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“Nat? What are you doing here so late?”
I’d wondered how I would deal with talking to her again. I tried calling her last week, but she didn’t answer. I didn’t imagine this would be how I’d receive her, like a damn ghost in the darkness.
“I needed to see you.”
“Now?” I didn’t imagine that would be my response to seeing her again, either.
“Can I come in? Please?”
I sighed before hitting the button that unlocked the front gate and went to the door to let her into the main room.
As soon as I opened the door, she rushed in, setting her bag on the small table and turning around in a circle.
“I’m sorry I’m here so late,” she said, putting her face in her hands. “I’m—”
“Is everything okay?” I asked, coming to her and putting my hands on her shoulders.
“Everything’s fine,” she asked, her words coming out clipped.
“No need to sound offended,” I said. “I don’t know what you’d think if I showed up at your house in the dead of night after not hearing from me in a while. This was unexpected.”
She paused, biting down on her lip. “I know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I needed to talk to you, and it felt urgent to see you.”
“That’s okay,” I said, getting my bearings. “I don’t care about the time.”
She sighed heavily, and we walked into the living room. I had to be careful. One part of me wanted things to be the way they were before, and the other feared letting down my defenses again. She had proven to be my soft spot, and I’d felt weak long enough.
I wasn’t going to let anyone—not her, my mom, my family—hurt me. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t a masochist. Fool me once.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked. “Some coffee?”
“I’m already too wired,” she said, starting to walk around the living room, pacing as if she were trying to find something she’d lost. I watched her walk for a while, picking things up and putting them back down, but her frazzled nerves were enough to put me on edge, and I couldn’t take much more of this.
“Do you want to try sitting down for a while?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think I could stand to be still. My nerves are just everywhere,” she said. “And you know I don’t do drugs, so no worries about me being coked up or tweaked out.”
I grinned. “I’ll admit, it was my first assumption, but I know you better than that. How much espresso did you have before you came here, anyway?”
“None, actually,” she said, “but I passed out at Alex and Bree’s after watching a movie with Bree tonight, and I suddenly woke up realizing I was right down the street from you. And then I couldn’t stand being so close to you and not being in the same space. It was too much.”
Suddenly, it became extremely difficult for me to swallow with the lump in my throat. “Did you have something that you wanted to talk about?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. I sat on the couch, watching her pace back and forth as she struggled to find the words she wanted to say. All the while, the clock crept on toward two in the morning, and I was getting more and more exhausted.
“Look, you can say whatever you want when you find the right words, but for now, I’m going to bed,” I said. “You can either come with me or stay down here on the couch. It’s completely up to you.”
We stood there for a bit, holding each other’s gaze, and I sensed a significant point was being reached between us. There was an intensity in this moment as if we were hovering over the blade of a knife.
“Okay,” she said, running a hand through her long hair.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll come to bed with you.”
I was so shocked by the straightforwardness of her words that I just stood there, staring at her, for a good minute before she turned away from me and headed for the steps that led to my room.
It had been so long since we’d spent the night together that I could barely believe she was here. I wanted to tell her to get out of here. I wanted to go on a tangent about how I wasn’t going to put up with this fickle bullshit anymore, that I didn’t care what she had to say, and that I didn’t need this drama.
