“Should I be worried about whatever is happening here?” He wiggles his big man fingers across the front of his face.
“Only because when I wash it off, I’ll be so devastatingly gorgeous you might die on the spot.”
It’s a joke, clearly a 100% facetious statement, but Nathan swallows his bite of apple, and then his eyes do a very odd thing: they tiptoe down my body.
It only happens that one time and his gaze doesn’t take the same path back up, but part of me wonders…no! No wondering! Shut up down there, you little instigators.
I register the wink of desire running through me and do the same thing I’ve always done over the last six years, what every good co-ed best friend dynamic has perfected. I dart around the kitchen like I have something very important to do, pretending like it never happened. At all costs, I NEVER acknowledge the feeling of desire.
I turn toward the counter at my back and find a cherry slushie in a Styrofoam cup. I gasp like it’s a goblet full of stolen jewels. “YOU BROUGHT ME A SLUSHIE!?” I have to say this in a way that projects my voice and conveys excitement without cracking the mask on my face. It’s an important skill to master in life.
I hear him chuckle and bite into the apple again. “You said you were craving one, right?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean for you to go get me one,” I say before putting the straw in my mouth and taking a long sip until my brain freezes deliciously.
Nathan is staring at me before looking grumpy and shooting his gaze down to his phone. “It’s really not a big deal.” He thumbs his screen then sets his phone down on the counter with a loud thud. “I’m so sick of this thing,” he says, dashing an anxious hand through his hair. “I feel like it goes off nonstop. I can never get a break.”
He leaves my little galley kitchen to move into the living room and plops down on my couch. I can’t help but chuckle at the sight of him, limbs completely sprawled out and hanging off every surface of my teeny-weeny furniture. He looks like he just climbed down the beanstalk and decided to nap on Baby Bear’s couch. His dark eyes close, and I sense how tired he is. Just looking at him and knowing the kind of schedule he has to keep makes me exhausted to my bones. I want to wrap him up in my bright yellow throw blanket, feed him soup, and make him watch cartoons all day.
“We could stay in and watch a movie, you know. I’m sure Jamal will understand if we miss his dinner.”
Nathan doesn’t open his eyes. “Nah, I want to go. It’s important to him that I be there.”
I sigh, knowing Nathan is as immovable on his reluctance to pass anything up in favor of resting as I am about taking money from him. I imagine a girlfriend would probably climb right on top of him and pin him down, giving him no choice but to stay in for the night.
But I’m not his girlfriend.
I shake myself from that fantasy. “Okay, well I need to go wash this goop off my face and then we can—”
I’m interrupted by the sound of Nathan’s phone buzzing on the kitchen counter. I look over my shoulder, but he holds up his hand, signaling for me to leave it be. “Shhh, no one move and maybe they’ll think I’m not home.”
“I can answer it and pretend they have the wrong number.”
“No one believed your French last time.”
That’s true. Tim, Nathan’s manager, made me hand Nathan the phone right away.
Nathan grabs the lime green pillow resting under his head and pulls it up to bury his face in. There’s an odd sense of satisfaction that hums through me because I get to see him like this, because he only lets his guard down with me. “I’m sure it’s just Nicole or Tim wanting another piece of my soul.”
The phone stops ringing.