“Well, first of all, I would need your number.” He held out his hand expectantly and I slid my phone towards him so he could put his number in.
“There, now I can always get a hold of you, and trust me, I wasn’t planning on blowing you off. I told you I wanted to catch up and that was the truth. I missed my Della.” A warm sensation fluttered through my stomach when his brown eyes stared back at me intently. My Della? I really wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take that exactly.
“Well, I missed you too.” I cleared my throat and looked around the table, realizing that Callie and Zoey had abandoned me. “So, how are your parents and your sister doing? I didn’t see anyone around when I was staying with my grandparents. I always loved your mom.”
“My mom loved you too. She’s actually been asking when I’m going to bring you over for dinner so we can all catch up. You down for that?”
“Of course, that would be awesome.” Donna had been more of a mom to me during the summers than my own mother ever had. She was always tending to our cuts and scratches from the adventures we went on and making picnic lunches for us when we would spend all day at the lake.
“What about your dad? How is he?”
I watched as Nash’s face transformed into a cold blank stare, and he poured another beer for himself, downing it and slamming it on the table. “No clue and I could care less. My dad’s an asshole, Della. My mom kicked him out a few years ago, and we haven’t heard from him since. Hopefully it stays that way.”
Shock must have covered my face because he reached out a hand to grab mine. The last time I had seen Nash, his dad had been like a hero to him. He had always looked up to him, and to know that their relationship had changed that drastically, surprised me.
“He used to beat the shit out of me,” he said in a quiet voice without looking me in the eyes. “Those summers we spent together were like my escape from him. He tended to leave me alone since I was never really home.”
“But you seemed to look up to him so much. How-”
He cut me off with a sharp shake of his head. “No, you just mistook that for fear whenever he was around. I was constantly tiptoeing around him to make sure I didn’t do something to set him off. The simplest things did it.”
“I’m sorry, Nash.” I really had no clue what else to say. I felt partially responsible for not coming back during the summers after I had moved away.
Had it gotten worse when I didn’t come back? Guilt coursed through me as all of the different scenarios ran through my head, but a slight squeeze to my hand brought me back to reality. “Don’t worry about it, Della. It’s done and over with now. I’ve moved on and we don’t need to dwell on it.” I bit my lip trying to squash down all of the questions I had, but I really didn’t want to bring back any of those memories if he really didn’t want to talk about it.
“Okay, fine, moving on then. So what are you majoring in? Still set on becoming an astronaut?”
“Nah,” he answered with a loud laugh. “That was definitely one of those kid dreams before you really enter the real world. Actually, I’m in the accounting program, I only have about a year left, and I’ll be completely done.”
“Wow, Nash Griffin sitting behind a computer all day, crunching numbers. Who would have thought?” I responded sarcastically.
“Well, people change, Della. What about you?”
I shook my head, looking down at our intertwined hands. “I have no idea. I just finished up my first two years at a community college and basically got sent here by my mother. She cut me off, so I basically didn’t have a choice.”
“Cut you off? That’s pretty harsh; you must have been one bad girl for that to happen. That really doesn’t surprise me much though.”
“Funny,” I replied.
“Uh-oh,” he quickly dropped my hand and scooted away from me several inches. I looked around the crowded bar but couldn’t tell who had freaked him out. He muttered something to himself before shaking his head and giving me a crooked smile. “What was that all about?”
“Don’t worry about it, we still have lots of catching up to do.”
We sat there for what felt like hours just talking. It was so comfortable being around him, like we had never been apart. Callie and Zoey stopped by every once in awhile, but for the most part, seemed to be giving us the privacy that I think we needed.
“Nash! What are you doing here? I’m so glad I ran into you.” A high pitched voice that I’m pretty sure pierced my ear drums filtered up from behind me. Nash stiffened slightly, but turned around with a small smile. “Hey babe, how’s it going?”