She placed the linens in the small closet, then gestured to the narrow stairs I’d found my first day. “Let me get you a coat. It’s cooling outside.”
We passed through the cupboard-lined hallway to a mudroom. It was stone floored and hook lined. Coats, boots, umbrellas, gardening equipment, and assorted chaos filled counters and bins.
She handed me her own gray waxed coat and opened the side door. “When you come back, if you come through here and up those stairs again, you most likely won’t run into anyone. If that’s a goal.”
“It is tonight. Thank you.” I pulled on the coat and set out.
As I rounded the house, Nathan crossed my path. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“You found me.” I stalled. “I’m sorry I disappeared. Isabel and I—”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Had a lot to talk about. You don’t need to apologize or explain. Where is she?”
“She went to find Grant and start her round of apologies. I suspect she’ll get to you too.”
“How are you?” Nathan’s hand slid from cheek to hand and stayed there.
“I’m sorting it all out. She said something on our walk about us being ‘written.’ She meant the terms of our friendship were fixed, and they were, I agree, but they were fixed on wrong assumptions, if that makes any sense. I pride myself on seeing things clearly, objectively, but I never saw my best friend. Maybe not myself either.”
“Don’t judge yourself too harshly. Outside math, what’s objective?”
I didn’t have an answer beyond nothing and we both knew it. “You were a pawn, by the way. She never really liked you at all.”
Nathan burst out laughing. “I figured that. I mean a Third Choice Guy can’t cause too much heartache, but”—he patted his chest, much like Herman in his fine vest—“I am charming. You never know, it might have gone the other way.” He stepped back and took in what I was wearing. “Where are you going?”
“Into Bath.” I gave him the same once-over. “And if you’re coming, you cannot go dressed like that.”
“I’m invited?” He pulled his hand from mine and held it out, fingers spread wide. “Give me five minutes.”
At my nod he took off running.
Fifteen minutes later, he joined me down the hill at the house’s main gate.
“I thought you’d given up on me and left.” He was breathless with the run.
“It took you long enough. If I’d stayed up there, more people might have wanted to come along.” I tried to laugh, but it came out flat.
I felt him brush the back of my hand. Our fingers tangled and held.
Nathan was wearing jeans and a quarter-zip sweater and soft brown loafers. His hair looked as if he’d just woken up, or just pulled a sweater over his head. He’d been too hurried—for me. I also noted no five o’clock shadow. He’d shaved. And he had really long eyelashes.
I squeezed his hand, which elicited a questioning glance. “I’m very glad Isabel missed all these charms of which you speak.”
“I feel pretty lucky too. Are we walking into Bath?”
“It’s only about a mile. I’ve seen you run on that treadmill. You can handle it.” I pointed to a sign ahead. “Sonia told me the Number 12 bus stops there and will take us right to the Roman Baths, if you’d rather.”
“Walking is fine.” He nudged me. “So you did notice me at WATT?”
“It’s clear I noticed you, Nathan.”
“Mary Davies.” Nathan drew my name long. “It wasn’t clear to me. Ever.”
He swung my hand in an exaggerated motion like this was exactly what he wanted to be doing and with whom. I willed myself to believe it.
After almost a quarter mile, during which he squeezed my hand, pulled me close, shoulder-bumped me away—generally acted like a sixth grader with his first crush—he pointed to an old car scooting down the street.
“That looks exactly like my first car. My parents helped me buy it a few months after I turned sixteen, and a mechanic my dad knew helped me fix it up.”
“I did that too. I inherited my eldest brother’s car at seventeen. It was a mess. I did most of the electrical work myself, which might have been illegal. I think all electrical work requires a license.”
“You mean except for playing around with it at work?” Nathan bumped me again.
“Yes, but WATT has state-of-the-art counter-fire measures in that lab.”
“Thank goodness.” He laughed. “I heard you blew up a Golightly prototype.”
“That was not a good day. You should have smelled the lab. I was actually on fire, burned all the hair off my right arm.”
“You could’ve been hurt.”
I shook my head, recalling the panic of that moment. “I was a little and I was banned from the lab. I may be still. I haven’t pressed it.”
When we passed a cottage tucked between a gas station and an antique store, Nathan told me how his family rented a house on the coast of Massachusetts one summer and he spent the entire summer cleaning boats and babysitting his sisters.
When we passed a fallen tree, I told him about the fort Isabel and I built in my bedroom when we were eleven—how I sawed branches from a downed tree and wove together a layered roof out of leaves.
“My dad almost killed me over that one. A squirrel nest came in with one of the branches we dragged in, which also scratched up all the paint as it came through. Then the squirrels got loose.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Dad called animal control and hauled out all the branches. They caught the mother squirrel, but not two babies. She was pretty mad and very territorial. So was my mom when she found a baby squirrel in her bed that night and screamed so loud the neighbors heard her. Then Dad really lost it.” I glanced at him. “If you knew my dad, you’d know that was a red-letter day. My dad never gets angry. Gentlest man you’ll ever meet . . . I got grounded and gathered leaves and random bugs for weeks. It’s one of my best memories, though. Before he came home from work and things went south, Mom and Isabel and I crawled inside and told stories the whole afternoon. She could tell the best stories.”
“May I ask?”
“You? A question? You never ask questions.” I stopped and crossed my arms. Teasing him felt good.
He stopped too. “Tell me about your mom?”
“Isabel never told you about SK’s mom?”
He shook his head. “I’d like to keep Isabel out of us, if that’s okay.”
Us.
“Very okay. My mom was diagnosed with MS soon after I was born, and it moved fast.” I scrunched my nose. “Correction—it felt fast. It’s a disease with a lot of variance, and it would hit hard, level off, hit again, level, and . . . She died two years ago, just before Christmas.”
We walked past The Circus roundabout.
“I’m remembering a lot about her this week. It’s the first time I’ve missed her, really missed her, in a long time. I . . . It sounds horrible, but I think I said good-bye years before she died.”
He pulled me close and swung his arm around me. He kissed my temple as we walked and said nothing more.