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“Okay, fine! You’re right, I have been avoiding you.”
“Why?” Matthias asked, his expression pained.
“I, because-”, she shook her head willing away the lump that had been forming in her throat since the moment she’d seen him walk in. “Tell me,” he urged. She took a steadying breath, everything she’d been bottling up for the past couple of weeks came bursting forth.
“Because it physically hurts to be around you, Matthias” she said. Matthias was dumbfounded, he opened his mouth to respond, not sure what to say but she continued.
“But I can’t stand to not be around you either,” she was pacing now, gesticulating wildly in her very Nina way. The same way she did whenever she got a big idea, the same way she had when they’d cooked up this whole stupid plan. It would have been cute if she didn’t sound like she was about to cry at any moment. “I don’t want to not have you in my life, even if we aren’t—” she gestured between them, “whatever we were.” He tried again to respond but she started up again, pacing away from him.
“But I can’t just go back to the way things were. I feel like I can’t even remember what that was like! We weren’t even friends and now I don’t know what we are. It’s so hard bumping into you everywhere, and everyone expecting us to be friendly, like what are we supposed to talk about, the weather?! It’s all just too confusing for me!” She turned back to him then, “and seeing you so okay with this makes it so much harder. It makes me feel-” she stopped to wipe her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt (his sweatshirt, she reminded herself) and then rub the heels of her hands into her eyes. Matthias tried to get a word in again, “Nina,-”
“I’m sorry, I know I’m word-vomiting all over you… but you asked, and you know how I get.”
He gave her a watery smile, “I do.”
She let out a sob at that and he sprung forward to hold her. She stiffened, not wanting him to touch her or see her cry, but not wanting him to let go either. Sensing her discomfort he started to pull away but Nina’s arms shot up from her sides and she clung to him, hugging him back as she sobbed quietly.
“It’s alright, Nina, please don’t cry,” Matthias said rubbing her back. Nina nodded against his chest and eventually eased out of the embrace. They looked at each other in the dim porch light.
“It makes you feel what?”
“Huh?” Nina took a moment to remember what she’d said. “Oh. Like it didn’t mean anything to you, like I was kidding myself starting to think it could have been real,” Nina shrugged, then cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry, I should let you get back to-”
“You’ve got this all wrong Nina. It did mean something to me, a crapload of something, actually! And I am definitely not okay with this! I don’t want to be fake-broken up, or real broken up! But you were so clear in the beginning about what this was. I didn’t think I had any right to think it could be more. I thought I was doing what you wanted, and, if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t want to get hurt. I thought it would be better to just end things like we’d planned, everything was just getting too blurry for me too. If I had known-”
Matthias took a tentative step towards her, “Maybe we’re more alike than we think.”
Nina sniffled, looking up at him, “Wait, are you saying you wanted-?”
“Yes. I really wanted to be with you, Nina. Want to be with you, for real” he added for good measure.
“But you thought I didn’t want that, and I was still pretending?”
“Correct”
“Oh, shit”
“Shit indeed.”
“God, I’m such an idiot, and possibly a killer actress but we’ll come back to that. And you’re too considerate for your own good!” Nina said, poking him in the chest.
They stood in awkward silence for a moment.
“I’m sorry, Matthias, I really should have said something when I started to feel different, it was the one rule we had!” She said shaking her head.
“It’s not your fault, I could have said something too,” he shrugged. “Besides would you really have admitted it?” He smiled down at her with a raised eyebrow and it tugged at Nina’s heart, he really did know her.
She scrunched up her face, still a little red from crying and shook her head, “Probably not, I guess I was hoping you’d catch feelings too so I wouldn’t have to, and we’d seamlessly, magically transition into a real relationship. Works in the movies, sometimes I think,” she shrugged trying to remember if she had ever actually seen a fake dating trope work out without a bit of a shit-storm in the middle. “Feelings are really fucking scary!”
Matthias chuckled at that, there she was, the Nina Zenik he’d gotten to know and like a whole lot over the course of their… acquaintance.
Nina grimaced and buried her face in her sleeve-covered hands “So I’ve wasted weeks being miserable when, we could have been…”
“Together?”
Nina looked up and beamed at him, “Yeah, provided we hadn’t killed each other yet,” she rolled her eyes.
“Come here,” Matthias said enveloping Nina in a hug that felt like coming home, like a dozen stolen oversized sweatshirts, and like waffles for dinner all in one. They stood there together, really together and it was a long moment before either of them moved or spoke.
“Matthias?”
“Hmmm?”
“Did I actually hear you say the word ‘shit’?!”
“Did I actually hear you say you’d caught feelings for me?”
“You're ruining the moment, Muscles!”