"I'm just observing."
"You're filing a complaint about the facility showers immediately after—" I stopped. Gestured at the general space between us. "This."
"The two things aren't mutually exclusive," Nathan said, and went back to his shirt, and I stood against the tile wall and felt something in my chest that was warm and slightly overwhelming and that I was going to need significantly more time to look at directly.
He was fixing his collar.
He was standing in a facility shower room fixing his collar after—after everything, after the office and the table andI'm working on itand the yes, after all of it—and it was the most Nathan Cross thing I had ever witnessed in months of witnessing Cross things, and I wanted to kiss him again.
I also just wanted to stay here, in this moment, with the bad water pressure and the inconsistent temperature and Nathan Cross critiquing the infrastructure.
I wanted to stay here for a while.
"The restaurant," Nathan said, without looking up from his collar. "Where you got the food tonight."
"What about it?"
"It was good." He adjusted his clothing that didn’t seem to need adjusting. "Do you have practice tomorrow afternoon?"
"Morning," I said. "Why?"
Nathan watched me for a moment. "We could go," he said. "After practice. To a restaurant."
We could go. After practice. To a restaurant.
Nathan Cross. Nathan Cross had just asked me to dinner.
We could go.
Together.To a restaurant.Like people who did that.
"Yeah," I said. My voice was admirably normal. "Hell yeah. I'm in. I’ll pick a place."
Something settled in his expression. Small. Satisfied in the way Nathan got satisfied, which was quiet and contained and easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.
I was paying attention.
"Good," he said.
He moved toward the door, and I fell into step beside him.
The parking lot was cold and quiet, both our cars the only ones left. We stood there for a second in the way you stood when you weren't ready to stop being in the same place as someone but didn't have a reason to keep them there.
"Drive carefully," Nathan said.
"I always drive carefully."
He gave me a look.
"I drive fine," I said.
A pause. Nathan looked at the parking lot, at the dark facility behind us, at some middle distance that held something he was deciding whether to say.
"Your approach,” he said, “to things that should be done carefully is. . .” He stopped. Started again, and I could tell he was trying to more precise. “You don’t do careful. It’s not fine. As an approach.”
He paused again.
“Most of the time.”
