Chapter Thirty-Nine
The weather had finally broken. For once, the air didn’t snap at my cheeks when I left the apartment; it just pressed gentle and cool, like the world was trying to remember how to be kind again.
Nate had texted at seven a.m.: Sun’s out, Livi, let’s take advantage before it changes its mind.
I’d surprised myself by actually wanting to say yes.
It had been a month since my own personal iceberg—one of those months where nothing happens, and everything happens.
After I found Nate half-drowned in his own sorrow, the two of us set to work building something new, even if it was nothing more than a routine: coffee in the mornings, slow walks around the block, sharing the crossword but never the answers.
We were careful with each other, like two dogs who’d both been kicked enough times to know not to bark too loud.
Still, things felt better. Not perfect, not even close, but better. And sometimes, that was enough to get out of bed.
I met Nate at the corner of his street, where the sun caught in the new leaves and threw patches of green light down onto the sidewalk. He was already waiting, coffee in hand, hair still damp from his shower, looking like someone who hadn’t slept but didn’t mind the trade.
“Nice coat,” he said. I looked down; it was Rachel’s, and the belt hung so loose around my waist it looked like I was playing dress-up. I shrugged.
“It’s what I had,” I said, tugging the collar up to my chin.
He grinned. “You make it work. Ready for a day of reckless literary consumption?”
It was the book fair weekend. Nate’s idea, obviously—he had an unhealthy love of used books and the oddball people who sold them—but I found myself looking forward to it, maybe because it was the first plan in weeks that didn’t end in an argument or the two of us avoiding eye contact for a full hour.
I let him lead the way, his steps light for once, as if he believed we wouldn’t trip over our own baggage before lunchtime.
The street fair took up two blocks and a parking lot.
Booths huddled against each other, tables loaded with paperbacks and hardcovers, old comic books, even antique children’s books with covers so faded you could barely make out the pictures.
There was a crowd, but not a crowd that made me anxious—mostly parents with kids, college students, the odd retiree who seemed determined to touch every book on every table.
We wandered for a while, picking up volumes at random.
Nate tried to find the weirdest title in every stall (“Tortoises and How to Paint Them”—a surprisingly heavy manual; “The Complete Guide to Espionage for Children”), and I got sucked into a box of old romance novels with pastel covers and lurid, hilarious taglines.
We competed to find the worst sentences, reading them out in our best faux-British accents, and sometimes people around us even laughed.
We were halfway down the second block when Nate spotted a table with rare and vintage cookbooks. He stopped, scanned, and then handed me a thin, battered volume titled “Cooking for One (and How to Enjoy It).”
“Thought of you,” he said, smirking.
I rolled my eyes, but the sight of the cover—retro orange, a cartoon chicken doing a little dance—made me smile. “This is passive-aggressive, right?” I asked. “Like, ‘don’t forget you’re single now, here’s how to roast a Cornish hen for yourself’?”
Nate shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe I thought you’d appreciate the subtext.”
I thumbed through it, found a recipe for ‘Solitude Soufflé’ annotated in shaky pencil, and laughed. “You’re a jerk,” I said, but the word landed soft.
We bought it, along with three other cookbooks that Nate insisted he’d use but never would.
At the next table, I found a paperback of a book I’d loved as a kid—one of those dog-eared, well-loved copies with someone’s name scribbled on the inside cover.
“To Danny, Summer 1997—Don’t forget to use your imagination!
” I bought it on impulse and refused to let Nate make fun of me for it.
We took a break for coffee at a food truck, sitting on the curb with paper cups so hot they steamed in the cool air. The conversation drifted: work, the bookstore, whether or not Jackson was actually proposing to Rachel (I bet on “no,” Nate on “maybe, if there’s enough tequila involved”).
Then, out of nowhere, Nate said, “You know, I really missed this.”
I glanced at him, wary. “Book fairs?”
“No. You. Us. When it wasn’t always heavy.” He sipped his coffee; eyes fixed on the swirl of cream inside the cup. “I’m not good at the serious stuff, Livi. But I can do this. I like this.”
It was so honest, so unadorned, that I didn’t know how to respond. I just nodded, tracing the rim of my cup with a thumbnail.
“I like this too,” I said, finally.
We finished our coffee, then circled back to the fair for another hour, picking through boxes of poetry and art books and old zines, some of which looked like they’d been hand-collated by anarchists with too much time on their hands.
Nate found a volume of Bukowski and read the filthiest poem aloud to me under his breath, and I nearly spit my coffee.
It felt like the kind of day people wrote about in memoirs—slow, a little aimless, but bright around the edges with the possibility of something more.
By early afternoon, we’d both bought more books than either of us could carry.
Nate loaded them into a reusable grocery bag that sagged dangerously with the weight.
We walked back to his place, the bag swinging between us, and when we passed a bakery he ducked inside to buy two chocolate croissants.
We ate them sitting on the stoop of his building. My fingers got sticky with the melted chocolate, and Nate wiped some off my cheek with a corner of napkin. It was such a gentle, unconscious gesture that I almost lost my breath.
He looked at me, really looked at me, and there was nothing in his eyes but warmth. “You okay?” he asked, a question he used to mean in a dozen different ways, some of them barbed. But not now.
“I think so,” I said, and realized it was true. “I think I’m better than okay.”
He smiled, and there was a little relief in it, as if he’d been holding his own breath all day, waiting to see if I’d break. But I didn’t.
We sat for a long time, just existing. No pressure, no demands, no fear of the ground vanishing under my feet. For the first time in months, I felt the faint, stubborn outline of hope—a tiny voice that said maybe, just maybe, things weren’t going to collapse again.
The sun was still out. The world was still turning. And for the first time in a while, I wanted to be here to see where it went.
∞∞∞
By the time we made it up the three flights to Nate’s apartment, my arms ached from hauling bags of books and half-eaten bakery boxes. He unlocked the door, then shouldered it open with a little grunt, letting the bags drop with a gentle thunk onto the faded runner in his entryway.
The inside was still a mess, but it was a different kind of mess than when I’d found him last month.
Now, the clutter was books and coffee mugs and a handful of folded laundry on the back of the couch, not empty bottles and neglect.
There was the faintest undertone of lemon from a half-hearted cleaning attempt, and the air was warm, touched with the scent of coffee grounds and the top note of wood polish.
There were still days, I knew, when he didn’t make it out of bed.
But today wasn’t one of them. I’d never noticed it in the beginning of knowing him, but I did now.
How his past trauma was still there, flickering in and out of his consciousness sometimes.
How it stopped him up short and I’d hear a sharp intake of breath as a memory was triggered.
He’d never say anything about it… but silence is loud.
I set my haul on the dining table—a battered thing that might have started life as an office desk—and then stretched my back, hands above my head until the vertebrae popped.
“Jesus, you’re going to throw out your shoulder if you keep buying books at this rate,” Nate said, already stacking his own loot on the end table, sorting them by genre. “At least tell me you’ll donate the duds.”
I arched a brow. “That’s rich, coming from the man with a first edition ‘Sex After Sixty’ on his coffee table.”
Nate grinned, unabashed. “A gift from a former boss. You never know when you’ll need to diversify your reading list.” He set down the last of his books, then turned to face me, hands in his back pockets—a classic Nate posture, half-casual, half-bracing-for-impact.
I watched him for a beat, waiting for the punchline, but he just stood there, silent, shifting from foot to foot. The effect was oddly endearing. When he finally spoke, he sounded almost nervous.
“Hey,” he said. “Can I ask you something? And before you answer, just promise you won’t laugh.”
“Depends,” I said. “Is it about ‘Sex After Sixty?’ Because I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”
He gave a tight, crooked smile, then shook his head. “No. I mean—well, maybe in thirty years, but…” He trailed off, then took a breath. “Would you want to move in?”
The words hung there, impossibly heavy and light at the same time.
I blinked. “Move in… here?”
Nate nodded, the flush climbing his neck.
“Yeah. With me. Here. Officially. I know it’s not perfect, and I know it’s probably too soon, and I get if you want to keep your space—especially after everything.
.. But—” he hesitated, searching for the rest, “—I like waking up with you. I like coming home and knowing you’ll be here.
Even if you leave hair all over the bathroom and fill my sink with weird coffee filters. ”
I almost laughed at that, but there was a tremor in his voice, a realness that stopped me cold.