after all, and almost everyone that studied this in college had to have a talent of some sort, or at least a passion for it.

"I do collages actually," she replied, and her cheek sort of redden from admitting this, I guess.

"Really? That's cool. I've never done that before," I replied.

"What about you?" she asked.

I chuckled. "I draw silly cartoons."

"They're not silly, they're cute," she answered automatically.

I frowned. "Huh?"

"Oh, sorry, you made some doodles on the notes you left me, so I saw your drawings."

"Oh, right, sorry, I didn't even realize I did. I tend to doodle a lot in class."

"They were fun to see in the middle of your notes. I like them. I just wondered if you did anything else. Not that you need to, they're fun, really. I don't have that kind of talent in drawing. I can't do stuff without a model. I can't come up with anything new on the spot," she kind of rambled.

Cute. But also, keep talking. 

"You just need to practice. I have tons of notebooks with awful doodles," I reassured her.

Our professor brought attention to the front of the class. His lecture was starting.

I felt a little disappointed that I couldn't keep talking with Esther.

I looked back in front, but I kept giving her sideway glances.

This girl was really a mystery to me. She didn't really make sense. She didn't look like a scared mouse anymore when she looked at me.

Clearly, she was a hardcore introvert like me and only got chatty and comfortable around people once she got to know them.

I could relate to that.

But there were other things. Like, she always wore those long skirts and long sleeve shirts and often cardigan over it, and I wasn't entirely crossing off the possibility that she had some kind of eating disorder, and her clothes were hiding that.

Being really poor always would explain some of her behaviour. Also, the fact that she didn't have a phone. Or maybe that was a religious thing.

Oh, maybe she was an Amish on her Rumspringa. Wait, would she be too old for it?

I wasn't an expert on anything faith related. I kinda completely stopped believing in any kind of deity after my father died. Even after my mom, and... well everything she did, I still had a kind of desire to want to believe that there was something after death, that she was taken care of somewhere, and that all of this made sense somehow.

After my father died, it felt like too much of a slap. Even if a god existed at that point, I wanted nothing to do with them.

I was thinking about all of these things, and not listening to the lecture and looking at Esther furtively, and she got me, and smiled back at me.

I wanted to punch myself.

I felt my whole face and ears turn red.

I stared at my notebook.

I started to take notes in shorthand, just to keep myself busy, and stop glancing back at Esther every two seconds.

When the lecture was finally over, Esther got up and said, pointing at my notes, "thanks for not giving me gibberish like that in your last notes."

I laughed. "You're welcome."

"I believe the medicine thing now though. You really write like a doctor," she said as we headed together out of the class.

"My father taught me shorthand when I was really young."

"That's nice."

"Yeah," I answered, smiling at her. We walked side by side. I was slowing my steps to match hers. "Did you want us to work on our project for a little bit?" I asked her, but what I really wanted was to keep talking to her, so she'd spill more stuff about herself and I could listen to her soft cadence of speech.

I was curious.

"Sorry, I have a class and other assignments to work on. Maybe another day this week?"

"That's fine with me. You can just email me when you're available," I told her and realized I made it sound like I had literally nothing else to do with my time, like a bad student.

"Perfect, I'll write to you. Bye Knickerbocker," she said and waved at me.

I burst into laughter. "So wrong, so, so wrong."

Esther smiled back, amused too. "Honestly, I didn't even believe it myself," she admitted. "I'm requesting another round."

"You have it," I replied, still chuckling.

"Nixon. For the President, and that's why you don't tell people your full name, because you're ashamed."

She was really putting thoughts behind it. I was impressed.

She was wrong, but still, she got points for her imagination and tenacity.

Also, I had to admit, I kinda like this little game. I kinda didn't want her to ever guess my name right so we could keep playing it.

"Richard Nixon aside, Nixon is kind of a cool name really, I wouldn't mind it."

"So, still wrong?"

"Still wrong."

"Alright, well then, bye Still-Just-Nik-For-The-Foreseeable-Future," she said, and waved again.

I smiled waving back. "Bye Esther."

I headed back to my dorms, knowing that Tyler would be gone for his class, and I'd be able to take a nap in peace, with a little bounce in my steps.