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AS NATE MOVED THE COUCH back into position, carefully arranging it so it was in the exact same spot it had been before, I planted my hands on my hips and surveyed the living room.
“It looks so much better in here now,” I remarked as I dusted some of the dirt off my knees. I had been working all day, and the tiredness was starting to get to me. I was exhausted, but seeing the amount of change we had managed to get done in this place made all the difference. It was worth it. I knew Mom would agree when she saw it, though it would take her a hot minute to wrap her head around letting anyone do anything for her. She was still dealing with the reality of Nate coming here to help out, and I was sure she was nervous about having him around the house when she hadn’t had a chance to cook a three-course dinner and scrub the baseboards with a toothbrush or whatever it was she felt like she needed to get done.
Nate seemed to be relaxing into all of this a little too. Listening to music together had filled any awkward silences we might have shared, and he asked about all the pictures lining the hallway. Bringing up the memories of all the places I had been with my mother to make them was a lot of fun, especially remembering our visit to Italy and all the pizza we had eaten like it was the best thing on the planet.
Something I’d noticed, though, was the lack of pictures of her on the wall. I mean, I knew Mom must have had them somewhere in the house, must have been hanging on to them, but she had put them all away. Maybe when she’d found out I was coming? Or maybe she just didn’t want to have to see them in general, the memories they stirred up too intense for her to handle. I knew how she felt. Sometimes, when I even touched on the deep well of pain that waited for me there, the ripples it sent through my body were more than I could take. More than I could handle.
I was trying my best not to let sadness get the better of me that day. In some ways, it felt good to clean this place out from top to bottom, as though I was helping to clear out some of the memories that still clung to the corners, in the dust and the cobwebs. I wanted it to be perfect by the time I left, and I needed to accept Mom couldn’t be the same level of houseproud she always had been. She had to do what she could to keep her immediate living space clean, but that didn’t mean she was always able to keep things spotless the way she used to.
Nate had mentioned some sort of back pain she’d been having before the fall, another thing I’d known nothing about. I had been completely oblivious to so much of her life. A few times when we were travelling I noticed her slowing down slightly, and she had always brushed it off and ignored any questions I had about it. How much had she been struggling, suffering, and I had known nothing about it? I wished I could go back in time and do more to help, but the best I could manage was wiping away all these years of dust and dirt and praying it was enough to help her.
I stretched my arms above my head and my stomach grumbled. I hadn’t had much to eat that day, and I needed to get something in me if I was going to be able to carry on with all of this. I didn’t want to run out of energy to take care of everything that needed doing, and I refused to allow myself to turn this into some weight-loss mission. I had a bad habit of skipping meals when I was distracted, one I was doing my best to get the better of.
“Hungry?” Nate asked, lifting his head and looking over at me. I nodded.
“Yeah, a little,” I replied. “You think we’ve done enough for today? I need a break.”
“Yeah, you’ve done well,” he replied, and I felt a little smile spread up the corners of my lips. I liked it when he spoke to me like that. When he seemed to value what I was doing, even if I was having a hard time doing the same thing.
“It’s looking a lot better in here now, right?” I remarked as I glanced around the room. He nodded.
“I really think your mom’s going to be pleased when she sees how well you’ve done with the place,” he replied. “But you should take some rest. Don’t want to burn yourself out.”
“Is that your official medical opinion?” I asked him, mostly joking, somewhat not.
“It very much is,” he agreed. “You want to go grab some pizza? There’s a place not far from mine that does pretty good pies.”
“You think I don’t know about Dario’s?” I replied, with mock-shock. “It’s the only place that does pizza worth a damn in the county.”
“You want some?” he asked, not entirely sure which way my answer was trying to guide him. I grinned.
“Yeah, I would love some,” I replied. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten there. I had eaten pizza at some of the best places in the world, but I missed the greasy, heavy pies you could get from Dario’s. The guy who ran it wasn’t even called that, he was Ron, but he thought it sounded more authentic to give himself a “real” Italian name.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Nate remarked.
He led me outside to his car and opened the door for me. His gentlemanly nature caught me a little off-guard. I was still reeling from the way he had talked to me on the phone when he had told me what had happened to my mother, the shock of it more than I could take.
But, as he turned up the radio, and the music filled the car around us, I began to relax. See? Whatever had been there between us had started to fade, and it was replaced by something downright friendly. I was starting to enjoy having him around. I didn’t feel as though he was just judging me the way he had been before.
We pulled up outside of Dario’s, which was already filling with people. It was the only place you could go if you didn’t want to make food for yourself in the evening, and I was sure there were a dozen families in the area who had decided there was no way they were cooking. Sometimes, I forgot this place had real life inside it; it was all too easy to just let it slip my mind, to think of this as the façade of a town more than one that actually existed.
“What do you want?” Nate asked me, as he pulled his car to a halt.
“It’s okay, I can order for myself,” I assured him, but he waved his hand.
“I’ll get it,” he replied. “It’s not like they have a whole lot of options here anyway, is it?”
“Fair point,” I laughed. “I just have the margherita, with some anchovies.”
“Anchovies?” he replied, wrinkling his nose.
“What’s wrong with anchovies?” I demanded defensively. “I know not everyone likes them—”
“No, not everyone likes pepperoni over salami,” he replied. “Everyone hates anchovies. Everyone with any sense in their brain, anyway.”
“You’re just a hater,” I shot back, but I couldn’t help but smile. He seemed to have cooled down a little in the face of everything that had been happening these last few weeks. Arguing about pizza toppings felt oddly comfortable, as though we had been doing this for years and knew just how to bounce off one another.
“Yeah, I am, a proud one,” he replied, shaking his head and staring at me. “Anchovies? Really?”
“You going to get them, or not?”
“I think if I pay for something like that, my credit card company’s going to think I’ve been robbed,” he replied.
“They’re not that bad!”
“They really are,” he replied. “But I already said I’d get dinner for us. So I will.”
He climbed out of the car and shot me a playful glance over his shoulder before he went inside as though he could hardly believe he was doing this. Shit, he was such an asshole, in such a damn appealing way, and I was having a hard time keeping myself sensible around him.
I hummed along to the radio as I waited in the car, wondering if it meant anything that he wanted to buy me dinner. It was just pizza, after the two of us had been working together all day, and I was sure there was nothing more to it than that, but it was hard not to let my thoughts get the better of me. Did I want someone like him to buy me dinner? If I was being honest with myself, the answer was yes, and I wished I could ignore it. I liked the thought of being his date somewhere, even if it was just to Dario’s.
He emerged a few minutes later with both of our pizzas. I had no idea how they got them out so quickly, but sometimes, the less you knew, the better. He climbed back into the car, balancing the boxes on his lap, and I inhaled the deep, savory smell as it flooded the air around us.
“Damn, it smells good,” I groaned, having to restrain myself from leaning over and taking a bite right then and there. I loved the thought of stuffing my face with pizza after we had been working all day, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to invite me back to his to do it or not.
It wasn’t like I could tell him we could roll back around to my mom’s. I didn’t own the place, and she might not want her doctor kicking around and getting in the way of things down there for too long. We had already changed up enough there as it was, and I didn’t know where else we could go. My hotel room wasn’t an option anymore.
He pulled the car out of the parking lot for Dario’s and hit the road at once, as though he had already made his mind up and decided where he was going.
“Where are we headed?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light, as though it wasn’t a big deal.
“My place,” he replied. “It’s close, and I don’t want the pizza to get cold.”
“Sure,” I replied, and I felt a little shiver of excitement run up the back of my neck. Oh, okay. So we were going to be alone together, were we? I couldn’t say I minded much. The thought of having him to myself, just for a little while, was enough to brighten my evening.
We pulled up outside his house a few minutes later. It was a little place on the outskirts of town. It must have been new, because I didn’t remember it being here when I lived in Maple Valley. It was a cute little place, small enough for one person but just big enough not to feel like too much to handle. I carried the pizza out of the car and up to the house, and he unlocked the door and stepped inside
“You must be the only person in the whole town who locks their doors, other than my mother,” I remarked, and he shrugged.
“Force of habit, I guess,” he replied, and he held open the door for me to go inside.
The house was mostly bare inside, as though he hadn’t been here for long enough to fill it out. I loved the way it looked, fresh, as though there was still so much which could be done it. Potential. That was what it held. Not the memories of my mother’s home, but the potential for something new. I liked it. I liked it a lot.
He led me to the living room, where he had a TV hooked up to the wall; it looked pretty new, the plastic still over the screen, and he propped his feet up on the table underneath it and sank back into the couch.
“You want to watch something?” he asked.
“Sure, what do you have?” I asked.
“Not much,” he admitted. “Come on, let’s go through it and see if there’s anything you like the look of.”
We picked through the streaming services he had there until he found a movie we both agreed on—a crappy horror film from when the two of us had been teenagers, the kind we probably would have snuck out of the house to see with our friends.
“That’s perfect,” I told him at once. I loved the idea of kicking back with a brainless movie so I didn’t have to engage too much. My head felt a little fried from everything we had been doing today, and I was looking forward to allowing myself to relax and forget about it for a while. As he turned on the movie, I flipped open my pizza box and took a big-ass bite from the largest slice I could find.
“Damn, I forgot how terrible the acting in this stuff was,” he remarked through a mouthful of food, and I laughed as we watched two twenty-something actors pretend they were nothing more than a fresh-faced sixteen.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cringey,” I agreed. “But they’re doing their best.”
“If this is their best, I don’t want to know how bad it gets,” he remarked, shaking his head. I stifled a giggle. Something about this movie, the way we were talking, the familiar crappy pizza on my lap, it was making me feel like a teenager again.
Just without the awkwardness.
We were sitting not too far apart on the couch, close enough I could have leaned over and put my head on his shoulder if I wanted to—not that I was thinking of doing so, of course. No, we were just a couple of friends who had been working our asses off all day and were taking a little well-earned time to ourselves, and I was glad for it, glad for his company.
And maybe, just maybe, a little more comfortable with him than I should have been.
“I don’t know how anyone could be this stupid,” he sighed as he waved his hand at the screen and shook his head at the girl wandering into the night alone to deal with a weird noise she’d heard.
“You haven’t grown up in a small town, then,” I replied, shaking my head. “Everyone here thinks nothing bad could happen. They’d all be out there like a shot to see what was going on.”
“No wonder you’re all in my office so much,” he joked back. “You think that’s what happened to your mom, and she’s just covering it up so she doesn’t get in trouble?”
“Yeah, probably,” I mused. “She’d be right out there with a shovel ready to take on anyone.”
“You’re all crazy in this town, all of you,” he remarked with amusement. I stole a glance up at him out of the corner of my eye.
“You have no idea,” I replied. “None at all.”
