Nick stepped into his office and plunked his messenger bag onto the desk. “I’m sorry you had a rough time, but I don’t get why you feel the need to tell me about it now.”
“Because when I was seventeen, I started getting it from my dad.”
He flinched as if poised to either bolt or punch me. I’d struck a nerve. “I was acting out and being a little shit,” I continued. “And he was an alcoholic who didn’t know how the hell to deal with my screwups.” I paused, chest tight. “I figured I deserved it.”
His face stayed blank, but a multitude of emotions boiled behind the thin facade. He yanked papers from his bag and slammed them onto the desk. “You were a fucked up loser. I bet you deserved every bit of it.”
My composure cracked as if he’d taken a sledgehammer to it. “Takes one to know one,” I shot back. “You can’t even get into med school after all your bragging about pre-med this and pre-med that. Who’s the loser now?”
I fled the office before he could respond to my stupid and nasty comeback. I knew damn well that Nick was in lashing-out mode and projecting all of his shit onto me. So why did his words hurt so damn much?
“Angel!”
I kept going toward the stairwell. He didn’t want to talk, and neither did I anymore.
“Angel. I’m sorry.” Misery filled his voice.
Sighing, I turned to see Nick in the hall outside his office, looking utterly bereft.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, returning to him and the office. “I shouldn’t have said that about med school. That was low. I know how much it meant to you and how hard you worked.”
Nick collapsed into his chair. “I’m going,” he said. “I’m fucking going to fucking med school.”
Frowning, I struggled to process that. “Okay, I’m lost. I thought you got rejected. What were you ripping up in your car?”
“You saw that?” He grimaced and turned beet red. “It was my acceptance. I got it last month.”
Baffled, I sank into the other chair. “But that’s good, isn’t it? Being a doctor is your dream.”
“Yeah,” he said morosely. “Classes start in August.”
“Dude, you make it sound as if you’re going to your execution.”
He looked away. “I can’t help it if I’ve considered other options.”
I mentally backtracked to reassess everything I’d seen and learned about him in the past year and a half. His pompous attitude about academics and being pre-med. His flurry of med school applications and exams and interviews. And his current look of defeat. “You really don’t want to be a doctor?”
Slumped shoulders twitched. “It’s the smartest thing.”
“That’s not what I asked.” I leaned forward and fixed him with a penetrating look. “Nick, do you want to go to med school?”
“I’d be stupid not to after all the work and money that’s gone into it.” He wadded a piece of paper and hurled it at the trashcan. “I guess I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, and you know it.” A picture began to form of an ugly family dynamic. “It’s your dad who wants you to be a doctor.” I paused as more pieces clarified. “When I saw you outside Crawfish Joe’s, that was when you told him you didn’t want to go through with it.”
Nick pounded a fist into his thigh. “I like being a death investigator here. Righ
t now, all I want to do is work and get back into theater and volunteer with Allen on medical relief missions and keep my friends. I don’t want to bury myself in stress for the next decade. Even if I did, I’d specialize in forensic pathology. I sure as hell don’t want to be a fucking trauma surgeon so Bear’s survivalists can have a goddamn medic for the apocalypse!”
I leapt to my feet and slammed my hands on the desk. “Then do all that shit you want to do! Get back into theater, and volunteer with Allen on medical relief missions, and for fuck’s sake don’t be a trauma surgeon unless that’s what you want. Don’t kill yourself for someone else’s dream. Fuck that noise!”
“I wish I could just say fuck it.” The flicker of fire had left his voice. “But I can’t.”
“You can’t be your own person?”
“I made a deal.”
I grabbed his chin and turned his face to get a good view of his bruised eye. “Is this part of the deal? How many times has he hit you?”