Page 25 of Winter at Wishington Bay
I placed the now full bowls on the counter in front of the breakfast bar stools and motioned for him to take a place as I grabbed the fresh bread I’d seen sat in a bag from the local bakery on the side.
‘I do,’ I said, placing a spoon beside his bowl as he busied himself tearing off a couple of hunks of bread and placing them on the side plates I’d added.
‘’Scuse fingers.’
‘No problem.’
‘Don’t you?’ I asked, referring back to his question. ‘I mean, new starts and all that?’
‘You were right. This is delicious.’
‘I know. And stop changing the subject.’
He gave the briefest of grins round his mouthful before swallowing.
‘You caught that, huh?’
‘Yes. So spill.’
‘Probably not the best thing to say to a man with a full bowl of bright orange soup in front of him.’
‘Oh, you seem the together type. I bet you’ve never dropped anything on an expensive tie in your life.’
He continued eating but gave a small shake of his head.
‘See? Together.’
‘Or boring. Depending on how you want to look at it.’
‘What’s boring about coordination?’
He shrugged. ‘Everything. Nothing. I don’t know. Just a bit… dull, I guess. And you’re this vibrant, sparky woman that I’m expecting to be entertained by having lunch with possibly the most straight-laced man you ever met.’
Ha! If only he knew. Next to some of the men I’d met, Nate was positively a party animal. But I couldn’t really explain that, without explaining other things I wasn’t ready to. Instead I fixed him with a look for a moment, then reached across and tore off another piece of the soft, white bread. ‘Let me know when you’re done with that pity party over there and we can get on with having an interesting conversation.’
He drew up a little beside me. ‘Pity party?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded, my mouth full of bread.
‘I am not having a pity party!’ He actually sounded quite affronted.
‘Oh, of course you—’ As I looked up, I saw it. I saw the look in his eyes. And I realised he wasn’t at all. He believed it. Believed that he was boring and had nothing of value to offer anyone in conversation. My thoughts went back to what he’d said on the walk home, about his wife being the chatty one, his job being fairly solitary and obviously quite a sober one. And then, of course, there was the fact that she’d left him. Is that the impression he had of himself? That she’d moved on because he was boring? I hardly knew him and yes, he was serious but I’d seen flashes of something else too. And I’d heard that laugh – a laugh that still felt unfamiliar. As though it had escaped in a moment when his concentration had drifted for a second. But then it got reined in and put back where it belonged. I could see there was far more to Nate McKinley than he was currently showing. And far more than he believed there was.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, wanting the tension now obvious in his shoulders to loosen as it had earlier.
‘It’s fine.’
Clearly it wasn’t.
‘No, it isn’t. I was… mistaken. And I’m trying to apologise. Sometimes people say things for attention. I should have known you’re not the type to do that.’
Nate continued eating. ‘You hardly know me. Easy mistake to make.’
‘I’d like to change that. I mean about knowing you. If you’d let me.’ He slid his glance to me briefly. ‘You know, just so I don’t mess up again and we’re not left sitting here so rigid that I think I might actually snap. Kind of like we are now.’
He gave a brief nod of agreement as he finished his soup. I reached over to the pan and poured a little more out into his bowl.
‘I’m fine.’
