Page 73 of The Austen Escape
“Walking is fine.” He nudged me. “So you did notice me at WATT?”
“It’s clear I noticed you, Nathan.”
“Mary Davies.” Nathan drew my name long. “It wasn’t clear to me. Ever.”
He swung my hand in an exaggerated motion like this was exactly what he wanted to be doing and with whom. I willed myself to believe it.
After almost a quarter mile, during which he squeezed my hand, pulled me close, shoulder-bumped me away—generally acted like a sixth grader with his first crush—he pointed to an old car scooting down the street.
“That looks exactly like my first car. My parents helped me buy it a few months after I turned sixteen, and a mechanic my dad knew helped me fix it up.”
“I did that too. I inherited my eldest brother’s car at seventeen. It was a mess. I did most of the electrical work myself, which might have been illegal. I think all electrical work requires a license.”
“You mean except for playing around with it at work?” Nathan bumped me again.
“Yes, but WATT has state-of-the-art counter-fire measures in that lab.”
“Thank goodness.” He laughed. “I heard you blew up a Golightly prototype.”
“That was not a good day. You should have smelled the lab. I was actually on fire, burned all the hair off my right arm.”
“You could’ve been hurt.”
I shook my head, recalling the panic of that moment. “I was a little and I was banned from the lab. I may be still. I haven’t pressed it.”
When we passed a cottage tucked between a gas station and an antique store, Nathan told me how his family rented a house on the coast of Massachusetts one summer and he spent the entire summer cleaning boats and babysitting his sisters.
When we passed a fallen tree, I told him about the fort Isabel and I built in my bedroom when we were eleven—how I sawed branches from a downed tree and wove together a layered roof out of leaves.
“My dad almost killed me over that one. A squirrel nest came in with one of the branches we dragged in, which also scratched up all the paint as it came through. Then the squirrels got loose.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Dad called animal control and hauled out all the branches. They caught the mother squirrel, but not two babies. She was pretty mad and very territorial. So was my mom when she found a baby squirrel in her bed that night and screamed so loud the neighbors heard her. Then Dad really lost it.” I glanced at him. “If you knew my dad, you’d know that was a red-letter day. My dad never gets angry. Gentlest man you’ll ever meet... I got grounded and gathered leaves and random bugs for weeks. It’s one of my best memories, though. Before he came home from work and things went south, Mom and Isabel and I crawled inside and told stories the whole afternoon. She could tell the best stories.”
“May I ask?”
“You? A question? You never ask questions.” I stopped and crossed my arms. Teasing him felt good.
He stopped too. “Tell me about your mom?”
“Isabel never told you about SK’s mom?”
He shook his head. “I’d like to keep Isabel out of us, if that’s okay.”
Us.
“Very okay. My mom was diagnosed with MS soon after I was born, and it moved fast.” I scrunched my nose. “Correction—it felt fast. It’s a disease with a lot of variance, and it would hit hard, level off, hit again, level, and... She died two years ago, just before Christmas.”
We walked past The Circus roundabout.
“I’m remembering a lot about her this week. It’s the first time I’ve missed her, really missed her, in a long time. I... It sounds horrible, but I think I said good-bye years before she died.”
He pulled me close and swung his arm around me. He kissed my temple as we walked and said nothing more.
Within another block we found ourselves in the heart of Georgian Bath. One sign pointed to the Roman Baths and another to the Assembly Rooms. Without making a plan, we strolled in the direction of the latter.
The main room at the Assembly Rooms was larger than I expected. Isabella and Catherine met here constantly inNorthanger Abbey, Isabella to see and be seen and Catherine to search for Mr. Tilney. InPersuasion, Anne met Lady Russell here as well, to tread these same boards and to share news.
