Caught Up In You (5 page)

So instead, I cross my arms over my chest
and put an indifferent look on my face. “Yes? Can I help you with something
this evening?”

He looks just as nice as he did
yesterday. He’s wearing a pair of khakis with a button up black shirt, and
crisp white sneakers on his feet. His hair is styled just like it was yesterday
and he has a expensive looking mail bag hanging off of one of his shoulders.
“Oh, I get it, you’re mad at me.”

I scowl and allow my hands to drop to my
sides. “Jeez, you don’t miss a thing.”

“Come on, Tor, don’t be like that.” He
pushes past me and starts to head into the kitchen. “I just got caught up.”

“Caught up?” I slap the button to close
the elevator doors shut since apparently he’s making himself at home. “Getting
caught up doesn’t last two days. It lasts a few hours, at the most.”

“I told you, I had to take care of some
things. It’s not like it’s easy to start a whole new life for yourself over
night.” He throws his messenger bag down on one of the stools around the island
and starts opening up the cabinets. “Got any good snacks around here?”

“I don’t care if you were busy, you
should have kept in touch! You know I’m not doing so good.” I shut one of the
cabinets he’s abandon and moved on from in his quest to find food.

He rips open a bag of sour cream and onion
chips he found somewhere and shoves a few in his mouth. “You shouldn’t be mad
at me Victoria, because in a minute I’m going to do something really nice for
you, and then you’re going to find it impossible to be mad at me. So might as
well save yourself the trouble and just let it go now.” He drops the chips on
the counter and opens the fridge emerging a few seconds later with what looks
like a thing of cheese and about four different types of lunchmeats. “Got any
soft rolls?”

“No.”
 
This is a lie. We have tons of soft rolls, and wraps. We
even have some nice pita bread mixed with our white and Italian breads, but I’m
mad at him so I’m not going to let him in on this information.

He spots the oversized bread box on the
counter and rolls his eyes while he starts sorting through all the types of
breads we have. “You know, it’s not very nice to lie.”

I walk closer to him and snag one of the
chips out of the open bag on the counter. “Kind of like it’s not nice to ignore
your best friend for a week when she needs you.”

He tares apart a few of the rolls and
starts spreading all different types of meat on top of them. “It wasn’t a week,
it was, like, a day. And like I said, you’re about to not be mad at me, so
maybe we can drop the dramatics for just a second.”

I make my way around him and open the
fridge to grab a bottle of water. “I doubt there’s anything you could do that
could make me unmad at you right now.”

He takes a huge bite out of his sandwich
and sighs in contempt to himself. Then he sets it down and looks at me
seriously. “What if I said I was really, really, sorry?”

I laugh and snag another chip from the
bag popping it into my mouth, “I’d say I’m still pretty pissed at you.”

He nods and grabs my water bottle off the
counter and takes a huge gulp out of it. “I thought so, so what if I told you
that in my bag I have something of great importance to you?”

I follow his gaze to his bag that’s still
sitting on the stool. It doesn’t look important at all, it looks kind of boring
and stupid.
A
expensive boring and stupid, but still
boring and stupid. “I would say I doubt it.”

Eric pauses for a second and waits for me
to make eye contact again. “In that bag is a certain journal that a certain
roommate was using to blackmail you into doing a certain something you had no
desire to do.”

“You didn’t!” I drop the chip I’m holding
on the floor and dodge around the island to where his bag is sitting so
innocently. I tear the flap open and dig my hands inside, and there it is. It’s
just sitting there as if it doesn’t have my inner most thoughts from a time in
my life that I can’t understand how I made it through. I flip through the
pages, and it’s all there. Every last one of them, it’s perfect, it’s exactly
how I left it. I hug it to my chest. “How did you?”

Eric grins and wipes his hands on a
random dishtowel that was sitting on the counter, only to get his hands all greasy
again when he takes another huge bite of his sandwich. “I told you I wouldn’t
let anything bad happen to you, remember?”

I’m around the counter and hugging him so
fast that it takes me a minute of being in his arms to realize it’s actually
happening. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

I feel relived for a few more seconds,
but then a sense of worry comes over me and I stiffen a little. He hadn’t read
it, had he? If Eric read this he would know just how dishonest I had been about
moving on from Nathan. Not to the counselors at the wellness center, he would
understand that, but to him. Somehow I didn’t think he would be that
understanding about how misleading I had been with him on my progress with the
Nathan situation.

I pull back from him a little. “You
didn’t, like, read it, or anything, did you?”

Eric laughs and unwraps his arms from
around me. “Oh please, I’m sure I can find more interesting material than your
secret journal for my reading pleasure.”

I grin at him and he takes another huge
bite of his sandwich. I feel myself start to relax again when I realize
something awful. Nathan. Worrying about Eric reading my secret thoughts about him
reminded me that he’s supposed to be here any second.

Shit.

“Okay, you are completely and totally
forgiven.” I start to gather up his sandwich in a paper towel and shove the bag
of chips at him. “But you need to take this to go.”

“To go?” He sounds surprised like the
thought never occurred to him.

“Yes.” I grab his bag off the chair and
start to shove him toward the elevator forcefully. “I just remembered my aunt
is going to be home any second.”

“Oh great!” He stops his body in the
middle of the room, not allowing me to move him any further. “I’d love to meet
her!”

Yikes.

“I would love that too.” I’m trying to
push his body toward the front of the suite again but he’s still not moving.
“Just not today because I’m not really supposed to have people over unless
she’s home. So you need to go and fast.”

Eric sighs then slowly starts to make his
way across the foyer and toward the elevator. Oh thank god, the last thing I
need is for Nathan and Eric to run into each other and get myself into a
situation where I need to explain to either of them what the other is doing
here.

Well, who knows if Nathan would even care
at this point, but Eric would for sure think the whole situation was shady. Me
writing an article about the kid who my attachment to pretty much got me
shipped off to a boot camp.

And let’s face it, it is pretty shady,
but it’s my shady situation, no need for him to know about it.

“Okay, well, I guess I’ll just text you
later.” He hits the button to the elevator waiting for the doors to slide open
and for a second I think I’m going to make it, I think everything is going to
be just fine, but it’s not because after the elevator doors open, Eric doesn’t
move.

And once I pear over his shoulder I see
why.

Standing on the other side of the doors
looking just as perfect as ever is Nathan.

Chapter
Six

No one says anything for a second and I
cringe inside trying to think about how I’m going to get myself out of this.
All it would take is one comment from Nathan to let Eric know who he is.

Eric looks Nathan up and down for a
second and then he turns around and looks back at me. I know I should say something,
anything. But I can’t, I’m frozen in the moment.

“Can I help you?” Eric finally says
something when I don’t.

For a split second I think I’m screwed,
but Nathan just shakes his head and moves past Eric knocking into his shoulder
as he goes. “Nope, I’m all set.”

Eric looks at him with a shocked
expression on his face then opens up his mouth to say something but before any
sound can come out I gather up all the strength I can and shove his body into
the elevator. I toss his bag and the chips into his hands then slam the close
door button in one swift motion, leaving him looking startled in the middle of
the elevator as the doors close on his face.

Okay, so that was totally rude. But I
would have to explain later.

Once the door is safely shut I stand
there for a minute listening closely for the clicks of the elevator getting
lower and lower until it finally reaches the lobby. I’m praying that Eric doesn’t
come right back up once he hits the bottom, demanding to know what’s going on
in here. But to my relief after a few seconds nothing happens.

I sigh in relief and turn around to find
Nathan right in my face. I jump back a little startled and he rolls his eyes.

“Downgrading, huh?”

I start playing with the sleeve of my
shirt nervously. “What?”

Nathan takes a step away from me but the
same look of annoyance stays on his face. “Nothing. So, where should we do this
thing?”

I glance around trying to figure out what
exactly he means by “this thing.” I thought we were just getting together to
talk about the article. What did it matter where we were?
   

“I was thinking your room.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was
holding in and start to choke a little bit.

Nathan chuckles. “Relax, it was a joke.”
He turns his back on me, starting to walk toward the living room.

He must have come straight from practice
because he’s wearing a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt with the Lebron
James symbol on the front. His hair is everywhere and it looks a little damp,
like maybe he took a shower in the locker room after. I immediately feel the
urge to go over to him and run my hand through it and I mentally remind myself
to control myself.

He flops his perfect body onto one of the
couches and I brace myself as I make my way over to him. I don’t know why he
even asked me where we should work since he clearly decided for us anyway.

I sit down on the couch next to him,
careful to give myself enough distance between our bodies. I should have sat on
the chair or loveseat, but like so many other things involving Nathan, I just
can’t seem to control myself.

“So, what were you thinking the article
should focus the most on?” I cross my legs and then uncross them trying to get
comfortable but feeling anything but.

Nathan reaches into his bag and pulls out
a zip-up. He stands up and I’m reminded of how tall he is
,
I immediately feel tiny by his side. He pulls the fabric over his head and the
top of his shirt rises up revealing a piece of his flat tan stomach. I feel my
heart leap into my throat. “I thought it was your job to come up with the
concept, or do I have to do everything?”

I hated how he was with me, how it was so
easy for him to be mean to me. It was so easy for him to disregard me and it
killed me. Mostly because of how much I still cared for him, because of how
much I still wanted him. It was more than that though, I had
a
article to write, and I knew I couldn’t do that with him acting this way toward
me.

“Nathan.” I try to make my voice as
serious as possible, and I arch my back a little so it looks like I’m sitting
up straight “This isn’t going to work if you don’t drop this whole attitude
problem you seem to have with me.”

“I don’t have an attitude problem. If you
think I do that’s your issue, not mine, so you fix it.”

The problem with trying to reason with
someone who’s still angry with you is that it’s never enough. No matter what
you say or do it won’t really matter, because deep down they don’t really care.
All they care about is what you did then, not what you’re doing now. And that
was what was going to happen with the article. I was going to throw around as
many ideas as possible, all of which Nathan would tell me were horrible. (Even
if he liked any of them he wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of letting me know
he liked them.) Then when he finally half-heartedly let me use one of my ideas
he would complain about it the whole time, saying it wasn’t good enough. This
article was important and if he let our past be involved in it then it would be
a disaster.

“Okay, well, then I guess there’s nothing
left to discuss.” I stand up and pretend to head for the elevator. It takes
every inch of my soul to do this, but I know I have to make him think I’m
serious if this is going to work. As I get closer and closer to the front of
the hotel I pray that he’s going to call out to me, but he doesn’t. I hit the
button, waiting on the elevator doors to pop open. “We can find someone else to
write the article, it wont turn out good if we’re like this with one another
anyway.”

Nathan leans back on the couch and
crosses his muscular arms over his perfect chest. “Oh, isn’t this typical,
Victoria running away from her responsibilities. Shocking.” He shakes his head
back and forth like he can’t even begin to express how disappointed he is.

I swing around and put my hands on my
waist trying to show him I mean business. “Nathan is this or is this article
not as important to your future as you say?”

“You know it is.”

I feel myself starting to soften. I can’t
help it, he may be treating me kind of shitty right now, but I understand why.
And deep down inside of me the girl who still cares about him deeply doesn’t
want to be mean to him, even if he’s being that way with me. “Then you have to
put the past aside and let me write it. You don’t have to be my friend or
anything. You just have to let me do this for you. Like you said I owe you,
right?”

Nathan uncrosses his arms and doesn’t say
anything for a second. And for a second I think I’m screwed, I think he’s going
to tell me to forget it, to go fuck myself. That I’m right this is hopeless and
he will never be able to be somewhat normal with me, not even for this article.
But then he just shrugs. “But we aren’t friends right?”

I swallow. “Right.”

He crosses the room in a few easy strides
and sticks his hand out to me. “Deal.”

“Deal.” And for the second time today I
feel weak from his touch.

***

“Oh my god! You were beyond cute.”

It’s the same night and I’m with Nathan in
my aunt’s office looking at his
Facebook
trying to
find some good pictures to print out for the article. It took all of my
concentration to not look at his main page while he was scrolling through to
see if any girls had written on it recently. Not that it matters since he has a
girlfriend, but still, I’m sure there’s plenty of girls who wouldn’t respect
that just for a chance to get with him. I mean, look at him. Anyway, somehow I
had managed to act like I didn’t care what was or wasn’t written on his page.

We had already printed out a ton of
options to choose from. Nathan going up for a layup to win the game, Nathan
taking a three point shot to win the game, Nathan taking a foul shot with no
time left on the clock to (what else) win the game. We also had tons of
pictures with him and his friends and of him at countless basketball camps and
tournaments. And of course a few cute ones of him and his mom, there was even
one of Nathan with his old dog who they had to put to sleep, the perfect set up
for the article.

On the screen now though was a different
type of picture. It was Nathan when he was little. He must have been about two
or three, and he was sitting in the bathtub with a bunch of toys surrounding
him. He had a little rubber ducky, a sailboat, a plastic basketball, and in his
hand held close to his chest was a doll. It looked really warn like he had
dragged it everywhere. The blonde hair looked dirty and it’s little blue dress
straggly, you could tell it was soaking wet. But Nathan was looking at it like
it was the most important thing to him in the world.

“It’s not cute.” Nathan rolls his eyes
like the idea of this picture being cute is silly. “It’s masculine.”

I laugh and look at him like he must be
kidding. “A picture of you holding a doll is masculine? How do you figure?

“Isn’t it obvious?” He walks from where
he’s standing on the other side of my aunt’s big wooden desk and squeezes into
the oversized desk chair next to me. “I was comfortable with my masculinity
even back then, I mean just look at me, born leader right there.”

I try to make my pulse stop racing from him
being so close to me, but it’s a challenge. “Whatever you say, but that just
looks like a little boy with a doll to me.”

Nathan clicks on the picture and it
multiplies in size zooming in on his even back then perfect smile. “Oh come on,
look at this, it was clear that even back then I was a born leader.”

“A born leader?” I try to hold in the
laugh I have surfacing behind my throat. “How does a doll show that?”

He sits up a little straighter and puffs
his chest out as if to look tougher, causing his body to crash even tighter
into mine. I pray he doesn’t feel the shiver that comes over me at even more of
his contact. “Well look at me, not caring what anyone thought even at a early
age. You don’t think I got teased for being the only little boy on the
playground with a doll? But by the end of that year every other boy had a doll,
too.”

I look at him skeptically. “Every single
one?”

“Yes, Victoria, every single one.” He
focuses his eyes back on the screen but I don’t break my gaze from him. “Well,
maybe not every single one, exactly, but most of them. Well, okay, a few of
them. Well, actually just my cousin, but whatever, everyone was clearly just jealous.
Like I said born leader, people are always jealous of born leaders anyway.”

“Well, since this is the first picture we
have of you being a born leader, it should definitely be in the article.” I
reach over and put my hand on top of his that’s still resting on the mouse, clicking
the little printer icon on the top of the page.

“What?” He sounds panicked. “Oh no, uh,
that’s okay, really.”

“Oh, no, no.” I click the okay button
finalizing the print on the screen. “I think it’s just what I need to get the
article off on the right foot. Besides, you don’t care what people think, right,
Nathan?”

“They’re is no fucking way that picture
is going in my article.”

I run my hands through my hair trying to
act like I have no idea why he wouldn’t want this picture to be included for
everyone to see. “Oh, there’s a fucking way all right.”

“No, there’s not.”

“Yes, there is.”

“No.”

“Yes.

“NO!”

The sound of the printer springing to
life on the other side of my aunt’s desk causes us to break our eyes away from
each other and stop our bickering. Having the same thought, suddenly, both of
our bodies are out of the oversized chair and lunging at the printer.

It’s close but I get to it a fraction of
a second before him and grab the white piece of paper with his picture on it
out of the holder.

I take a step away from him and hold it
up in the air triumphantly like I’ve just won some important award. “Thank you,
thank you. I’d like to thank all the haters that thought I couldn’t make it!
Look at me now!”

Before I have time to react Nathans hands
are all up and down my sides and underneath my arms tickling me everywhere. I
start to giggle unconditionally and fall to my knees in an effort to protect
myself, but it’s no use. “Okay, okay, I surrender.” I drop the picture as a
show of how serious I am.

We’re both on the floor now laughing.

“Did you really just say that you’d like
to thank all your haters?”

And then we both start laughing all over
again.

I’m just getting my giggles under control
when Nathan stands up and starts to gather the other pictures and stuff we had
already printed off. “Well, I think we got off to a pretty good start, don’t
you?”

“Totally,” I say. I stay on the ground
hoping that maybe he’ll take the hint and come back down here, but he doesn’t.

He adjusts the hood on his sweatshirt and
pulls his phone out of his pocket glancing at the screen for new messages. “I
better go.”

I don’t want him go anywhere. I want him
to stay right here and keep talking to me. But of course I can’t say any of
this out loud. “Yeah, you better.”