Page 37 of Chasing After You
Just like we were the last time.
NESSA
I’m still dripping water when I get back to our cabin, sneaking in as quietly as I can.
My efforts are for naught, it turns out.
“Where’ve you been at this hour?” Vale’s face appears, lit up in the glow of his cell phone. He’s spread out on the sofa just inside the door, aimlessly scrolling from the looks of things.
“Out.”
He shoots me a look, letting me know just how obnoxious he finds it when I resort to acting like I’m fourteen and he’s my nosy big brother still trying to boss me around. “It’s not like I’m going to go tell on you,” he grumbles, pushing himself up into a semi-seated position. “It’s also not like I can’t guess for myself where you’ve been. Or more specifically, who you were with.” He reaches for the oversized chair near him and yanks a blanket from it, tossing it at me. “I swear I’m having flashbacks or something.”
I grin. “I forgot you were the one who caught me sneaking in that night too.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re not a teenager anymore. You’re an adult now. I didn’tcatchyou doing anything because you weren’t sneaking. You were just being quiet in a house full of sleeping people.”
“If I’m not fourteen, why do I feel like you were waiting up for me?” I counter, draping the blanket over my head and wrapping it around me like a cloak. Now that I’m standing inside the air conditioning, I’m getting chilly.
“Because you’re paranoid,” he mutters dryly. “I’m up because Anna woke me when she came wandering in after your late-night chick fest in the kitchen and I got just enough of a nap in before that to take the edge off and leave me feeling wide awake. So, I came out here, where I could occupy myself until I got sleepy again without bothering her.” He wags his finger up and down my soaked and blanketed situation. “Being around for this was just a bonus.” He smirks. “You know, right time, right place. That sort of thing.”
“You would put that kind of a spin on it.”
He nods, chuckling. “I would.” He points to the bench across from the coffee table. “Now go sit. Tell me what you’ve been up to. Make it all worth it.”
I sigh, but I do as requested and traipse my way over to the only piece of furniture in the room able to withstand my level of wetness without sustaining water damage, and plop down. “I really just went to get some air.”
He arches a skeptical brow. “But then?”
“But then, Matti showed up.”
“Of course, he did.” He almost laughs out loud, stifling it at the last minute to keep from waking the others. “Then what happened?”
I shrug. “We talked.”
“Uh-huh.” He’s not buying it. He doesn’t even have to say the words. They were more than clear in that ‘uh-huh’.
“Okay, you want it all? I’ll let you have it all.” I take a deep breath, preparing to rattle it all off before I have time to think about any of it. I can’t think about it yet. Even walking home, I spent the whole time forcing myself to remember lyrics to songs I haven’t heard in a while, just to keep my mind from wandering back to everything that transpired between Matti and me.
“When he showed up out of nowhere, I thought maybe it was a sign. Kismet, if you will. Maybe I don’t entirely believe he wound up here on a vacation with the band by coincidence, but I don’t believe the man has taken to stalking me, so what were the odds, we’d both end up outside, trying to clear our minds, not once, but twice in the same day?”
“We’re talking about you and Matti?” Vale half frowns. “Probably fairly good. That’s pretty much all you two have ever done when you needed to think. Grab sneakers and go. Outside. To clear your minds. Usually together. Like you share the same brain or some shit.”
“Whatever.” I brush off his efforts to poke holes in my signs from the universe. Clearly, some greater force is at play here. And even Vale will see that by the time I get to the end of my story. “The point is, I didn’t want to just keep guessing if I was seeing signs or if it was real. If this truly is some cosmically arranged second chance for us.”
Now he’s frowning for real. “You hear yourself too, right?”
“Do you want to hear my story or not?”
The threat is enough for him lay off the mockery a bit. “My apologies. Please,docontinue.”
“So, there we were.”
“That much has been established.”
I glare at him before I go on, “When I remembered the firepits in the little park area at the center of the pastures.”
“Ah,” he nods, slowly grinning, “I’m starting to see where this is going.”
