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“I get to be with you, so the house doesn’t matter all that much. I only want to have a permanent home for when we’re raising children. I don’t think they should have to change schools often. Neither of us did.”
“I understand that completely,” he told her. His mind was back on when she’d stopped returning his calls. “You act like being with me is the most important thing for you, but you stopped returning my calls all those years ago. I still don’t understand why.”
She gaped at him for a moment, laying down her fork. “I didn’t stop returning your calls. You stopped calling.”
He shook his head. “I called every night at seven like you asked me to do. And you never called me back, even though I left a message with your roommate every night.”
She thought back to her sophomore year and the first semester. “That’s when I was rooming with Laura.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I felt like I had a relationship with Laura and not you.”
She shook her head. “Laura ended up being a terrible roommate. She stole from me. She never wrote down messages. She even took my car once in the middle of the night because hers was out of gas, and she didn’t come back for three days.”
His brows drew together, and he frowned. “But when you came back for Christmas, you didn’t call.”
“Because I’d waited by the phone for you all semester.” Her eyes grew wide. “She was forwarding all calls to her phone. That must be what happened. I know Mom kept missing me when she called as well.”
“And you didn’t call me because I didn’t call you.” He frowned. “All these years, I thought you grew tired of me and quit returning my calls. I’ve always wondered what I did wrong.”
“I’ve done the same thing. I decided that you never really cared for me if you couldn’t last in a long-distance relationship with me for longer than you had. I quit coming back for breaks because it hurt too much to even be in the same town with you. I only came back after medical school because Mom kept begging. She wanted her whole family together. I don’t think she was really all that worried about Aunt Lydia. She just wanted me home.”
“I’ve been blaming you all this time. And feeling like I couldn’t trust you.”
She sighed. “I have been blaming you. I couldn’t figure out why you were so fickle.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, before reaching for her hand. “Let’s never let things fester between us again. I’ve loved you since we were in ninth grade, and I’ve been afraid to trust you with my heart since you walked down the aisle toward me.”
“Me too,” she said in a whisper. “I love you, Nate. So very much.”
“We’re not going to let idiots come between us again,” he said. “I can’t believe we wasted so much time because of your stupid roommate.”
“I should have guessed. She was so terrible, but it never occurred to me that you were still calling every night when the phone never rang. She was probably in a bar every time you called.”
They finished their meal, and he sent her upstairs for a bath while he took care of the dishes. When he finished, he went up the stairs as well, stepping into the bathroom and stripping out of his clothes. “Hi you,” he said softly, his heart feeling so full knowing what had really happened between them.
“Hi,” she said. She still felt as if she’d done something wrong, and she needed to apologize. “All that time I’ve been blaming you, and I should have guessed what had happened because I was the one who lived with Laura.”
He shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself.” He got into the tub, sitting beside her in the giant bath. “We could both feel guilty til the end of time, and it would change nothing.”
She rested her head against his shoulder. “You forgive me then?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. We were kept apart by a terrible roommate and life. Now we’re together again, and everything is going to be perfect between us.” He cupped her face in his hands, leaning down to brush a kiss across her lips. “It’s all forgotten.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a deeper kiss. “I promise to let you know if I feel something is wrong between us, and we’ll talk it out. We should have talked about all this on our wedding day.”
He shook his head adamantly. “I finally had you in my arms, and there was no way I was going to let you postpone the wedding night over something like this.”
She laughed. “I didn’t want to postpone the wedding night any more than you did. I’d planned to ask for a couple of months to get to know the man I married, but when I knew it was you, I was ready to strip and get on with it.”
He chuckled. “And you really never even dated anyone else?”
She shook her head. “I’d look at someone and compare him to you, and I knew I’d never be able to look at him favorably after that. And I really did devote every minute to my studies.”
“But we’re good now, right?”
She nodded emphatically, tears in her eyes. “We are so good.”
His hand covered her breast. “I kind of like how you feel with water all over you.”
