Chapter 97: The Door

POV: Niko

Don't follow me. Don't talk to me, ever again.

He kept replaying it.

Each word hit differently on the loop, like every rotation found a new place to land and press. The devastation in her eyes when she said it. The way her voice was completely steady even though her face was not. She had never looked at him like that, not even in the beginning when they genuinely hated each other. Back then she looked at him with contempt, with competition, with the specific kind of fury that came from caring too much about winning.

Last night she had looked at him like he had already won and taken everything.

He stood in the field alone and replayed it until it was burned into the back of his skull.

Despair. Regret. Shame.

Maybe all three. Maybe something that didn't have a name yet.

He was still in the blood-stained shirt. He hadn't moved. The Black River Falls fog was sitting against the grass around his feet and the campus was quiet and the night had the specific weight of something that had gone entirely wrong and couldn't be rewound.

He thought about her eyes.

He thought about the voicemails.

He thought about her saying it's me, talk to me in the corridor at the banquet with her warm palm against his cheek, and him pulling away anyway.

He stayed in the field until the specific quality of the darkness shifted into the kind that came just before early morning. Then he moved.

He was at Degrassi Hall within seconds, standing outside her door with the lump in his throat traveling up and down and no idea what he was going to say. Just that he was here. Just that he needed her to know that.

He raised his fist and knocked.

Nothing.

He knocked again.

"Carly." His voice came out quieter than he intended, strained at the edges. "Carly, I know you're in there. I can hear you breathing."

A long silence on the other side.

Then the door opened.

Not Carly.

Katy stood in the gap, hair in a bun, pajamas, arms crossed, blocking the entrance with her full body and the expression of someone who had been expecting this and had prepared accordingly.

His fist nearly caught her face before he registered who it was.

Their eyes met. Her scowl matched his.

"As if you haven't done enough damage tonight, you nearly ruined my face." She said.

He exhaled hard. "Katerina. Always a pleasure. I thought gremlins had a curfew."

She gave him the finger. "Funny, I thought fuckboys had hours too. Guess we were both wrong."

She's Carly's friend. She's Carly's friend.

He kept it running on repeat because it was the only thing stopping him from saying something he couldn't take back.

"As entertaining as this is, I'm not in the mood tonight." He said. He tried to step past her.

She blocked him.

He stopped.

His skin was pulsing. The specific heat of barely contained frustration running under everything. She was a foot shorter than him and completely unmovable.

She is Carly's friend. She's Carly's friend.

He breathed in. Breathed out. Closed his eyes for a second.

"This is between me and Carly." He said, as evenly as he could manage. "I need to talk to her."

"And I need a full night's sleep, so we're both having a rough one." Katy said. Her hands came up and pushed against his chest and he moved back one step despite himself, more from surprise than her actual force.

He was in front of her in an instant, close enough that he watched the faintest flash of fear move through her eyes before she collected herself. He didn't let it linger. He stepped back.

"For the sake of her caring about you, I'm going to let that go." He said. "But don't expect it to hold every time."

"Is that a threat?" She said.

"Take it how you like." He said.

She met his gaze and didn't blink. Then she stepped forward and he stepped back again, which was twice in one minute and he was not going to think about that.

"You can make whatever promises you want." She said. "But I'm not moving, because it's what she wants. She doesn't want to see you tonight."

The words landed differently than he'd braced for. He'd been prepared for the door to stay closed. Hearing it said clearly out loud was something else.

His jaw tightened. His eyes dropped briefly.

"She has to know I'm here." He said, quieter. "That I'm trying."

His voice cracked slightly on the last word.

Katy looked at him for a moment.

Something in her expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. Not softness exactly. Something closer to recognition.

She crossed her arms and stepped away from the door slightly, lowering her voice.

"She knows." Katy said. "It's not your effort she's questioning. But you need to accept that right now she doesn't care. Give her tonight."

He opened his mouth.

"Just tonight." She said. "She's not going to hear anything you have to say right now. She's too far inside it. Let her sleep."

He looked at the door. Then at Katy.

He hated that she was right. He hated that she was right and he knew it and still wanted to knock again anyway.

He stayed where he was.

Author's Note:

Katy standing in that doorway was the bravest and most unhinged thing she has done in this story and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.