Page 79 of Awestruck at Dusk
Thankfully, the wrist cast was finally coming out on Friday. It was an eventful day, May 14th. It was the anniversary of my mother’s death, my wrist cast was coming off, and don’t forget … It’s William’s birthday too.
“Wait here,” Nolan said, laughing. He stepped away and aimed at Emily, who took a pen out of her bag and handed it over to him with a smile. Nolan came back and gave it to me. “Scratch away.”
“Oh, my God. Thank you!” I pushed the pen in between the cast and my itching skin and scratched away as Nolan suggested. “Ohhh, yes.”
Nolan laughed again. “You might want to keep it down, Bee. That sounds weird.”
I joined him with a chuckle and a slight grimace. “Sorry.” My smile disintegrated promptly as I told him, “That’s basically what I heard that day—across the wall. But louder. So you tell me.” I extended the pen toward Nolan.
He squinted at me, obviously agreeing with my hypothesis. “Nah, you can keep that,” he said, waving a carefree hand at me. “You should probably call Nathan and scratch your arm with that pen. You’ll see how fast he hops on a plane and flies back to New York.”
“Nolan!” I shoved him.
“I’m just saying!” He eased out of a laugh and asked, “So, has Nathan been like super busy all the time or what?”
“He has. I feel like his job is getting crazier by the minute. I’m happy he got that big promotion, and I thought he would delegate more of the work. But that hasn’t been the case.”
“Well, Nathan’s a grown-up lawyer—man-person, so what did you expect? That’s what you get for dating an old dude like him.”
“Hey! He’s only twenty-eight, and I’d like to see you tell Nathan that to his face.” I raised a brow at him. Nolan was in a very playful mood. Or maybe he was just trying to cheer me up, and it was definitely working.
“Yeah, I’d rather not.” He let out a low, breathy laugh. “Just don’t let that grown-up, serious vibe get to you. Don’t forget you’re twenty-one. The guy’s almost thirty. I mean unless that’s what you want.” Nolan pushed one of his brown curls off his forehead. They were longer now.
“I’ve told Emily more than a few times how I feel like you’re just gonna step into school one day with a big ring on your finger.”
“Oh, no. No, no. No.” My eyes widened in panic. Nolan noticed my alarmed reaction.
“See what I mean? I sayring, and you get all high-pitched and panicky.”
“No, I don’t!” I almost screeched.
“I swear to God … the guy’s not gonna make it to the end of this year without proposing,” Nolan said, crossing his arms at his chest, his fingers drumming on his bicep as he squinted at me, studying me.
“Nolan, you need to stop, or I’m going to need a sleeping pill tonight.” I released a nervous, broken chuckle.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t get over that conversation we had at your party. How your eyes glazed with—something when you talked about”—he looked over both of his shoulders—“William. About having feelings for him. So I’m just having a hard time believing they’ve all gone away. And I know you’re probably hurt after you heard him with Zara. You can’t deny it.”
Nolan was now helping me scratch a different kind of itch, basically saying,hey, I found this key.Why don’t you open that chest and see what happens?
“And hey, it’s okay not to know what you want at our age. As I said before, you’re twenty-one. And for some reason, I get this vibe that you feel like you need to have all your shit figured out, but you don’t. So I’m just wondering if Nathan pops the question in the next few months, or say a year if we exaggerate, would you be ready for something like that?”
Not in the very least. I felt like I had a million things I wanted to do, to experience, and it’s not that I felt like Nathan was stopping me from doing things, but I wasn’t sure if he would be down for the kind of adventure my soul was demanding of me. And I didn’t even know if I would be able to get away with any of the numerous things that went through my mind—the possibilities. But I had to at least try.
I knew I wanted to travel around after graduation, to grab my camera and go places. And again, I didn’t even know if such a thing would be possible with my father being like he was, but what if he agreed one day?
Nathan couldn’t just drop everything and join me. And I wouldn’t mind going alone on a trip now and then. But how would that work with Nathan? Relationship-wise. I’d never been in a long-distance relationship, and I didn’t know if that’s something that would work for us.
That is why listening to Nolan speculate about rings and proposals was a level five on the anxiety-inducing scale.
“You told me how he keeps making marriage jokes and shit like that,” Nolan continued. “You know he’s measuring you up, right? Like he wants to see if you laugh or if you freak out on him.”
“Well, I usually laugh, but it’s mostly out of nerves, so I don’t know what he might be picking up from that.”
“Shit, Bee,” Nolan said, shaking his head a few times. “And by the look on yourhow do I get off this rideface, something tells me you’re not ready for any of that. And I swear to God I’m not trying to mess with your mind or something. I know Nathan wouldn’t think twice to pull any of that Krav Maga shit on me because of this, but I just think you’re a little too hard on yourself sometimes.”
That’s what Juan Pablo told me the last time I saw him, how I needed to stop being too hard on myself. And I didn’t realize what he meant by that at the time. I mean, I understand the meaning of that phrase, but I didn’t know in what context or in which cases it applied to me.
I kept battling the idea of Juan Pablo being full of shit or not, but damn, he always hit the spot with most of the things he said. I still wished I could bump into him so I could kick his ass for what he did to Nina. It’s so unfair that she had to go through all that nonsense while dating him.
