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She feels like home.
When she finally pulls back, Nate closes the door behind us, and she brings her palms up to cup my jaw for a moment before grasping my upper arms gently. “Let me look at you. Oh, how I’ve been dying to meet you,” she confides, and I glance up at Nate nervously as he circles to stand behind his mom. “You’re right, my boy. She’s absolutely lovely,” she tells him over her shoulder, and my face flames.
“Thank you,” I whisper, still not quite registering what’s happening right now, and I lift my hand to push my glasses up my nose just to have something to do with my hands.
“Come, sweet girl. You can help me plate the food while Nate goes and showers,” she says, linking her arm with mine and pulling me to the right. But Nathaniel speaks up.
“I’ll just shower later, after I take Evie back to her car. I’ll set the table, Mom,” he replies and walks ahead of us. Mrs. Black stops, her arm tightening through mine, and brings me to a halt, and when I look over at the woman, her mouth is dropped open, and I see tears fill her eyes. She turns the look on me then closes her mouth, blinking back the tears and letting out a little laugh.
“I don’t know what you did, sweet girl, but thank you. Thank you for healing whatever it was inside him that his father and I and countless doctors never could,” she says in a low tone, and she pulls me in for another hug that I melt into. When she stands back up, she seems to shake off the thick emotions, gives me a big grin, and pulls me along to the kitchen, which is straight out of a freaking lifestyle magazine.
Nate is washing his hands in the giant trough-style sink, and I watch him curiously, noting that he no longer seems to count inside his head. He doesn’t wash them rigorously a certain number of times front and back and between his fingers. He just… soaps up, looking over his shoulder to wink at me, rinses them after several seconds, and then turns off the faucet, snatching off a random number of paper towels instead of counting them out like he did once before at my house, and dries them, tossing the towels into the garbage on his way to pull open the silverware drawer. And then he disappears into what must be the dining room.
Mrs. Black chuckles softly beside me. “My water bill thanks you too,” she whispers, and it startles a snort out of me. As if these people have to worry about their bills being high. They look like they could afford to run the Niagara Falls.
Twenty minutes later, I’m next to Nathaniel at a six-seated dining room table, his mom and dad across from us. I was surprised at the intimate setting, expecting the table to stretch for a mile with a countless number of seats, and Nate picked up on it without me saying a word.
“This is our family dining room. The formal has a table that seats forty,” he informed me, and I pulled my lips between my teeth before whispering to him, “Of course it does.”
“So, Evelyn,” his dad says, laying his napkin across his lap and turning his plate a fraction of an inch, a move so similar to something I’ve seen Nathaniel do with his pencils and books that it’s endearing if I were to ignore the fact that it’s an actual disorder that causes him to need things to be just right. “Nate has told us so much about you—all of it good, so don’t worry.” He says it sincerely instead of flippantly, as if my anxiety is something Nathaniel also informed him of, and he wants to reassure me before I have time to overthink it.
I smile appreciatively at him, instantly warming to him. “He’s told me wonderful things about the two of you too. Yet he seemed to leave out the part that you knew about me,” I reply, turning my head and lifting a brow at him. “Although, I have to admit I’m grateful he did.”
Nate leans over and kisses my cheek before turning back to his plate, and everyone digs in. It’s all way more relaxed than I imagined it would be; everyone has table manners, but it’s not the scene out of The Princess Diaries I thought I would be stepping into, where I’d play the role of the clueless Mia while she tries to fake her way through using the proper utensils. There’s only one fork, one spoon, and a steak knife next to each of our plates. There’s even a community butter knife set on top of the big plastic tub of butter in the center of the table. I stare at it for a moment, finding it weird when we’re sitting in the largest estate in Black Mountain. Shouldn’t the butter be in perfect little pallets in some fancy dish? Especially in a house full of men who literally fear imperfection?
