“See you out there. And thanks for keeping this to yourself, Natalie.”
“Not a problem. And you can always talk to me.” I made eye contact trying to drive home the point that I meant it.
“Thanks,” she said with her sweet smile, and hurried away.
I moved over to the bookshelf I’d seen the yearbook on and reached to pull it off. When I did, a couple of other books fell off. “Jeez, Tim,” I muttered. “Could you have packed it in any tighter?” He obviously needed bigger bookcases.
When I reached down to pick up the books that fell, I happened to notice that one of them was open, and I saw my name in his handwriting. Frowning, I picked it up. It looked to be a journal.
I closed it immediately. This wasn’t something I should be looking at. I hurried to put them back on the shelves, when I heard footsteps behind me.
“Hey.”
I spun around guiltily to see Tim standing there. “Hey. I, uh, didn’t look at anything. These just fell off when I reached for the yearbook, and I was putting them back when you came in.”
He made a face at me. “Why are you being weird? What books are they?” He stepped closer, and when he saw the books, journals, really, that I was holding, his face went pale. “Oh.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Those… well, those are for you, Nat. I just hadn’t planned on giving them to you yet.”
“They’re for me?” That didn’t make sense. Why would Tim be giving me his journals? “There are four of them.” My eyes widened. “Are they full?”
He chuckled, still looking awkward. “Three are full. The fourth one is about halfway there.” He sighed and sat on a leather sofa. “Look, I haven’t really told you, but I started going to see a therapist after you left. I’ve been going more than a year now, and it’s helped me a lot. It really has. What happened between us… it just wouldn’t have gone down like that if I’d had therapy when I should have.” He looked me in the eyes. “When you and so many others told me to. But I was stubborn, and it screwed up my life. And you got hurt in the process.” He reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear.
Guests from somewhere in the house could be heard calling his name, and he stood up. “I want to talk to you about all of that, but tonight’s not the best night. Those are yours, though. Let me get you a bag so you can take them home with you.” He went and rummaged around in a neat closet and found a gift bag.
“Tim Summers. Are you one of those monsters that keeps all your old gift bags?”
“Hey—gift bags are unnecessarily expensive. There’s no reason not to reuse them.”
I curled my lips inward to keep from laughing.
He laughed and shook his head. “Hell, what can I say? Mom taught me well.”
He put the four nice journals in the bag and handed it to me. “But what are they?”
He looked uncomfortable. “You know how you didn’t want to be in contact with me because of what I did?”
“I vaguely remember that,” I said sarcastically. I was trying to be playful, but I was afraid it hadn’t come of like that. Either that, or he was thinking so hard about what he needed to say that he didn’t respond to me.
“My therapist said I should keep a journal of everything I wanted to tell you while we were apart. So, I did,” he gestured to the notebooks. “They’re basically diaries of everything I would’ve told you if we’d been in touch for the past… what, like eighteen months?”
“And you want me to have them?”
He nodded, not quite meeting my eyes. “I poured my heart into them, though, so please be gentle.”
“Of course.” I started to walk to him and hug him, but Alexis burst into the room.
“Tim, you have to come. There are weird people none of us know and they’re insisting they’re invited.”
Tim looked back to me as if for permission. “Go,” I said. I followed him out of the room, intent on taking my gift bag full of Tim’s journals to the car. When I stepped out into the main room, I noticed several guys and pretty women that used to come to Tim’s parties. No one looked very happy to see them.
I almost dropped the bag when I saw him in the corner with Cora, the girl I’d seen him having sex with the week after we’d gotten together. They looked to be having a quiet, animated conversation, and she kept touching him. She ran her hands on his arms and his chest, but he barely seemed to notice.
Were they together? Had they hooked up regularly over the past year and a half? Everyone had led me to believe that Timhad changed; that he no longer hooked up with random women all the time. Were they lying? Was Tim lying?
Ugh. The old insecurities came rushing back. I needed fresh air. I left and walked along his packed driveway until I reached my car. I put the gift bag in the passenger seat and seriously considered leaving.
“Natalie? You’re not leaving, are you?” I turned to Sadie standing behind me.
“Um… I’m not really a big fan of the people that just got there.”
