21. Claire
twenty-one
I shouldn’t be peelingat the crack in my manicure, but my anxiety is currently winning.
It’s Wednesday. Which means Mom has book club, and Zoey has cello. Which means I’m usually on kid duty.
Except tonight, I’m not. Tonight, I’m in the middle school gym, waiting for a basketball game to start, where I’ll be running a clock or something. There’s a sheet of paper in the middle of the table in front of the score box. The directions are written in such perfectly blocked handwriting, I wonder if this was printed in some new font.
Mom gave me a guilt trip the second I asked if I could work late on Wednesday.
Maybe that was my problem. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.
I’d simply told her it was for work, and she’d stormed off, the heel of her Jimmy Choo’s still clicking on the upstairs carpet after she’d slammed her bedroom door.
Never mind that she didn’t ask Michael to give up his plans with friends to help out. Michael the soccer star is never expected to pitch in. Michael is never asked to babysit, despite the fact that he’s in high school and can be responsible for his siblings for a couple of hours. No. That responsibility rests solely on me.
So, instead of reveling in the simple fact that I get to spend a few hours not parenting my younger siblings, I get to worry—that my mom is mad at me. That I’m not doing enough. That I’m not doing the right thing.
“Your nail polish is peeling.”
Those words scratch out like his throat is a desert. I feel his presence before I make the slow turn to see him with my own eyes, my index finger currently frozen in place where it was picking at the burgundy polish on my thumb.
My gaze first meets the buckle of his belt, shiny gold winking around crisp brown leather. I deter my eyes from what sits beneath, and instead follow the crisp line of buttons up his powder blue shirt. His tie is River Valley navy and green, alternating stripes that barely wave with the movements of his shallow breaths. When I get to his Adam’s apple, it bobs slowly, thickly, painfully almost with the lump he swallows.
God, why do I want to lick it?
His gaze is penetrating behind his square frames, the intensity an overbearing sauna that makes me want to rip off the chunky cardigan I’ve been wearing all day. I threw my hair into a claw clip during second period, and yet, Nathan’s unruly blonde hair still looks more styled than mine. He looks torturedly put together, and that has me biting the inside of my bottom lip.
“Hi,” I wince. I don’t know why I do. Maybe it’s because, beneath his stare, I feel caged. Caught. Like his gaze is somewhere I’m not supposed to be.
His brows furrow together in slow motion, puzzle pieces clicking in his eyes as his gaze ticks downward to my hands. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but the furnace when his thumb touches mine is going to leave a brand. My lips part as he tugs my thumb free, the chip in my manicure falling back into place.
I gasp, his thumb still lingering hotly on my skin. I can feel his heartbeat, and it seems to be ticking as quickly as mine.
He must realize it, must realize that we’re in a gym full of people, because he suddenly jerks his arm away and lets it fall to his side. He clears his throat, then uses the same hand that branded me to smooth his tie before pressing that thumb to his lips and sitting in the chair beside me.
“Are you running the clock?”
“Mhm,” I somehow manage to squeak out, my brain still ten seconds in the past to when he’d kissed the thumb that he just used to mark me.
He nods. “I’m keeping score.”
Welp. I guess I won’t be sitting here alone to process whatever the hell just happened.
Nathan clears his throat, removes a pen from the pocket of his shirt—because of course he has one blue and one black pen in his shirt pocket, nestled against a discreet pocket protector—clicks it on, and begins making notes on the provided rosters. All while I’m basically sweating buckets beside him.
Thank God I decided to reapply my body spray before I came here.
I slip my hands into my lap and discreetly rub my thumb over my index finger, checking for burn marks.
He kissed his thumb after.
Why was that so hot?
It was like that night in the parking lot. The one when he’d walked me to my car and tilted my chin up to look him in the eyes. My skin had prickled with heat then, too, but not only from his touch. It’s the intensity of his eyes that has the potential to ruin me one day. That, and the fact that I’m almost certain he was about to call me a?—
“Claire.”
“Hmm?”
I snap out of my daydream, but immediately bank more fodder for later at the sound of my name rolling off his tongue, so forceful and succinct, tied with a bow that says, Yes sir.
“The game is about to begin. Did you have any questions, or were my instructional notes clear enough?”
“You wrote this?” I ask, lifting the paper I was almost certain was printed.
Nathan nods, and I smile and chuckle. His brows tent together.
“What’s funny?”
“You would have font-like handwriting. It’s so…”
He raises a brow in challenge.
“Neat. Orderly. Very on brand.”
His gaze softens, and I even earn a small smile. His attention returns to the score-keeping equipment, but he says, “Your handwriting is a picture of you, too.”
My cheeks heat.
He hasn’t mentioned the makeup or the note. Never said thank you or alluded to using it. He didn’t return it, either. I carried around embarrassment for the rest of the week, and had all but forgotten about the stupid gesture until this moment.
He is wholly focused on the scoreboard equipment. The roster. The game. He isn’t paying me a lick of attention. But the skin on the back of his neck turns red, creeping up from beneath his collar, as he says, “Curvy and elegant, with a hard edge.”
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more in my lifetime than to see where that blush color starts and ends.
Unfortunately—or maybe luckily—the game begins. I am forced to pay attention to basketball and basketball alone for the foreseeable future, which might just be a blessing in disguise. But like all good things, the time flies by too quickly. I don’t know if I’m more sad to see my time with Nathan, or my extra night of freedom, coming to an end.
With both of those thoughts chasing me like the slow start of a funnel cloud in midwestern August, I take my time. I help Aaron, Lucy, and a few others with takedown. I talk to my friends until they’re clearly tired and walk hand in hand out of the building, toward one vehicle, because they’re going home together.
I think of what lies ahead for me.
A huge house stuffed to the brim. My parents’ judgmental stares when I arrive home from a night of “freedom” while my mother had to actually spend time with her children instead of drinking wine and talking about a book she never read. The guilt sits like a hot rock in the pit of my stomach, and I putz a little more to delay the inevitable. When I finally head toward the front door, I’m startled to realize that Nathan is still here.
In the squeak of the light switch and the dimming of his office light. In the tap of his Oxfords on the tile floor and the scent of cedar and vanilla that intensifies as he meets me in front of the main office desk. His coat is on. His messenger bag is shouldered at a precise forty-five degree angle over a chest I’d suddenly like to feel through less layers of clothing.
“Ready to go?”
I tilt my head, pinching my brows together in question.
“Did you… wait for me?”
The red that electrifies his cheeks at my question is my answer.
“It’s dark outside. You shouldn’t walk to your car alone.”
The rock that weighed heavily in my gut? It presses lower. Beneath my belt. Good thing we’re now walking, because if not, I’d need to squirm.
The only sound between us is the slapping of shoes against gravel, but even that isn’t louder than my racing thoughts.
He waited for me? So that I wouldn’t have to walk to my car alone?
And let’s not forget the thumb kissing.
I can’t keep in what I’m longing to say—the fact that no one has ever looked out for me before and that my heart is racing like an adrenaline junkie’s—so I fill the silence with, “So, that game was exciting, right?”
I wince at my own awkwardness.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Wasn’t it literally your job to keep score?”
“It was.” We stop beside my car, and he turns to face me. “I was a little distracted by my companion, who couldn’t seem to remember to stop the clock at the right time.”
My own cheeks flame, and I start to apologize—it was my first game! I thought I did well!—but Nathan’s head falls, and he runs his hand through his hair.
“Sorry. That came out wrong.” He exhales, then mutters something under his breath, not meeting my eyes as he says, “I was trying to…”
My body buzzes with awareness. I’m either going to hit the nail on the head or turn in my resignation immediately.
“Were you trying to razz me, Harding?” He lifts his gaze and looks the most real I’ve ever seen him.
Guilty, desperate, human perhaps?
I can’t outrightly tell him that I fudged up the clock tonight because I was too busy concentrating on how often our knees knocked beneath the table, can I?
Instead, I curl my lips into a sly smile.
“Hard-Ass Harding was trying to make a joke, wasn’t he? I’ll give you a solid six out of ten. You need to work on your delivery.”
He rolls his eyes, which is so wildly out of character. It’s charming. Like the mask is slipping a little bit more.
“And you need to work on keeping your eyes on the game.”
I exhale a forceful laugh, tilting my head all the way to one side as I catch the mischief in his reserved smile, the glint of something new in his eyes.
“It’s okay. I’m a fast learner.”
The smokiness that cradles those words surprises me, and I gasp, watching it register on his face. The hardness returns, but I don’t miss the clench of his fist at his side. This is restraint.
What does he want to do? What would he do if we weren’t standing in the middle of this parking lot right now?
“Do you still have to take care of your siblings when you get home?”
Any fantasies that were just drumming their way up disappear at the mention of what’s waiting for me at home.
“No,” I say, my shoulders dropping. “My mother had to actually be a mother tonight. I’m sure I’ll get a lecture, though. By the time I’m done letting it go in one ear and out the other, I might have a little time for myself before I call it a night.”
His fingers dig into his palm, the pulsing clench of his fist riling up a fire in my belly as he asks, “And what does that look like?”
“I’ll probably hit up a drive through and then start the fantasy series I just got from the library. I’m years behind the train, but the sixth one comes out next year. Maybe I’ll catch up by then.”
I shrug, pushing a short laugh out my nose because that’s never going to happen. But hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?
“Food sounds good.”
All of that, and all he got was?—
“I meant…” He clears his throat, and my body heats at the core, because I know exactly what he’s fumbling to say, just the same as he’d stumbled over that joke. “Do you want to get food?”
“Like… together?”
I glance around the parking lot, wondering for the hundredth time if being alone with him is a good choice, while simultaneously wondering if I’m actually supposed to care. That realization runs over his face, but I don’t want to turn him down—no I want to get food with Nathan and talk about our days, and like I’m playing with fire, I don’t care who knows.
But I care enough about him to know that I should.
So twenty minutes later, we are parked side by side in an abandoned lot, splitting a twenty-piece McDonald’s nugget and a large fry in the front seat of my car. We’re quiet. Probably because we’re both terrified of how much we want to be here despite how wrong it is. He breaks the silence first, when we get to the bottom of the nuggets and still haven’t spoken a word.
“If I’m cutting into your reading time?—”
“No!” I interject. “No. I want to be here.”
“Oh,” he says. “Good.”
I tick my gaze over to his and sputter a laugh. It starts out innocently enough, until his smile lights up the cabin of my car, and we can’t control ourselves.
“What are we doing, Nathan?” I sigh, lifting my feet to rest on the seat and my cheek on my tented knees.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head and his smile is pained. “But I want to be here. With you. I’m not sure what that means, but I can’t help myself from finding out.”
We sit with that weighty admission, one that I was too scared to say, one that he had to supply for me.
“Where does your brother live now?” I ask.
“Boston. He’s working through his oncology residency.”
I grin. “That’s amazing.”
“It is. I’m really proud of all that he’s accomplished, in spite of…”
He struggles to say those words again—that his parents are dead; that he and his brother are equally resilient.
“How old was he when it happened?”
“He was in middle school.”
“That had to have been so hard on both of you.”
I reach out. I can’t help it. He swallows around a lump in his throat, and when my fingers close around his hand, he exhales in relief that matches my own at the fact that he lets me.
“It absolutely was. I just wanted to be good for him. To raise him right. To make them proud.”
“They have so much to be proud of. Look at you—assistant principal extraordinaire who put his brother through medical school?”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “That was all Cal. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Please. I’m sure you helped him with his homework at least once.”
Nathan blinks, a smile transforming on his face as he gets lost in thought. He tells a story about the first time he and his brother argued over a math assignment, and somehow, it softens him even more.
“When I told him that I’d signed my first contract to teach English, he told me, ‘Good thing it isn’t math; those kids would all fail.’”
“What a bully!” I laugh.
He smiles and sighs. “Can I tell you something?”
I nod. You can tell me anything as long as it keeps us here.
“I would endure college all over again, get my minor in math, and figure out this new curriculum if it meant I got to be back in the classroom.”
My heart is weighty with his admission. I lock it away, knowing I am its sole keeper.
The distance is gone from his eyes with that off his chest. He lifts his glasses and rubs his eyes, and sighs all the way down to his toes. I wonder if I’ve overstayed my welcome when it comes to stealing nuggets of information, but when he tilts his gaze back up toward mine, there is only relief there. Maybe he’s been keeping it all inside this whole time. Maybe he just needed somebody to ask the questions.
I can’t help myself when I lean in. I see his breathing slow when he clocks it, his eyes flutter closed for a second beneath his glasses.
“Tell me I shouldn’t kiss you right now, Claire.”
Ha. What a funny man he is.
“What if I don’t want to?” I tease, leaning across the center console.
He closes the distance, and my world falls into place with his lips on mine. Authors have described first kisses like fireworks and summer sunshine, or like a blazing inferno. But kissing Nathan Harding finally gives me a picture of what happened when God spoke the world into existence.
I see nothing but blinding white light, and at the same time, the bottom of his soul in those hazel eyes. I feel every single nerve in my body buzz to an awakening I didn’t know existed.
For the first time in my life, something feels right. Someone feels right.
It takes only seconds for his tongue to press at the seam of my lips, for my hand to wind into his hair. He cups my chin in both hands, then kisses a path from my cheek to my throat, moaning as he sucks against my racing pulse. If heaven could be earth-side, we would be its sole occupants.
I’m about to climb over into his lap when my phone rattles inside the cup holder. We both sigh, parting reluctantly as I see that my mom is calling.
Before he turns to exit my car, Nathan leans over to cup my cheek again.
“I hope you get to find time for you tonight.”
And just when I think he’s out of surprises tonight, he slips two fingers beneath my chin to tilt it up so that I can meet his gaze. I see almost no hint of the golden iris, his pupils the size of saucers behind his glasses that are now fogging up at our proximity.
“Drive home safely.”
I nod, and that simple movement puts more of his skin on more of mine. It takes every ounce of my willpower not to say Yes, sir.
As I drive home, reflecting on the resentment I have for always doing what I’m told, my thighs press together at the thought that I’d do it willingly for him.