Page 142 of Two Marlboros

I couldn’t say it. It would have been like running him over twice, killing his memory,ourmemory.

“What?”

I tried again to hold back a tear, which instead slipped and streaked down my cheek. I was thankful that I had only the dimness of the bookstore in front of me because I could not have stained myself with that murder by looking at Nelly in the eye.

“What if I find out that I love him more than him? More than Oliver? I’m not saying now, but in a few years...you know...”

Nelly wrapped me completely in her arms, in an embrace from the sister she had always been to me. She gave me comfort without judgment, full only of affection and closeness for what I was feeling.

Tears flowed again for a few more minutes as I picked up the shards of my broken soul, violated by that one fear that, at that rate, would not take long to become a certainty. She soothed me with slow strokes on my back, whispering in my ear not to worry. We loosened from the embrace, and she ran her thumbs over my cheeks, to cleanse me of the evidence of my crime.

“Maybe you will love someone more than Oliver, yes. And you know what? That’s okay.”

“Maybe.”

“And then who knows, maybe there is someone righter for you than Oliver. It might just be this new guy. What’s his name?”

It was really hard to think of him as someone righter than Oliver; yet, on the other hand, thinking about dating together caused fluctuations in my stomach.

“Nathan.”

“Oh, what a lovely name! It reminds me of a boy I know. Come on, let’s get comfortable so you can tell me the rest.”

We got off the desk and sat in the chairs behind us, this time with the light on the shelf illuminating our faces. I satiated hercuriosity and told her that Nathan and I were opposites and that I should have found him insufferable for that reason, instead I was as attracted to him as I had ever been to anyone. I amused her with Ashton’s stunt for the Wit Matrix concert and told her in detail about our hugs and the kiss we had exchanged. I spoke of it with a transport that had waited so long to come to light, and that made me feel unease and elated in equal measure. However, admitting for the first time, out loud, that that peck on the lips had made me want more -muchmore - swept away any sense of guilt, but the excitement was soon replaced by anguish as soon as I got to tell her about the text Nathan had sent me two days earlier.

“My guess is that he is testing you,” Nelly speculated. “Or, perhaps more likely, he realized that he likes you and got scared. You said he didn’t have any serious relationships, right?”

“Not that I know of, and I don’t think that sort of relationship he has with his ex could be called ‘serious.’”

I thought back to how Harvey had treated Nathan at the party, and what had happened between them over the next few days. Their figures appeared in my head in an intimate moment, and I chased away that annoyance I had never felt.

“There, you see? Anyway, he’s angry with you now, so you’re the one who has to make the next move.”

“I just don’t know what to do,” I replied, then sighed. “My colleague told me to invite him out to apologize, however...”

She shrugged. “However?”

“I don’t know whether to invite him as a friend or something else.”

“What a lot of fuss! Go out as friends and hopefully you’ll even get a kiss, a serious one. Whether he’s into it or not you can tell anyway, trust me.”

I blew out a laugh. The next moment I was reminded of that dream that had shaken me so much, only with more tongue. Ittook little, however, for the scene to become polluted with my insecurities, for I was not enough to dump Harvey and for my feeling to be reciprocated.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Nelly.

“It’s that I care about him, and I’m afraid that a kiss or a relationship might ruin what we have.”

“I see.”

“There’s something between us, something I can’t explain, an understanding I’ve never felt with anyone. It’s something magical and I don’t want to lose it.”

Nelly laughed with gusto. “He must have really bewitched you, this guy! Look, do you want my advice? Go for it. See how it goes. And let your instincts guide you a little more for once.”

Nelly and I had a good evening. All she did was say how much my eyes sparkled when I talked about him, that she was so happy for me, and so on and so forth. I didn’t know if I was happy for myself. I was going out onto the battlefield with no weapons or armor, ready to get stabbed if that was the way things were supposed to be. I just had to find the courage to make it all real.

So, semi-reclining on the bed, I held the phone in my hand as I finished writing the text for Nathan. Eighteen words; a hundred and ten characters guarded all the desire I had to see him again, so cheesy it almost scared me. When was the last time I even thought such words? My heart began to pump wildly, but it wasn’t excitement, no: it was fear. Fear that he would mock me for what I had written or reject my apology and invitation. I sighed. I brought my thumb to the send button, closed my eyes, and pressed it without even rereading the text. Sent. I crawled under the blankets with my heart racing, along with the wish that he would respond as soon as possible and, at the same time, that he never would.

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