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“I can’t slow down,” she says, putting another dish in the rack for me to dry after I finish this one. “There’s no one else to do this shit. You know how it goes.”
“I do,” I say. “And I wish you’d let me help you. The offer always stands, you know.”
“You take Kylie so often. It’s enough.”
I shake my head. Natalie will never ask for money, but I wish she would. Either that or a better job—something that will pay her more so she can afford to work normal hours and a get a good night’s sleep once in a while. I decide to see what I can do to help. I’ll start asking around, see if I can find her something that will do more for her. She deserves so much more than this life she’s been saddled with.
“What’s wrong?” Natalie asks.
“What? Nothing.”
She gives me a pointed look. “That’s not nothing. You’re so down in the dumps, it’s unlike you. Everything okay at work?”
I nod. “This snow isn’t making training easy, but hopefully we’ll be back to a normal routine soon. I can use the extra training.”
Natalie narrows her eyes. “Everything okay with Raven?”
I sigh. “You’re going to keep pushing this, aren’t you?”
“What happened?” she asks, knowing that it's Raven. Now that she’s gotten hold of it, she won’t let go.
“Nothing,” I say.
She puts the last plate in the rack and I grab it to dry, glad to have something else to focus my eyes on when Natalie’s gaze bores into my soul.
“Did you break up?”
“It was going to end, anyway,” I say. “She’s going back to Paris, and that’s the end of it.”
“Quit forcing me to play Twenty Questions with you and tell me what’s going on.”
I sigh. I know she’s not going to let this go. And maybe I should talk about it. It will be good to get it off my chest and put it into perspective so that I can forget about her and move the fuck on.
“We had a fight,” I say. “She…has a daughter.”
Natalie frowns. “That’s what you fought about?” She grabs the pot she used for spaghetti and starts scrubbing, so I add more.
“She didn’t tell me.”
Natalie is quiet for a moment, only the scrubbing filling the kitchen, so I keep talking. She knows just how to make me spill it all, leaving the space wide open for me to fill.
“I know it’s been such a short time, and it’s not fair of me to expect her to tell me all that. I just thought we were closer than that. Having a daughter is a big deal, and she didn’t say anything.”
“Why does that upset you?” Natalie asks.
“I don’t know…I mean, it shouldn’t matter, right? It’s not like we’re doing this. We said we would call it off once she leaves. I just…I feel betrayed. Like she didn’t think I deserve to know.” I sigh. “She told me I’m not serious about her, it was just a fling anyway and that it’s all I’m good for.”
Natalie raises her eyebrows. “She doesn’t believe that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw how she looks at you.”
I shake my head. “You saw her for the whole of five minutes.”
Natalie shrugs. “And I’m a woman. I know what it looks like when a woman is head over heels for a man. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” I say.
