“When are you leaving?”Nathan’s voice is so quiet, it takes me a moment to realize he’s speaking to me, and another few seconds for his question to register.
“What do you mean?”
“When are you flying back to London or wherever?”he asks.
“I don’t have a flight booked.I plan to stay for as long as Mum needs me.”
He bobs his head slowly, his gaze still trained straight ahead.“She’d be fine, you know.She’d have all of us.We’d make sure she was okay and keep taking care of her.”
If it were anyone else, I might think this was a selfless gesture.An ‘out’ of sorts for me to feel okay about returning to my regular life.The fact Nathan is the one saying it gives it a completely different connotation.“You’re determined to make me some sort of villain, aren’t you?”
His head jerks in my direction.“What are you talking about?”
“You want me gone so badly, you’d be okay with Mum being hurt?”
“I’dneverwant Mae to be hurt,” he snaps.His fists clench on his thighs, and he looks away again, taking a slow, deep breath in before pushing it out on a noisy exhale.“I’m not trying to make you into a villain, and I’m not trying tobeone either, Fiona.I know how much you love Mae and that you want to support her.But I also know that after three weeks in Honeywell, your feet must be getting itchy.”
Itchy feet.That’s what my dad always called it when he got the desire to travel.It’s as if Nathan can see what I was thinking earlier, and he plucked the thoughts from my head to use against me.
Before I can respond, he says, “We all know you being here is temporary.Nobody expects you to stay.Like I said, I’m not trying to be some sort of bad guy here, I was just curious.Don’t forget I know you.”
“You don’t,” I blurt.“Youdon’tknow me, Nathan.Youknewme.There was a time when you knew me better than anyone else on earth, but not anymore.”
He’s back to nodding slowly, his mouth twisted to one side like he’s deep in thought.“You’re right.I don’t know you anymore.”He stands from the piano bench, and I expect him to walk away.He’d say I’m an expert at that, but he’s good at it too, especially after dropping emotional bombs on my lap.Instead, he moves closer to me, stopping a few feet away.“Out of curiosity, do you still eat your pizza crust first?”
I stare at him, bewildered.“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.I bet the Italians love that.”He chuckles to himself.The sound is so foreign, it’s almost as surprising as his random question aboutpizza crust, of all things.
“What’s your favourite colour?”he asks.
I press my lips together.He thinks he’s so damn smart.This is a trick question, and we both know it.I’m tempted to pick a colour at random just to prove him wrong, but there’s clearly no point.
“All the colours,” we say at the same time.
I wouldn’t exactly call the lifting of Nathan’s lips a smirk, but he does look way too pleased with himself.When we were little, I could never choose a favourite colour.I liked nearly every colour and didn’t understand why I had to limit myself to just one.Until I hit my teens, my bedroom looked like an explosion of one of those mega boxes of crayons that feature every shade you can imagine, along with ones you didn’t even know existed.
“I remember you telling me once that you didn’t want to pick a favourite because you didn’t want the other colours to feel left out.”
A surprised laugh spills from my lips.I can’t believe he remembers that.
“Do you still watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” every year, no matter where you are in the world?Still do the Snoopy dance too?Do you still cry at every single sappy commercial, and at the end of every movie, whether it’s happy or sad?Do you still—”
“Okay!”I say, cutting him off.I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.To bolt out of here or to concede that he’s right about every.Single.Fucking.Thing.“You win in this weird little game you’re playing, okay?I guess some things never change.”
He tilts his head, eyes narrowing as he scrutinizes my face.“Youhavechanged.You’re different and yet...deep down, you’re still the same person.You’re still the girl I played Poohsticks with on the bridge out back, and drank stolen strawberry wine with in the treehouse.You’re still the girl I held in my arms a million times and lost my virginity to.”
Heat floods my cheeks as memories swarm like buzzing insects.That’s the last thing I expected Nathan to say.This whole conversation isn’t going how I expected.
“You’re the same in so many ways, but I suspect you’re different in just as many,” he says.
“Where are you going with this?”I ask.
He ducks his head and runs a hand through his hair.It’s longer than it’s been in years, curling around his nape and ears in a way that somehow softens the sharp angles of his face.“I don’t even know,” he says with a sigh.“I guess I was trying to prove a point, but I don’t know what it is anymore.I think there’s a part of me that wants to know the person you’ve become, but ultimately, you’re going to leave, whether it’s tomorrow, or a week from now, or sometime in the not-so-distant future.”
“And that means we can’t get to know each other now?”I ask.“And continue to get to know each other going forward, even after I leave?There’s no reason we can’t stay in touch.Youwere the one with the all-or-nothing mentality.Youwere the one who didn’t want to stay friends.”
I hate the accusatory tone in my voice, but this whole conversation has me feeling like I’ve been turned inside out and all my nerve endings have been exposed.
