Since Sunday morning, Nate’s tried to be—corny as it sounds—he’s tried to be the perfect gentleman. We haven’t so much as cuddled. I guess he’s being nice, and I appreciate it, but I kind of want to tell him he doesn’t have to stand on ceremony for little ol’ me.
He’s even given up the bed for me.
“No, no,” he’d said last night, smiling but insistent. “really. You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
“That’s not fair. It’s your bed. I’m the one who got stuck here.”
“You’re the guest.”
“Not by choice.”
Nate had scooped up a pillow and a pile of carefully folded blankets, his smile gone and a stern look on his face. His eyes had been doing that adorable crease-around-the-edges thing, though, like he was trying not to laugh. “You’re taking the bed, Imogen, and I’m taking the sofa. It’s my house, I make the rules.”
And, fine, I’ll admit: even if the whole chivalry thing was just an act, it was still hot.
“You could just share the bed with me, you know. I don’t mind.
We did last night. We did a lot more than share a bed last night, my friend.”
Nate blushed, but shook his head. “Yeah, but that was . . . different?”
I didn’t see how, but I’d taken the bed anyway.
“Don’t tell me,” I joke now, while he’s hesitating, retracting his hand from my leg, as if catching himself, and turning his head away from me to face forward. “I don’t look as good in real life as I did on my profile.”
He laughs. “Imogen, you remember that you were the one that ran out on Sunday morning, right? Without so much as a good-bye?”
“So?”
“So,” he says, his hands fidgeting in his lap, “I don’t get it. Did I do something wrong?”
I gawp at him. “What gave you that impression? Is this your way of asking me if I faked it? Because, you know, you could just ask me. I had to borrow your boxers, and my underwear are currently on your radiator.” I point at them. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry about offending me, at this point.”
Nate runs a hand over his face, and he lets out an awkward, halfhearted chuckle. “I’m not trying to feed my ego, here. My point is . . . my point is, you were just going to disappear without a trace. I thought . . . I dunno, I thought after all that time we spent talking, you wouldn’t just ghost me.”
“I wasn’t going to ghost—”
The deadpan look he cuts me makes me stop midsentence.
I smile sheepishly at him, and even though I know I don’t have to explain myself, he looks so sweet, so confused, that I do anyway.
“We had a one-night stand. You told me you weren’t looking for anything serious. I figured it was just, you know. Easier. I didn’t want to make you feel awkward, make you feel you had to see me again or take me on a date or something, when you said you weren’t after something else.”
“But . . . ” Nate frowns at me, and looks away. He drags his hand back and forth through his hair again. “Yeah, I mean, I said that, but . . .
I liked you. I thought that counted for something.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that.
Nate clears his throat when I stay quiet, obviously not sure how to follow that up. I sort of expect him to crack a joke about it, say something like, Or at least liked you enough to have sex with you, but as soon as I think it, I know he wouldn’t. Nate’s not that kind of guy. Even over text, he was straightforward. Not blunt, or rude, just upfront. Honest.
With nothing else to say, I go back to my original question. I raise my eyebrows and ask him, “So, you wanna watch that movie? Sack off work for the rest of the afternoon?”
There’s definitely a smile playing at the corner of his mouth and I’m really tempted to kiss him, but then he turns suddenly serious and sits up straighter, pushing my legs off his lap.
He reaches for the TV remote, handing it over to me, and then he gathers up his laptop and notebook. “You can watch a movie. I’m gonna go work in the bedroom for a couple of hours. Big, important meetings I just can’t miss, you know.”
I watch him go, feeling a little out of sorts.
It’s not like I’ve never been rejected before. I’m a big girl, I can handle it. Plus, he is working. But there’s something about the way Nate seems to be holding me at arm’s length that I’m not used to, and my heart sinks as he closes the bedroom door behind himself.
Tuesday
apartment #14 – imogen
Chapter Nine
Nate’s alarm on his phone goes off across the hallway in the living room. His phone vibrates angrily once, twice, on the table, a contrast to the tinkling chime noise that accompanies it. He turns it off, and then I hear him get up.
What kind of . . . ?
Who does that? Who just hears their alarm, and gets up, like, straight away? I mean, fine, Lucy does, but that’s Lucy.
Oh God, speaking of Lucy, that’s a problem. Her stupid wedding-planning DIY-centerpieces weekend thing for her future sister-in-law is only taking place upstairs, in this very building, isn’t it? Of all the goddamn gin joints. When I realized, half of me wanted to run around hammering on doors until I found her so I could tell her everything (and maybe borrow a T-shirt or something) but . . . well, duh. I can’t do that.
I can’t let her know I’m with Honeypot, or that the quirky little mishap of the week is that I got stuck with him in quarantine. I mean, shit. Even I know how bad that sounds. Plus, she’d only worry, and it sounds like she’s got plenty of her own problems to worry about this week with Kim the bridezilla and a quarantine of her own. No, I have to—I want to—handle this myself.
And, I guess, I probably shouldn’t go around pounding on apartment doors and talking to strangers in the middle of a pandemic or whatever.
(Keeper of Keys, our jailer, bald and beardless Rubeus Hagrid, also might actually kill me if I do that. Which would be kind of inconvenient.)
Anyway, Nate’s alarm goes off, and I hear him get up and go into the bathroom to take a shower, and I’m already wide awake anyway for some stupid reason, and my brain is going at a thousand miles an hour, so I do what any other reasonable human would.
I get up. I open the blinds for Mr. Neat-Freak Nate, and feel a little bad about how much of a bombsite his lovely, boring bedroom is right now. Considering I arrived here with basically just the clothes on my back . . . Said clothes are dumped in a pile on the floor by the wardrobe, despite there being a chair set out apparently for that exact purpose. The little hairbrush from my bag is on the dresser, along with the other miscellaneous crap I was carrying around: sunglasses, a little paperback copy of Jane Austen’s Emma, some lip balm.
I do my very best to make the bed. When I say that, I mean I don’t just yank the duvet back up, I mean I even try to tuck the top sheet back in, I smooth out the wrinkles, I fluff the pillows back up, and put the two decorative cream cushions back on the bed from where I’d tossed them into a corner last night.
The room is transformed. Hey, look at me, Nate, living up to your stupidly high standards.