Page 64 of Awestruck at Dusk
I scrunched up my nose and ran the palm of my hand up my forehead. His reaction made it clear it was the first time he looked at them.
He tucked his phone back inside his jacket pocket and looked away.
I was more asleep than awake. Perhaps I was already sleeping in my bed, and the nightmares had chosen a different direction this time. But it wasn’t the case.
“Nathan, it’s—nothing. They’re just photographs from Tobias’s premiere. We all got photographed.”
Nathan laughed, still looking out the window. “Lana was right.”
“You take advice fromLananow?”
Yeah, we were going at it in the car. In front of everyone. At first, I thought we could wait it out until we got home and talk about it privately, on the curbside, that is, since he couldn’t come up. But once he said Lana, I lost it. I couldn’t stop seeing that little smirk of hers drawing on her face when she implied sheknewNathan.
The car came to a complete stop, and Aaron and Amena shot out from their seats, opening the SUV doors on both sides. Nathan stepped out on his side, and I followed Nina out.
“I’ll go find Zara,” Nina said, walking inside the building. David escorted her.
Nathan and I moved away from the main entrance. I leaned against the wall and said, “So? What about Lana? Is there anything I’m missing here?”
“I saw you, you know?”
“You saw me—where?”
He arched his neck back with a sad laugh and loosened his tie. “You thought I wouldn’t go looking for you? When you went missing during the party?”
He still needed to clarify what exactly he saw, and I wouldn’t say a word until he did.
“Amena told me that you were okay and that you needed a minute, so I waited. But a minute turned into ten, twenty, thirty minutes. She finally told me where you were, and to my surprise, you weren’t alone.” His eyelids were heavy, and the way he bit his lip, with such disappointment, just destroyed me.
Nathan didn’t deserve for me to be this torn. And seeing him like this made me panic. The thought of losing him was unbearable.
“We were just talking,” I replied. It was the truth. “I was having a hard time about Caleb, and he came looking for me because the show was about to start. It’s not like I sought him out to talk or something.”
“I know you were just talking. I heard you both talking about Jordan. That’s why I went back.” He sighed. “I’ve been trying to be—patientwith you. After William got shot, everything changed. I can see the way you look at him, and I don’t know if it’s guilt. If somehow you feel—I don’t know, responsible for him getting hurt or if you bloody bonded over that, but I’m not an idiot.”
“I—no. I mean, I do feel guilty about what happened, of course. Hedidget shot because of me. But I’m with you it’s not like—”
“His relationship with Zara makes you jealous too,” he threw in. I stared at him because I didn’t know what to say. Here I was, feeling like a sheet of glass. Transparent. And for some stupidly naive reason, I thought Nathan was the exception to being aware of my translucency.
But he wasn’t. I guess everyone could see right through me all the fucking time.
“What? Why do you seem so surprised, Murph?”
“I’m not jealous of Zara,” I lied, too quickly that it almost burned my tongue. I had to. “She’s your sister, and William’s just my neighbor.”
“Neighbor of the year, that is,” Nathan said with a snort, looking at me, analyzing my every gesture. “I’msickof him. Everything revolves around him. Everyone. It’s like none of you can’t help yourselves. I’ve been trying to figure out what this—awestruck-filled admiration means. And I try to tell myself how it’s nothing because I know that you love me. I can feel it. It’s just that I’ve never felt this—insecure before. It’s not quite like me to feel this way, and Ihateit.”
“I do love you, Nathan. You know that. I adore you.”So much. And I kept wishing he didn’t ask if I had feelings for William because I loved Nathan too much to lie to him about it.
My reply seemed to put him at ease. His eyes were still wonky, as Zara noticed before, and that wouldn’t change until he slept the drunkenness off.
His brow furrowed again as he asked, “What about those photographs?”
“I was furious when that happened. You havenoidea. You see me smiling, but I was asking him to let go of me through my teeth. I was so worried about what you were going to think. I discussed it with Caleb afterward.”
It seemed like a million years had passed since then, but it’d only been a few weeks since that happened. When Caleb died, it was like the end of an era. Anything before that felt so far away—distant. Yet the pain was still so achingly raw.
“Lana approached me when I came back alone after I went looking for you. I was at the bar refilling my drink, hoping to stop thinking nonsense. And she asked about you and said how everyone is saying that you and William are secretly dating. And she said she had proof, but I know how she likes playing games like that, so I ignored her.”
