Chapter Eight Natalie #2
“I need to go. Lots to do before the rehearsal dinner tonight. Good luck with the vows. I know they’ll be great,” she said, then hurried out of the room before he could respond.
It was their five-year college reunion, and Natalie had stayed for the annual campus dance—a party for students and their families, alums, and faculty outside on the main quad.
Between the fairy lights glowing in the trees, the jazz band, and the surprising number of older alumni in tuxes, Natalie felt like she’d been transported back to the 1920s.
It would’ve been supremely romantic, except for the fact that she was the only one of her friends who was currently single or hadn’t found someone to hook up with that weekend.
“Why don’t you ask Jonathan to be your date?” her old roommate Chloe had asked when they’d arrived on campus a few days earlier. “Didn’t he just break up with that girl from med school?”
“That’s exactly why I can’t ask him out. It’s too soon and it’ll make me look aggressive and desperate, like I was just waiting for the right moment to pounce.”
Chloe had sighed heavily, looking pained. “You always have some excuse. He either has a girlfriend, or just broke up with a girlfriend, or seems too stressed about exams. Why can’t you admit that you’re just too afraid of rejection?”
“Because it’s the most painful, humiliating outcome I can imagine? And why are you acting like it’s entirely in my control? He’s had more than half a decade to ask me out. He’s clearly not interested.”
“That’s because you give off stay away from me vibes. No, don’t shake your head, I’ve seen it! Anytime things get mildly flirty, you make up some excuse to leave. Or you ask about some girl you assume he has a crush on. The man’s not psychic, Natalie. He can’t read your mind.”
“I’m not his type at all. You’ve seen the girls he’s dated. Remember Kelsey? The freaking pageant queen who got a full scholarship to Harvard Med School?”
“Give me a break. She was Ms. Teen Delaware. That’s the second-smallest state in the country. How stiff could the competition have been? I know you think Jonathan’s some kind of god, but I promise you: he’s just a nerdy guy with good hair. Don’t give me any of this ‘out of your league’ shit.”
They hadn’t spoken about it again, and Natalie had gone to the dance solo, resigned to being a third wheel with Chloe and her girlfriend, Luna.
But once she’d arrived, she struggled to find them in the crowd.
Feeling supremely awkward, she snuck around the back of Wilson Hall and sat on a bench while she decided between toughing it out and heading back to the dorm.
It’d gotten a bit chilly. Even after many New England winters, she still shivered whenever the temperature fell below seventy.
“Hey, Bumpy,” a voice called from the shadows. She looked up to see Jonathan standing in front of her, more handsome than ever in his gray suit. “What are you doing back here?”
Natalie racked her brain for an explanation that wouldn’t make her seem pathetic.
“Just soaking it all in. It’s nice to be back, isn’t it?
” She’d underestimated how hard it’d be to settle back into life in the Cleveland suburbs after four years amid ivy-covered clock towers, coffee shops and bookstores tucked into decommissioned eighteenth-century churches, and apartments with working fireplaces.
Every time she pulled into a strip mall, attended a high school friend’s baby shower in a newly built tract home with wall-to-wall carpeting, or dropped by a coworker’s birthday party at the Cheesecake Factory, a little piece of her soul died.
She was ashamed of her newfound snobbery, but she knew she just didn’t belong there anymore.
“Sure is. Okay if I join you?”
She’d been about to protest and say something like, I’m fine! You should go have fun!, but then remembered what Chloe had told her. So instead, she’d said, “Of course.”
Jonathan settled down next to her. “Remind me, when do you leave for Scotland?”
Against all odds, Natalie had somehow won an obscure but well-funded scholarship to do an MFA at the University of Edinburgh.
It covered tuition, housing, and even included a travel stipend.
Natalie hadn’t been able to afford to study abroad junior year—she’d never been out of the country at that point—and was more excited than she’d ever been in her life.
“Not until September. Their academic year starts late.”
“I’m jealous. My orientation begins in July.”
“Are you really going to complain about that? After getting into your top-ranked residency?”
“This is why you need to move to New York. Who else is going to call me on my bullshit?”
“In a city of eight million people? I’m sure you’ll find someone.” A breeze swept through the back quad, rustling the dark leaves as Natalie shivered. Without saying a word, Jonathan slipped off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “Thank you.”
“You should go to grad school in Hawaii; you’re always so cold.” Jonathan wrapped his arm around her, and every nerve ending in Natalie’s body crackled to life. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this—he was naturally physically affectionate—but his arm was lower this time, snug around her waist.
“Wait, isn’t Hawaii next to Alaska?” she asked with feigned confusion. First semester of freshman year, Jonathan had told her about a girl from high school who’d been befuddled by the map in their classroom.
“It’s been tough hanging out with people who don’t get any of my inside jokes.” He sighed and pulled her slightly closer to him. “I wish you were moving to New York.”
She stiffened and braced for the inevitable joke that would undercut the statement, but Jonathan was uncharacteristically still and silent. “That would be fun,” she said, careful not to meet his eye.
“It’d be the best.”
The moment passed, and a few minutes later, they drifted apart—Jonathan to find his friends, Natalie to finish packing for her early flight. But Jonathan’s words echoed through her head for the rest of the night. For the rest of the week. For the rest of the summer.
In July, she emailed the University of Edinburgh admissions office, explaining that due to “unforeseen circumstances” she’d have to decline the scholarship and withdraw from the MFA program.
Two weeks after that, she was sleeping on her family friend’s couch in New York as she desperately hunted for a job.
She didn’t tell Jonathan right away. She needed a watertight explanation, something he wouldn’t see through.
Because if he had even the smallest inkling that she’d given up Scotland to follow him to New York, it’d be all over.
But then she’d gotten the tutoring job, and a few days later, she worked up the courage to send him an email.
She told him how she’d decided that her heart was in publishing and so she’d deferred her acceptance to Edinburgh (a lie) in order to pursue her dream job (another lie—an editorial assistant gig was still out of the question, given the sixty thousand dollars she still owed in college loans, but Horatio Street Press had agreed to let her read submissions for them on weekends).
Jonathan had been surprised but thrilled, and for a while, they’d met up for dinner or drinks once a week.
She’d even spent the holidays with him and his family in Philadelphia when she hadn’t been able to fly home for Christmas.
Natalie felt a bit icky about misleading Jonathan, letting him believe that she only tutored on the side, that her publishing job was full-time, but it felt minor in the grand scheme of things.
They were closer than ever, and Natalie was convinced it was just a matter of time before he finally made a real move.
But then one night, about a year after moving to New York, she’d gotten too drunk at dinner and slipped up, using the word reader for the first time to describe her role at Horatio Street Press.
“Wait, what?” Jonathan’s brow furrowed. “I thought you were an editorial assistant. Isn’t that why you deferred grad school? Because you landed a full-time job?”
Fear coursed through her, and instead of calmly telling Jonathan he’d misunderstood, she began to babble, just like she always did when she was terrified. She had to cover her tracks. She couldn’t let him think for one millisecond that she’d made it all up to move to New York for him.
“Yeah, no, that’s what I thought, but it turns out they didn’t have a budget for an editorial assistant, so they hired me as a part-time reader instead.
I should’ve told you, but I was too embarrassed.
And then I guess I forgot. When I get embarrassed, I forget things.
Does that ever happen to you? Maybe it’s a medical condition?
Let me know when you get to that unit!” She forced a laugh, but Jonathan didn’t smile in return.
The expression on his face was unreadable.
Natalie’s panic surged into an even higher gear.
She had to throw him off the scent somehow.
“Speaking of things I forgot to mention, did I tell you about my neighbor Marigold? I think you’d really like her.
Maybe she can meet us for a drink later? ”
And that was that. Marigold happened to be free and met them at a bar in the West Village.
Jonathan got her number that night, and they started dating shortly after.
And when Marigold couldn’t figure out what to do for Jonathan’s birthday, Natalie had offered to help her write a sweet card, listing all the things she loved about him.
Then when Marigold struggled to come up with more than a few, Natalie had been happy to nudge her in the right direction, supplying a few examples. Twenty-nine of them, to be exact.
After all, that’s what friends were for.