Almost twenty-four hours passed before we spoke again.
Last night, being the big, bad, tough girl that I was, I sat on the porch as long as I could stand the cold, which had been, maybe, two hours. Nathan looked up from the couch when I sauntered inside, gathered the shorts and t-shirt I had bought to serve as my pajamas, and made my way to the bathroom to change. Though I felt his eyes on me as I crawled into bed, he hadn’t said anything, and neither had I.
He was gone—playing outside in the shed—when I got up, and didn’t come inside until late in the afternoon. From my seat on the couch, I watched as he retrieved a change of clothes.
“Get ready. We’re going into town,” he called over his shoulder as he retreated to the bathroom.
I was still in my seat when he emerged a moment later, dressed in jeans and a black thermal long sleeve shirt that made it irritatingly impossible not to notice how his biceps strained against the fabric. I forced myself not to stare and, when he saw me disobediently sitting on the couch, my gaze met his crisply.
He sighed. “Please?”
I resisted the urge to laugh, and buried my nose in the five-year-old Sports Illustrated magazine I was reading for the third time today. “How did that taste coming out of your mouth?”
“Like shit,” he muttered. “Now, come on. We have to go.”
I licked my fingers and flipped a page. I had no intention of doing as he requested. I was done following him blindly. I wanted answers and explanations. I was a reasonable person.
He shifted and stuffed his hands into his pockets uneasily. A small smirk lifted the corner of my mouth as I watched out of the corner of my eye.
“Did you know Tiger Woods started golfing when he was only two years old?” I flipped to another page. “I had no idea.”
“Kris...”
“He was three when he played his first nine holes. Now that’s impressive.”
With that statement, he had my full attention. I felt the color drain from my face as I looked up. The mysterious phone call had been to Gran? I should have known. That should have been my first assumption. Not some secret girlfriend. Not some other commitment. I felt like an idiot.
Worse, she didn’t answer. What did that mean?
“Is there a way for us to find out what happened to her?” I asked.
“That’s why I want to go into town.”
Oh. Great, now I really felt like an idiot—giving him a hard time when all he wanted to do was check on Gran.
Way to go, Kris.
But how was I supposed to know? He never told me anything.
Have faith in the guy. He’s never led me wrong.
Not yet. Not that I was aware of.
Only after I shut the bathroom door behind me did I realize I was having a conversation with myself in my head. I stared at the optimistic version of myself in the mirror, and told her to shut up. I didn’t want her opinion, and I most definitely didn’t want to hear her defending him.
Besides, crazy people had conversations with themselves, and I preferred to think I wasn’t crazy. She was going to have to keep her thoughts to herself.