Nico
A cloud of cigarette smoke gets in Jack’s eyes, even through his years of partying and hanging out in hazy nightclubs and bars, he’s never gotten used to this sensation. Jack pushes past a crowd of ravers, high school kids, college dropouts, skinny hipsters interspersed by a few white collar fuckboys preying on drunk girls, a screen of dry ice vapour concealing their lower bodies. He does the zig-zag walk of a person leaving a concert, wading through a crowd facing in the opposite direction.
The stroboscopic light blasting from the stage illuminates a shape here and there, and some of them he recognizes for a second; a bespectacled boy from his class he barely knows, the some punk chick working in the bakery by his place, a lanky guy he remembers from his high school swimming team, but then he spots Kate, the pretty freckled girl that he used to take Spanish lessons with, but she’s here with some tall guy in a leather jacket, so he just smiles at her and says a meek hi that could only be read from his lips, pushing on further. Jack, initially intent on getting out of the nightclub to get a breath of fresh air, decides to make a stop by the bar to order a drink. The lights shining upwards from the bar makes the bartender — a rather disinterested, dreadlocked ginger in an oversized dark hoodie — look even more aloof, the raised podium behind the bar making it appear almost as if she’s judging what kind of alcohol her customers order.
“A large beer”
All that Jack wants right now is a cold lager. A cool beer from the tap, in a large cup that’s nicely coated in condensation on the outside, he watches as the semi-translucent plastic cup fills up with a nice head of foam, looking inviting, mouth-watering. He’s thirsty from all that dancing by the stage and that beer is looking like the most attractive entity in the entire club. But he decides he’s not gonna drink it here, his experience muddled by the irritating smoke. His drunk mind has just come with the most challenging way to enjoy his beverage — he’s gonna take the beer with him, resuming his laborious journey through the packed nightclub, now made even tougher with the task of not spilling the beer.
Jack looks into a dense pack of people smoking, drinking, flirting and winking at each other, blocking the already narrow, claustrophobia-inducing tunnel leading out of the club, and gulps dryly. It’s the final part of the challenge,but he is up to it, balancing the drink, evading a dizzy drunk who has trouble standing upright, and finally walks past the big Walrus-like mustachioed security guard and out of the nightclub. Somehow, some way Jack has managed to bring the beer, intact, all the way outside.
When Jack steps out of the nightclub, and into the street, turning around to face the nightclub’s LED faux-neon sign, “Smoke & Mirrors” it says in a pulsating purple light. He is savoring his achievement and looking at the cup, lifting it towards his mouth to take in a long-awaited sip of the cold beverage, the plastic almost touching his lower lip when-
Someone runs into Jack from behind, the cup slipping from Jack’s hands and falling on the pavement. The entire beer spills on the ground, wetting the concrete a darker shade of grey before running off, foaming trails seeping into the gutter.
Great. Just fucking great, Jack thinks as he wipes some of the beer from his hand.
“Oh my, i’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.” he hears a girl’s voice just behind him.
He turns around, and there’s a girl with a phone in one hand, a cup of unfinished beer in the other and an apologetic look in her eyes. “Oh, hm, maybe I can… buy you a drink?” she asks.
He takes a half-emptied cup of beer from her hand and lifts it, drinking it, eyes closed in bliss, not finishing until he chugs all of it down the throat, holding it up for a few extra seconds allowing the last few remnants to slide and drip down the length of the cup. He passes the cup back to the girl, and says “looks like you’re running dry as well, so let’s go buy ourselves a drink”
Jack would have minded a great deal more if anybody else had caused the loss of his drink, but if it is a pretty, blue-eyed blonde girl who even offers to buy him another one, he could care less. The pleased smile on his face reflects an almost zen-like state of contentedness — everything is happening exactly as it should. She grabs his hand and leads him through the tunnel, and back to the bar. They seize a pair of bar stools and the girl motions for the bartender to order. Jack’s friend Matt, with whom he came, sees him from the other end of the bar and winks at him, Jack smiles and Matt mouths a word and then shows an obscene gesture with his fingers. Jack smirks, hoping that the girl doesn’t notice the unspoken conversation going on between them. Yeah, I’m getting laid tonight.
“Two beers please”
The spaced-out dreadlocked bartender seems to barely register the words, but eventually she does as she turns around and takes two cups, filling them up one by one. The girl pays for the drink and they symbolically ‘clink’ the two cups. “Cheers”, they say, looking into each other’s eyes as they both take a sip.
“So, yeah, I never got your name…” Jack mentions.
“It’s Nico”
“Nicole?”
“Not Nicole. Nico. eN, I, Cee, O, without the L” the girl explains, basically talking right into his ear in order for him to hear, her face just inches away from Jack’s. The conversation is taking place by the bar while music is blasting from the not-so-distant stage. She’s not sure if he heard all of that correctly. “I’m Jack” he replies, simply. No chance of mishearing that name.
“So, how is your night going so far?” Jack asks her.
“Huh?” she says, unable to hear the question properly. He leans in closer to her and repeats the question, speaking almost right into her ear.
Jack looks at her and asks a question that might seem more standard, one that is easier to understand “Wanna go out for a smoke?” while motioning with his fingers, as if he was taking a drag from an invisible cigarette.
Nico nods enthusiastically.
They emerge from the club, the fresh air of a summer night a particularly pleasant sensation for Jack. Nico leans against the brick wall of the nightclub, the position hiding her inebriation discreetly. Jack, holding her hand still, lightly touches her chin with the fingers on his other hand and says “to be honest… I don’t even smoke” and moves in closer, she shuts her eyes before their lips meet and they engage in a deep, long kiss, his frame pushing her slightly up against the wall. The palm of his left hand is spread open and resting against the brick wall to support his weight while his other hand is lightly entwined against the back of her head, holding her in close as they make out.
They cease after a while, but still their faces are inches apart. “What were you saying before we went out?” Nico asks. He has one hand on the back of her head, playing with her hair “I wanted to know how your night was going” he replies. She smiles, playfully tugging on Jack’s blazer and pulling him closer to her, whispering in his ear “A little better now that I’ve met you”.
*
Jack wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, in an apartment that is equally foreign to him, groggy eyes spotting an hourglass shape lying next to him, a girl with long blond hair strewn over a patterned pale pink duvet that barely covers her feminine frame. Slowly, he recollects his memory, and were it not for the throbbing hangover, he would even be smiling as he slowly begins to recall the prior evening. The pre-drinking at Matt’s, the nightclub, the smoke inside forcing him outside, and that chance encounter with the blonde girl. This blonde girl. Nico. Not Nicole.
She turns around, perhaps sensing Jack’s stare, her eyes still half-closed from. “Hello there, handsome” she says in a soft voice and smiles warmly. She sits up slightly, her back against the back of the squeaking wooden bed frame, pulling him towards her playfully “Come here”. They kiss, though Jack’s mouth is dry, they are both hungover, and, what is worse, he can’t ignore the acrid taste of cigarette smoke on her tongue.
“I better get going” he suddenly announces. Nico looks at him a little surprised. “You sure?” she asks, giving him an innocent, puppy-eyed stare “Yeah” he says as he gets off the bed and finds his crumpled jeans on the floor, pulling them onto his legs, the belt clinking as he does so. “It’s Sunday, and my folks have invited me out for lunch. I haven’t seen them in a while” he says without looking at her. He locates his wallet, phone and feels up the keys in his jean pocket before finally meeting her gaze. “Hey, let’s see each other again, but I really need to go now”, and the explanation seems to be enough to make Nico content. “Sure” she says, with a slightly forced smile. He walks over to her bed and hugs her, kissing her, and then whispering in her ear “I’ll call you, I promise”, before releasing his embrace and leaving, she hears him hurriedly putting on his shoes in the hallway before he opens the door and shuts it, now all that she can hear is the faint sound of his footsteps tapping rapidly as he descends down the stairway of her college dormitory.
*
On Tuesday, Nico suffers through an extraordinarily dull behaviorist psychology class. It is an overcast day filled with gray and misery. The classroom is bathed in the yellow light of cheap ceiling lights. She sits by a window and the glass pane trickles with tiny rivers as drops of rain tap against it. Her notebook sits there largely unattended by her hands, she’s long since given up on taking notes. Nico fidgets with her pen, listening as the elderly female professor talks in a monotonous voice that is almost like a lullaby to the students in attendance, Nico being no exception. She fidgets with her pen, drawing geometric shapes in her notebook when suddenly the lights in the class are dimmed. The projector on the teacher’s desk begins shining a ray of bright light, illuminating a few swirling dust motes as it casts a presentation slide on the plastic white board titled ‘’Classical conditioning: teaching old dogs new tricks’’ with a hideous clipart illustration of a drooling dog beneath it.
The professor drones on; “Last week, we discussed operant conditioning in which behaviors are either rewarded or punished, which either reinforces or discourages that behavior. Please note that this is very different from today’s subject — classical conditioning. Here, a powerful biologically potent stimulus is paired with an otherwise neutral stimulus, which, when repeated often-enough, will make the subject react the same way to either of the two stimuli. The most well-known study comes from the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, who…” Nico stops listening and takes out her phone. Hiding her activity behind an erected copy of a thick textbook, she dims her light to a minimum and writes a text to the number Jack gave her on Saturday evening. She then places the phone back on her desk, screen-side down, and waits impatiently, her very own example of a Pavlovian reflex at the ready as she enthusiastically expects the phone to vibrate twice with an answer, any moment now.
However, no answer arrives by the time the class ends. On her way home from university, she attempts to call the number and it goes to a dead tone. Either he intentionally gave her the wrong number, or it was an accident — regardless of whether it was her mishearing or him confusing the order of the numbers. However, the end result is the same — she has no means of contacting Jack again.
Annoyed at herself for not being thorough that night and not checking the number by calling him right then and there, she stops by a small kiosk on her way home from work to buy mint chewing gum and a pack of slim cigarettes. After she pays and begins to walk to her dormitory, she spots a familiar figure jogging down the street. It’s Jack.
“Hey stranger!” she calls out, and Jack, sporting a pair of headphones, does not hear her and plods on. She waves at him and he notices her out of the corner of his eyes. At first, he does not recognize her, and then he takes out the headphones and smiles.
“Nicole!”
“Come on Jack, it’s Nico” she playfully corrects him, no hint of annoyance in her voice. They both look cheerful, their faces contrasting with the gray, overcast weather and drizzling rain.
“That number you gave me doesn’t work” she says, pulling out her phone and listing the contact.
“Oh, and here I was thinking you didn’t call me on purpose” he says.
“No, first I texted and there was no answer, and I then tried calling and-” Nico replies.
“Well, it seems like fate has given us another chance” Jack interrupts her and gives her a sly smile.
“Sure does…” Nico says quietly, and then asks in a firm tone “what are you doing tonight?”
“Tonight i’d rather just rest, but how about we hang out tomorrow after you finish school? The weather should be nice, and there’s this field near the art school where there’s a great view of the city. What do you say we buy some wine, hop the fence and see the sun set?”
“That sounds great. When do you wanna meet?”
“Can you meet me at 4?” Jack inquires “Sure, I end at 3:15, and where shall we meet?
“Let’s meet bus stop by the art school”
“Okay Jack, I’ll see you then” Nico replies, and Jack nods, putting on his earphones and almost running off before Nico yells at him:
“Jack, wait!”
“What’s up?” he says, pulling out one earbud.
“I still need your number. The correct one this time” she says, with her phone in hand.
*
Jack offers his hands for Nico to step on, lifting her up and allowing her to scale over the large but thankfully spike-less fence separating them from the empty grassy field. She climbs over, a little clumsily, but manages to drop onto the soft ground on the other side. Jack quickly jumps up to the top of the fence, grabbing it from the other side with one arm and vaulting himself over it, landing softly on his feet and dusting off his hands against themselves.
“You like breaking rules, Jack?”
“Only those I don’t like” he smiles and leads her up towards the hill that oversees the northern part of the city. They sit down on the soft spring grass, yet untrimmed this year.
“You know, some rules exist for a reason” Nico returns to the topic as she passes the corkscrew to Jack “Some rules make sense.”
Jack places the wine between his jean-clad thighs, squeezing them together to get a strong grip on the bottle while he pulls the corkscrew away from it until the cork loosens and then pops open with a distinctive sound.
He looks at her, one eyebrow raised “What are you saying Nico? That we shouldn’t have hopped that fence? Or should we not be drinking in public? Some rules do exist for a reason, but I see no reason for not breaking rules as long as nobody is harmed by it. You know, some rules are just made up. And being able to know which rules can be broken, well, that’s my key to an exciting and happy life.” he says, before taking a swig from the bottle and smiling at her.
“Jack, you can break all the rules you want except for one; ladies go first” she says and playfully snatches the bottle from his hand as soon as he finishes drinking.
“I was just testing it… for poison” he grins at her, the teeth already stained from the cheap red wine.
“Sure you were, Jack” she smiles and passes him the bottle, then unpacks a new box of slim cigarettes and lights one up. Jack’s face, otherwise almost always cheerful, has a shadow of a scowl flash across it briefly. Nico picks up on the hint.
“Something wrong?” She asks.
“No, not at all. I just don’t like smoking” he says as he drinks more of the wine.
“Health reasons?” Nico asks, letting the thin cigarette burn without taking a drag.
Jack looks off into the distance, staring at the view of the city, taking a while to think before he answers. “No, it’s just that I don’t like compulsive behavior. Addictions.”
“But then, you drink?” Nico asks.
“You’re right, maybe I should stop with that as well,” he says as he places the bottle on the grass. “Come on Jack, it’s normal to have a few vices” she says as she puts the cigarette to her lips and takes a drag from it, the ember on the tip lighting up and burning before she exhales a cloud of scented smoke. “We’re all going to die some day, might as well enjoy our lives until that day arrives”
“It’s not death or illness that I worry about. It’s the loss of independence, or agency, freedom, whatever you call it, the way nicotine and other substances can control a person. We’ve been blessed with free will and so many of us throw away that gift in favor of some physical pleasure that is just temporary”.
“But what makes you think you have free will just because you don’t smoke? You exercise every day — do you do it truly because you want to do it, or do you do it because your body releases dopamine afterwards?”
“That’s different,” Jack says, sounding slightly annoyed.
Nico doesn’t answer. She takes one last puff from the cigarette and then extinguishes the stub against the grass, throwing it into the empty wine bottle.
*
When Nico first visited Jack’s apartment, what first caught her eye were the numerous trophies from swimming competitions displayed on top of a large bookshelf in his living room, their faux-gold upper bodies, frozen in time, captured in mid-crawl. Underneath each trophy a year, a category and Jack’s name, the only property that is consistent throughout the diverse range of awards.
They are sitting in the living room, Nico entwined around him, her legs resting on top of his knees, feet dangling slightly above the polished laminate floor designed to look like wood. A tabby cat enters the room and walks up to the two, sniffing at them before brushing her head against their legs. “Fish” Jack says, and Nico looks at him quizzically “that’s his name? Fish?”
“Yes, Fish, is her name. I found her abandoned on the street about a year ago” he says. Fish jumps onto the sofa and onto Nico’s thighs, laying down and curling up in her lap. “Looks like Fish likes you”.
Nico pets Fish, and the cat purrs in response, wiggling a bit to find a more comfortable spot and closing her eyes.
Jack gets up and looks for something in the kitchen, returning in a moment with a small white plastic package that he opens, Fish immediately gets up and focuses on the thing in Jack’s hand.
Jack says “Check this out” and throws something green on the floor. Fish immediately jumps down from the sofa and begins to smell the substance, then keels over onto her back and starts to literally roll around in it, taking it in, her eyes filled with ecstasy.
“Catnip” Jack says “Funny how these little creatures become deranged just because of some random-ass plant”
*
Nico was going through a gruelling day at university. She was nervous about her dissertation, her teacher not helping the fact. It had also been 2 weeks since she invested in a package of nicotine patches in a bid to completely stop smoking. Though the patches did help, there was something special about her everyday ritual of having a smoke with her coffee, or having smoke breaks outside the university library. Now she was taking walks through the campus, wishing she had a cigarette.
Her phone rings and Jack announces that they will be having dinner at a Thai restaurant she had been longing to visit. The place is rather expensive and tables are not easy to book, especially not on Friday afternoons. Something special was up. She was curious what he had planned; having dated for just a few months, no, it was way too early for him to propose, but maybe he was going to suggest they move in together?
He picked her up on time, dressed sharp in a dark blue blazer with a white button-up shirt beneath, tightly wound and showing off his athletic frame. She had opted for a stylish brown trench coat underneath which was a black silk dress adorned with a floral pattern she saved for special occasions. The taxi ride to the restaurant was strangely tense; Jack did not reveal his cards just yet. He actually looked slightly nervous, something she had seldom seen before.
He asks her about her day, and she says her advisor at uni gave her hell for the latest chapter in her dissertation, so she’ll likely have to spend the weekend rewriting it. They talk a little more about her school, but the entire time Nico’s thoughts are racing. Finally, just after they finish their entrée, she asks it.
“Jack, what’s the occasion? Why are we here. What’s all this about? Spill the beans already!” she says, beaming in anticipation of what he’s about to say.
He smiles sheepishly, then extends his hand over the table and grabs hers softly, hesitating and looking off into the distance sideways for a moment before he starts talking.
“Nico, these past three months have been wonderful, getting to know you, spending time together… but as you know, my coaching job at the school isn’t really paying me well enough, well, I just got a very, very handsomely paid offer to work as a private swimming instructor… in Dubai”
“In Dubai? That’s… quite far away. How long is the job for?”.
“The contract they offered me is for 6 months, with an option for an additional 6”. His other hand grabs her own “I thought long and hard about it, but I don’t see any other opportunity like this. I have to leave, and I want us to talk about our relationship, what will happen with us, I mean, I can see us doing the long distance thing, I-…”
His words trail off as Nico’s mind becomes fogged. Suddenly everything around her disappears, she can only think of one thing — the relationship is over. 6 months is twice as long as they have been dating. She can’t imagine a man as attractive as Jack will stay faithful, let alone stay committed to her for such a long time.
He’s chosen a well-paying job over me.
“-and maybe you could fly over from time to time, I mean tickets aren’t exactly cheap but we could sort something out-”
“When are you leaving?” Nico interrupts him.
“In 3 weeks” he says. Nico’s eyes begin to well up, she gets up and leaves in a hurry, heartbroken, nearly running into the waiter bringing the main course. Jack quickly digs in his wallet and leaves cash on the table to pay for the bill before he chases after her, grabbing a hold of her just outside the restaurant, in the rainy street. He embraces her and she struggles for a bit, fighting him meekly before she breaks down and starts crying. “I don’t wanna lose you, Jack” she says as she hugs him tightly, not wanting to let go.
“Don’t worry, you won’t. I promise. We’ll spend every day together until I leave, and then we’ll be in touch, 6 months will pass sooner than you think, and you can always visit me”. A cab rolls down the street and he waves it down. “Wait inside while I get our coats” he tells her, opening the cab door for her before he returns to the restaurant, bringing her trench coat and handbag along with a bottle of wine he just purchased from the restaurant’s bar.
They arrive in front of Jack’s place just as the rain turns to a drizzle. They enter his apartment and the tabby cat is waiting by the door, greeting them as the rain-soaked couple enter.
“What’s gonna happen to Fish?” Nico asks.
“My parents will be taking care of Fish, at least if- at least until I return” he corrects himself.
Nico squats down and pets Fish, and she purrs enthusiastically in response “I’m gonna miss you, Fish” she says, kissing the cat gently on her head.
He grabs her hand and leads her into the bedroom, not even giving her time to undress and put down her handbag. He kicks open the door to his bedroom and she allows the handbag to just sort of slide off of her arm, he takes off her trench coat and throws it on an empty chair, then he pushes her gently onto the bed and takes off his shirt…
*
Nico can’t sleep. She looks at the time; 1:02 AM. tries to lay down and fall asleep next to him, but she ends up staring at the ceiling, a million thoughts rushing through her head, all of them centred around the man sleeping next to her. Is this really the end of our relationship? There has to be some way. Maybe the long distance thing might work out. But that sounds like a naive thought, even now while he’s sleeping right by her side. Should she abandon her studies and move with him to the Middle East? But maybe he doesn’t even want that. Maybe he really wants to get ride of me. She looks at the time again: 1:21 AM.
She sits up on the side of the bed and gets up, walking over to the hallway and looking for her handbag. She digs into it, her hands probing for her smokes, and she locates some kind of box that is too bulky to be cigarettes — she then realizes she stopped smoking, but takes out the box anyway. It’s the nicotine patches. She sighs, looking at the package of nicotine patches, thinking about how they helped her get over one addiction. Too bad there aren’t patches that will help wean her off Jack.
An idea, a dark and rather bizarre thought comes into her mind. She looks at Jack’s sleeping form through the ajar door, sleeping naked and barely covered by a thin blanket, much of his torso exposed. She unpacks one of the patches and walks over to him. She prods him gently, testing if he wakes up, but Jack continues to snore peacefully, the post-orgasmic upsurge of prolactin knocking him into a deep sleep. She unwinds the nicotine patch and places it on the back of his neck.
Nico looks at her watch once more. It’s 1:30. Jack was never a morning person, she figures he’ll sleep at least until 9. That means she has to take the patch off around 8, just to be sure. She sets a silent, vibrating alarm on her phone and goes to sleep next to him. Waking just before her alarm goes off, she waits until Jack rolls over onto his side and then gently peels off the nicotine patch.
When Jack wakes up some time after 10 AM, he gets up groggily and nearly falls on his way to the bathroom. He complains about dizziness and of sweating at night. “Maybe you had too much wine?” Nico suggests, turning around on the bed to hide her smile from him.
*
The next day, she suggests he comes visit her at her dormitory, and the process is repeated once more. After he falls asleep, Nico places a fresh patch on his upper back, waking early in the morning to take it off. Over the ensuing several days, they meet and have sex every night, and every night as Jack sleeps, his body is, unbeknownst to him, loaded with nicotine, amounts that were enough to make a heavy smoker lose their appetite.
After a week, Jack wants to spend even more time with her, suggesting that she moves in with him until he leaves for Dubai. Nico takes up the offer gladly, and for a few more precious days, things are as idyllic as possible. She scarcely has time to work on her dissertation — Jack has become insatiable, where once he wanted to have sex maybe once per day, now they are fucking like rabbits, like those first weeks when they started dating. And Nico is all too happy to provide that for him.
Nico buys another package of patches and continues in her devious plan, and it seems to be working. One night, she leaves their apartment to study at her dorm as she has another revision with her advisors early the next morning. It was to be the first big test of her scheme with Jack, and it works out brilliantly. After she finishes her meeting at university, she picks up her phone and hears Jack on the line:
“Nico, when are you coming by? I want to-, no, I need to see you. And I want to tell you something.”
She arrives right after, and Jack hugs her tightly right after he opens the door, smelling her hair, kissing her on her cheek. “Come with me” he takes her hand and they sit down on the sofa in his living room.
“I’ve decided to stay” he says, smiling. “Are you sure?” Nico asks, hiding her delight upon hearing those words “Yes, I’m sure” Jack says, looking straight into her eyes.
“You don’t have to do this because of me” Nico says “Jack, you should make your own decisions”
“This is my own decision, I am sure of it” he replies. “I think, for all my life, I’ve loved independence, and being free, being able to do what I want, whenever I want… and these past few weeks, I don’t know, something changed.” he holds her by her hand, gazing thoughtfully into them before he looks into her eyes once more.
“What I want to say, Nico, is that I love you, and I wouldn’t trade the world for you. I am in love with your scent, your smile, the sight of you, your body, your entire being, I can’t imagine leaving you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’ve never experienced love, not like this. I go to sleep thinking about you, and I wake up hoping to see you by my side… and last night, I was here alone for the first time in weeks, it made me realize, it made me realize just how much I don’t want to lose you, no, I can’t lose you. You are, like, the most potent drug I’ve ever tried, and I am hopelessly addicted to you”
