Page 90 of Fighting Words

I jump out of my skin when the back door opens a half hour later. Nate’s covered in snow flurries, the tip of his nose red from the cold, his blue eyes bright and sharp.

“Where’d you go?” I ask, hurrying to stand so I can get him dinner.

Nate yanks off his coat. “Nowhere. I just needed to walk. It helps sometimes.”

The moment his boots are off, he heads back up the stairs in a rush. Not another word, no pleasantries. I don’t realize how hopeful I was for his company until I hear his door shut behind him. The cottage is so lonely with him stuck up in his room. I deliver his dinner and he mumbles a thank you, his eyes never straying from his computer. I can’t help but feel invisible.

I wonder if this is the way he always works, frantically getting words down, or if this is the result of suffering writer’s block for the last few years. Maybe there’s a fear that at any minute, the well will dry up.

There’s a strange mixture of emotions swirling inside me. The InkWell employee and developmental editorandNathaniel Foster fan is dying over the fact that he’s in there working on book three right now. The woman Nate slept with the other night, the person sharing a home with him is feeling juvenile and insecure and frustrated. I understand that we agreed what happened is best left in the past, but it seems like moving on completely has been a little too easy for him, like it’s no hardship at all to cast me aside.

I can’t dwell on the hurt though. This is objectively good on all sides. I don’t want to continue acting unprofessional with Nate. I don’t want to have to resist his advances, mostly because I know I couldn’t. If he so much as looked at me with a warm expression, I’d fling myself at him, and I hate knowing that. I feel weak and naive.

I liked Nate’s idea to take a walk. I’ve been stuck inside the cottage for far too long, just like him. He went without mittens or a hat, but I layer up to the point that I’m 99% wool.

It’s dark out so I don’t plan to go far, just around the property and down the lane heading for a familiar English oak tree that we pass on our way to and from Sedbergh. According to Nate, it’s over 200 years old.

My borrowed flashlight does a good job of lighting up the path ahead of me. I expect a passing car or two, but it seems like I’m the only one out here for miles around. It’s dead quiet except for the whisper of the snowflakes and the occasional owl hooting in the distance. I hear paws scurry once and almost catch sight of what could be a small fox or rabbit, but by the time I get my flashlight trained on the sound, it’s already gone.

I don’t take walks like this in the city, ones where I’m this alone with my thoughts. There, I usually have a podcast or audiobook drowning out the sound of traffic and pedestrians whirling past me. What will it feel like to go back to that? The chaos will be hard to stomach now, I think. In some ways I think this trip has changed my DNA.

While I walk, as a way to force myself to stop dwelling on Nate and our complicated relationship, I daydream about what I envision for my future now that Andrew is out of the picture and there’s no romantic relationship tethering me down. I live in New York because I’ve always lived there. It puts me near my family and the office, but a lot of InkWell employees work remotely these days, and it wouldn’t be hard for me to put in a request to do the same.

If I’m looking to live in a town similar to Sedbergh, I could always search in Upstate New York. It would be hard to duplicate the charm of this place though. I’m in love with the village even now in the dead of winter. I can’t imagine what it’s like here in the spring and summer, the massive hills so green and verdant, trees canopied over the narrow roads, the book festivals drawing in hundreds of tourists, Alice’s shop busy with readers and collectors. I would help her if she ever needed an extra set of hands, stocking shelves and ringing up customers. It’s a vision so clear I can taste it—what life could be like here.

Then I realize what I’m doing and I panic and shake the thoughts free. It’s a fairy tale. My time in England has to end, the same way any great vacation does.

It’s hopeless to even imagine myself living here because deep down, I know my life’s trajectory. It might seem fun to fantasize about a future in Sedbergh, but more likely than not, a month, a year,fiveyears from now, I’ll find myself in Manhattan, at my InkWell cubicle, in a relationship with a man one slight variation away from Andrew Miller. People might even confuse the two. This new guy will have blond hair instead of brown, he’ll work in commercial real estate instead of investment banking.

God, that’s depressing. It’s like my life has already been set in motion, and whether or not I want to change course, it feels like it’s already too late.Is it?

The question spurs a montage of scenes in my mind’s eye, collected over the last few weeks. I see version after version of Nate: him restraining a biting remark as he watches me pour too much cream into my coffee in the morning; his brows furrowed in mock annoyance when I steal the last square of chocolate out of his hand; his blue gaze holding me captive as he approaches me slowly, hell-bent on stealing a kiss.

It feels like I’ve just gotten the wind knocked out of me.

This desire penetrates everything—even more than I realized—and though I’ve tried to stifle my feelings, they’ve grown like a weed in spite of it all. I stand here, thinking over my future, and all I can seem to gather is that I would really like to be kissed by Nate again and again, as long as we both shall live.

I choke on a half-laugh half-sob.

It’s hard to believe. I always thought I was completely numb to feeling. I assumed there would never be a man to draw me out of my shell. It’s silly now that I used to worry about my ability to fall in love, like that part of me was permanently undeveloped or broken.

Oh Nate.

I pinch my eyes closed and rub them, but it’s no use. I’m in love and now there’s no way to stop this.

With everything in sharp focus, I start my walk back to Nate’s cottage in a comatose haze. I stare down at the ground where my flashlight lights the path, but I don’t look beyond it. I reach the back door and turn the knob and there’s Nate, standing at the sink cleaning up dinner.

My heart pounds like I’m worried he’ll know where my mind has been this last half hour.

Dreaming of you.

He glances over at me and he doesn’t smile, but then neither do I. I think my entire face is frozen solid. I’ll have to wait for blood flow to return to my extremities before I can be counted on to make a facial expression of any kind.

“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him, nodding toward the dishes.

I feel guilty for leaving a mess, but I was going to get to it right when I returned from my walk.

Nate shakes his head. “It’s fine. I don’t expect you to clean up after me. That’s not your job.”

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