Page 48 of If This Was a Movie

A ballerina he knew.

“When did you break your arm again?” I ask, trying to be casual.

“Uh, I don’t know. The beginning of the year. I was with Grandma and Grandpa at their mountain house, and I slipped on ice. I wasn’t too sad because even though it was right after Christmas, I got so many presents.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty cool,” I say, but my gaze is scanning the store, looking for her father. When I find his tall frame, though, his eyes are already on mine, taking me in and watching us like he’s afraid if he blinks we’ll disappear.

I understand that feeling.

A week ago, Nate Donovan was a sour memory that hurt when I touched it. Now, it’s holding this tiny spark of hope I keep trying to put out, but I can’t seem to make myself do it. I’ve sworn off love and men, but maybe I was too hasty? What if this really could be something special, some once in a lifetime, movie-worthy romance, and I’m just too scared to give it a shot?

A few hours later, we’re back at the house, watching Sophie put on the final ornaments. We stopped for lunch on our way home before we came back, Nate and I putting up the tree, stringing the lights, and hanging all of the delicate bulbs out of her reach.

I move to stand beside Nate, who’s watching Sophie show each ornament to her doll with a small smile on his lips.

“Found out the Ashlyn obsession is pretty new,” I say, trying to break the ice.

“Did you now?” he asks, eyes not moving toward me like he's afraid to hear what I’m about to say, what Sophie may have revealed.

“Oh yes,” I say. “Your daughter told me you got her because she looks like a pretty ballerina you know.”

A light blush crosses over his cheeks. “She told you that?” he asks.

I smile and shrug. “Something tells me she isn’t very good at keeping secrets.”

Nate shakes his head with a small laugh. “The worst, actually. But you can’t deny you look just like the doll.”

“So you bought it…” I start to say, watching the doll dangling in Sophie’s hand.

“After we met.”

“Before or after I blocked you?”

“Before. I remember thinking about texting you, taking a photo, and sending the doll to you, but you didn’t know about Sophie and…” His words trail off, and suddenly I feel the urge to know, to ask once and for all.

“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” I ask.

He lets out a bone-deep sigh before running his hand over his head.

“You know, I’ve asked myself over and over since I saw you again. Probably would have saved us a lot of heartache. At least a dozen times when you were here, I almost mentioned her, but there was never a good time to bring it up, you know? We were…brand new. I didn’t want to fuck it up. Turns out, not mentioning it was our downfall.”

“I get it,” I say, because I do. “I get protecting her until you knew for sure there was something there you felt comfortable exposing her to.” I think of all the men my mom dated before she met Stanford, the way she’d parade them as some new dad. The way they’d buy my affection with toys only for them to leave, my mom in tears and me just confused.

A heavy silence hangs over us, and I hate it, feeling like I steered us in a shitty direction, so I try and move forward.

“So you bought your daughter a doll you thought looked like some chick you hooked up with?”

He looks at me, gives a light shake to his head before taking two steps and cutting the distance between us in half. His hand moves up then pauses, like he wants to touch my face, before it falls again.

“You were neverjustsome chick I hooked up with, Jules, and you know that. You were always more. So much more, I didn’t understand it at the time. But then my daughter ran to you on a crowded street, as if she knew too, like she could feel the pull of you to us.”

My heart skips a beat or two before it kicks back into action doing double-time.

I open my mouth to say something—to remind him that I’m not here for that, to remind him and maybe myself that I’ve sworn off love and men and it’s all for the best, really, it is—butbefore I can, an alarm goes off on my phone, reminding me to leave for my class that’s in thirty minutes.

“I gotta go,” I say in a whisper. “Practice at the center.”

“Yeah.” This time, when his hand lifts, he lets it rest there on my cheek, the warmth of his palm radiating through my skin in a way I really, really like. “Yeah, you do.”

---