forthsofar | Entries tagged with neil

The plan had always been for all of them to stay the night at Nick's, movies and dinner and all of them either piling close or pairing off, then spending the next day together at least through the afternoon. It made it easier, once the three of them realized how very wrong everything had gone, for Rosie to avoid even the thought of telling anyone else. Of telling Neil.

He didn't need to know. Didn't need to hear it from a text message or over the phone, especially not all these months after his own pair of losses, and even less time since the agony of that bizarre videotape they'd watched together. And if Caleb had stayed, they both needed her sadness even less, something crashing in over all that happiness. It was better, easier, to leave her phone in her bag; to cling to Charlie and Sabrina, all three of them huddled close in Nick's bed, at Nick's apartment--and was any of it even Nick's any longer? She didn't know--none of them sleeping very much as the night went on. They stayed together through the next day, until Sabrina decided to go home to Marcus and Dan, to start the process of sharing their loss with the other people who matter. Charlie drives her back, then drops Rosie outside Candlewood, helping her unload the few things she claimed from Nick's apartment from the trunk.

It's nothing special, just the gift she'd bought him for Christmas and a few of his shirts and sweaters. She doesn't think about how small a remembrance it seems, taken all together.

Unlocking the door, she nudges it open with her foot, then kicks it closed once she's inside. It makes a louder sound than she'd anticipated in the closing, and she winces, aware it's going to pull Neil's attention if he's even here at all.

"Sorry," she calls, her voice sounding awfully small in just that single word.

Rosie's been busy in the week or so since Darrowfest, and not just because of school, or for the usual Nick or Sabrina-related reasons. One of the places she'd applied, the seafood restaurant down by the water at the fancier end of the boardwalk that'd been looking for a hostess and had seemed like such a long shot, actually called her in for an interview--and that had gone well enough that now she was supposed to come by one night next week, too, for a kind of walkthrough and training just to know what she was really getting into. Even though the main reason she's doing it seems terribly far off, that thought of a quiet little house near the woods with enough space for all four of them, it still feels like a step forward.

As distracted as she's been, though, she hasn't missed the change that seems to have come over Neil since the festival. He's been happy, happier than she's really seen him in months, and it feels just a little like he's finally come out the other side of losing Harry and Guy in one harsh blow. She hasn't asked why, but she's noticed, and whatever the reason, she's glad.

Today, she's spent the afternoon at home, most of it reading on the couch. She's still there when she hears the short buzz of Neil's phone that usually indicates a text coming through. She doesn't pay it much mind, but then it happens again not long afterwards.

And again. And once more, just for good measure.

Rosie still doesn't get up, but when she hears Neil coming down the hallway and into their living room, she looks in his direction. "Someone really wants to talk to you," she says, a little amused. "Everything alright?"

Running into Charlie on her walk from school led to going to his house instead, which in turn meant she’d hung about long enough that it only made sense to stay for dinner once Newt and Kavinsky were home, and while she’d made sure to let Neil know where she was her phone had found its way back to the bottom of her bag before his reply--if there would be one at all, he was probably busy with school or work or Harry--flashed up on the screen. All of that means she doesn’t know, not until the evening is at its end and she’s digging through her bag again on the way to the bus stop.

When she pulls up the messages on her phone, reading them once, twice, even a third time, she turns and all but runs back to the Kavinskys. If one of them brings her home, it’ll at least be faster than the bus, but it still feels like it takes forever.

Rosie murmurs a distracted thank you as she gets out of the car and shuts the door, pushing into the Candlewood lobby and waiting--and waiting and waiting and why is it taking so long--until the elevator doors slide open at her floor. She fumbles with her keys, her hands shaking as she tries to fit them in the lock, and when she finally does get inside, she nearly leaves them hanging there in her distraction. That she even takes off her coat, once she sees Neil slumped miserably on the couch, is a miracle in itself.

“Both of them?”

It's only once it's all over, once Nick's been delivered into the far more capable hands of a doctor at Darrow General and there's nothing to do but wait and hope, that Rosie lets herself think about going back home. She could stay, she knows; clean off the dried and drying streaks of blood on her skin as well as she can in the bathroom by the emergency waiting room, look for something clean to wear in the hospital gift shop, stay with the remainder of the same small group that had convened outside the bar only a few hours ago. Maybe she even should, but the thought of a shower, of clean clothes that are her own, of seeing Neil and knowing that everything they'd just done had kept him safe too--all of that is enough to make up her mind.

She makes Charlie promise to text once there's more news, promising him in turn that she'll come back as soon as she can. Someone drives her to Candlewood, drops her at the door. There's a long mirror on one of the lobby walls by the elevator, some attempt at elegance or class that doesn't really fit with the rest of the building; spotted and streaked though it is, it's clear enough that Rosie gets her first proper look at herself. What she sees--rust-colored smears on her forehead and shins, hands gone crimson, stains on her blouse and skirt--makes her go pale and sends her stomach lurching unpleasantly. When the elevator chimes open, it's empty, a small miracle that she doesn't dare question, and she rides up to the eighth floor in silence.

Rosie unlocks the door to the flat, slipping inside as quietly as she can. Now, she just needs to get to the bathroom, get the door locked behind her and the shower on without Neil realizing she'd ever been gone in the first place. Once she's clean, she'll be able to face him, to start explaining what still seems to her more than a little unexplainable.

There was nothing wrong, exactly, with the furniture in their new apartment. Some of it came with the unit, while others were ones Neil planned to bring one floor down from his old, smaller place. All serviceable, even if some of it was a little plain. It’s just that none of it was hers, a realization that only struck Rosie once her few belongings from the Home--all she had in the city, all she had in the world--were packed up in a dismally small amount of boxes in the corner of the dormitory, awaiting transport to Candlewood the next day.

She’d gone out then, intending only to spend an hour or so in the Törgt showroom--just to look around, to get some possible ideas for how to make the best of what they already had. But she’d found one piece, then another, and it had made so much sense to think about getting another bookshelf, and the desk chair in her bedroom wasn’t comfortable at all… Before long, Rosie had a slip of paper scribbled with product code numbers and a growing awareness of two things: she was about to spend a truly breathtaking amount of money, and she hadn’t the slightest idea how she was going to get any of the things she planned to buy home with her on the bus.

“You know, we offer a delivery service,” said one of the salespeople standing nearby; mostly out of helpfulness, Rosie hoped, than a slightly grasping desire to take advantage of her clearly overwhelmed state. Whatever the impetus, though, the suggestion was a good one, and she followed him to the counter, coming away a few minutes (and several hundred dollars) later with all her furniture ordered and a FLÅTTEPÄK delivery scheduled for tomorrow.

The next day, after completing the last of her discharge paperwork with Matron Robin and getting David’s help to move her few boxes from the Home to the apartment, Rosie settled in, listening for the sound of the buzzer as she made space for the things she’d so impulsively purchased. It took less time than she expected. Going to the door, she opened it wide, pausing at the sight that greeted her: not a hallway full of burly movers toting furniture, but one single, slightly weedy-looking deliveryman with a pushcart full of long, flat boxes.

“You Wilson?” he asked, starting to pull the dolly past her into the apartment. “Got your Törgt stuff, where’dya want it?”

“I think there’s been a mistake,” she said, utterly baffled as the man started piling the boxes in the middle of the living room floor. “I ordered...I ordered quite a lot of furniture, what is this? What are you doing?”

“Yeah, you got the FLÅTTEPÄK service, right? That’s this. Instructions should be in each box, hardware, everything you need.” Rosie froze, staring at him in disbelieving, dawning horror, and he snorted--a reaction she found more than a little distasteful even in the midst of everything else. “Most people have fun putting it all together. It’s one of those...like a bonding experience thing. Oh, and I’m gonna need a signature, kid.”

What could she do? She signed. And then, once he had taken his cart and gone, the door shut tightly behind him, Rosie went back to the stack of boxes and burst into hysterical, embarrassed laughter. Taking out her phone, she sat down on the floor, the boxes behind her, and took a selfie, texting it out to all her friends with a brief if frantic message: Does anyone know how to build furniture? Help!!!

“Stop worrying about it,” Jodie said, looking over at Rosie in the passenger seat while they wait for the light to change. “You look great. I knew that dress was going to be perfect.”

“Thank you for letting me borrow it,” she says. It had been a lovely offer, and she really was grateful. It was important to be gracious, especially in uncertain situations. And she was very uncertain indeed about this one. “It’s nice, but. It’s just so…”

“Fashionable?”

“Short.”

“I told--what?” Jodie shouts as the car behind them lays on its horn. “God, I was going to start moving. Anyway, your whole retro thing is cute for school and stuff, but not to go out, you know? Even if it worked last time and you wound up all alone in the theatre with him.”

Rosie sighed. She’d kept certain details of that afternoon private out of respect for what Neil had told her before they’d gone to the movies--and, admittedly, played up others because of how fun it had been to make her friends at school think she’d done something unexpected and a little scandalous. Had she known Jodie and the rest of them would keep bringing it up, she’d have been much more straightforward. “We’re going out as friends. We’re very happy just to be friends with one another, I keep telling you that.”

“Yeah, for now.”

As they turn the corner, Rosie takes her phone out of the little purse Jodie had given her and texts Neil: Almost there. Promise you won’t think I look ridiculous? She knows he’d be too nice to say anything, but asks just to make herself feel a bit less uncomfortable about everything.

They pull up to the curb outside Neil’s building, and Jodie puts the car in park. Rosie opens the door and steps out with as little awkwardness as she can manage, even as she wobbles a bit in her borrowed heels. She shivers, the chill night air seeming to go straight through her dress before she gets her coat from the backseat and puts it on. “Thanks for the ride over,” Rosie says--while biting back everything else she wanted to say--before shutting the door and walking up to the front entrance of Candlewood.

Just as she presses the button marked PERRY 9D, Jodie honks her horn and rolls down the window. “Once I get home I’ll call that place you’re living at and tell them you’re staying the night at my house,” she shouts, before pulling away from the curb.

“Oh goodness,” Rosie says, already feeling herself start to blush.