Descend the Stairs (Part 2)

“Annin can’t–mmf!”

My hand clapped over Nelle’s mouth before she could finish uttering whatever idea had sprung into her mind in the milliseconds since Elliso had revealed the location of the restaurant. Having recently experienced the dire physical consequences of one of her well-intentioned ideas, taking urgent action seemed a necessity.

I knew that this would likely condemn me to nausea and vertigo, perhaps even the revelation of my secret, but those results were predictable.

What might come if I let Nelle speak? The memory of the adhesive’s scent was warning enough.

Better the enemy you know, right?

That said, I was now facing Elliso, Deji, and Pera with one arm around Nelle’s shoulders and one hand clasped over her mouth. Not exactly a pose I could justify without explanation.

“He can’t what?” Deji asked. The innocent curiosity behind the question only compounded the awkwardness.

“I, uh…” I began, my mind spinning in circles as I searched for a reason. Suddenly, Nelle’s ability to come up with even terrible ideas on the fly seemed very impressive. “I can’t… um…”

Three pairs of eyes looked on. Nelle began to wiggle in my arms, her hands coming up to pull my hand off her mouth. I had seconds left before disaster.

“I can’t wait to try it out! Let’s go!”

I began to walk toward the elevator, dragging a still struggling Nelle behind me. Her arms pinwheeled as I offered sheepish grins to the people we passed. I looked over my shoulder to where the other three stood dumbfounded.

“What are you guys waiting for?” I called back, trying to act as if I didn’t look like I was kidnapping someone in broad daylight.

We reached the elevator doors, where a short line awaited. A mother with a child in a stroller side-eyed me with a concerned gaze.

“Ahahaha, he just won’t keep his mouth closed around the ladies, you know?” I said, taking my place at the end of the line. “Gotta keep my bro out of trouble!”

Her glance darted away from us just as quickly as it’d come, which somehow felt more mortifying than if she’d kept staring. Heat rose at the back of my neck.

“Mefft ee guuu!” Nelle said against my hand. “Ammmim!”

With the others now approaching, I released her. Nelle took a big breath, then spun toward me. I couldn’t see her eyes through the sunglasses, but I already knew I was in a brand-new kind of trouble.

“You guys… good?” Elliso said as he came up behind Nelle, sounding more eagerly nosy than concerned.

“Hold our spot in line, bro,” Nelle said, her voice pitched as low as she could make it. I had to admire her commitment to her disguise even in a situation like this. “We’ll be right back.”

She grabbed my hand, pulling me after her, past the shop beyond the elevators and around the corner onto a smaller street. Her hands pressed against my chest until I backed into the wall, thankful for the papered over windows that blocked us from the view of any shoppers inside.

“Crouch.”

“What? Like a wall sit?”

“Just do it.”

Confused, I bent my knees, back sliding down the window until I was on her level. As soon as I stopped moving, her hands thudded against the glass on either side of my head.

I won’t lie; I might have flinched a little, even if the impact wasn’t all that heavy.

“So, what was that?” she said sweetly.

I gulped, less at the sudden interrogation and more at the realization of how close our faces were. Nelle’s sunglasses covered her eyes, but I could see the rest of her face just fine. Clear lip gloss shone, just a few inches away.

At another time, I might have pointed out that it didn’t really fit her disguise. However, at the moment, it seemed of secondary importance.

“I had the perfect excuse ready. Why did you stop me?”

“You were about to say something that would permanently alter my reputation, weren’t you?”

Nelle’s mouth opened, clearly ready to deny it. I waited, but no words came out. Her mouth snapped shut.

“What was it?”

“It’s too late. No point in saying it now!” The awkward laugh that followed her words only confirmed my suspicions.

“Nelle.”

“Ahahaha, really! It probably wouldn’t have worked anyways!”

“What can’t I do?”

She turned her head to the side, looking away from me.

“Don’t ignore me when you’re the one you pulled me over here and trapped me against the wall. Wall sits aren’t easy, you know.”

“…”

“…”

“… dumped you,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“I was going to say you can’t go to the restaurant because that’s where your last girlfriend dumped you!”

Now, let me make two things clear. One, I had never been to the restaurant called Jills. Two, I absolutely had not had a girlfriend who broke up with me in front of a bunch of strangers.

To be precise, I’d never had a girlfriend at all.

“I know it was a bad idea, okay!” Nelle said, the words coming out in a rush. “It was the best I could come up with! Who would want to go back to a restaurant where they were publicly humiliated?”

The theory was sound, I had to admit. However, in practice, the public humiliation of my friends believing I’d been publicly humiliated when I had not been publicly humiliated seemed to me just about as bad.

“And what was your plan when everyone started asking questions about that non-existent girlfriend?”

“I would have figured something out,” Nelle grumbled. Her head dropped as she looked at her shoes, the brim of her hat hiding her face.

I didn’t laugh, but I couldn’t entirely swallow my smile. Maybe I should have been mad, but Nelle’s idea was too absurd for anger. I began to straighten my legs, and Nelle let her hands fall to her sides when they hit my rising shoulders.

“Listen,” I said. “It’s not like I don’t appreciate you trying to help. But I’m not going to die if I take an elevator one time. You don’t have to go into panic mode any time I might have to go somewhere high.”

“I know.” She pulled off her sunglasses, shoving them into a pocket.

“And…” I’d been ready to continue my sermon, but something about the way Nelle just stood there made me hold my tongue.

“Nelle?”

For a moment, she was silent. Then, slowly, she leaned forward, the top of her cap coming to rest against my chest in the gentlest headbutt of all time.

I stared at the wall opposite us. Although we were close enough to the main street for the bustle of passing people to hum in the air around us, it felt as if we were the only people in the entire city.

“I’m sorry, Annin. I know I should let you handle things the way you want. I just can’t stop myself.”

Her voice seeped out around the sides of the hat, quiet and subdued.

“I don’t want you to have to do things you don’t want to do. Not if I can help you.”

When I looked down, I saw her hands clenched in fists.

“Nelle, I–”

My hands lifted of their own accord, arriving on her shoulders.

Her head snapped up at my touch, and I froze.

Tears glistened in her eyes, but her eyebrows slanted fiercely downwards, glossy lips pressed together in frustration.

“Haven’t you done enough for everyone else?”

The roughness in her voice, as if the words had forced their way through an asteroid belt, hit a spot in my heart I hadn’t known existed before that moment. An almost irresistible urge to cup her face in my hands washed over me.

But…

Even if the roles of “princess” and “ambassador” no longer mean anything, is it really okay to think about myself first now?

I’m not sure that it is.

I sucked in a breath, then exhaled long through my nose as I searched the unfamiliar brown of Nelle’s contact-colored eyes for a way out.

The fact that Nelle cared this strongly held certain troubling implications. The kind of implications, you know, that might jeopardize a certain guy’s commitment to not falling in love with her. A guy who wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t read between the lines.

Not saying who that guy is, though.

“If that’s how you feel,” I said, trying to make my voice normal and light. “I guess I’ll just have to let you keep helping me. Even if you destroy my reputation in the process.”

“How I feel…?”

Nelle pulled back and I let her go. She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, then replaced her sunglasses. For a second, I feared she would continue the thought, but then she shook her head.

“So… does that mean you want to go with the girlfriend idea after all?”

Maybe I’d overestimated her level of affection for me.

“Overruled. I’m getting those cinnamon rolls.”

“Eh? I thought you were going to let me keep helping.”

“I’ll take a rain check on this one.”

I slung an arm around her shoulder, the very picture of one bro chilling with his other bro. Two bros, who most definitely had not been in a kabedon a minute earlier.

“Besides,” I said. “I don’t think I could stop you even if I wanted to. What’s that line you always say?”

I couldn’t see Nelle’s eyes behind the aviators, but the smile that appeared on her face was enough.

“A princess never forgets her promises?”

“That’s the one.”