[ it's a blessing and a curse — cellar has the grace not to press him on that monumental stumble, but the topic isn't changing. he's reluctant to hand over the safety of the bottle, nick might never recover if he does something as embarrassing as tear up without even a paltry excuse for why, but he holds it out anyway, mostly because he doesn't have a good enough reason for saying no. ]

I was being nosy. I heard my parents talking about a kid around my age up at the Moreau place, I wanted to see who it was. It was--so stupid actually, I pretended to fall off my bike so I had an excuse to go up to the house. He wasn't so quiet, back then.

[ nick doesn't particularly want to eat, his stomach is churning too much for that, but he grabs a bag to fumble with opening it, just to give his hands something to do. ]