Chapter 12 Nathan Is Suddenly a Problem
Two months after I leave Blake, I find an apartment.
It's a one-bedroom on the second floor of a converted house on Birch Street, about eight minutes from the salon.
The kitchen is small and the bathroom is dated and the bedroom windows face west so the afternoon sun pours in hot during the summer.
The landlord is a retired teacher named Dorothy who lives downstairs and keeps a garden in the back.
The rent is manageable on my salon income.
I sign the lease on a Tuesday afternoon and move in the following weekend.
Raina helps me unpack. We carry boxes up the narrow staircase and we arrange furniture that I bought secondhand from an online marketplace.
A bed frame, a nightstand, a small kitchen table with two chairs.
The couch is new because I decided that the first piece of furniture I own completely on my own should be something I chose from a store and paid for with my own money and sat on in the showroom until I was sure it was the right one.
"It's nice," Raina says, standing in the middle of the living room with her hands on her hips. "It's small but it's nice."
"It's mine."
"It is yours."
We eat takeout on the floor because the kitchen table isn't assembled yet and Raina leaves around nine and I sit alone in my apartment for the first time.
It's quiet. The floorboards creak when I walk.
I can hear Dorothy's TV through the floor, muffled and distant.
Outside the window the streetlights on Birch Street are coming on.
I love it.
I love the silence and the solitude and the fact that nobody else is going to walk through that door tonight.
Nobody is going to leave their shoes in the hallway or their dishes in the sink or their secrets on their phone.
Nobody is going to reach for me in bed at two in the morning or mumble questions I don't want to answer.
This space belongs to me entirely and the relief of that is enormous and unexpected.
I didn't know how much I needed this until I had it.
I spend the first weekend organizing. I put my books on the one bookshelf that came with the apartment.
I hang my two framed prints on the living room wall.
I stock the kitchen with basics: olive oil, salt, pepper, pasta, rice, the ingredients for the five meals I know how to cook well.
I buy a shower curtain with a pattern I chose because I liked it, which is a smaller victory than it sounds but it matters.
Every decision in this apartment is mine alone.
Over the next few weeks I settle into a routine.
Work at the salon from nine to five or six depending on the day.
Home to Birch Street. Dinner, usually something simple because I'm cooking for one now and cooking for one is a skill I'm still learning.
An evening spent reading or watching TV or talking to Raina on the phone. Bed. Repeat.
It's quiet and predictable and I need that right now. I need the simplicity of knowing exactly what my day looks like and not being surprised by anyone else's schedule or choices or lies.
The friend group has rearranged itself around the absence of Blake and Hailey.
Blake has mostly retreated. He goes to work and he goes home and he doesn't come to group events anymore, partly because nobody invited him and partly because he knows he's not welcome.
Hailey has disappeared almost entirely. Alana mentioned once that Hailey might be looking at jobs in other towns.
Nobody confirmed it. Nobody seemed to care much either way.
The rest of us still get together. Sierra organizes dinners. Chase comes. Ronnie comes. Nathan comes.
And that's where my problem starts.
I notice Nathan at a Saturday afternoon cookout at Sierra's apartment complex.
The complex has a shared patio area with a grill and two picnic tables and Sierra has claimed it for the day.
She texted the group at nine in the morning with a message that said "cookout at my place, 2pm, I'm making potato salad, bring whatever else.
" Sierra runs group events with the organizational efficiency of a project manager and the warmth of a camp counselor.
You don't decline Sierra's invitations. You just show up.
I show up with a bag of chips and a six-pack because I'm still learning how to contribute to group events as a single person.
When Blake and I were together we'd bring things as a couple.
A casserole. A dessert. Something that required two people to carry.
Now it's just me and a bag of chips feels inadequate but nobody comments on it.
Chase is already at the grill turning burgers. Ronnie is setting out plates. Sierra is arranging her potato salad on the table with the focus of someone who takes presentation seriously. And Nathan is sitting at the picnic table with a beer and a book that he puts down when he sees me approaching.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
I sit down across from him. He slides the book to the side. I glance at the cover. It's a nonfiction book about military history. The spine is cracked and the pages are dog-eared, which means he's read it before or he reads hard or both.
"Reading at a party," I say. "Bold choice."
"Nobody was here yet when I sat down. The book was in Ronnie's car."
"You brought a book to a cookout."
"I bring a book everywhere. Habit."
Chase calls out that burgers are ready and everyone fills plates. I end up back at the picnic table with my plate of chicken and corn and a beer and Nathan sits down across from me again.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He starts eating. He doesn't say much at first because Nathan never says much at first. He's the kind of person who enters a conversation slowly, contributing a comment here and there, listening more than he talks.
Most people in the group treat his quietness as an absence.
I've started to realize it's a presence. He's paying attention to everything.
"How's the new place?" he asks after a few minutes.
"Good. It's small but I like it. How did you know I moved?"
"Ronnie mentioned it."
"Of course he did."
"He said you found a place on Birch Street. That's a nice street. Dorothy Phillips owns a couple of those houses, right? The retired teacher?"
"She's my landlord. She lives downstairs."
"She taught my mother's church group how to garden about ten years ago. Good person."
I look at Nathan. He's eating his corn in neat rows, which is something I've never seen anyone do before.
Most people eat corn in random patterns.
Nathan eats it one row at a time with the precision of a machine.
I want to comment on it but I don't because drawing attention to someone's eating habits feels invasive and also because I'm suddenly aware that I'm watching him eat corn and cataloging the pattern, which is not a normal thing to do.
"What?" he says. He caught me looking.
"Nothing. Your corn technique is very organized."
He looks down at his corn. Then he looks back at me.
"It's more efficient this way. You don't miss any."
"I've never met anyone who optimized their corn consumption."
"Army habit. You eat what's in front of you and you don't waste any."
He says it simply, without making it into a story. Nathan was in the Army for four years. I know this from Ronnie but Nathan has never talked about it at any length around me. He mentions it sometimes the way other people mention a previous job. Casually. Without drama.
We talk for a while. Nothing important. The weather, which has been hot.
A new restaurant that opened on the other side of town.
A movie that Chase has been insisting everyone needs to see.
Normal topics. Easy conversation. But somewhere during the conversation I notice that I'm leaning forward slightly and that my attention is entirely on Nathan and that I haven't thought about anything else in about twenty minutes.
That's the problem.
I think about it on the drive home. I think about it while I'm making dinner in my small kitchen. I think about it while I'm sitting on my new couch with a book I'm not reading.
Nathan Johnson is suddenly a problem.
He's not doing anything wrong. He's not flirting with me. He's not making moves. He's being exactly who he's always been: quiet and funny and decent and present. That's the problem. He's being himself and I'm noticing.
I notice the way he listens. Not the polite, half-attentive listening that most people do at group events where they're scanning the room while you talk. Nathan faces you. He gives you his full attention. He asks follow-up questions that prove he heard what you said three sentences ago.
I notice his hands. Large hands, rougher than you'd expect from someone who mostly works a desk job now, but he did four years of hard service and the hands remember even if the rest of his life has softened.
I watch his hands while he's opening a beer or gesturing during a story and I'm aware that I'm watching them.
I notice that he's funny. Not the loud, performance-style humor that Blake used.
Nathan's humor is dry and understated and it slides in sideways.
He'll say something so deadpan that it takes people a full two seconds to realize it was a joke.
Chase falls for it every time. I've started catching the jokes before everyone else does and when I laugh Nathan looks at me with a small expression that suggests he's pleased someone got it quickly.
I notice that he's tall. Six-four according to Ronnie. He has to bend slightly to get through some doorways. In a room full of people he's the tallest one there and he carries it with a comfortable ease that suggests he stopped being self-conscious about his height a long time ago.