And speaking of Nate . . .
The bathroom door is cracked open slightly, steam pouring out of it. The extractor fan whirrs low and loud. I bang an open palm on the door and push it open slightly to shout inside, “Yo, Nate-Nathan-Nate, you want some coffee?”
“Jesus!”
There’s a wet scuffle, like he’s slipping, and the clatter of his one, lonely shampoo bottle falling into the bathtub.
“Imogen, I’m in the shower,” he shouts back. I can practically hear him blushing.
“I’m not looking,” I point out, from the other side of the door. I’m not. I’ve got my back to him and I can’t see anything except some tiles on the wall. “I’m just asking, do you want coffee?”
He stammers for a long moment before babbling, “Uh, t-th-yuh-sure, yeah. Coffee. Yes. Now please go away.”
I pull the door to close it, and then open it back up to call in, “You want me to shut the door?”
“Yes!”
Well ex-cuuuuse me, mister. It wasn’t like he had shut the door in the first place. How was I to know? There isn’t a window in the bathroom; maybe he needed to leave it open to let the steam out. Excuse me for being considerate.
It takes me a few minutes to figure out the fancy coffee machine, although I don’t have any trouble finding the little pods to go in it. To be fair to Nate, the kitchen is orderly, but it makes total sense. The flow and organization of the cupboards alone is worthy of its own Netflix special.
I open the lime-green roller blind in the kitchen. There’s not as much light on this side of the apartment as in the bedroom and it’s a cloudy morning, so I have to put the lights on as well. Actually, I realize as I survey the kitchen, there is a color scheme going on in here: green blind, green tea towel, green backsplash tiles. Even the Swiss cheese plant on the windowsill, I guess, counts into the green theme.
Imagine being this organized, I think. Imagine picking out backsplash tiles. And I bet he actually keeps his plants alive and they don’t die however much he reads up on how to look after them and no matter what he tries.
Must be nice.
By the time I’ve finished pouring a second coffee for myself, Nate joins me in the kitchen. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt but manages to look pulled together. Smart-casual, not slouch-casual. It’s a second later it hits me why he looks so different in that outfit to the guys I’m used to: he’s ironed it. His blond hair is damp, hanging in a mess over his forehead.
“Sorry,” he tells me, dithering in the doorway, apology written all over his face. “I promise I’m not a grouch in the mornings. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
Oh.
An apology.
Okay, wasn’t expecting that.
“It’s your house.” I shrug. “You don’t have to apologize to me.”
Not that I’ll apologize to him, though. I don’t think I did anything wrong.
“Of course I do. I’m sorry,” he tells me again, emphatically.
“It’s okay. I did kind of barge in.”
“No! No, you uh, you didn’t. You just took me by surprise, that’s all.”
“Nate, sweetie, if I wanted to take you by surprise, I would’ve wheeled in a confetti cannon and serenaded you in full costume as Phantom of the Opera.”
(It would not be the first time. Although it would be the first time I’d done that in a bathroom.) (Look, it wasn’t as weird as it sounds, I promise. Lucy wanted to go see it for her birthday but we couldn’t all afford the tickets because it was just after university finished so we were all, like, putting down deposits on apartments and waiting for our first paycheck and things, so I got everyone to come as one of the characters and got Lucy an outfit to be Christine and we all had this epic sing-along to the movie version. I mean, tell me I’m not the greatest best friend ever. Even if I do owe her a shit-ton of money.)
“You’re up early,” Nate says then, taking the mug I offer him. “Did I wake you up?”
I shake my head. I’m still a little thrown off by his apology, and trying to think if I’ve already told him the story of Lucy’s Phantom birthday. I lean against the counter, cradling my coffee in my hands.
Nate takes up a similar stance across from me, leaning against the wall, both hands around his mug.
“I’m sorry, too, for the record,” I blurt.
“It’s okay.”
“Not for the bathroom thing,” I clarify, suddenly as awkward as he was a minute or two ago. “Um, for . . . I’m sorry for running out, on Sunday morning. Or trying to. It really wasn’t anything against you, personally. Or about me,” I add quickly, slamming a palm into my chest in defense. “It’s just, you know. There’s always . . . this.”
I gesture between us and Nate’s eyes follow my flapping hand before he repeats, “This,” in a deadpan voice that makes it clear he’s got no fucking clue what I’m talking about.
“You know! This! The whole awkward morning-after thing. The coffee. Breakfast, where you have to make small talk like either of you plan on seeing each other again.”
Alarm bells go off in my head as soon as the words are out of my mouth. The sirens blare, the lights flash, and my brain takes us to DEFCON 1. This is where he’ll get a judge-y look even though he’s trying not to be judge-y and say, “Oh, so you do this a lot, huh?” and like, sure, I do it sometimes, but excuse me for having a healthy relationship with sex even if I can’t always have a healthy relationship, period, and uh, hello, double standards.
I didn’t even have to defend myself to him. I didn’t have to apologize. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
But Nate doesn’t say anything like that, doesn’t even look at me funny. He just nods. And then quietly, head bent slightly over his coffee, he tells me, “Although for the record, I would’ve planned on seeing you again. I told you, I liked you.”
“Oof,” I joke, “past tense already.”
“You know what I mean, Imogen. Although jury’s officially out again now I’ve had to live with you.”
“You might be the first guy I’ve ever met who’s judging me more on my ability to make a bed than what I was like in bed.”
Nate took a sip of coffee at exactly the wrong moment because as soon as I say that, he chokes on it, sputtering it all over the floor before he can cover his mouth. I crack up laughing even as he coughs and switches his mug for some paper towels to clean it up.
“Not, I guess, that guys usually get a lot of time to judge me. It’s usually all over within five dates, at most.” I hug my drink a little closer into my body, not really sure why I’m telling him this, but apparently not able to stop. “I’m not really girlfriend material. Not the kind they want to take home to meet Mother. You know the last guy I dated told me I had ‘Wine Aunt energy,’ which I think is a compliment. I took it as one, anyway. But that’s okay because he wasn’t boyfriend material either. Or, I guess, he was. Just for the girl he’d already been dating for six months, who I found out about on Instagram.”
“Ouch,” Nate says. I’m not sure which part he’s referring to—maybe all of it—but I just nod and mumble, “Yeah.”