Page 66 of Fun at Parties
About us? I nod, though I have no idea what the night will look like when he makes itabout us.About ussounds intimate. Romantic. But I can’t read anything into it.
It turns out a night with Nate at the Sunflower Sound Country Music Festival looks like this: a cold beer and a hot bowl of ramen as the evening chill creeps into the air, our knees knocking against each other under the picnic table. A game of Kan Jam with a couple we meet at the activity field, a guy from Dallas and a guy from Kansas City who united in person for the first time this weekend after meeting through a video game. We all suck, but we don’t stop laughing, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to be invited to their wedding someday. When I finally manage to toss the disc straight enough for Nate to deflect it into the can, I fall to the ground like I just won Wimbledon. Nate bows to me.
Our new friends tell us the nicest bathrooms on-site are hidden behind the sunflower field, so we make a pit stop there so I can use a relatively clean toilet in a trailer that opens up onto a sea of deep gold, the flowers like starbursts in the dark. Nate snags us each a warm spiked apple cider before I even mention that my hands are cold,and we drink them on the walk over to one of the smaller stages, where a folksy singer-songwriter is playing.
We stand on the fringes at the back, and we don’t touch but we don’tnottouch. In fact, when I catch a flash of pink tinsel hair—the girl who recognized me earlier—I step away for a second, because I’m supposed to be celebrating my singlehood and I’m pretty sure we look like a couple. It definitelyfeelslike we’re a couple when the heat of his chest radiates against my back. When an especially aching lyric gives me the shivers and we make knowing eye contact. When he angles his head down and says into my ear, “I’m glad we’re doing this together.”
We don’t stick around to drink or watch the late shows. On our way back to the golf carts, we pass somebody squatting to pee in the bushes, her skirt hiked up to her waist.
“Now isdefinitelythe time to get the hell out of here,” Nate says. And that’s what we do.
Chapter 22
As we wait for aride, there’s only one thought in my head, impossible to ignore, like a boulder in my shoe:Is this happening?When our Yamaha chariot arrives, Nate gestures for me to sit first.
His pinky settles against mine on the vinyl seat, thawing my hand with its warmth. The golf cart drops us off, and the whole walk to the RV, my stomach flips heavily, like a tire at a CrossFit gym.
He checks his phone as he follows me up the steps, and whatever he sees makes him stumble. “Shit.”
“More news from Joe at the bagel shop?”
“No, no. Just Ravi checking in.”
He shuts the door behind him. We’re inside and alone. Other than the possibility of Livvie and Kyla returning, conditions are ideal for a hookup—if one is ever going to happen, it should be at the end of a night like this, when it feels like I’ll never be warm again if I don’t get to keep touching his skin. But I’ve pursued him enough. It’s time to see what happens if I leave our circumstances up to him.
I select the least sexy seating option in the RV other than the toilet: the tiny breakfast booth near the front.Nate hovers at my shoulder, so I pull up tomorrow’s weather on my phone and pretend to study the hourly temperature forecast.
He clears his throat. “I’m going to shower again. Every time I take a step, the dried mud on my ankles cracks.”
Washing the mud away. That’s definitely a thing someone should do before sex. It’s probably also something someone should do before climbing into bed and going to sleepwithoutsex.
I stare at the wall and bounce my knee and rub my temple with the heel of my hand. Eventually, I take off my boots and look down at my own legs, which are unsurprisingly covered in dried splatters of Kansas earth and god knows what else. When I rub a spot with my finger, it turns crumbly.
Ten minutes later, the water turns off. When Nate slides the bathroom door open, I announce, “I’m going to shower too.” Thankfully, I get the whole sentence out before it registers that he’s standing in the doorway wearing only a pair of gym shorts. Nate is trim, with a solid chest and swim-toned arms, and right now all of him is damp and there’sliterallysteam following him into the bedroom. I struggle to get out a strangled “Excuse me” as I rush past him and close the door.
He wore a shirt to bed in Denver.
He is not wearing a shirt now.
He’s either trying to seduce me or he needs to do laundry.
By the time I realize I don’t have my toiletry bag or my clothes, I’m standing under the spray of water. I can’t very well ask Nate to bring my stuff in here; he’ll have to godigging through my underwear, and when he comes in, he’ll catch a glimpse of my glistening back in the mirror. It’ll look like an invitation, and I’m not issuing any of those.
There are already bath products in here, anyway. A cluster of luxury mini bottles that came with the RV, and the full-size ones Nate brought with him. I only need body wash, so I uncap the little tube and take a whiff.Blech.It’s cherry-scented, and it smells like children’s fever medication. On to option two. Nate’s isn’t too strong, with that oak and bergamot scent I hate less than most others, but just to be sure, I squirt a little on my finger and sniff.
Nothing.
I smell it again. Hmm. The bottle looks the same as the one he’s been using—except no, it doesn’t. It’s the same brand, but instead of a green tree, there’s a pale blue raindrop on the front.Fragrance-free,it says, and it slips out of my hands, clattering on the floor of the shower.
“You okay?” Nate calls.
“Fine,” I shout back. I think I’m better than fine, but I need to be sure, so I grab his shampoo.
Fragrance-free.
It’s like a card turning over. The realization that I’ve hit blackjack.
He bought these bottles the morning we left Denver, even though his old ones were still half full. He went out of his way to buy unscented products so he’d smell like exactly what I want him to, which is nothing but himself, and I have never been as certain of anything as I am now certain that we’re going to have sex.
