Page 85 of Fumbled Into Love

“The way she spoke about you…” Nyla trails off, shaking her head.

I nearly grab Nyla by the shoulders and shake her until she tells me how she spoke about me. Instead, she squeezes my arm and rinses her cup in the sink.

“You two work well together,” she admits. “I understand why you fell in love with her. She’s good for you.”

“I didn’t realize this was going to be a sappy moment,” I grumble, pointedly ignoring the way my chest flares at her words.

Nyla laughs deeply.

“It’s not. I know how much you hate those,” she winks, “I wanted to tell you how much Mom and I enjoyed meeting Nathalie and hope we get to keep her around.”

Another quick squeeze to my bicep, and she’s gone, disappearing into the guest room. I grab the wine Nathalie left in her quick departure and slip into my bedroom.

Nathalie lounges in bed, feet kicked up, juggling both Gordie and the snack bowl in her lap.

“How crazy does she think I am?” are the first words she says.

The moment my legs slide beneath the covers, her feet slide beneath my calves, and I hiss from the sensation of her freezing toes against my skin.

“You need to start wearing socks,” I mutter as her icy feet burrow deeper between my leg and the bed.

“I don’t need socks; I have your calves.”

“You won’t have my calves to warm your legs forever.” The words are out of my mouth and into the universe before I can stop them, and she rips her feet away. “Nathalie, I didn’t—”

I scramble to clarify, but she cuts me off with an awkward smile.

“No, you’re right,” she says simply, crossing her legs beneath her and passing the snack bowl. “Are you ready to watch the show?”

She takes a long gulp of her wine and starts the show on the television. The air between us is thick and uncomfortable during the recap of the previous episode.

Those were the wrong words, but I don’t know how to make them right because there’s a truth to it.

This is not going to last forever.

Gordie curls into a ball in the space between Nathalie and me, preventing me from scooting closer, taking her hand, or tangling my fingers through her hair.

The lines have been blurred a bit too much, and now the line between real and fake is paper thin.

“Do you think they’re finally going to cast Dan as the villain?” I ask, a flimsy attempt to make conversation with her.

She shrugs. My chest tightens.

“Maybe. I think they’ll wait another week and put him on a two-on-one date to increase the drama.”

Nathalie never glances away from the show. I want to turn it off so she’ll look at me and I can attempt to decipher whatever she’s feeling from what swims behind her glasses.

Her eyes have always been expressive.

But she doesn’t look at me the rest of the night. We chat during the show, but it’s stilted and awkward.

It hasn’t felt this way with her, ever. Not even in the beginning when things were weird. She always lifted the energy, but now, as she places her glasses on the nightstand, the energy is off-center.

A wide gap divides Nathalie and me, and I want to crawl across it and apologize for my words.

This is not how I imagined the night going when I realized my family was coming and we would have to share a bed. I pictured holding her in my arms as we fell asleep. Or waking up in the morning with her head on my chest.

Not an expanse between us wider than the Grand Canyon.

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