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“I missed you,” she mumbles, tucking her head under my chin and keeping the contact between us, even once our lips separate. It’s a soft confession, spoken like a moment of weakness. Natalie isn’t used to relying on others, I know. Acknowledging she noticed—missed—my absence is close to a love declaration coming from her. I’m not ready to say those words, and I doubt she’s ready to hear them. But I feel them between us, sprouting like a plant that’s just been placed in soil after months in a pot. There’s space for it to grow now, where there wasn’t any before.
“I missed you too,” I whisper, kissing the top of her head.
“Do you really want to do this?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I repeat.
Natalie laughs, and the happy sound soothes the scared part of me that’s spent the last few weeks worrying that we would always be over before we ever really began.
“Come on, I’ll show you around.” She grabs my hand and tugs me forward.
And I follow, because right behind her is exactly where I want to be.
“How’s football going?” Natalie asks, as we walk along the Charles. Bikers and joggers and dog walkers pass us by.
I take a sip of the iced coffee I got after we finished lunch before answering. “We don’t need to talk about it.”
“I wouldn’t haveaskedif I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ve been playing like crap lately,” I admit.
“So, if I make it to a game, you’ll be fourth string?”
I roll my eyes at her sass, but honestly, I missed it as much as everything else about her. “You’d come to a game?”
“Isn’t that a thing girlfriends do?”
“Yes.”
“Then…yes.”
Her acknowledgement sends a thrill through me.Natalie Jacobs is my girlfriend.
Bizarre in the best way.
“How’s your mom?” I ask.
Her left shoulder lifts and drops in a small shrug. “Hard to tell. She’s still got a few weeks left at the treatment center.”
“What about your dad?”
“I haven’t talked to him since I left for school. We mainly discussed my mom, and there’s not much to say on that front these days. So…” She shrugs again.
“Yeah. I never realized just how much my dad and I talked about football until we stopped. Now it’s, I don’t know, awkward.”
“Don’t you guys talk about…”
“About?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a normal relationship with my dad. Like school? Movies? Food? Has he ever bought you hair gel?”
My brow furrows with the randomness of the last one. “My hair just looks like this, Nat.”
