Was itme? Did he not trust me?
Nathan rolled up the sleeves of his gray ribbed sweater, revealing those tattoos I savored, then dropped to his knees. I nearly toppled over at the sight.Hot fucking damn.Was he doing this on purpose to distract me? He focused on unpacking the box, not peeking to catch my reaction, so probably not. Still worked like a charm though.
“Ooh, I remember this,” I said, plucking a circular glass ornament Nathan made in middle school from his hands.
The glittery ornament was filled with picture cutouts of his favorite things from that year—a bat and baseball, us on the field together, Nathan with his parents in front of the Owls stadium, a video game controller, an album cover. The ornament I’d made that year was probably long gone, chucked in my mother’s cross-country move.
“I think you missed your calling by not pursuing this whole art thing.”
Nathan rolled his eyes. “Hilarious. I guess you don’t want to see what else I found in the basement then?”
I leaned over him, trying to see what he concealed. He held me back with one hand while the other covered his discovery.
“Stop holding out on me,” I whined.
“Good things come to those who wait.” His tone was lilting, and he sported a shit-eating grin.
I stopped struggling and pushed back on my heels. “You know, Nate, that’s sound advice. I’ll be sure to remind you of that whenyouget impatient.”
Recognition of my threat flashed in his eyes. He immediately held a box out to me. I laughed loudly, drunk with power.
“No need to go nuclear on me.”
Inside, I found a half dozen VHS tapes and a couple of photo albums. “Oh my God. Y’all kept these?”
I seized the small album on top, decorated with a sunflower and a baseball bat. Until now, I would’ve avoided a trip down memory lane because it would remind me of what I’d lost. But today, all I could think about was what I had found again. I wanted to replace the hurt I associated with our past with joy.
And there was joy. It poured out of every page as I flipped through this album.
“If you couldn’t tell, my father saved everything that ever entered this house.”
These photos were from our freshman year in high school. Nathan with his parents at the table in front of a birthday cake, probably rolling his eyes at me for taking the photo. Next came a panoramic view of the Owls stadium from behind the dugout on the first base side of the field, our preferred place to sit. Nathan, Ax, Stark, and Freeze stuffing their faces with pizza in this very room.
Most of the pictures didn’t include me because I took them. I ran my fingers over one of the two of us in our baseball uniforms, cheeks sunburned beneath our caps, his arm slung around my shoulders. I looked at him with such love in my eyes while he grinned at the camera.
The image speared my chest.
“You went through that whole photography phase, remember?” Nathan was studying my expression.
I cleared my throat, closing the album. “I think I used it as an excuse to take photos of you.”
“I’ve been told Iama perfect subject.” He tossed me a smug smile. “Seriously, you were good, Bren. You didn’t want to study it?”
I set the album aside and snatched a couple of ornaments from the box. “Photography? No.”
“We need to do lights first,” he said, stopping me from hanging an ornament.
He squatted and began zig-zagging a string of lights across the bottom of the tree, unspooling them from an empty wrapping paper tube where they’d been stored. Once he got higher, we worked in tandem.
“What did you study in school?” Nathan asked. It hit me how strange it was for someone to know so much about me but not simple details about my life.
“Kinesiology.”
He paused, hanging onto the lights, forcing me to look at him. “And you like studying physical therapy?”
I shrugged. “Some of the classes made me queasy, but it’s been worth it.”
“Too much blood?”
