‘It’s Thanksgiving back home,’ I told him in a hushed voice, afraid somehow that if I spoke any louder I’d become hysterical again. ‘No matter how sick Mom was, she always fought through it for Thanksgiving, trying to make everything normal when it wasn’t.’ My mouth trembled as fresh tears spilled down my cheeks. ‘She was my best friend. My soul mate.’
‘Babe.’ I heard the pained empathy in his voice and took comfort from it.
‘She died five years ago today, on Thanksgiving. It’s the first year since her death that I haven’t visited her grave.’ I cried harder. ‘I don’t want her to think I’ve forgotten her.’
He held me tighter as I continued to cry, soaking the already wet fabric of his shirt.
‘Liv …’ Nate squeezed his arm around me. ‘Babe, she wouldn’t think that for a second.’
‘I was with her through it all, Nate.’ I wiped a hand across my snotty nose. ‘I missed out on being a kid, I left school, I did it all to help her fight. And we didn’t win. Her life … gone. My teen years … gone. It should have meant something. It should mean something.’
‘It does mean something. She taught you to fight no matter how hopeless things look. That’s a lesson not many people can impart to their kids, but she did. She taught you to be brave, Liv, and she taught you life is fragile. People say that all the time, but they never really understand until one minute they’re laughing with someone they love and the next they’re crying over their grave. I get it. I get it because Alana taught me about it. I think about her every day, and she knows that I think about her every day. I don’t have to visit her grave for her to know that.’
Confused and concerned, my heart pounding harder than before, I wiped at my cheeks as I lifted my head from Nate’s chest to look into his eyes. ‘Alana?’
Grief I’d never seen in his eyes before, telling of a loss so deep I felt it seep from him to me, darkened them to pure black. How he’d managed to hide it all these months I would never know. ‘Did Cam tell you we’re from Longniddry?’
I nodded.
‘It’s just a wee place outside of Edinburgh. A pretty place on the coast. Cam, Peetie, Alana, and I grew up together. We were all best friends until we turned thirteen and a kid I didn’t like asked Alana out. I got really mad at her and we got into a fight.’ He smiled softly, remembering. ‘I hated fighting with her. She was the gentlest girl. If you fought with her, she’d cry, and that just made you feel like shit. So we fought and she cried and I kissed her to say I was sorry.’ He shrugged, then laughed hollowly. ‘That was it. We were together. Childhood sweethearts.’
I swallowed past the massive lump in my throat, the pain inside me expanding for Nate. ‘You loved her.’
Tears shimmered in his eyes, making the breath catch in my throat. ‘Aye. She was my best friend.’
‘What happened?’
He was silent a moment and then his eyes caught mine, and our connection only intensified as he replied, ‘Cancer. Lymphoma. She was just about to turn seventeen.’ He glanced away and his arm tightened around me again. ‘I stayed with her through every stage. Every dashed hope, every failed treatment. And I really believed that we’d beat it. That if I just kept breathing for her she’d make it.’ I heard the catch in his throat and tensed against him. ‘She was special, Liv. Pure. In the end the only thing that got me through was the belief that she was just too good for this place. When she died two days after her eighteenth birthday that was all that got me through. She was just too good for this place.’
‘Oh, God, Nate.’ I dropped my forehead to his chest and wrapped my hand tight around his arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too, babe.’
We lay there in silence for a while until finally I drew the courage to say something I really didn’t want to. ‘I’ll get up. Let you go.’
I felt his lips in my hair and then he said quietly, ‘If it’s okay with you, I’m quite comfortable here for the night.’
I relaxed instantly. ‘I’m good with that.’
We’d passed Dad’s flat on Heriot Row and turned down Howe Street. We were less than a minute from my apartment and the entire walk home had been filled with comfortable silence born of the deeper connection we’d made last Thanksgiving. Still, there was a weight in Nate’s silence that made me uneasy.
Finally, as we stopped outside my building, he spoke. ‘I’ve got a couple of deadlines this week, so I might not be able to drop around until after judo class on Wednesday night.’
Shaking off the weird sensation that felt an awful lot like disappointment, I said, ‘No problem.’ I gave him a cocky smile that I didn’t really feel. ‘I’ll practice flirting with my mirror.’
I was gratified at the low chuckle he emitted, a warm glow spreading through my chest as some of the darkness lifted from his eyes.
He pressed a kiss to my cheek. ‘See you soon, babe. Sweet dreams.’
‘ ’Night.’ I let myself into the building and gave him one last smile over my shoulder before I shut the door and headed up the concrete stairs. Though I understood exactly where he was coming from, a heaviness grew in my gut as I changed into my pajamas. I knew that tonight Nate wasn’t going to need to look in the mirror at his tattoo as a reminder to think of Alana.
No. She was inside him tonight; there was a haunted look in his eyes that I’d never seen before. Something was bothering him, and I was afraid that if I pushed too hard, I’d become just like every other woman in his life and he’d shut me out completely.