“I do.”
“Then don’t worry about anything else. Just recover.”
Immediately, I shake my head. “I wanna try to be normal. No more crying on the couch. No more looking like ... this.”
“You look fine.”
“It’s sweet that you’d lie for me, but I’m a mess. I can’t go on like this.”
“Take as much time as you need. You don’t need to rush.”
I do need to rush this, only so he doesn’t feel like he has to stay because of me. But he doesn’t know that yet.
“I want to move on. Move forward. I can’t mull in this for too long. You know that.”
Nate only sighs. The summer before college, we both lost someone. For Nate, it was his mom. For me, it was my grandma, the woman responsible for my fun summers and warm Christmases.
Both of us fell apart. I tried to be there for him and he tried to be there for me, but we were a mess of grief with no way to process it. Eventually, Dad sat both of us down after two weeks and told us we had to at leasttryto do the things we loved, even if we didn’t want to. Otherwise, the depression would only get worse.
I can’t feel that way again, and Nate knows it.
“Want me to join you for your run tomorrow?”
Usually I would say yes, but not this time.
“You might have plans.”
“The whole point of my summer is tonothave plans.” He raises an eyebrow. “Unless you have something for me.”
“I might.”
“What are you getting at?” he asks slowly.
I pull out the pamphlet for the cruise and hand it to him. “I’m thinking this.”
He looks it over, eyes going wide. “This is your honeymoon cruise.”
“Yep. It’s still booked. Someone”—I look up at him—“could go.”
“And by someone, you mean me.”
“Yes.”
“With you?” He says it slowly and I immediately shake my head.
“No!No.I’m not going.”
His brow furrows. “And why not? Is being on a boat in the middle of the ocean suddenly not appealing to you?”
I roll my eyes as I lean back in the chair. Nate knows about my fear of the water, and he looked at me like I’d grown a second head when I originally told him where I planned to go for the honeymoon.
“You don’t need to gloat.”
“I’m not trying to gloat. I just didn’t see why you’d choose to be around water on purpose.”
My reasons seem stupid now. I thought that meeting Rob in the middle would make him more open to living in my house, at least temporarily. Now I know nothing I could have done would’ve been enough. Not without distancing myself from Nate.
“The point is, my parents paid for it. Someone should enjoy it.”
