Abroad

chapter 3-2

“Over there is Alex.” Alex was a black guy with short-cropped hair and the sort of face that you don’t expect to see on a human being in person, pretty much ever. Nick theoretically knew that models and actors and such were actual people who existed in the world and were photographed and walked among peons like Nick, but Jesus. He got a hold of himself and gave Alex what he hoped was just a regular, friendly sort of nod.

“This is Steph.” Izzy pointed to the girl sitting next to Alex. Nick almost jumped—it was the girl who’d greeted him at the dorm on his first day. How had he not noticed her until now?

She gave him a happy grin over her beer glass. “Hiya, mate. Good to see you again.”

“This grumpy dude here is called Dex.” Nick half-smiled and gave an aborted hand wave and realized he recognized this boy, too. He’d been at International Night, and when Nick had caught a brief glimpse of him, he’d been looking at Nick.

At the time, he hadn’t had enough time to process it before the boy looked away, and now he was sort of starting to wish he’d look away again. If Natali and Alex intimidated him, Dex made Nick feel like he shouldn’t be there at all. Nick made every effort not to bolt, and just barely stood his ground. For a brief second, he wanted nothing more than to be back on his bed watching Downton Abbey. He pulled himself together.

Grumpy, maybe, but—pretty. Dex was black, too, his face framed by neat dreads, all dark except for the occasional green, blue, and purple. Wide brown eyes watched Nick from under intense eyebrows. It was hard to imagine his full, chiseled mouth relaxed into a smile. Nick broke eye contact and looked at Izzy again, because at least she wasn’t making him feel like he was intruding on what had been a perfectly nice time up until now.

“And, finally, this is Jonny,” she said breezily, pointing to a blond boy with the kind of face it was hard to picture looking unhappy. He was leaned back in the booth, one arm slung across the back of it, holding a beer in the other hand.

“Hey, there,” he said. His voice was sweet and slow like molasses, and Nick liked him immediately.

“Hey.” He nodded and vowed to just ignore Grumpy Dex as much as he could.

Nick might not have been a people person, precisely, but Izzy had invited him, and he didn’t want to let her down.

“Right.” Izzy clapped her hands. “Nat, shove over and let Nick sit, and I’ll go get us drinks. Nick, what do you fancy? Lager, ale, cider? Wine, something stronger?”

Nick’s mind went blank. Somehow, in all this time, he hadn’t even considered he’d have to make a convincingly informed choice of drink. He wasn’t twenty-one, and outside of family gatherings and an occasional beer with Lena, he barely drank. He would have rather gnawed his hand off than admit it, though, so he just said, “Oh, lager is fine,” and hoped that whatever that was, he’d be able to choke it down.

“Cool.” She grinned, then bounded off toward the bar.

Which left Nick alone to sit down among five strangers. He clasped his hands between his knees and smiled at the table in general, hoping the conversation would happen around him and allow him to melt into the booth a bit. It was crowded, and he was pressed up against Natali in a way that was a bit too intimate for a first meeting, but she didn’t seem to mind, so Nick willed himself to relax. Deep breaths. He felt his face getting warm but tried to ignore that, too.

“So, Nick, how did you meet Izzy? Was it International Night?” Steph asked.

“Yep.” Nick nodded, giving her another smile. He really wanted that drink now.

“Cool.” She smiled back.

“And where are you from, exactly?”

This came from Natali, and Nick had to tilt his head at an awkward angle to respond. He gave her the short story. “Michigan.”

“Nick’s also Russian,” Steph supplied from across the table, and everyone turned toward her. “Aren’t you?” she said in an encouraging sort of way.

“How the hell do you know?” Alex asked, while Nick felt the uncomfortable pressure in his belly, that familiar bracing for questions.

“I checked him into his hall.” Steph shrugged. “He’s got a Russian first name. Well, and last, too.”

“Go on,” Natali prompted, nudging Nick with her shoulder, and he ducked his head, wrinkling his nose. “What is it? Does it have a million syllables, like Dostoevsky or summat?”

“C’mon, give the people what they want.” Alex grinned, and Nick couldn’t help smiling back at him.

“All right, it’s Nikolay. Melnikov.”

Nick could never decide if “the people” wanted the full, authentic experience, so his accent always landed somewhere in between. Not Russian, not really American. Just an in-betweenie sort of place where it sounded neither. Sounded fake.

“Ohhh, cool. But you haven’t got an accent? I mean, not a Russian one, I don’t think,” Alex said.

Nick ventured a glance across everyone at the table. They were all watching him with what looked to be genuine interest. All apart from Dex, who was busy scratching at a spot at the table with the sort of intensity usually reserved for people who were paid to clean those tables for a living.

Nick shrugged. “It’s been ten years. I guess I got lucky. They say that if you’re immersed in a language before you’re twelve, you won’t have an accent.” He paused and shrugged again. “I was ten. My sister was fourteen, so she has a bit of one, still.”

“Wow,” Steph said, watching him with her face propped on her hand. “Ten years old—what was that like?”

“Um, weird, I guess?”

“f**k’s sake, he just got here and we’re already pestering him for his deepest stories?”

Nick’s gaze flew to Dex, who was now staring into his own drink like it had personally offended him. Everyone else was staring at Dex.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Steph’s gaze skittered between them, looking genuinely distressed. Nick felt just a little bad for her, but Dex had kind of saved him, however unwittingly. “I should have thought … Sorry.”

“It’s totally fine.” Nick glanced over at Dex, and this time their gazes caught. Dex was the first to look away, taking a deep gulp of his drink. Nick looked back at Steph, who still appeared a bit embarrassed. “Really, don’t worry about it. It’s probably the most interesting thing about me.”

“Pffft, right.” She sent a small grin his way before taking a sip of her drink. “Oh, hey, what are you studying, by the way?”

Nick pushed his glasses back up his nose. His armpits itched. “Um, history.”

Steph looked on the verge of asking more, but then a giant glass of amber beer appeared under Nick’s face. “All right, there we are.” Izzy dragged a chair over and placed herself next to Nick. “Now, what have I missed?”

“Steph asked too many questions.” Steph shot Alex a dirty look, which looked sort of funny on her friendly face.

“And Nick is Russian,” Natali offered. Since she was smiling at him, he decided not to take offense and smiled back. What a whole lot of smiling he was doing. He took an exploratory sip of his drink.

Hmm. Not bad. Only a little bitter aftertaste.

“Are you really?” Izzy asked. “How cool is that? So much cooler than just being boring old American.”

Nick snorted and wound up with beer foam under his nose. He wiped it away hastily and laughed despite himself.

“Izzy!” Steph sounded scandalized, but she was laughing, too.

“What? It’s true—Russia’s so much more mysterious than America.”

Nick was still laughing. “That’s one word for it.”

Izzy grinned over at him. “At least it’s got a history, right?”

“True,” he agreed. “That it does.”

Izzy clinked glasses with him and took a long pull. Nick followed suit.

+

The rest of the night Nick spent listening and drinking and asking the occasional question, especially once the beer in his glass began to disappear.

He was warm and a little sleepy in a way he hadn’t felt in a while. After the third time Izzy sent Dex what looked to be a mock glare after Dex had made some smart-a*s comment, Nick took a sip of beer, leaned back in the booth, and asked, bold as hell, “How did you guys all meet?”

“Oh, I know, I got this!” Natali bounced beside him, honest-to-God hand raised in the air. She brushed her bangs from her eyes and said, “Well, these two”—she pointed at Alex and Dex with her Corona—“met in their ubernerd lectures. Biochem majors, can you believe this s**t?”

Alex and Dex instantly gave them identical winning smiles. Nick flushed for no good reason.

“Right, and Dex lived in halls with this harlot.” Natali reached around Nick to poke at Izzy, who just stuck her tongue out at her. “They met when Dex was attempting to make an American-style grilled cheese sandwich on the hob and nearly set the kitchen on fire.”

“It was so not even close to being on fire,” Dex protested like someone tired of pointing it out.

“Excuse me, it actually went up in flame?” Izzy said, flicking a coaster across the table. She turned to Nick. “There was a perfectly usable toastie maker right there, too.”

Dex went on like she hadn’t spoken. “It was a contained grilled-cheese flame that barely even triggered the smoke alarm.”

“But it did, actually, trigger it,” Natali corrected. “Anyway, Izzy had apparently just wandered into the kitchen in her b*a and pants—”

“Oi!”

“Excuse me, in her teeny tiny pajamas,” Natali continued. “And Dex wound up burning his eyebrows off.” She paused. “From what I understand.”

When all eyes turned to Dex, he was looking at the ceiling, calmly sipping his drink. His initial bout of grumpiness was hard not to take personally, because as soon as Nick was no longer the center of attention, Dex visibly relaxed. Nick had at first thought it was hard to imagine those stern lips ever smiling, but he knew better now. Dex smiled easily. It dimpled his cheeks and made him look boyish, younger than the rest of them.

The thing was, Nick had a problem with staring. Zoya had pointed it out to him enough times that he’d more or less learned to curb the impulse, but it was hard with so many new people around. They all seemed so easy around each other, so familiar together, that Nick felt himself relaxing alongside them, which led to him studying each of them, one by one.

He tried not to study Dex as much as the others for fear of the grumpy dude returning, but when Dex smiled it was hard to look away.

Now, with everyone else watching Dex, too, Nick had implicit permission. He also had a question he couldn’t contain. “You burned your eyebrows?”

Dex sighed and frowned as he looked down. “No.”

“Dexter,” Izzy said tonelessly beside Nick.

“Ugh, fine.” He threw Nick a dubious sort of look. “Yes, I singed my eyebrows a bit. Was just startled, is all.”

“It was epic, man,” Alex cut in, laughing. “He shows up at the lab looking like he’d already experimented a bit too much, and it hadn’t even been anything but f*****g cheese.” Alex was shaking with laughter, infecting everyone at the table with it. Nick felt almost euphoric, giggling alongside the others. “A grilled cheese sandwich and a half-n***d Izzy were a deadly combination, apparently.”

“I hate you,” Dex said, but even Nick couldn’t perceive any real heat behind it. “Anyway, Izzy and Nat met at some get-together or other, and Steph and Jonny we picked up—”

“Right here in this pub!” Jonny interrupted, lifting his glass. “Steph was determined to make friends despite being a shy young thing.”

“Was not,” Steph mumbled, pink-cheeked. Watching her gave Nick a similar feeling to walking through his own front door. She put Nick at ease. He smiled at her when she caught him staring, and she smiled back. “I mean, I was, but whatever, this was two years ago.”

“Shyness is not a character flaw, babe,” Natali said. “Anyway, Jonny and Steph met at freshers week stuff, and Jonny took her under his wing, being older and wiser than the rest of us because … well, blah blah, and then we came across them both, and blah blah friendship blah.” She gave Nick a smile and finished off her Corona in the next go.

“I mean, it’s not like we’re a cult. We do know other people,” Izzy offered. “I meet people all the time.” She pointed to Nick with her glass.

“Izzy likes to pick up strays,” Dex added, and just like that, Nick’s newly found euphoria popped like a balloon. He hoped his expression hadn’t changed, but he knew better. He’d been called an open book by Zoya enough times.

“What the hell?” Natali protested. Nick looked down at his drink, wondering how to extricate himself to get another. He’d never gone up to a bar before in his life. And he didn’t even know what he was drinking.

“What?” Dex asked, then said, “Oh. Oh, s**t. Sorry, Nick. That wasn’t—sorry.”

Nick glanced up at him. For some reason, hearing Dex say his name startled Nick, and he shrugged in an attempt to cover it up. Dex actually did look apologetic.

“Oh, it’s fine, I didn’t even…” He seized the moment. “I was just gonna get another drink, actually. Um…” He steeled himself. “Can I get anyone else anything?”

“Ohhh, yes, please!” Steph raised her glass. “It’s the Stella. Cheers, mate.”

Nick nodded, repeating Stella in his head, and waited for Izzy to move her chair so he could get out.

“Can you grab me another Corona?” Natali asked, and Nick gave her a nod, as well. Right. Three drinks. He could do three drinks.

“Oh, and a cider here,” Alex piped up, finishing his glass off in one gulp. Nick got a little mesmerized by the movement of his Adam’s apple, then panicked. Four drinks. Okay. He could fight his way through the crowded pub with four drinks. His fingers were reasonably long and grabby.

“I’ll come up with you,” Izzy said decisively and grabbed his arm like she had earlier. “These lazy tossers,” she muttered. Nick tried not to look too relieved.

Once they managed to get through the throngs of drinkers, Izzy bellied up to the bar like she was paid to do it. All Nick could do was stand back and wonder at her ability to pull attention toward herself like she was lit by a spotlight. He noticed that the bartender all but flew over to where she was waiting, much to the annoyance of the dude who’d been craning his neck in an attempt to get attention.

“What’ll it be, Iz?” the bartender asked, leaning his elbows on the bar and giving her a crooked smile.

Of course he knew her. Nick hid a smile behind his hand while Izzy rattled off the drink orders. Nick remembered to grab his wallet just in time, shoving his card at the bartender. Who didn’t spare him a glance, fair enough. Standing next to Izzy was like a sparrow attempting to upstage a peacock.

“Don’t mind Dex, by the way,” Izzy said while they waited for drinks to be poured. “It’s not you.”

Nick shrugged, looking down at the smooth surface of the bar. “It’s fine.” His face was hot. There was a lot of humanity around him.

“Well, it’s not fine, him being a bit of a tosser, but he isn’t always like that.” When Nick looked up at her, she was biting the inside of her cheek like she was holding something back. Not for the first time, Nick wondered about those two. He wondered just what was sticking in Dex’s craw, and he especially wondered, with an uncomfortable, clawing-at-his-belly feeling, why Izzy had invited Nick out in the first place.

“Well, everyone else is really nice,” Nick offered.

“Oh, no,” Izzy smiled, shaking her hair back. “They’re also tossers, they’re just much cheerier about it. Oh, goody, here we go!” Three glasses and a Corona appeared beside them.

All in all, Nick was pretty proud of himself for not even spilling any beer as he slithered his way between people and set the glasses down on the table without any disasters.

“Cheers, mate,” Alex said, grabbing his and Steph’s drinks while Nick handed Natali her Corona.

Then he sat back down, took a long gulp of his own beer, and decided to ask no more questions.