He must see what I’m thinking because he immediately reassures me. “I am having a good time.” He gives me a smile and raised eyebrows. “I get to feel all strong and manly when you cry on my shoulder.”
I laugh. He can always make me laugh. “You are strong and manly,” I murmur, leaning over to kiss him on the jaw. “And very sweet.”
“That doesn’t sound very manly.”
“Well, I think it’s very manly.” I take the book out of his hand, and I wrap his arm around me, curling up at his side. “If a man doesn’t have a little sweetness in him, then I don’t want anything to do with him.”
He chuckles, adjusting so he’s slouching a little on the couch, getting more comfortable. “All right then. Strong and manly and sweet it is.”
I’m smiling now, and I keep smiling as I relax against him, warm and safe and comforted, in the heat of the fireplace, surrounded by his arm.
I guess I’m probably still smiling as I fall asleep, but that’s not something I know for sure.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT time it is when I wake up, but I slowly realize I’m sleeping all over Nate.
Like all over him.
My head is in his lap, and I’m kind of clutching at his side. After a minute, I discover he’s trying to get me off him.
“Sorry,” I mumble, trying to wake up. “Did I fall sleep?”
Nate doesn’t give this ridiculous question the response it deserves. Instead, he says, “Sorry to wake you. I need to get up.”
“Okay.” I’m trying to help get myself off him, but I’m not awake enough to have much coordination. As I’m trying to sit up and he’s trying to stand up, I end up elbowing him.
I’m not actually sure where I hit him since we’re both moving at the same time, but he releases a muffled grunt—the kind he makes when something really hurts.
“Sorry.” I cringe as I finally get myself up. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he mutters, sounding strangely breathless. He doesn’t look back at me. Just walks a little stiffly across the room and to the hall that leads to his bedroom.
I sit for a minute, trying to orient myself. Then I check the time to see that it’s almost one in the morning. I must have been sleeping on him for a couple of hours. No wonder he needed to get up. He should have woken me a long time ago.
Maybe he fell asleep too. I sure hope so. I hate the idea of him sitting there trapped while I’m sleeping all over him.
Then I start to worry about how he acted just now. It’s not like him at all to leave so abruptly. Concerned, I get up and walk to his bedroom door. It’s shut, and for some reason the closed door looks forbidding, as if I’m not welcome.
But I tap on the door anyway.
“What?” His voice sounds muffled, faintly impatient.
“Are you okay?” I call through the door.
“Of course I’m okay.”
“You don’t sound okay.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He doesn’t sound at all like his normal self.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad at you.”
“Then can I come in?”
“No!”
I pause, startled by the curtness of the response. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” His voice is softer now, slightly rough. “Sorry if I was rude.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I had a leg cramp and needed to move. Now I’m just tired and want to go to bed. You should go to bed too.”
“Okay.”
I don’t leave immediately though. I stand at the door and think through what just happened, making sure I hadn’t unintentionally offended him or hurt him. He sounded more normal just now, but before he sounded very... strange.
I can’t think of anything I might have done.
I’m tempted to give him an equally curt response, which is what I’d normally do. But I want this trip to be perfect. I don’t want to get into an argument. Plus I’m really worried about him. Something is wrong.
“Are you still standing at the door?” he asks from inside the room.
“No,” I lie.
“Go to bed, Jane. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Okay.”
I do go to bed since I’m exhausted and kind of fuzzy, but I’m still thinking about Nate as I finally go to sleep.
Three
I INTEND TO GET UP early the next day so I can take an early morning walk, but I don’t wake up until almost nine.
I lie in bed for a few minutes, stretching under the covers and enjoying the comfort of the bed and the excitement of actually being here in England.
Then I start wondering about Nate. He’s probably awake by now. Hopefully, whatever was bothering him last night has passed.
I finally remember Rochester. I didn’t check my messages before bed, and I even forgot to reply to the brief one he sent me. Maybe he’s had time to write another note by now.
I reach onto the nightstand for my phone and pull up my email. I wait for what seems like forever for the new emails to load. The reception out here is kind of spotty.
Finally, however, I see that I’ve gotten a new message from Rochester, so I pull it up, wondering why I’m not feeling quite as excited as I normally do.
He’s sent me a very nice note—a really long, rich, thoughtful one. He says he’s barely had time to sit down for the past twenty-four hours, but he’s been thinking about me the whole time. He says he hopes I’m having a great time on my trip, although he knows it might be emotional for me because of my memories of my mother. He says I have a habit of being too hard on myself, expecting too much out of myself, and he hopes that I’ll let myself be sad if I feel like it—that it won’t necessarily ruin my time here. He says being happy all the time isn’t necessarily the way to have the best trip.
He’s so right. I have no idea how he knows me so well, but he does. I think about his note for a long time before I send the reply.
I tell him about the cottage and about our trip here yesterday. I tell him he’s exactly right about how I’m feeling. I read my message over quickly after I write it and wonder for a minute if there’s too much about Nate in it. Then I decide it doesn’t matter.
If I’m going to be in a relationship with Rochester, he’s going to have to accept that Nate will always be part of my life.
I send the message on, pleased when I check the timestamp on his note and see that he just sent it an hour ago. I haven’t made him wait too long. He won’t think I’m ignoring him, even though I forgot to reply to his first message last night.
I’m feeling relaxed and pleased with the world in general as I leave my room in search of coffee.
As I expect, Nate is already up. He’s wearing jeans and a retro Batman T-shirt, and he’s sitting in a lounge chair in the garden with a cup of coffee and his tablet.
I pour myself a cup from the pot he’s brewed, and I go out to join him.
The clouds from yesterday have cleared, and it’s a cool and sunny morning. I’m charmed by the sight of the early flowers blooming in the garden and all the green that surrounds us, so I’m smiling as I sit in the chair next to him.
“It’s beautiful out here,” I say.
“It’s not bad.” High praise from Nate.
“This coffee is really strong,” I add after I take a sip.
He always makes coffee too strong, and I always comment on it. It’s one of our things.
He takes another swallow and frowns. “Tastes about right to me.”
“It would.”
“How did you sleep?”
I glance over and see that he’s peering at me closely, and I wonder if he thinks I stayed up all night crying or something. “Good,” I tell him, speaking only the truth. “I feel great this morning.”
“Good.”
We sit in companionable silence for a few minutes. He checks something on his tablet, and he must have an interesting email since he’s absorbed in
reading it for a minute. But then he relaxes and puts the tablet down on the little table between the chairs.
I’m glad. I’d hate for him to be distracted by work on our vacation.
When I look over, he smiles at me. “What do you want to do today?”
“I don’t know. What did you have planned?”
“I don’t have anything planned until we take the train up north. I looked into all the Jane Austen sites in the area, so I know where they are. We can do them whenever you want to. And one day we’ll have to go to Bath, but that will be a long day, so we could wait a day or two before we do that so we’re rested up.”
“Yeah. That sounds great. Let’s do Bath the day after tomorrow.”
“We have plenty of time to do everything, so we can take it easy today if you want. We can go out and see one site this afternoon and then have dinner, unless you want to do more.”
“No, that sounds perfect. Maybe we can do a walk this morning. Apparently, there are several good ones in the area.”
“Yeah.” He puts down his coffee cup as he stands up. “I picked up a brochure about that. Hold on.”
Sure enough, he returns with a three-fold brochure about the Hampshire walks. There’s even a map on the back with them traced out. I scoot my chair over so we can study it together, and we find one that looks good—not too strenuous—that starts on the other side of the village.
When this is decided, I pick up our coffee cups and go into the kitchen to refill them. When I return, Nate is still studying the map. His familiar face is focused and intent, like he’s trying to memorize the route.
As I sit down, I’m overwhelmed with a wave of fondness for him. He put a lot of work into planning this trip. It isn’t just the money he spent. Even now he’s working hard to make sure everything goes smoothly. And he’s doing it all for me.
I don’t know anyone in the world who has a better friend than I have.
He glances up and then looks again, evidently noticing something in my expression. “What?” he demands.
“What, what?” I try to look innocent but don’t do a very good job.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you want to pat my head or something.”
I giggle. “I don’t want to pat your head.”
“Good. Because I’m not going to let you.”
“I bet you would.”
“Would what?”
“Let me pat your head. If I ask nicely, I bet you’d let me.”
His gives me a look of exaggerated malevolence. “I definitely would not.”
“Now I kind of want to do it.”
“Well, you’re shit out of luck.”
I’m trying to suppress my giggles as I reach over toward his head. “Please? I really want to do it now.”
“Don’t even think about it.” He ducks away from my hand and puts down his coffee cup.
I put mine down too since I’m close to spilling it. I reach over toward him again, and this time I almost reach his head, but he jumps to his feet before I can make it.
Still laughing, I get up and come after him. I corner him against the cottage wall, and we have a silly, playful tussle as I fight to reach his head in order to pat it. He grabs hold of both my wrists to keep my hands from reaching their target, and both of us are laughing as I finally give up.
“You’re no fun,” I say breathlessly, making a face at him.
“Sometimes you have to learn to live with disappointment.” Despite his words, his blue eyes are soft and warm and laughing as they rest on my face.
I love the way he’s looking at me now. No one else looks at me that way, and I don’t really want Nate to look at anyone else with that particular expression. It feels like it’s mine.
To hide my random thoughts, I stick out my tongue at him.
He chuckles again and pulls me into a soft hug.
I hug him back. I love to hug him. I always have. And it feels a little different this morning, like he’s holding me more possessively, like it means even more.
I’m almost dizzy with how deeply I’m feeling toward him, how much I want him to hold me like this, how much I want him to touch me.
I hope it’s not inappropriate. Maybe it’s just normal, natural, given how needy I’ve been since my mother died and how incredibly sweet Nate has been.
I don’t want to start feeling things that are inappropriate and somehow mess things up between us. We’ve been together for twenty years now. If something came between us, it would break me.
It would break me.
The thought upsets me so much that I pull away, keeping my eyes down so he doesn’t see anything unusual in my expression.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his laughter fading immediately.
“Nothing.” I have to make sure he doesn’t see what I’ve been thinking. He’s so observant that it’s hard to hide anything from him. Then I get a brainstorm.
While he’s distracted, I reach up and give him a firm pat on the head. “There,” I say. “That’s what I wanted to do.”
He lets out a roar and comes after me, thinking I tricked him on purpose. I flee into the house and get to my room just in time to shut the door on him. I laughingly tell him that I’ve won and that now I need to take a shower.
He grumbles audibly but doesn’t object.
I feel better as I pick out my clothes for the day. A random flicker of inappropriate feelings isn’t the end of the world, as long as Nate doesn’t find out.
He’ll feel awkward. And then he’ll feel guilty. And then he’ll be stiff and reserved. Everything will change. Nothing will be like it’s always been between us.
I can never let him find out.
WE SET OUT ON OUR WALK an hour later, stopping first in the village to get some lunch to bring with us. Nate puts the lunch and the map and our phones and our water bottles in his backpack, and both of us are pleased with the prospect of the walk as we begin.
It’s a very good walk. We follow a path over a hill and by a lake and then through scenic pastures. We see sheep and farmhouses and lovely stone walls and loads of wildflowers. We stop to eat a picnic lunch, leaning against a big tree, and then we start back home.
That’s when I see a lake in the distance that I want to explore.
It’s not on the map, but it’s quite clearly visible, so neither one of us thinks it will be a problem. The lake is farther away than we originally believed, but it’s gorgeous, and we rest for a while at its shore, taking pictures and chatting amiably.
It’s the return trip when we run into problems. There isn’t a landmark to get us back to where we started from. It’s just acres and acres of pastures and farms, all of which look the same. Nate is sure we’re headed in the right direction, but we walk for an hour and still don’t recognize anything.
That’s when I start to worry.
I try to pull up GPS on my phone, but we’re too far out in the country to get reception. So we keep walking.
I don’t mind being lost—not really—but Nate always gets crabby. He hates being lost more than anything. Once, in college, we were looking for a little restaurant his friend had told him about, and we spent an hour downtown trying to find it. He finally got so fed up that he just drove home. I was mad at him—not for getting lost but for acting that way—so I made him stop to get me a hamburger first. He refused to eat anything.
So that’s what I’m really worried about. I don’t want Nate to get angry or upset since I’m still concerned about this trip being good for him too. I can see the frustration in his face as he looks at the map and then at the pastures and hedgerows around us.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I shouldn’t have taken us off the path to go to that lake.”
“It’s not your fault.”
He’s not angry with me. He’s angry with himself. He thinks he should be able to find our way back, and he hates that he’s not able to do it.
“Well, yo
u said we should be heading east, so let’s just keep walking that way.” The sun is still out, so at least we’re able to tell directions. “We’ll eventually run into something.”
“But we might have already walked past the village,” he grumbles, looking at the map again. “Just give me a minute.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
He’ll feel better if he feels like he has an idea about where we should go, even though I’m quite sure that—no matter how much we think about it—any way we set out on will be mostly a guessing game.
I’m not about to complain since getting lost is basically my fault, but I’m actually getting really tired. I’m not in bad shape, but I’m also not any sort of athlete, and we’ve been walking for hours. The sun is beating down on us now, and I wish I hadn’t put on long sleeves this morning.
After a few minutes, he says, “Let’s go this way.”
“Okay.” I try to smile as I push up the sleeves to my shirt for the hundredth time.
“Just take the shirt off,” he says.
“What?”
“You have something under it, don’t you?”
“Just a thin tank top.”
“Well, who cares? If you’re hot, take it off instead of messing with your sleeves all the time.”
I glare at him since there’s no reason to be so rude to me. I’ve thought about taking the shirt off—it’s a cotton button-up in pink-and-green plaid—but the tank top is not really the kind of thing I use as outerwear.
But sweat is starting to run down between my breasts and my shoulder blades, and who knows how much longer we’ll be walking. So I unbutton the shirt and slide it off, feeling ridiculously self-conscious about the way the thin cotton of the tank clings to my breasts and rides up on my belly.
I pull it down to cover the strip of skin above my jeans and reach over to unzip Nate’s backpack and stuff the shirt in.
We walk for twenty minutes until I see an old man walking across the grass with a huge flock of sheep.
“Why don’t we ask him?” I suggest. “He probably knows how to get back to the village.”
Just Friends: Two Friends-to-Lovers Stories Page 10