I raised my eyes to meet his, fear vanishing the moment a soft smile graced his features. I was safe. I didn’t need to run. I was okay.
With a nod, I sat down and ran a hand over my face, steadying my racing heart so that we could resume our assignment.
That was close, Augustus. You can’t let him in.
***
Not letting Nathaniel in proved to be a challenging task. He was not only unflinchingly curious, asking questions no one else would bother to ask, but he was warm, inviting, tempting me to spill all my secrets.
In my attempts to keep him at an arm's distance, he’d somehow shifted closer. Over the course of our study sessions, I learned a lot about him. Involuntarily, of course.
I learned that he spoke four languages: English, Korean, Japanese, and French. He was most fluent in English and Korean, but his favourite was Japanese because he loved reading manga and watching anime.
I learned that Halloween was his favourite holiday because he would take his brothers trick-or-treating and get a sugar high. They all dressed up in matching costumes. One year; the Adams Family, another year; shipwrecked sailors, his favourite year; fungi infected zombies from his favourite video game.
Speaking of video games, I learned that when he wasn’t studying or writing music, he was lounging on a beanbag, PlayStation controller in hand as he battled monsters andgunned down criminals. His favourite game was The Last of Us, but he was alsoverypassionate about Nathan Drake from Uncharted. I was pretty sure he had a crush on him. He neither confirmed nor denied it.
I learned that friendship was important to him. He had five friends from high school, three of whom studied medicine alongside him at Dawnridge. They were his world. Makayla was a makeup artist and moved to London to further her career. Her boyfriend Xander moved there with her to study gaming development. Nathaniel texted them every day, sometimes playing with Xander online. Jae-Hwa, Wes and Paige were the three he spent the most time with. All studied medicine. All wanted to be surgeons.
He’d also made several friends from university, though he referred to them as ‘clubbing friends’ and not ‘crying in their arms friends’.
“What type do you wantmeto be?” I’d asked him teasingly in between classes.
“I thought we weren’t friends,” he said.
“Well, since you keep begging me–”
Nathaniel nudged me with a laugh, his dimples deepening the wider he smiled. I dedicated more time than I should have drawing out those dimples, the sight spreading warmth through my veins.
I learned that Nathaniel was stubborn, determined to retrieve answers I refused to give. But he was a masterful manipulator, softening me up so it was harder for my walls to stand tall.
“What happened?” Nathaniel asked one evening after a long four-hour study session to finalise our essay. He was asking about Ava, again, and for some reason, the gentle tone, the softness around his round, brown eyes, infiltrated my guarded walls.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It all just…crumbled so quickly. We were happy. Inseparable. And then…Eden….” I closed my laptop to save power since it was clear we wouldn’t be resuming any study with the allocated time we had left. “Eden and Ava grew close and Ava liked her a lot. She wanted to spend every second of every day with her and I felt…replaced. I tried not to bring it up because I didn’t want to fight but when I did…Ava just accused me of being jealous.”
“Were you?” Nathaniel asked.
“Not in the way she thought,” I answered. “She thought I was just jealous because I liked her or because I wasn’t in a relationship. But that wasn’t true. I didn’t care about that. I cared that I was losing my best friend, and she didn’t even seem to notice.”
“Oh, you didn’t like her?”
“What? Of course not,” I said, shaking my head. “Ava liked girls and I…”
Nathaniel leaned forward. “Yes?”
“I don’t think I’m capable of liking anybody.” My mind flashed to Alexander and the day we shared at Framlingham castle. I shook the memory away instantly, not wanting to dwell on the way he’d looked at me when I had my lips locked with Elysse.
“What do you mean?” he asked, brow pinched with a mix of curiosity and confusion.
“I don’t know…” I mumbled.
Nathaniel waited, patient.
“There was a time…in high school…where I thought maybe…I was gay.” It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud. The first time I audibly acknowledged it. The words tasted like poison on my tongue, as though I had fallen victim to an assassin’s attempt on my life.
Nathaniel straightened in his chair, but he didn’t interrupt me as I went on.
“I didn’t have a lot to go on, so I did a few ‘am I gay’ quizzes but I found the questions difficult to answer.”
