47. Nathan
forty-seven
“I’msorry I just showed up like this. Again.”
A rope strangles my heart. I kiss the top of Claire’s head again, for what seems like the thousandth time, while we lay on the couch in my study, me on my back, her sprawled over my chest.
“Please never apologize for coming to see me.”
“But it’s Christmas,” she exclaims, teary stains still holding her words captive.
“Consider yourself my Christmas wish, then.”
She sits up.
“I’m ruining all of your plans.” She shakes her head, still in complete denial because of the wickedness that her mother ensnared around her this morning. “It was selfish of me to come here and?—”
“Stop.”
I halt her in the middle of lifting from my embrace, flattening my hand to her back as I sit up, tucking her until she’s half in my lap.
“I’m perfectly happy that you showed up on my doorstep,” I say, lifting her chin with my index finger beneath it, my thumb stroking beneath her bottom lip. “I’m abhorred by the actions of your parents. I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay right here for as long as you’d like. In fact, I’m asking you to stay and spend the rest of your Christmas with me.”
She sniffles, her head tilting downward in my grasp so that she can stare into her lap again.
“You aren’t going to see family today?”
“No. Both of my parents were only children. I have no surviving grandparents.”
“What about your brother?”
I stiffen for only a second. “Cal wanted to spend Christmas in the city this year.”
“So you spent Christmas alone?”
She sounds sad for an entirely different reason now. I force her stare back up to mine, eyes hardening behind my glasses.
“No. I spent it waiting for you to call and tell me you wanted to see me. I thought about calling myself, but I knew you had plans with your family, so I sat with my phone across the room so that I wouldn’t be tempted to check it.”
I sound a little pathetic admitting it, but the way that her head kind of flops to the side as her sad smile tips up in admiration makes it worth it.
“I’m not sad, Claire. This is the first Christmas in a long time that I’ve had something to look forward to.” Her shoulders scrunch up to her ears, and the slow creep of her candy colored blush makes me want to forego all the plans I had as soon as she unexpectedly showed up on my doorstep to chase it with my mouth.
“And besides,” I say, scooting out from beneath her to cross the study to where I’ve stowed her gift. “Now we can trade presents.”
“Oh my God, Nathan! You didn’t have to get me anything!”
I know her parents didn’t get her anything of value, but her reaction makes me wonder when the last time was that anyone did an act of service for her.
“I wanted to.”
Wanted to so badly that I dipped into my inheritance.
It pained me to make the phone call, to go behind my plans for Cal and the house and the growing pile of worry surrounding my financial situation that I’ve decided to push back until after the New Year, solely so that I can see the look on her face.
I’m not sure what to do with that feeling in my gut that allowed me to break all of my own rules for her, but I’ll deal with the consequences later.
“Wait. I’ve got yours out in my car.”
When she comes back with a small bag and a shy smile, my chest fills with stuffing. Seated on the couch again, I hesitate, tapping the envelope against the palm of my hand.
“Can I go first? I’ve been keeping this a secret from literally everyone and if I don’t tell you soon, I might pass out.”
She is worlds away from the Claire who walked in here carrying the weight of the world in her tears. If she asked me to jump right now, I’d ask her how high.
“Of course.” I take the bag from her, but pause as her hand empties, and raise it to my lips to kiss her palm.
I peel back the tissue paper and recognize the shape of a book already. But what emerges from the green and red paper steals my breath.
It is leather bound, and I know the title before I even uncover the rest.
It’s a strange feeling, having a ball of tears caught in your throat.
I haven’t cried since my parents’ funeral, and even then, I did that in private so that Cal wouldn’t see me as weak.
All of a sudden, this woman beside me has my emotions on a roller coaster ride, and I don’t know that I want to exit.
“I know you already have like, seven copies of it, but this one is a special edition,” she says while I trace the gold foil impressions on the brown leather. “Oh! And there’s a surprise inside!”
She snatches the book away from me and I surge forward, but not before she can flip to the inside pages.
Ink is scrawled in the margins of The Fellowship of the Ring, in her neat, loopy handwriting.
“Did you annotate this?”
“Mhm,” she nods. “I finally finished it. And then I left my thoughts for you in the margins.”
She shrugs. Shrugs, like it was such a simple thing to do.
“I don’t uh…” She shakes her head, her brows pressing together like she’s unsure of herself. “I wanted to get you something bigger. This was such a gold mind find when I stopped into a secondhand book store, or I would’ve gotten one from like, Barnes and Noble. I don’t have a ton of extra money lying around, so I umm… I thought I could give you my thoughts? On your favorite book.”
She has no idea what she’s done. Gifting me her heart on the pages of my own.
I can’t decide if I want to spend the rest of the evening wrapped up in these pages or in her, so I choose both. I steal the book from her grasp and tug her into my lap, mashing my lips against hers in pure, animalistic possession. I growl into her open mouth, then plunder my tongue there, thanking her with my body because the words written on my heart right now would reveal too much. As the hand not holding onto the book dips beneath the hem of her shirt, she pushes away.
“Wait, wait!” she giggles against my mouth, and I sink a bite into her neck, hoping that it will hold off the sting of tears and the unfamiliar sensation that has my chest ready to burst. “I want to open mine!”
My stomach tightens. I stop kissing her immediately and sit up straight.
“I don’t want you to be disappointed after that,” I admit, one hand still on the treasure she’s gifted me.
She cups my face, somehow knowing that I need her touch to ground me.
“How could I ever be disappointed with you?”
She carefully unseals the envelope, revealing the project I’ve been working on instead of dealing with my own finances. As she opens the card, her gaze turns inquisitive before her eyes widen, the blue brimming immediately with tears as she gasps, pressing her other hand to her throat and grasping lightly there for purchase. When she snaps her gaze to mine, waiting patiently with unguarded anticipation, I feel my heart pulse in my throat.
“Is this… Are you taking me on a trip?”
I nod, swallowing the intrusion so I can answer.
“Yes. It’s for spring break, since we will both have the time off, and Penelope won’t be as suspicious. The Airbnb has a big fireplace for you, and a window seat overlooking the forest. If we go into town, there are lots of bookstores and cafes. It’s far enough that we shouldn’t see any people we know. I wanted to take you out in public, but I wasn’t quite sure how. I know that you value quality time, so I thought this might be more valuable to you than a trinket. I’m sorry if I may have guessed wrong.”
I run my hand through my hair, then stare down at the book still clutched delicately in my lap. At the gesture I’m not sure I will ever be able to repay. But Claire interrupts my train of thought with her lips pressed to mine, her tongue slipping in on a moan, her hands replacing my own to muss up my hair, as she gently peels the book from my lap so that she can situate herself there.
“This,” she says, then kisses me, “is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
I can’t decide if I should feel pride or sadness.
How has no one else ever had the privilege of offering this woman the whole world?
Instead of letting the intrusive thoughts consume me, I kiss her back, thanking her with my body because words can’t quite compare to what’s in my heart right now.
After starting in the study, and ending up in my bed, we lay in the living room, where the tree I always decorate with Cal is adorned solely in white lights. She arranged the blankets and pillows right beside it and threw open the curtains on the picture window where a gentle snowfall makes this night picturesque. We’re lying in the quiet, after making grilled cheese and researching all that the vacation town has to offer. Claire made a note in her phone of all the restaurants and bookstores she wants to visit, then shared it to my phone.
“Why aren’t there any ornaments on your tree?” she asks, puncturing the quiet with her whisper.
“I’m a man of simple tastes,” I say. I don’t tell her that I wouldn’t touch the family ornaments this year without my brother.
Her hand scratches delicately over my bare chest.
“I like that about you. No frills. Just you and me. I don’t need anything else in between.”
She is shattering my foundation, and repaving it from the ground up. My head spins and my heart turns inside out. I’m falling quickly down a well, and I’m not sure what’s waiting for me at the bottom. Something tells me that I’ll be okay as long as I have her to help me out.
We remain there, on the floor of my living room, in the glow of the tree, as we talk about how we’ll spend the rest of our days together this week. All the while, Claire peppers me with kisses and little thank yous for planning a trip for her.
When she drifts off to sleep against my chest, I inhale deeply. Because somewhere inside of me, I know that I planned that trip for three months into the future because that means we will have a future. I won’t answer the knuckles of Freud on the door to my subconscious, the ones toying with the idea of future turning into forever. It’s a dangerous thought, and an even more dangerous hope. Something I’ve learned not to do.
So instead, I close the door in his face, saving that confrontation for another day. For now, I have Claire in my arms, and an uninterrupted week with her ahead. The future can stay exactly where it is. I learned a long time ago not to try to predict it.