Chapter 23
Nolan
The crowd buzzes with excitement, animatedly recounting the notable plays, the wild touchdown that tied the game. Admittedly, I didn’t see any of it. In fact, I didn’t pay much attention to the game at all.
Even when Andi and I weren’t talking, my mind was racing.
First, there’s all the questions I want to ask her, all the things I want to know about her.
Then, there’s the fact that we were holding hands.
We’ve held hands before, but sitting there today with her made me feel like a ten-year-old again, pathetically losing it over the weight of her fingers intertwined in mine.
The barely there thrum of her pulse, making me startlingly aware of every movement, every flex and squeeze.
The way the warmth of her spread into my entire body, lighting it up.
By the time we funnel out of the stadium and onto the sidewalk, I’m not ready to end the night. So I suggest we take a walk along the canal. It’s a warm night. It feels peaceful, especially with the city lights shimmering over the still surface of the water.
“Tonight was…fun.” She says it contemplatively.
“You say that like you’re surprised.”
“I was pretty nervous to come here tonight,” she admits, her eyes fixed on the pathway ahead.
“I know we’re not actually dating, but in social situations, I always overthink it and blank, especially with guys.
Then I end up rambling and talking about embarrassingly niche topics, like emissions reduction targets.
That actually happened, by the way. I almost put a guy to sleep on a date in grad school talking about climate change policy. ” God, this woman is smart. I love it.
I resist the urge to tell her I could listen to her talk about climate change until the ice caps melt. Any policy. But I settle on, “Anyone who thinks saving the planet is boring strikes me as a massive asshole.”
“He was a dick, come to think of it. He told me that he didn’t recycle because it was too complicated. Anyway, that guy aside, I’m terrible at dating in general. That’s why I don’t do it.”
My chest pinches when she says that. “I think you’re probably better at it than you give yourself credit for. But how will you ever get good at it if you don’t try?”
She shrugs. “I—I don’t know. I don’t enjoy trying things I’m not good at. It’s one of my worst traits.”
“One of?”
“I have a couple,” she says wryly, the moonlight catching her profile. She looks obscenely gorgeous tonight. “I’m really selling myself here as a great fake girlfriend, huh?”
A snort rises out of me. “You know what? I like the honesty. I feel like this is how people should date. I feel like people aren’t really themselves on first dates.”
“That’s very true,” she says, her gaze following a couple strolling hand in hand, chatting softly.
“That’s the problem, actually. People are too busy putting their best foot forward, and then inevitably the flaws start coming out after you’re already dating, little by little, which is probably why most relationships don’t work out. ”
“Possibly,” I say, considering it. “It would be ideal, knowing someone’s bad traits before getting in too deep. A flaws section should be up front on every dating profile.”
“Exactly. Then you can decide if you’re willing to live with it.”
She swings me an adorable, squinty smile. “Did we just revolutionize love and dating?”
“Sure did. We deserve a Nobel Prize. It would save a lot of broken hearts.”
I turn, absorbing her like a sponge. “So what’s yours? Your actual worst trait?”
Her gaze cuts to my eyes as she considers. “People-pleasing, probably. As you already pointed out earlier.”
“Have you always been a people-pleaser?”
“Oh yeah. I was a rule follower. Never stepped out of line. Always did what I was told. I’ve spent my entire life being agreeable to make my parents happy, because they were miserable together. Mostly my mom. I felt like I had to keep the peace and make things happy for Amanda.”
“Is your sister like that, too?”
“Nah. Amanda doesn’t care what people think, which is my favorite thing about her.
She’s a free-spirited artist. She takes after my dad, which drives my mom nuts,” she says with abundant sarcasm.
“My mom has tried really hard to forget about the past and move on with Dave and his family, who are all…rich and uptight. Like her family.”
“They sound amazing. When am I meeting them?” I tease.
“For your sake, hopefully never,” she replies, dodging a cyclist coming in hot behind us.
“Luckily, my mom rarely visits. I haven’t seen her in, like, six months.
Most of the time when I call, she gives me three minutes tops before she urgently has to go.
She always says she’ll call back, but she never does. ”
“Do you want to see her more?”
“I don’t know. I always get excited at the prospect, but then actually being with her is really stressful. She’s always critiquing, nit-picking. I can never do anything right. My job is never enough. My clothes never fit right. It takes a long time for me to recover.”
My heart pinches at the sight of her, eyes cast downward at the ground. “Jeez. Sounds stressful. I can see why you never told her about your books.”
“Precisely. I get enough critique from my readers. I don’t need it from my own mother.”
Frankly, this woman sounds fucking awful.
I hate that she’s made Andi feel so small, so self-conscious over the years.
I’m struck with the overwhelming urge to stop walking and hug her.
But instead, I settle for, “For the record, I don’t think people-pleasing is a completely bad trait.
I assume it’s one of the things that makes you really good at your job. ”
She considers that over a burst of laughter from a group of teens taking selfies on the grass. We’ve walked so far, we’ve nearly reached Elgin Street. “Maybe. My sister says I’m desperate for Gretchen’s approval in lieu of my mom’s.”
“Are you?”
“Probably. It sounds weird, but it feels nice to be needed, especially since my mom doesn’t need me anymore,” she admits plainly.
“That makes perfect sense, actually. I mean, that’s part of what motivates people to do well. Everyone wants to feel valued and appreciated.”
“That’s true. Maybe it’s stupid of me, but I really like Gretchen as a person.
Despite what people probably think, she’s a good person.
She genuinely cares about all the causes she promotes, which is why she’s so neurotic about all the details.
And she’s going through a really hard time, especially with the scandal, which is my fault. I guess I feel like I owe her.”
It strikes me that Andi’s dedication to her work is beyond “career.” She has a huge heart.
She truly cares about Gretchen, Eric, and their family.
I don’t think they realize how lucky they are to have her.
“Between you and me, do you think she and Eric are happy? I mean, in Squamish, they didn’t really talk much, did they? ”
She shrugs. “They used to be the happiest couple. Lately, no. I mean, he’s almost always gone. And even if he’s home, he’s in his office reading through briefings—not that he has a choice. It’s the job. But they don’t get a lot of quality time together.”
I nod, taking a moment to rest on an empty bench. “I get that. It’s kind of like long-distance. After so much time apart, you stop really knowing the person.”
“It’s a doomed way to live unless it were short-term,” she agrees, parking herself next to me.
My body buzzes at her proximity, at her thighs in those shorts.
“How do you really get to understand what it’s like to be partners when the other person is never there?
You’d get used to being alone, and when they’re finally back, it would be like getting to know them all over again.
I guess you’d know. You mentioned in Squamish that your last relationship was long-distance. ”
I nod, explaining what happened with Penny, about her meeting someone else while I was away.
Andi cringes, stretching her legs in front of her, the muscles in her thighs flexing. “I’m sorry. That’s really shitty of her.”
I shrug. “Relationships rarely last in my line of work. There’s always resentment because of the crazy schedule, sometimes cheating. Not worth the trouble, in my opinion.”
“And you picture doing your job for a long time?”
“As long as my body will let me, yeah.”
“You’re okay to be single for the foreseeable future?” she asks, meeting my eyes.
“I don’t know. Guess I planned to work so much, I wouldn’t have time to think about it.”
“Sounds familiar,” she says with a chuckle. “Okay, it’s your turn. What’s your worst trait, aside from being a workaholic?”
“Okay, I don’t know if this counts because I don’t think I do it anymore, but when I was a kid, I had a sleepwalking problem.”
“Sleepwalking problem?”
“Oh yeah. I moved around a lot as a kid, so I’d get confused about where I was.
I’d go all around wherever we were living at the time, trying to make food, and make a huge mess.
One time at my grandma’s, I heated up water to make mac and cheese and I guess I decided to go back to bed and left the pot boiling on the stove.
Another time, I literally left my aunt’s house in the middle of the night in the dead of winter and went into the backyard to make snow angels. ”
She barks a laugh. “Sorry. I don’t mean to laugh. That’s actually terrifying and potentially dangerous.”
“It’s okay. You can laugh. It was so bad, I had to wear mittens to bed and sleep in a sleeping bag for a while.”
She tries to bite back a grin, but fails and snorts instead. “Sorry. I’m picturing you all bundled like a gigantic burrito.”
“I basically was.”
“I can see why you don’t do relationships,” she teases. “The sleeping bag and mittens might be a deal-breaker.”
“You don’t think mittens in the bedroom are sexy?” I ask, in a mock serious tone.
She grins, but her expression quickly morphs into something heavier. “Can I ask you something?”
I nod.
“You mentioned a couple times living in a lot of places. Staying with your grandma or your aunt. You don’t have to answer, but I was just curious—”
“No. It’s okay. Um, my mom was in and out of our lives, pretty much from the time I was around four or five.”
I explain how my dad wasn’t in the picture and how Mom’s life revolved around her boyfriends.
How one of them convinced her she could become a singer and how she’d use it as an excuse to leave every few months, on this quest to be discovered.
It feels easy, telling her this. It makes me wonder why I held off for so long like it’s this big secret.
“So what happened to you guys when she’d leave?”
“Usually it was without notice. I remember a lot of times sitting with Emma on the curb, waiting to be picked up from school, but no one would be there. And then the office having to call all our relatives, asking them to pick us up.” I tell her how we bounced between family members, none of whom wanted the burden.
She wraps her arms around herself and lowers her head, as though she’s taken on the weight of my story. I feel immediately guilty for dumping all of that on her at once. “Shit…That’s…”
“Heavy? Yup. That’s why things are a bit complicated with my mom. Anyway, I really dampened the mood,” I say as she shakes her head to deny it. “Now you’re obligated to cheer me up with another bad trait.”
She kicks her feet against the ground. “You did not ruin the mood at all. But okay, let me think…I’m too sensitive. Like…I’ll cry at just about anything. If I’m stressed, I’ll probably cry. If I’m mad, I’ll cry.”
“Ah, so you cry easily. How is that a terrible trait?”
“I don’t know. It gets annoying for some people. Like, for example, orangutans are my favorite animal of all time. If I see a video or picture of them, I’ll cry and it’ll ruin the mood.”
“Okay, I need to test this theory.” I whip out my phone and search for orangutans on Google Images. “Does this make you cry?” I show her a photo of a large orangutan with flanges, eating a juicy-looking orange.
The photo draws out an instant beam. “No. Just baby orangutans.”
I show her another. This time, it’s a bunch of babies in a wheelbarrow. She immediately starts to tear up. I lean in to look closer. “Oh my god. You’re actually emotional about it.”
She wipes her watery eyes. God, she’s fucking cute. “See?”
“Shit. I’m sorry for purposely making you cry. That makes me a horrible boyfriend,” I say, forgetting to add the “fake” descriptor in there.
She doesn’t appear to notice. “No. It’s not your fault. I’m ridiculous.”
“Not ridiculous. Adorable,” I say. “Actually, I wish I cried more. I don’t think I even remember the last time I cried.”
“Really?”
“Nope. Haven’t cried since I was a kid.” I was on the phone with my mom, telling her I’d been a good boy, that I’d behaved at school, basically begging her to come get Emma and me from my aunt’s.
I’ll never forget what she told me: “Nolan, you’re ten years old,” she said, even though I was nine. “You’re a big boy. No more crying.”
“Do you…want to cry?” she asks, eyes narrowing to slits.
“I mean, there’s been a lot of times I probably should have cried, like at some of the shit I’ve seen overseas. But I don’t know, my body won’t let me.”
“I’m going to give you a list of my top five saddest movies of all time.
You’re going to watch them and report back,” she decides.
She texts me a list of movies with The Land Before Time at the top.
“If you don’t cry at the part where the mom dies, you’re officially a robot,” she warns, standing with a stretch.
When she lifts her arms, the hem of her shirt lifts a little, revealing a small patch of soft skin around her stomach.
And don’t even get me started on the way her shorts hug the curve of her ass.
I smirk, questioning my ability to stand at this point. “Okay, challenge accepted.”
While we wait for her Uber, we go back and forth for a little while, telling each other about our terrible habits.
I’m a horrible loser when it comes to games.
She likes to fall asleep with the TV on.
I tend to let my dirty clothes pile up for a couple days too long before doing laundry.
She takes showers long enough to drain the hot-water tank.
She turns around before getting into the Uber. “Nolan?”
“Yeah?” I manage, taking her in. Shit. She’s gorgeous.
“This was the best date I’ve ever been on. Even if it was fake.” She fiddles with the sleeve of her sweater, her clear, twinkling eyes reflecting the golden light of the streetlamp above when they find mine again.
I don’t stop smiling the whole way home.