Nick and Charlie

Anonymous said:

Dude long distance never works, trust me it’s better to end it now and save yourself the pain

Anonymous said:

Everyone should go into uni single!! University years are your sexiest years!! Gotta bang as many people as you can!!!!

I don’t really want to bring this up with Nick because I don’t want him to feel bad for going to university. He’s completely right to be excited about it.

It doesn’t matter how I feel about it.

Nick returns from the bathroom in just pyjama shorts, rubbing a towel over his hair. “What’s up?”

“What?”

“You’re frowning again.”

I quickly close the Tumblr app. “Am I?”

He walks over to the mirror and picks up his hairdryer. “Yep.”

“Maybe that’s just my face.”

“Nah, your face is usually way nicer.”

I hurl a pillow in his direction, but he steps to one side to dodge it, laughing.

I can’t tell him about this. He’d feel awful. He’s had enough of feeling bad because of me. I’ve already been the most annoying boyfriend in recorded history, what with all my mental health stuff.

“Come take a selfie with me,” I say. “I want to piss off my Tumblr followers.”

Nick grins and puts down the hairdryer. “Why would that piss them off?”

“Selfies piss everyone off.”

“So passive aggressive.” He walks over to the bed and flops down next to me.

I open the camera on my phone and before he has the chance to say anything about it, I kiss him on the cheek and take the photo like that.

Nick laughs again. “Oh, you’re doing that on the Internet now, are you?”

I wrap my arms around him. “You know it’s what they all want.”

“At least let me sort out my hair.”

“It looks good when it’s wet.”

We lean our heads together and I make a peace sign with one hand and take another picture. Then I take one of us actually kissing, but I don’t put that one on Tumblr. Some things are nicer if they’re just for us.

NICK

The next morning I wake up to the sound of Charlie’s phone alarm – he always sets it to an annoying un-ignorable beeping sound, rather than music like I do. Despite this, waking up next to Charlie is definitely better than any other way of waking up. I don’t really know why. My bed always feels sort of cold when he’s not there.

Charlie’s still insisting he has to go to school today because he’s crap at revising at home, so he’s making me get up at seven o’clock in the morning to drive him. While I could go to school to revise, the idea of trying to revise on the first day of my study leave kind of makes me want to burn all of my revision notes, and also we’re both crap at doing schoolwork when we’re together anyway.

I open my eyes to see him stirring. A line of sunshine falls across his chest through the gap in the curtains, and even while I’m still half-asleep I get another sudden urge to take a picture of him. Then I remember that I used up the film yesterday afternoon, and I already took one of him asleep last night anyway, when I found him curled up in my bed after I’d gone to get a glass of water.

Charlie rolls over to turn off the alarm and then goes to climb over me to get out of bed – my bed’s situated against the wall – but as he does I slide my hands round his waist and pull him down on top of me. He lets out a surprised noise and then a small laugh, his voice still sleepy. “I have to go shower—”

“No, stay here.”

“I can’t, I’ll fall asleep again.”

“Don’t go to school.”

“Nick!”

“Stay here with me.”

“I can’t, I’ve got to… I need to revise.”

“Mm, fine.” I loosen my arms so Charlie can wrestle himself out of them. As soon as he’s gone, my bed feels cold and empty again. It’s pretty dumb, really. I sleep alone most of the time.

TWO

CHARLIE

I sort of hoped Nick might have picked up on how I’ve been feeling. Normally he’s pretty good at that; like, weirdly good, actually. And I’m not exactly subtle in my attempts to get him to stop talking about uni. But by third period, after I text Nick to see whether he’s awake again (after dropping me off at school, he said he was going back to bed), the excited text onslaught begins.

Nick Nelson

(11:34) We should go uni shopping soon!!! Is it weird I’m excited about buying kitchen utensils?

Nick Nelson

(12:02) Dyou think I should email to check whether I’ll have a double bed?? Like how do people know which sheets to buy?

(12:05) I’d better have a double bed lol your bed is bad enough

Nick Nelson

(12:46) Dyou think I should take my xbox or is that too unsociable? I need people to like me

Nick Nelson

(12:54) Is Kaleem in school?? If he is can you ask him whether he knows about the beds?

Nick Nelson

(13:15) I’m way more interested in home furnishing than I thought.. the ikea website is a dangerous vortex

I reply to all his messages and really try to be enthusiastic, but I can tell my texts sound a bit flat. Nick doesn’t seem to notice though. He just keeps texting me about university and buying stuff for his room and the modules he thinks he wants to take and all sorts of other things that just make me feel increasingly more awful by the second.

We’ve talked about it before. Quite a while ago, actually, back when Nick was looking round universities last summer and when he was applying to them in the autumn. I admitted I was pretty worried about him leaving. I said I was scared of being on my own all the time. It was kind of embarrassing, really. Stupid. Scared of being on my own. I sounded like I was three-years-old.

Nick obviously reassured me we’d talk all the time anyway and everything would be fine. We haven’t talked about it much since then, but only because there’s not much more to say about it.

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