After Braden left the apartment Christian told me that he was going to Todd’s for the evening. It took all of us quite a while to calm down after Braden had shown up out of nowhere and started a fight with Nick, but once we’d calmed down a bit Christian and Todd left the apartment looking happy and holding hands.
I felt bad for Nick because it was my fault the whole fight had happened in the first place. What was I doing wandering around the city with a strange guy and stealing kisses under the neon lights of Times Square?
“I feel really bad about what happened,” Nick said, his hands in his pockets. He shuffled his feet. “I didn’t mean to hit him that hard. It’s just that, you know, I saw him push you and I saw your head slam into the wall and I just—I guess I got protective. I don’t know. I swear that it’s not normal for me or anything like that. I don’t go around starting fights.”
I held the ice pack to my head. My head was throbbing, even after the four Excedrin. The bottle had said to take two and I figured it was going to take twice that much to take care of the headache.
“I don’t want you to think that Braden is really that kind of guy, either,” I told Nick. “I think he was just probably really stressed out after taking a red eye to get here to see me and he’s been paranoid about Christian anyway because Christian and I were boyfriends ages ago.” I shook my head. “And I was really shitty to Braden the other day on the phone. He was really paranoid about Christian and for whatever reason it just rubbed me the wrong way and I just kind of chewed him out on the phone. Then I topped that all off by walking through the door of the apartment holding your hand after he came all the way to see me when I didn’t call him after what happened to me—I mean, I can start to understand why he did what he did tonight.”
Nick leaned up against the countertop. “Do you love him?”
I looked out the window. “You know, I don’t know.” I sighed. “I really don’t know right now."
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