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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, you 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.”
When I see Nate hesitate, I roll my eyes. “Well, I’m going to ask him.”
I walk away before Nate can argue. He doesn’t like to ask for directions. Just another one of his annoying habits when he’s lost.
The man is very nice, but his accent is so thick that I can barely understand him. It takes a while for him to figure out where I want to go since I pronounce the name of the village different from him. But we finally work it out, and he gives me directions accompanied by a series of gestures and hand motions.
I thank him profusely before I return to Nate. The man grins and waves at Nate before he moves on with his sheep.
“Was he laughing at me?” Nate asks.
“No. I don’t think so. I couldn’t understand him very well, but I think he said that my lad didn’t look very happy.”
“Your lad?”
“He might not have said that. He was hard to understand. But he was very nice, so you don’t need to be sneering in his direction.”
It looks to me like Nate is trying to suppress his bad mood, and his voice is less curt as he asks, “So what did he say about getting back?”
“He said we can keep going this way and we’ll run into a road. Then we turn left, and it will lead directly into the village.”
“Okay. Good. Let’s go.”
We walk for a long time before we finally reach the road. Nate stops and looks at it. Then he looks left and right. He sighs. “This is the road we took into town yesterday. We went way out of our way.”
“Oh, who cares, as long as we get back?” I take his arm to get him to walk.
We’ve been walking for a few minutes when a car speeds past, giving us a honk as it goes on.
Nate scowls.
“He was just being friendly,” I say.
“He was probably honking because you’re hardly wearing a top.”
I gasp and look down at myself again. Since I’ve been sweating some, the fabric is more transparent than before, and the lace of my bra is clearly visible. “You’re the one who told me to take my shirt off.”
“That’s because I thought I’d be the only one to see you like that.”
I peer up at him, trying to pinpoint what’s provoking his tone. It’s almost like he’s being possessive, like he doesn’t want anyone else to see my boobs.
Irrationally, I kind of like this idea.
“Well, it’s too hot to put the shirt back on,” I say at last. I kind of want to put it back on, but it would feel like a defeat after Nate’s grumbling. “So you’ll have to deal with it.”
“Did I say it was a problem?”
“Actually, yes you did. You just said that—”
“Okay, fine. Whatever. Let’s just walk.”
“We are walking. You’re the one who keeps snapping my head off. I already said I was sorry about making us go to that lake and getting us lost.”
Nate gives a soft groan. “I never blamed you for that. I just don’t like getting lost.”
“I know you don’t. And, believe me, I don’t like getting lost with you.”
We walk the rest of the way back in silence. By the time we reach the village, I’m about to collapse with exhaustion, and we still have half a mile to go to the cottage. I really need to stop and rest, but I refuse to say so. I just press on, no longer having enough energy to even speak.
When we get to the cottage at last, I limp inside, heading immediately to my room.
I go to the bathroom and then splash water on my face. I’d like to take a shower, but I don’t yet have the energy, so I fall onto my bed, on top of the covers, and try to catch my breath.
I don’t know what Nate’s doing, and I don’t really care. He’s been a jerk all afternoon.
I haven’t yet recovered enough when Nate taps on my door. It’s not closed all the way, so when I don’t answer, he pushes it open.
“Are you okay?” he asks after taking a quick assessment of my condition.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I’m tired.”
“You should have told me you needed to rest.”
“I didn’t need to rest. I needed to get back.”
He’s frowning as he walks into the room, closer to the bed. “You look terrible.”
I scowl at him. “Same to you.”
He looks hot and tired too, although he’s obviously not as winded and exhausted as I am. His face is flushed, and he’s been sweating and his hair is doing some crazy flips and kinks.
He still looks adorable. I wish the same could be said of me.
He groans and lowers himself to lie beside me on the bed. I stare up at the ceiling while he turns his head to look at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says at last.
“For what?” If he says he’s sorry for getting us lost, I’m just going to have to give him a shove.
“For acting like an ass.”
I turn my head to look at him now too, and our faces are only inches apart. “Are you?”
“Am I an ass?”
I give a breathless huff of amusement. “Are you sorry?”
“I am. I know I was a jerk. I knew it while I was acting that way. I tried to stop myself, but I guess I didn’t try hard enough.”
I smile at him, feeling better about the world in general.
He smiles back. “I’m sorry it turned out to be a crappy day.”
“I didn’t think it was a crappy day until the last hour or so. I had a good time with the rest of it.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” After a minute, he adds. “Me too.”
We lie in silence for a minute, and I feel the ridiculous impulse to hold his hand. Fortunately, I manage to resist the urge.
After a while, Nate murmurs, “I want you to have a good time on this trip.”
“I am having a good time.”
“I’ll try not to mess it up for you again.”
“You didn’t mess it up. I mean, I don’t want you to get all mean and cranky again, but it didn’t mess up the whole trip. I don’t have to be happy every minute for it to be a really good trip.”
Nate shoots me a quick look, and I can’t figure out what he’s thinking. “Where did those words of wisdom come from?” he asks at last.
I don’t know how he always seems to know when I’m paraphrasing something from Rochester, but he does. “I might have read them in a note from a friend this morning.”
Nate groans. “Don’t tell me.”
“Well, you’re the one who asked.”
“He’s full of all kinds of crap, isn’t he?”
“It’s not crap,” I say, feeling defensive. I haven’t thought much about Rochester today at all, but that doesn’t mean I want Nate to insult him. “He’s really... I don’t know... wise.”
Nate groans again.
“Don’t act like that,” I tell him. “He’s really kind and thoughtful, and he has a beautiful way of thinking.”
“A beautiful way of thinking?”
I ignore the sarcasm. “He does. He’s written the most beautiful things to me.”
“Well, you need more than beautiful words for a relationship to work.”
“I know that. But he really seems to get me. I don’t think it’s all talk.”
“It seems like a lot of empty romantic babble to me.”
“That’s not what it is. It’s not empty.”
“How do you know? You don’t even know the man behind the words.”
“I do know him. I really think I know him. You don’t understand.”
“I guess not.” Nate has been looking at me as we talk, but now he stares up at the ceiling. “But love is more than words, you know.”
“I know it’s more than words. But words are nice sometimes, you know.”
“Sure they are. If they’re proven by actions. You don’t need a guy who just talks pretty to you and conjures up romantic notions. You need a guy who believes that you’re the most important thing in his world. You need a guy who is always there when you need him. You need a guy who’s willing to rearrange his entire life for you.”
I stare at Nate in breathless astonishment. I’ve never heard anything like this from him before. He’s usually so dry and clever. Almost never earnest like this.
And I like it. I like it a lot. It makes me feel full and rich and confused and tangled up inside.
He darts a quick look over to me, evidently feeling a little self-conscious at his outburst. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“Don’t be sorry,” I say. “The truth is, I don’t think any guy will ever be that way with me.” I sigh as I admit the truth to myself. “No one but you.”
I reach over to pick up his hand and hold it the way I wanted to earlier.
He tightens his hand around mine, and he suddenly feels full of tension, like something is about to release inside him.
I wonder what it is, and then I’m all breathless and excited, waiting to find out, even though there’s no reason for me to think that something important is going to happen.
But then I remember that this is Nate. Nate. The boy I used to seesaw with for hours as kids. The boy who helped me with my math homework year after year, all the way up until college algebra. The boy who has always been the bedrock of my life.
Him and my mother.
I’ve lost my mother, and it was almost too much to take. There’s no way I can lose Nate too by messing things up between us.
I’m suddenly terrified—terrified by all the horrible possibilities—and I scramble out of the bed. “I need to take a shower,” I say, trying to sound casual when Nate sits up, looking astonished and concerned. “I’m sure I stink.”
I’m in the bathroom and shutting the door when Nate replies in a voice that sounds almost resigned, “You don’t stink.”