He takes my phone from my hand, fiddles with it, and sets it carefully back onto the coffee table. “Some people need more time to get their answer right. It’s not fair to give a time limit.”
“Sorry, but that’s life, buddy. You can’t wait forever.” I realize now that he’s angled the phone on the coffee table, setting it up so that it’s facing us.
He looks at me again. “I disagree. I think some things are worth waiting for, no matter how long it takes.”
Nathan leans over and punches the button on the side of my phone, and a light starts flashing for the ten-second timer. Before I have a moment to grasp what’s happening, he puts a hand on my shoulder and gently pushes me over so that my back falls flush with the couch cushion. This is new. Nathan hovers over me, pinning me in as the subtle countdown flashes continue to spark beside us.
“Bree, I want to kiss you. Is that okay?”
All I can do is nod.
He bends down, slowly, and drops one soft lingering kiss to my mouth. Fire explodes in my belly. We are not in public. And the camera is still counting down. This kiss isn’t for anyone but me and him. That was when it was just fake. His lips are warm, soft, vulnerable caresses. They end far too soon.
“Your soul is my favorite in this entire world,” he replies quietly, just as the camera sends the final bright flash signaling the photo.
I’m shocked. So scared I’m dreaming I could cry. It wasn’t exactly a declaration, but it felt like it. My heart beats: Hope. Hope. Hope.
I take his jaw in my hand. “Hold still.”
“Why?” Nathan says on a chuckle, because if I can be counted on for anything, it’s making a moment weird.
“Because you don’t have a good poker face, and I want to see if I can find the answer to something.”
His smile fades into something more serious, and as I tilt his face slightly to the side, he complies easily. His jaw is scratchy beneath my fingers. I tilt his head the opposite way, sizing him up from all angles. He indulges me like he has every day of our friendship. No squirming or averting his eyes. He lets me swim through those deep, dark irises, and just when I’m almost to the glowing answer at the end of the tunnel, his phone blares an alarm.
He expels a breath and drops his head into my neck, and I’m able to register his full glorious weight pressing down on me before he pushes off the couch to get his phone. The alarm is silenced. He looks at his phone like he’d enjoy crushing it in his palm and tossing the debris out the window. “That’s my alarm telling me it’s time to go to work.”
“Okay,” I say, my breathy voice barely punctuating the air. But seriously, how am I supposed to respond after a moment like the one we just shared? We’re on the brink of everything changing, but we’re not able to jump quite yet.
He and I stare at each other for one long moment, and then he groans and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I have to go. Can we talk later? About…everything?”
I smile. “Yes.”
You know what’s strange about being a normal person and not living inside a Netflix movie? After significant moments, you don’t get a scene jump. After your best friend whom you’ve been secretly pining after for years and years maybe-sort-of-did-he? admits to liking you too, you don’t get to flash forward.
Nope. My life goes on, painfully slow and full of uncertainty. I get to live in the grey for three whole days. You’d think with how often I wear grey, I’d like living in it, but NO! I don’t. I want to take everything grey I own and burn it in a pile in the parking lot. I’ll do some sort of ritual dance around it to cleanse myself of its hold on my life. I’ll lift signs and chant, “WHAT DO WE WANT? NO MORE GREY!”
So anyway, Tuesday was rough. After Nathan left for practice, I had to go teach my new toddler class with a banged-up knee and elbows that felt like someone was scraping shards of glass over them every time they bent. And guess what? You bend a lot in ballet. It’s practically all we do. Bend all over the place.