Nothing Less by Anna Todd
There’s a set of two pictures of me, looking away from her, with the sun shining bright in the background. The two photos are nearly identical. Their captions are different, though. The first has the same words from her familiar love-note-inspired cocktail. I remember the night I found out that Dakota and Nora were roommates. The night began with some promise but quickly turned sour. Every detail from that moment with her floods my memory.
I’ve noticed her taking pictures of things before, but I just didn’t really think too much about it. Since Tessa has joined the world of Apple products, she’s on her phone all the time. I’m even on my phone a lot, checking scores or looking at my work schedule. There’s always something to do on the interwebs.
This entire time I’d been focusing on her not having Facebook, or lying about it in one of her many attempts to keep herself hidden from me. But now, here I am staring at an entire collage of her life. Dakota even makes an appearance a few times: she and Nora sitting cross-legged on the floor of their apartment, a board game between them, bottles of wine by their feet. And when I see the pink phone, I remember playing this game with Dakota and Carter when we were younger. It would usually be me and Carter playing while Dakota cooked dinner and their dad slept on the couch—or wasn’t home at all.
I need to move my thoughts away from that time in my life. The hole from the loss I shared with Dakota seems to steal the air from every room we’re in together. With the loss of so many people . . .
Her sorrow is in control of the room, even though she’s trying not to show it. She rustles on the bed and tugs at the fabric of her T-shirt, and I know she’s awake. She knows that I know she’s awake. She knows that I know that she knows—and so on forever.
I choose to be selfish for once and look back at the little screen instead of at her. The caption on the second picture reads: You chase the winter and I chase the summer. And, darling, the two will never meet.
A chill runs through me, and I tap out of the screen and toss the phone back onto Dakota’s bed.
A dreadful silence draws a long breath. Her voice is quiet in the dark. “Landon?”
“Yeah?”
She doesn’t turn around when she asks, “Do you love her?”
I think about my response and how it may feel for her to hear it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”
Dakota sighs from her bed. “When did you stop loving me?”
How on earth can I answer that? I don’t know if there is even an answer to her question. I’m not sure that I ever stopped loving her. I look over toward her and remember how she felt in my arms as she slept. Most importantly, is four a.m.—right after I told her I love someone else—really the time to have this conversation?
And still, I can’t hide from this forever.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever stop loving you, Dakota.”
“Stop lying.”
Her voice is harsh. Her back is turned to me. I need a moment to prepare an answer for her. I’m too tired to fight, but I need her to understand that she hasn’t been in my life for six months. Six months. That seems so much longer right now, in this hotel room with two beds and empty Starbucks cups in the trashcan. She still smells the same, and her slender body has grown into an athletic, toned figure. She works hard, and she looks incredible. It’s strange to think about the difference between her body and Nora’s—they are equally beautiful and so different; neither is better than the other. I would be the uglier of the couple with either of them. The difference, though, is that it’s deeper than their exterior—it’s the energy, the connection, the expectations from each woman.
I sound like I’m filling out an application on a dating app.
I wait a few seconds for Dakota to say something about my silence. She’s lying still, her back toward me, and the old TV doesn’t give much light to this vampire-dark hotel room. I had stepped over a used syringe in the parking lot, so maybe it’s just part of the package. When I was younger, it wasn’t this bad. This city used to be pretty cool, and I have a lot of good memories from this place. But drugs have taken over because the economy in the Midwest has fallen and there aren’t good jobs to soften the blow.
I shake my head even though she’s not looking at me. “I’m not lying. I have no reason to lie to you.”
Dakota’s body moves so quickly that her cotton-candy-pink T-shirt is a blur in the dark. The small television is playing old episodes of Maury. Well, I hope this is an old episode and people don’t actually watch this show anymore. My mom always used to watch it; while I was doing my homework, I heard “You are not the father!” too many times to count.
“Yeah? You sure about that, Landon? Because it seems to me that you’ve been lying to me for quite some time now. And now, here we are, back in Saginaw to watch my dad die, and you won’t even talk to me.”
Our room is silent as a woman is jumping up and down pointing in her ex’s face, yelling something that appears far too gleeful for such a tragic moment between them.
“Did you have sex with her?” Dakota asks, and before I answer, she adds, “I need to know if you had sex with her.”
Are we really here? Should I agree with whatever she says and admit to every accusation she throws my way? Or should I take the harder road, the more complicated one, and tell her how childish this whole thing is? We’ve been through too much, especially her, to be acting like this.
I tighten my armor and step into the battlefield.
She’s standing in the gap between our beds, only a few feet away from me.
“Is this where we are?” I move to the edge of the bed and sit with my back as straight as can be. If she moves closer to me, she’ll be touching my knees. “Are we these people”—I correct myself—“these strangers, who fight over jealousy and pettiness? Or are we two people who’ve been through half of their lives together and want to stay civil?”
She regards me. “Just answer the question.”
“Yes. I have.” I tell the truth because I don’t have it in me to lie.
Dakota sits down on the bed a foot away from me and drops her face into her hands.
I don’t know what to say to her—or even if saying anything to her will do any good. I can’t apologize, because I’m not sorry. I can’t tell her that it didn’t mean anything, because it did.
I let her cry as I stare at the TV. Now there’s a new woman onstage; her face is stoic as a man jumps in circles around her. He’s so happy not to be the father of her baby—it’s a sad, scary world out there.
The only way I’m keeping track of the time is from the TV, and the commercial break just ended, so some time must have passed by the point Dakota asks, “If we would have stayed here, do you think we would still be together?”
I nod. “Yeah. I think we would.”
Dakota’s hands are trembling in her lap, and she doesn’t lift her sad eyes to mine. “You’re being so quiet. You didn’t even try to explain yourself.” Her voice is defeated, and her shoulders are slumped. She looks like a doll sitting here, her face as still as stone.
“I don’t have anything to explain. We haven’t been together for six months, Dakota.” I remain as calm as can be. If I let her see the stabbing needles multiplying inside my chest, I’m done for. If we fight—if I raise my voice and actually fight with her—that would mean we’d be crossing the line back into relationship territory.
“When did it start?” she asks.
I glance over at Dakota, and she’s looking at me now. Her eyes are already swelling up from her tears, and I force my hand to stay down, gripping the edge of the mattress with both hands. I look away from her face.
“A little while back.”
“Before we . . . tried to that one day?” Her eyes dart around the room and focus on the clock on the tiny desk.
We both should have known that this wasn’t going to work since that embarrassing mishap.
“No. After that,” I say, hoping it will sting a little less.
A low
After a few more awkward beats, she turns her back to me and lies down on her bed.
When I lie back on my own bed for the night, I hear her say, “I slept with Aiden.”
The words float to me, and my brain tries to scramble a response to my heart before my mouth gets the message and I say something I can’t take back. I’m not exactly sure what to think, let alone to say. My insides are all turned around, and I don’t think I’m supposed to be sad about this, and I don’t think I’m supposed to feel like a volcano erupted inside me. But again, I’m not the strongest of knights, so it kind of hurts more than I thought it would. It’s a little hard to describe the way I feel about her sleeping with a guy I know, a guy I despise.
Out of all the guys in this massive freaking city, she had to be sleeping with the one guy I don’t like at all. From his arrogant smirk to his meticulously quaffed white-blond hair, he oozes everything I can’t stand. Why him?
I look at Dakota’s side of the room and close my eyes. I think of Nora’s body on my lap, soft and aroused in my arms. I think of the way she moaned when I put my tongue on her. Her hair messy, her pouty lips swollen and soft red, her bright red shirt and sexy black pants. I think of the way she laughs when I nerd out on her and the way her skin rises into tiny bumps when I run my fingers across it. I don’t regret a moment with her; it’s not fair for me to believe Dakota can’t share similar moments with someone else. No matter how hard I try to think of the perfect words for her, there’s nothing more I can say to Dakota that will make this better.
Maybe we aren’t supposed to live happily ever after with our first love after all.
chapter
Thirty-five
IT’S BEEN A LONG MONTH since I got back from Michigan. Everything in my life has changed. My mom had my little baby sister last week, and I just returned from a weekend trip to visit them. Abigail Scott is the cutest little girl I’ve ever seen. It’s insane the way my family has grown and changed so drastically in the last two years. I would never have imagined that my mom would fall in love again, or that I would ever have another sibling, let alone two. The tiny little girl is easier to get along with than Hardin, for sure. With everything that’s happened between Hardin and Tessa recently, the two of them aren’t speaking. Which only makes things even more difficult for me as unofficial middleman.
Tessa started sleeping on the couch and is back to hating music again. It reminds me of Twilight when Bella Swan rips out the radio in her truck with her bare hands. I can understand how she felt, and I wouldn’t blame Tessa for ripping her headphones to shreds. I’ve signed up for HBO GO and been binge-watching Game of Thrones, and with the end of each episode I think of Nora and how incredible it would be to watch it with her and talk about our theories and rant about the latest death. I started the show three weeks ago but now only have two episodes left. During the first few episodes, every time I saw Ned Stark, I wondered what Boromir was doing away from the White Tower. It took me a moment to get reoriented there.
Nora hasn’t reached out to me, and I haven’t reached out to her. Tessa stays silent between us—a middlewoman of her own sort—but she’s so lost in her own pain that I don’t even think she knows what’s going on between us. Well, nothing is going on between us anymore. Nothing at all.
This morning when I get to work, Aiden is behind the bar. He’s pouring a cold brew into a cup full of ice. Surprisingly, my dislike for him hasn’t grown since I got back from Michigan. I’ve tried to focus on his positive traits, but searching those out took too long. Even though he slept with Dakota, I feel indifferent toward him and don’t want to bother.
“Hey, bro,” he says, and I wonder if he even knows that I dated Dakota at all. The thought occurs to me that she may not want him to know about her past, or maybe they were never emotionally attached enough for her to talk about that. Maybe she just slept with him—the way I did with Nora.
My BS alarm goes off in my head. I didn’t just sleep with Nora—I fell in love with her and couldn’t stop. Even now, I’m still mourning the loss of her presence in my life. I miss her every time I smell cookies or walk into my kitchen. The chairs hold memories of her straddling me, of me on my knees in front of her, and when I look at the counters, I see her long hair cascading down her back, a seductive smile on her lips.
“Hey,” I finally respond to Aiden as I step over a pile of boxes. Of course he didn’t put them away. He waited for me to get here because he knows I’ll clean them up. Of course I’ll unpack the coffee beans and put away the straws. Of course I’ll unwrap the cups and put away the bottles of flavored syrups.
I clock in and tie my apron. At least Posey will be here in thirty minutes.
I watch the minutes tick on and on, and after an hour, she’s here, the lobby is still empty, and I’ve gotten around to unpacking the boxes. Lila is sitting quietly at a booth, rolling a little car on the table. Posey nods along to a man in a suit who’s talking about how delicious the espresso is in Europe. We’re pretty slow today, and I have a paper to finish tonight. My reward to myself for finishing the essay is to watch another episode on my laptop.
I start sweeping, and a few minutes later when a customer comes into the shop, I walk over to help Posey. She stands behind the register, and I stand by the line, ready to take the cup and start the drink. The sound of a familiar voice makes the hairs on my neck stand straight up.
“An ice-blended caramel latte,” Dakota says. She looks around behind Posey, and I wonder if she’s looking for Aiden. Should I tell her that he’s not here?
When her eyes fall on me, she gives me a smile. It’s not unfriendly, but it’s not the familiar smile I’m used to getting from her.
“Hey,” I say, and quickly busy my hands. I grab the cup from Posey and push the ice scoop into the bin.
Posey turns to me, gives me a knowing look, and walks to the back room. I don’t know if I should thank her or call for her to come back.
“How are you?” Dakota asks.
I glance up and dump some of the ice back in. I wasn’t actually paying attention, and I need to dump out half of the ice I scooped into the blender jug.
How am I? What a loaded question.
Tessa is freaking miserable. I’m nearly failing my Educational Psych class. I miss Nora, and sort of miss Dakota, too. Just because we no longer have a future together doesn’t cancel out my feelings for her. Part of me will always care for her. In a few years when she’s posting engagement photos, then gets married, then has a family, I’ll smile and feel relieved that she has a good life, even without me.
I opt for the short version. “Good. You?”
I pump in two squirts of caramel syrup and switch on the blender. It’s loud, and neither of us talks until I hand her her drink.
She takes a long sip. “Same. I just got a callback for a commercial.”
I can see the excitement rumbling inside her and smile. “Congrats!” I say, truly meaning it.
Dakota turns her cheek, and I take her in. Her dark hair is straight. It’s pinned back behind her ears in a tight little bun. She’s not wearing any makeup, and she looks gorgeous.
I ask her what type of commercial she’s starring in. She tells me with a shy smile that it’s for a gym and that she’s meeting with the owner of the chain to possibly host a workout video for them, too.
Diverting the conversation away from herself, she sips her drink and asks, “Can you sit with me for a minute?”
After making sure the lobby is empty enough and double-checking with Posey that she’s got everything under control, I go to a back table with Dakota. I can’t stop staring at her hair; it looks so different, so good. I glance at the kitten on her sweatshirt. It’s a little white furball of a cat wearing a pair of hipster glasses. It’s a good distraction.
“Nora came to get the last of her stuff from our place this morning,” she says.
Please tell me that she didn’t come here today to fight about
I stare at the door and she speaks up before I do.
“I thought for sure you two would be together by now. It surprised me that she had that driver with her. I don’t know why she’s living so far from the city.”
I haven’t really been able to stop thinking about what Nora’s been up to in the last month. I feel like I knew she was going to start spending more time in her Scarsdale mansion.
I’ve found that the more I think about her, the longer the days get.
“Yeah, where else would she go?”
I wonder if Nora has come to a resolution with her husband and his family? Has Stausey had her baby? Is Nora sitting in a big, empty house with him? I’m not jealous; I feel awful for everyone involved. It’s such a tricky situation, and I honestly commend her for her strength. I’ve always thought of myself as strong, but I’m merely aluminum compared to Nora’s titanium.
“Good point.” Dakota pulls one of her legs up onto the chair. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”
Here we go . . .
I smile noncommittally. “Is that so?”
Dakota shakes her head, and I’m so used to her bouncy curls floating around her head that it’s sort of weird looking at her with her hair straightened. “Not like that.” Then she nudges me.
When I look up, Posey is staring at me from behind the counter. Our eyes meet, and she quickly looks away. I’m going to miss her when she leaves Brooklyn. I was pretty bummed when she told me she was moving to be closer to her aunt. I understand, though. Her grandma’s health is declining, and it must be hard for her to take care of an autistic toddler all alone. Posey is just a good person, through and through.
“Are you still seeing Aiden?” I ask before Dakota can elaborate on her recent thoughts about me.
She smiles and leans back against the chair. “Sort of.”
“Hmm . . .” If I have nothing nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all.