Never Too Late

Lacey's Point of View

The next morning I woke up and Nick wasn't next to me. I grabbed my clothes from my bag and went to take a shower. After I was done in the shower I got dressed and then went back out to the room. I made the bed up and packed my stuff up. There was a knock on the door and I turned to see Nick standing there.

"Almost ready?" he asked, looking a little awkward.

"Yeah, just let me grab the rest of my stuff and I'll be ready," I told him.

Nick nodded and then walked away. I put my hair up in a messy bun, grabbed my stuff, and headed out to the living room. Nick was sitting on the couch and then we walked out to his car. The ride to school was silent, neither one of us saying anything until we were parked outside.

"So about last night…" Nick started.

"What about it?” I asked. “It was just something that happened. It meant nothing. Right?”

"Right," Nick said with a nod.

I could hear something was off in his voice but I didn't bother asking about it. Nick unlocked the car doors and we stepped out. We went our different ways. School went by fast and was over before I knew it. I had other things on my mind. Nick ended up giving me a ride home. I wasn’t ready to see my sister yet and when I got home, she wasn’t there. Gerard, however, was.

"I’ll be up in my room,” I said. “I have homework to do.”

"We need to talk about what happened last night with your sister," Gerard said, ignoring what I’d told him.

"There's nothing to talk about,” I told him. “She's going to do what she wants. I don't care about it anymore. She's going to leave me just like everyone else does.”

I didn't give him a chance to reply. I walked to my room and closed the door. I sat down at my desk and started doing my homework. And that was the routine for the next week. Lucy tried to talk to me a few times, but I still wasn’t ready. Gerard and Mikey tried a few times too, but I didn’t want to hear about it anymore. Things with Nick were still pretty tense too, which didn’t help.

The night before Lucy’s birthday, I heard a knock on my door shortly after I got back from school and had started on my homework.

"Go away," I said without looking up.

"Sucks kid, I'm not going anywhere,” I heard a voice say.

I turned around and saw it was Frank. I sighed and put my pen down.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Well, someone may have told me what happened and may have asked me to talk to you," he told me and sat down on my bed.

"Gerard." I rolled my eyes.

Frank laughed and nodded. He sat silently for a few minutes, and when I couldn’t take the quiet anymore, I began to tell him everything, including what happened with Nick.

"I just don't know what to do,” I said when I finished.

"Well, maybe you should try to talk to your sister and explain to her how you feel,” he began. “And as for the Nick thing, what do you want to do about it? Do you have feelings for him?"

"I don't know!” I groaned. “Like, it just randomly happened. He kissed me first and then this urge just came over me and then things just happened.”

"Sounds like you have a crush on someone," he teased.

"I don't know, I guess maybe," I admitted.

Frank laughed. We wrapped up our conversation, he gave me a hug, and I finished my homework. After I was done I laid on my bed and thought about everything Frank and I had talked about. He was right. I needed to talk to Lucy about everything. I’d almost forgotten about her birthday being the next day so I made her a card. I felt bad about not having a gift for her, but then remembered something I’d kept in my dresser drawer. I reached inside and found our mom’s old locket that I’d taken after she died. I never wore it but I’d just liked having it there. Maybe Lucy would get more use out of it.

I walked down to her room and knocked on her door. I heard her tell me to come in. I did and I sat on her bed. She joined me and I gave her the locket, which she seemed really happy about. We talked about things a little and then spent a good hour catching up. It started to get late so I decided to head to bed and said goodnight to Lucy. I went back to my room and got into my pajamas. I went to plug my phone in and saw I had a text message from Nick. I opened it up and read it.

I can't stop thinking about the other night. Was that really nothing to you?

I didn't know how to respond to that. I laid down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Was it nothing? Did it mean something? With all these thoughts running through my mind, there was no way I was going to sleep.