Page 54 of One-Star Romance

She looked at him directly then. He stayed right where he was. He did not think he was saying this just because Jeff irked him. Perhaps three years ago he would’ve enjoyed having the upper hand here. He’d lost their wedding toast battle, but she was lost in a larger way. He didn’t enjoy it now, though. Instead, he felt a strange sense of melancholy. Finding the person you were going to spend your life with came down to many factors. Readiness, yes: Rob had wanted a partner when he met Zuri. Good decision-making too: again, thank God he hadn’t slept with Natalie when she’d turned to him at the lake, open and wanting and full of need. But also, so much depended on sheer luck. If Rob hadn’t gone to that lecture, or if the person walking in before him had sat in the open seat next to the beautiful woman, who knew what his life would look like today?

“But Jeff is wonderful,” Natalie said. “I don’t have a good reason not to…It has to be a problem with me.”

Where had all the fire and surety she’d shown at the wedding gone? For a moment, he wanted to put his arms around her. He kept them glued to his sides.

“What if I never want to move in with anyone?” Natalie asked.

“Well”—he swallowed—“how did you feel about living with Gabby? About getting to see her every day?”

“I felt like I could have done it forever,” she whispered.

“Then you’re not broken. You can feel that way with someone else. And if that person never comes along, you’ll live by yourself and be the love of your own life.” He dug his hands deeper into his pockets. “Not everyone is lucky enough to love someone as infuriating and interesting and alive as Natalie Shapiro.”

They held each other’s gazes for a moment. She wiped a tear that had begun to bead in one of her eyes.

“Dammit, Rob. Why did you have to…” she began. “I don’t know if I want to thank you or punch you.” She turned away into the garden, unable to look at him any longer, her voice formal. “You should go inside. Your gorgeous fiancée is probably wondering where you are.”

21

Nat and Jeff got out of the taxi at the train station and walked to the ticket kiosk, the last of their friends returning to the city, having stayed late to help with the cleanup.

You built up routines over a year and a half with someone, all sorts of lovely little patterns. Whenever Natalie was at Jeff’s and she got cold (Jeff’s roommate refused to turn up the heat, another reason Jeff wanted to move), Jeff would bring her a blanket, then a hat, then gloves, then another blanket, and on and on until she was warm and laughing and nearly drowning in fabric. Natalie poured them both cups of coffee in the mornings when he stayed over at her place and knew exactly how much milk to put in his to make him smile in utter satisfaction. They each had two toothbrushes now, one in the other’s apartment. Sometime during the last six months, they’d started buying their train tickets together whenever they went on a day trip, alternating who covered the cost. Natalie had gotten their tickets out to Long Island, so now Jeff sped up ahead of her to start the transaction.

“No, I’ve got this,” Natalie said.

“You do not. You bought last time.” He pushed the button to select the ticket type, and she hurried to the machine next to his, starting her own transaction.

“Yeah, but this was for my friend’s event, so I should pay for it.”

He looked over, grinning as her fingers flew over the options on the screen. “Oh, is this a race? You know I’m competitive, Shapiro!”

“Not a race. I insist.”

Still, laughing, he hustled to remove his credit card from his wallet. Her arm, of its own accord, popped out and whacked the card away from the machine, sending it to the ground.

“Please, let me,” she said in a strangled voice, and he held his hands up.

“Whoa. Okay.”

Silently, she waited for the machine to spit the tickets out, then led the way to the platform. He stood beside her, shifting from foot to foot as Rob’s words echoed in her head. You can feel that way with someone else. Rob, with his dark eyes and his hands in his pockets, seeing her to her core. Her fingers had lost circulation as she stood with him in that freezing garden. She hadn’t noticed until she got back inside.

It broke her heart that she couldn’t feel that way about Jeff.

Beside her, Jeff began to talk about how cold it had gotten, unable to stand the silence for long. Sometimes, when they were quiet together for more than a minute as they walked down the street, he’d say, “Isn’t it nice that we’ve gotten to the stage of our relationship where we don’t always have to talk?” and then begin to discuss all the other nice things about the current stage of their relationship. He was so good to her.

“So, what do you think?” he asked now. “You want one more night to sleep on it, or should we pull the trigger on the apartment?”

Natalie swallowed, dread in her stomach. “I can’t say yes to the apartment.”

His eyebrows knitted together in concern. “Is it because of the bedbugs? Drew swears that was two years ago, and he hasn’t seen one since. But I can look into getting an extra inspection—”

“No, it’s not that. The place sounds lovely. I just don’t think I’m ready to move in together.”

“Oh,” he said with such disappointment in his tone. His mouth tightened in determination. “Well, it could be nice to wait one more year. Delayed gratification! Or I could see if I can go month-to-month on my lease.”

She hesitated. Maybe things would change in a year. She’d grow into the person she so desperately wished she could be, the person who was right for Jeff. She could keep the one stable thing she had in her life. In the distance, the light of the approaching train appeared, the wind whipping up, a mournful blast of the horn echoing around them. She had sympathy for her mother now, for the fear of loneliness that led her to run headfirst into relationships, to stay even when the joy had expired. She’d always told herself that she’d rather be alone than be in a relationship just to be in one, but she hadn’t been acting like it.

Giving this another year—of uncertainty, of the constantly changing pros and cons list in her head—would be unkind to both of them. He’d try even harder to hold her while she pulled farther away. Jeff was not Greg, not her mother’s husband by a long shot. And that made it even more important to let him go so that he could find someone who appreciated him as much as he deserved.

---