Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,21

of the artists who’d inspired him to go into music in the first place—which I’d learned about from watching several of his interviews online—had. Instead, I was demanding he live. It had to be infuriating. We spent June locked in a loud battle of wills that made everyone else in the house cringe.

“I want to invite people over,” Nick told me, shaking because he was so fatigued but refusing to go to bed. I’d compromised by suggesting he spend time relaxing by the pool and soaking up some sun.

“Sure,” I agreed, arms crossed, staring at him. “Call ’em up, get ’em on over here.”

He went through his phone, swiping up and down for ten minutes as I waited.

“You have to just stand here like a damn statue?” he finally snapped at me.

“Why should it bother you? I mean, c’mon, you’re so close with whoever these people are, let’s make it happen.”

“It’s this new phone,” he griped peevishly, waving it at me. “It’s all different, and I can’t find things on it, and I just…I just hate it!”

I grunted.

“The hell is that noise?”

“It’s the phone’s fault, I see,” I placated him. “Even though, yanno, those are all the same contacts downloaded from your iCloud and therefore all the same people, but you can’t find your friends because of the phone.”

He roared in frustration and hurled it at me.

I ducked, of course, and we both heard the splash after the crack as his phone bounced off the cement and into the water.

“That’s probably not gonna help,” I offered, trying to look solemn.

Back in the kitchen, I called Owen to order him a new one.

“I hope you get hit by a car on your run tomorrow,” he yelled, which made Marisol catch her breath in horror.

“He doesn’t mean it, do ya, Nicky?”

“I fuckin’ hate you!”

“Why don’t you burn off your hatred swimming laps?” I suggested, trying to be helpful. “Maybe you can dive down and get your phone. We could see if putting it in rice will save it.”

He stomped to his bedroom, but he was back in minutes in his swimming trunks. So even though I had pissed him off something fierce, he did, it turned out, burn it off in the pool.

“You’re playing with fire,” Marisol warned me. “I’m worried that he’s going to come after you in the middle of the night with a frying pan or shovel.”

“Like he knows where the shovel is,” I baited her. “And I can defend myself from a man with a frying pan.”

She shook her head.

“He’s swimming, isn’t he? And after that he will be tired, and you might even get some more food in him before he showers and goes to bed.”

She shrugged. “You two yell a lot.”

“It’ll change.”

She did not look optimistic, but even though it was a vicious tug-of-war, there were minuscule changes, and the first one was that after that, Nick always ended his day with laps in the pool followed by a late-night snack, then reading, and then sleep. The mornings were a whole other ordeal.

“Good morning,” I greeted him cheerfully when I woke him every morning at seven, Saturday and Sunday included, yanking the covers off before I opened all the windows.

“Why do you have to be so loud first thing?” he snarled at me, sitting up in bed with his sleep mask on, not scary in the least.

“To make sure you actually rise,” I informed him. “You need to get up and have your smoothie so we can go for a walk before breakfast. You have five minutes.”

The first week of that routine, I watched things fly around the room aimlessly, since he couldn’t very well aim while wearing the sleep mask. I will admit that my cackling didn’t help anything, but I was, first and foremost, an ass, and no one I knew would have expected any less of me.

I ended up moving his nightstand one night so he wouldn’t have anything handy to throw at me the next morning. Unfortunately, when I woke him up, he reached out to find something to pitch, and stretched so far that he fell right out of bed.

“What the fuck,” he whined, sliding the mask up on his forehead and looking up at me from the floor.

“You’re not a child, so you can stop throwing tantrums, as well as whatever you can grab,” I warned him, pointing at his desk across the room where a brand-new Echo sat. “I’ll make you a deal; as long as you’re in the