I gawp at him. “What gave you that impression? Is this your way of asking me if I faked it? Because, you know, you could just ask me. I had to borrow your boxers, and my underwear are currently on your radiator.” I point at them. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry about offending me, at this point.”
Nate runs a hand over his face, and he lets out an awkward, halfhearted chuckle. “I’m not trying to feed my ego, here. My point is . . . my point is, you were just going to disappear without a trace. I thought . . . I dunno, I thought after all that time we spent talking, you wouldn’t just ghost me.”
“I wasn’t going to ghost—”
The deadpan look he cuts me makes me stop midsentence.
I smile sheepishly at him, and even though I know I don’t have to explain myself, he looks so sweet, so confused, that I do anyway.
“We had a one-night stand. You told me you weren’t looking for anything serious. I figured it was just, you know. Easier. I didn’t want to make you feel awkward, make you feel you had to see me again or take me on a date or something, when you said you weren’t after something else.”
“But . . . ” Nate frowns at me, and looks away. He drags his hand back and forth through his hair again. “Yeah, I mean, I said that, but . . .
I liked you. I thought that counted for something.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that.
Nate clears his throat when I stay quiet, obviously not sure how to follow that up. I sort of expect him to crack a joke about it, say something like, Or at least liked you enough to have sex with you, but as soon as I think it, I know he wouldn’t. Nate’s not that kind of guy. Even over text, he was straightforward. Not blunt, or rude, just upfront. Honest.
With nothing else to say, I go back to my original question. I raise my eyebrows and ask him, “So, you wanna watch that movie? Sack off work for the rest of the afternoon?”
There’s definitely a smile playing at the corner of his mouth and I’m really tempted to kiss him, but then he turns suddenly serious and sits up straighter, pushing my legs off his lap.
He reaches for the TV remote, handing it over to me, and then he gathers up his laptop and notebook. “You can watch a movie. I’m gonna go work in the bedroom for a couple of hours. Big, important meetings I just can’t miss, you know.”
I watch him go, feeling a little out of sorts.
It’s not like I’ve never been rejected before. I’m a big girl, I can handle it. Plus, he is working. But there’s something about the way Nate seems to be holding me at arm’s length that I’m not used to, and my heart sinks as he closes the bedroom door behind himself.
Tuesday
apartment #14 – imogen
Chapter Nine
Nate’s alarm on his phone goes off across the hallway in the living room. His phone vibrates angrily once, twice, on the table, a contrast to the tinkling chime noise that accompanies it. He turns it off, and then I hear him get up.
What kind of . . . ?
Who does that? Who just hears their alarm, and gets up, like, straight away? I mean, fine, Lucy does, but that’s Lucy.
Oh God, speaking of Lucy, that’s a problem. Her stupid wedding-planning DIY-centerpieces weekend thing for her future sister-in-law is only taking place upstairs, in this very building, isn’t it? Of all the goddamn gin joints. When I realized, half of me wanted to run around hammering on doors until I found her so I could tell her everything (and maybe borrow a T-shirt or something) but . . . well, duh. I can’t do that.
I can’t let her know I’m with Honeypot, or that the quirky little mishap of the week is that I got stuck with him in quarantine. I mean, shit. Even I know how bad that sounds. Plus, she’d only worry, and it sounds like she’s got plenty of her own problems to worry about this week with Kim the bridezilla and a quarantine of her own. No, I have to—I want to—handle this myself.
And, I guess, I probably shouldn’t go around pounding on apartment doors and talking to strangers in the middle of a pandemic or whatever.
(Keeper of Keys, our jailer, bald and beardless Rubeus Hagrid, also might actually kill me if I do that. Which would be kind of inconvenient.)
Anyway, Nate’s alarm goes off, and I hear him get up and go into the bathroom to take a shower, and I’m already wide awake anyway for some stupid reason, and my brain is going at a thousand miles an hour, so I do what any other reasonable human would.
I get up. I open the blinds for Mr. Neat-Freak Nate, and feel a little bad about how much of a bombsite his lovely, boring bedroom is right now. Considering I arrived here with basically just the clothes on my back . . . Said clothes are dumped in a pile on the floor by the wardrobe, despite there being a chair set out apparently for that exact purpose. The little hairbrush from my bag is on the dresser, along with the other miscellaneous crap I was carrying around: sunglasses, a little paperback copy of Jane Austen’s Emma, some lip balm.
I do my very best to make the bed. When I say that, I mean I don’t just yank the duvet back up, I mean I even try to tuck the top sheet back in, I smooth out the wrinkles, I fluff the pillows back up, and put the two decorative cream cushions back on the bed from where I’d tossed them into a corner last night.
The room is transformed. Hey, look at me, Nate, living up to your stupidly high standards.
And speaking of Nate . . .
The bathroom door is cracked open slightly, steam pouring out of it. The extractor fan whirrs low and loud. I bang an open palm on the door and push it open slightly to shout inside, “Yo, Nate-Nathan-Nate, you want some coffee?”
“Jesus!”
There’s a wet scuffle, like he’s slipping, and the clatter of his one, lonely shampoo bottle falling into the bathtub.
“Imogen, I’m in the shower,” he shouts back. I can practically hear him blushing.
“I’m not looking,” I point out, from the other side of the door. I’m not. I’ve got my back to him and I can’t see anything except some tiles on the wall. “I’m just asking, do you want coffee?”
He stammers for a long moment before babbling, “Uh, t-th-yuh-sure, yeah. Coffee. Yes. Now please go away.”
I pull the door to close it, and then open it back up to call in, “You want me to shut the door?”
“Yes!”
Well ex-cuuuuse me, mister. It wasn’t like he had shut the door in the first place. How was I to know? There isn’t a window in the bathroom; maybe he needed to leave it open to let the steam out. Excuse me for being considerate.
It takes me a few minutes to figure out the fancy coffee machine, although I don’t have any trouble finding the little pods to go in it. To be fair to Nate, the kitchen is orderly, but it makes total sense. The flow and organization of the cupboards alone is worthy of its own Netflix special.