Chapter 29
Iwas in love with Nathan Cross.
I figured this out on a Tuesday, on his couch, with Leo on my head. The figuring out was less like a revelation and more like finally reading the last word of a sentence that had been going on for two years.
Oh, I thought. That.
That's what that was.
Honestly? Being in love with him explained a lot of things I had been filing under other categories.
The hall outside the breakfast room in Toronto.
The way I'd stopped going to Broderick's.
The way I'd said I owe him one more shift in a tunnel and meant it about Dylan but also meant it about Nathan, had been meaning things about Nathan for so long that I'd stopped being able to tell which things were about which person.
The way I'd said things to his father in his living room that I had not planned to say and had not been able to not say.
I was in love with Nathan Cross.
Nathan, who had been watching me since the first game.
I was in love with him.
Leo adjusted on my head and purred.
"You knew," I said, to Leo.
Leo said nothing. Because he was a cat.
"You've known for a while, haven’t you?" I asked him.
Nathan appeared in the doorway.
He'd been working out. This was evident from the state of him—black hair damp and slightly wrecked, gray shirt with a darker patch down the center, breathing still evening out from whatever he'd been doing in there that wasn't dealing with his feelings but was adjacent to dealing with his feelings. He had a water bottle in one hand.
He looked at me on his couch with Leo on my head.
I couldn’t help but watch him.
All six-foot-one of him, post-workout, in the morning light, looking at me with those blue eyes and the jaw and the general situation of him, which I had been in close proximity to for two years and had apparently been in love with for some portion of that time without fully processing it until approximately eight minutes ago.
Soon, I thought. Very soon.
"Talking to the cat?" he said.
"Consulting the cat," I said. "There's a difference."
He came in and dropped onto the other end of the couch, which he did not usually do post-workout, which meant he had decided being near me was more important than his usual routine, which was a lot of information to be receiving before nine a.m.
Leo considered relocating. Stayed on my head.
"Nathan," I said.
"Mm." He drank from the water bottle.
"We should go somewhere."
He lowered it. "You're on rest protocol."
"I know."
"You're not supposed to be exerting yourself."
"I know."
"The protocol specifically—"
"But." I looked at him from my horizontal position with the cat on my head. "We're both not working. I'm not playing. You're not—" I moved my hand. "We have time. We have nothing but time right now. And I think we should spend it somewhere that isn't your couch or my couch."
He looked at the water bottle.
"Somewhere warm," I said.
"Warm."
"With vitamin D."
"That's not how vitamin D—"
"Nathan."
He looked at me.
"I booked tickets," I said.
A pause.
"When?"
"Last night. After the pizza."
"Wesley."
"They're non-refundable."
He sighed. "Of course they are."
"The vitamin D is genuinely medical," I said. "For the concussion. Sunlight promotes healing. That's real. I looked it up."
"You looked it up."
"I did research."
He looked at the water bottle for a long moment with the expression of a man doing a calculation he's already done and arriving at the same answer.
"Where," he said.
I told him.
He looked at me.
"It has a beach," I said.
"I can see that."
"And a menu I can read."
The corner of his mouth. The full version of his smile, a rare sight. "When do we leave?"
"Thursday," I said.
"That's two days from now."
"Yep."
"You booked non-refundable tickets for Thursday."
"First class."
"Wesley."
"Nathan."
He looked at the water bottle.
"Okay," he said. “Sure.”
Leo purred on my head.
I looked at Nathan Cross on his end of the couch—damp hair, water bottle, morning light, the whole impossible situation of him—and thought: I'm in love with you and thought: soon and thought: yeah, okay, Thursday.
Thursday came.
I threw things into a bag while Nathan had what I can only describe as a cube situation happening on the bed: tiny mesh bags, organized by category, which I had not known was a thing people did and which was extremely Nathan.
I was in love with him.
He stared at my bag for a moment.
"You don't have—"
"It's fine."
"Your sunscreen isn't—"
"Nathan."
He went and got his own sunscreen and put it in my bag without saying anything else about it.
I was in love with him.
I scrolled through the movie options on the seat back on the plane for forty minutes while Nathan read a book beside me. At some point his hand found mine on the armrest between us. He didn't look up from the book. He just found it.
I was in love with him.
We landed somewhere warm.
The air outside the terminal had a quality that was the direct opposite of Boston in every way that mattered.
I was in love with him.
The hotel was small. Nathan had researched it, of course he had, and it was exactly what the research had promised, which was quiet and warm and far enough from anything loud to feel like it existed outside of the usual rules.
Our room had a window that opened. Nathan checked the latch.
Organized his toiletries in a row on the bathroom counter.
I sat on the bed and watched him do it.
I was in love with him.
We spent three days doing nothing other than sitting on the beach watching the waves.
For three days, the beach did exactly what beaches were supposed to do, which was exist warmly and require nothing from anyone.
On the fourth day, I was in a chair. Nathan was in the chair next to mine. We had water—not drinks, because concussion protocol, which Nathan had mentioned twice and which I was choosing to find endearing rather than annoying—and Nathan had a book.
I had approximately twenty minutes of attention span for the book I'd brought before I'd put it face-down on my chest and started watching the water instead.
Nathan was reading. His sunscreen was applied at the correct interval. He had a hat, which he'd brought, which I had made fun of on the way out of the hotel and which I was now privately conceding was a reasonable choice given the angle of the sun.
I was not going to tell him that.
I watched the water for a while.
Nathan turned a page.
I was going to say it.
Not now. Not yet. I was going to wait for the right moment. I was going to find the correct context, the appropriate—Nathan would say framework—the thing that made it land correctly instead of just falling out of my mouth in the middle of a beach where he was trying to read.
Nathan turned another page.
I watched the water.
A bird did something on the sand that I couldn't explain.
Nathan, in my peripheral vision, had a small line between his brows that meant he was focused. His hat was slightly crooked. He had put his water bottle in the cupholder of the chair with the same intentionality he put everything everywhere.
"Nathan," I said.
"Mm." Not looking up.
"I love you," I said.
The beach did its thing around us. Waves. Sun. A kid somewhere doing something with a bucket.
"Well," Nathan said.
He turned to face me.
He had the expression that had no wall in it. The one I'd been collecting since the first game and seeing fully for months and which in this configuration—hat crooked, sunscreen applied at the correct interval, water bottle in the cupholder—was almost too much.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," I said. "Sorry. It just—" I moved my hand. "Came out."
"You've been carrying it since last Tuesday," he said.
I stared at him. "How do you know?"
"You've had a look since Tuesday."
He wasn't wrong.
"Nathan," I said.
"Yes."
"Do you have something to say to me?"
His eyes went to the book. Then to the water. Then back to me.
"I love you too," he said. "Obviously."
"Obviously," I repeated.
"It's been fairly evident," he said. "For some time."
"It has? For how long?"
"Probably two years."
I sat with that for a second. Nathan Cross, in his slightly crooked hat, water bottle in the cupholder, having just told me he'd been in love with me for probably two years with the same tone he used to report clinical findings.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay," he said.
He went back to his book.
After a moment, I reached over and straightened his hat.
He didn't look up.
But the corner of his mouth did the thing.
The water did its thing.
I was smiling so hard it hurt and there was nobody to perform it for and it was just my face doing something true in the sun on a beach somewhere that wasn't Boston.
I was in love with Nathan Cross.
He had said obviously.
I was going to be thinking about that for a very long time.