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“Mum, are you going to the shops tonight?” Nick calls out before he has even closed the door behind him. On the street, Christian’s dad has already accelerated and is gone – Nick finds it a wonder sometimes that he even bothers to slow down when he drops any of them home. He half expects to have to drop and roll out of the door whenever Christian offers a lift. The front door clicks behind him as he makes his way straight to the kitchen without even bothering to remove his coat. “I need to get Charlie a birthday present.”
His mum looks up from her place at the kitchen table. She has some dog-eared paperback in her hand – Nick recognises it from the pile of romance novels that she keeps on a shelf on the landing for when she’s feeling stressed at work or they’re going on holiday – and she places it carefully face down on the table. It’s an incredibly gentle gesture considering at least five of the pages have become loose over the years from her throwing it down on the beach.
“No, darling,” she says softly, taking him in with fond eyes. “I did the big shop this morning.”
Nick rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet; full of nervous energy. His secret is on the tip of his tongue but it doesn’t feel right, yet, to let it spill out. He wants to both shout it from the rooftops and hold it close like a baby bird in the palm of his hands. Right now though, it feels like if things don’t go his way his mouth will make the decision before his brain can even engage. He grips the strap of his bag tight with both hands.
“Okay, well can we go tomorrow after school?”
“Oh, sweetheart I’m sorry, I’ve got to work.” She looks genuinely apologetic, but the irritation rises up in Nick anyway. “I was going to ask you to get the bus. When’s his birthday?”
“Saturday, so I—”
“Well, I’m not working Sunday, so we can pop out then to get something and you can give it to him at school on Monday.”
“No!” Nick barks, shrinking back when she gives him a look. “I mean— he’s invited me to his birthday party on Saturday and I can’t just show up with nothing.”
The idea of hanging out with Charlie’s friends outside of school is anxiety-inducing enough. If he turns up empty-handed, Nick is fairly certain that Tao will murder him with his bare hands.
“Well, I can give you the money for the bus and you can go into town Saturday morning then.”
“I can’t— I’ve got rugby.”
He feels the lump rising in his throat. Something about the sinking feeling in his gut must be written all over his face because his mum looks at him sympathetically before reaching out to brush his hair back from his face. Her hand lingers on his cheek – her thumbs brushing under his eye as if she’s trying to catch a tear that he’s fairly certain hasn’t fallen yet – before she drops it back down to the table.
“Baby, Charlie will understand. He’ll probably have so many presents to open on his actual birthday he’ll be grateful to have something to look forward to.”
“Yeah… maybe…”
She picks her book back up from the table and carefully extracts the bookmark from between the back pages before slotting it into place. Nick realises that he’s interrupted the little amount of time that she gets to herself, and now he feels guilty on two fronts. Regardless, she flashes him a wide smile and pinches his cheek gently.
“You’ll see. You’ll be extending his birthday by a couple of days.” Nick glances away, so fully aware that the misery is written all over his face, and focuses instead on the rest of the room. The oven is on – preheating away with a gentle hum that barely breaks the silence – and there’s some sort of casserole dish balanced on the hob. His mum follows his gaze. “Dinner in an hour. Do you have homework?”
He would have, if he hadn’t spent most of the previous evening studying with Charlie in his bedroom. They had managed the best part of an hour laid out on Charlie’s rug before they had got distracted with kissing. It has turned out that Nick himself is fairly motivated by promises of kissing though, so in the end they managed to finish most of their respective homework with enough breaks in between.
Nick loiters at the bottom of the stairs once he has hung up his coat and shucked his shoes onto the mat. He could probably get to the corner shop and back before dinner is ready, although he’s fairly certain that all that trip will yield him is some off-brand chocolate or some sort of children’s stationery. The kind of things his little cousins beg him to buy whenever they’re visiting and he’s been sent to take them to the shop. Nothing present-worthy, in any case.
He huffs, a little, on his way up the stairs, and by the time he has stomped his way to the top he feels a bit better. Enough to hope that his mum didn’t notice the way his feet thumped against the carpet as he went, at least. His bag makes a similar thud as it hits the ground and he lowers himself down onto his bed. There’s a gentle patter out in the corridor, then Nellie noses her way into the room.
“Hi, girl,” he murmurs into her fur when she has bounded onto the bed and settled in next to him. She feels warm and slightly heavy against him, like she’s just woken up and is in danger of drifting off again in his lap. He kisses her head.
“Any ideas?”
If she does have any, she keeps them close to her chest.
Nick groans and flops back onto the mattress. The movement dislodges Nellie, who slopes off the bed with a quiet whine and a slightly reproachful look. She curls up on the beanbag instead of leaving altogether, her head tucked up on her paws and her tail gently thwacking the bookcase beside her. The movement is slightly hypnotic, and Nick watches her for a moment as he continues to sulk.
Eventually, his eyes drift around the room and land on the shelf above his desk. It’s where he stores all the knickknacks that he’s ever brought back from Menorca, a couple of rugby autographs and the postcard his dad sent him last time he was in America. Pride of place, though, is the photo of him and Charlie that day in the snow. Nick had dragged his mum over to one of the old-fashioned photo printing machines that he’d seen in Boots the last time they were in town and begged her to show him how to print something from his phone. He had clutched the single photo in its little envelope, along with a photo frame to fit, up and down every aisle until his mum was ready to pay.
Now he grabs it to hold it tight in both hands. He’s not sure what drew him to this particular photo out of all the ones he took that day; neither of them are looking at the camera and Charlie is pulling a slightly squinty look where Nick pressed the button at just the wrong moment. There was something about the way Nick saw himself in it though – smiling dopily at Charlie as if he was the only thing in the world worth looking at – that had tugged at his chest and told him this was the one. He had wanted to see himself like this – unencumbered with worry, his crush fizzing under the surface – instead of with his usual mask plastered across his face.
It’s not much, but hopefully it’ll be enough.
Last time he took her to the shops, his cousin Tillie had been obsessed with a packet of heart and star stickers she’d found on the stationery shelves. Nick had refused to buy them, arguing that she had already chosen two sweets while Leo had a magazine clutched in his hands. The fiver his Uncle Rich had slipped him would only go so far.
Afterwards, he had felt bad enough to slink back there and hope that a more persistent child hadn’t come along and nabbed the pack. They’re still in his desk drawer – minus a few that he had carefully peeled off and arranged thoughtfully on the inside cover of his school diary – and, well, what Tillie doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
He places the frame carefully on his bedside table and makes his way to the door.
“Mum!” he calls, as he thunders back down the stairs. “Where’s the wrapping paper?”