Of All The Ways He Loves Me (5 page)

“Move on.” He said it flat
and lifeless. “Of course, because that’d get you out of feeling anything for me.”

“I feel things.” She waved her hands wide. “I like you. I look forward to talking to you. I respect you, and now, I’m
impressed by you. So there. I
am
impressed. Paterson Radovich is a closet romantic with the ability to make a girl swoon. I’ll write you a recommendation for when that girl comes along.”

“Give me a break,” he said.

Is that all she’d thought this was? His frustration rising, he opened the car door and got out. The click of hers a moment later made him jump. She walked around the car and stood in front of him. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“How many arguments have we ever had?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Ten, maybe?
” she continued.

“This makes eleven then,” he said.

“I want to know why this matters to you,” she said. “Are you trying to prove something to yourself? You’re lonely and want a girlfriend, so you’re trying it out on me? What?”

He glared at her and licked his lips. “Ma
ybe you should ask yourself why it
doesn’t
matter to you. You don’t want to admit you’re an attractive girl and I’m a guy interested in you. You want everything to be the same. Me as
good ole Paterson
and you as
Nadia, best bud.
But I don’t want that anymore. Yeah, maybe Evelyn’s comment made me speak. Yeah, at first, it was harmless. Now, it’s not. Now, I want this, and I think you’re afraid.”

She exhaled, the breath elongated. “You’re right,” she said at last. “I am. I’m afraid what we have will fall apart and I’ll be left with nothing.”

“What we have will fall apart and we’ll both be left with nothing the day some other guy catches your eye and you’re swept away,” he said.

She silenced.

“You haven’t noticed that. Have you? Nat, nobody knows me better than you do. Nobody understands me better than you do. Nobody helps me out more, supports me better, or makes me laugh quite the same, and I don’t want to be standing here the day you leave wondering if I should have made my move.”

“I … never thought of that,” she said.

“I know. So let me do this. I
want
this. I want
us
.”

She stepped closer and looked up at him, her face
bathed in the yellow light of the nearby street lamp. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said, her voice soft.

“It’s the truth. I want to know if I can be the guy who makes your stomach flutter and your heart dance for all the thousand reasons locked in my head and
the three I gave that mean the most. I don’t want to look elsewhere for some other girl when the one standing right here already has all the qualities I seek.”

He raised a hand to her face and settled in on her cheek. “Why can’t I think you’re beautiful? You are. I’ve noticed that for months now. And why can’t you feel the same for me?”

Nadia laughed. “You wanna know something?”

“What?” he dropped his hand to his
side.

“I
never thought of you like that until all of this, but then I got to noticing.”

“Oh?” He dropped his head closer to hers.

“Yes,” she breathed. “And that hand thing you did. Where’d you learn that?”

“
Mmm, that’s a secret I will not divulge.”

“You
can … can do that anytime you’d like,” she said.

He smiled. “Good to know.”

“Paterson?”

“What?”
The warmth of her breath kissed his lips.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“About what?” he asked.

She bit her bottom lip and released it.
“Kissing you. Nothing says you can’t kiss me tonight.”

He chuckled. “No, nothing says that. Except maybe
your cold.”

She sighed. “Rats.”

He raised his head. “Tell you what. Turn around.”

“Turn around? Why?”

“Because I asked, that’s why. Now, turn around.”

She rotated in a circle, placing her back to him.

“Now, don’t flinch,” he said.

Lifting her hair, he coiled it in his hand and carried it to the side. He then bent forward and pressed his mouth to the base of her neck.

She gasped, a delicate hiss. “I think that’s almost as good,” she whispered.

He released her hair and pulled her back against him.
“Mmm. Almost.”

CHAPTER 4

My mom took me shopping Thursday for a new dress. She had two reasons for doing this. One, because I asked, and two, because as a
dear friend
of Mr. and Mrs. Radovich, she felt obligated.

I liked Paterson’s parents. They’d moved into town in early 2005 and spent six months remodeling what was then the most rundown house in the neighborhood
– repainting, replacing the grass, installing new windows. In short, making a lot of noise and mess, and it was this that caused me to first go over there.

I was inordinately nosy at age nine and wanted to
know exactly where the irritating new boy in my class lived. So one Saturday I snuck over there, wriggling through the hole in our privacy fence and climbing the chain link of the neighbor directly behind us only to end up knee deep in a frog pond I hadn’t known was there in full sight of Paterson.

And h
e did something strange. Seeing me standing there drenched to my underwear, seemingly having all the fun, he jumped in beside me. This pretty much describes our relationship from then on. If he’d try it, I’d follow after. If he came down with it, I caught it, too, and so on. Until I hit puberty.

That day,
Paterson wanted me to come out and ride bikes, but all I could do was curl up on the couch and sob. After all, the world was ending and I was fully convinced I’d be dead by morning. So he offered to let me ride on his handlebars (his way of being nice). However, I said no, and standing there over me, his face all wrinkled up, he’d shrugged and walked out.

He came back later and told me it was no fun alone. He’d rather play
video games if I was up to it. I’d said
yes
and we’d subsequently spent the entire afternoon chugging cola and stuffing our faces with chips and brownies instead.

I was thinking
of all this on the ride to the department store, how we’d come this far from ponds to bikes to puberty to when his voice changed, and that memory made me grin. He’d had a really rough time of it, his voice breaking at the slightest word, and me giggling every time. But then it had settled and he’d simply sounded like Paterson, only older.

Here we were yet again at another milestone in our lives, and as usual, we were taking the same path, but this one required roles, something we hadn’t done before. Before we were equals, either one of us able to do most anything the other tried:  fly a kite in the empty lot at the end of the street, swim across Mackinaw Lake to the
peninsula on the other side, run the length of the football stadium twelve times. Yet now … now he was the boy and I was the girl, our given parts locked into place.

In my head, he was still Paterson, friend and confidante, but in my heart he had changed. I looked at him differently, seeing the width of his shoulders, the broad canvas of his back, his square bearing and self-assured demeanor, the strength of character
, all things that fit snuggly into the empty slots of my life.

I glanced at my mom. She had one hand on the steering wheel and the other in her lap.
“Mom? When did you know Dad was the one?”

Her eyebrows rose and she flicked me a look.

“Humor me,” I said.

She smiled and inhaled. “Oh, about a month into dating, but we were ten months getting engaged.”

“What was it … that made you know?”

She lifted her free hand and scratched the side of her head. “No one thing. More like a lot of little things that all meshed together.”

“And you never looked back?”

She shook her head. “No, I never did. Can I ask why this is coming up?”

“Just thinking, you know, about me and Paterson.”

“Good or bad?” she asked.

I reached out a finger and tipped the air vents upward into my face. “Good, I guess. We talked last night, and something he said …” I didn’t feel like saying exactly what, so I quieted for a moment. “I’m not used to thinking of him like this.”

She switched her hands on the wheel and patted the ba
ck of mine. “I can imagine you aren’t. I was scared near to death about being serious with your father, and I didn’t have all the memories to contend with that you do. But think of it like this – there aren’t any secrets between you. You know exactly who he is and how he’ll react, and none of that has run you off so far.”

She was right. That was what had gotten me so worked up over this in the first place.

She returned her hand to the wheel. “So what do you think? Merlin’s or Eastman’s?”

“Eastman’s.
Paterson likes their clothes.”

***

How was it possible for me to be nervous about Paterson after seeing him every day for over half our lives? Yet come Friday afternoon, I was jumpy and bouncy and wound tighter than a top. I fixed my hair and re-fixed my hair, did and re-did my makeup, and fidgeted and fussed until my mom told me to take a deep breath and relax. Yet I couldn’t and so the only breath I caught was the one right before I opened the door, and that one fled at the first sight of him.

“You’re … you’re … dressed up,” I said.

He looked fabulous. I’d never seen him wear anything fancier than a button up shirt and a pair of khakis. But there he stood, black dress pants, long-sleeved shirt, and a tie.

“I’m trying to look as nice as
you. Oh well, I tried,” he said with a smile. He took my hand and spun me around. “You fixed your hair like I wanted.”

I ducked my head, my cheeks warming at the appraising look in his eye. “You asked me to,” I said.
He’d never asked me that before.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

I paused from my spin, gulping down the wad of emotions filling my throat. He had that look in his eye again, the one that made him so much more male than he’d ever been to me.

He took hold of my hand, without doing the hand thing, but at that moment it wasn’t necessary as I was overcome by him; and he drew me toward the door. “We don’t want to be late,” he said.

We weren’t late, but right on time. The hostess, a twenty-something wearing too-tight black slacks and a white oxford shirt, led us to the corner booth, and all the eyes in the place swiveled our direction. I knew what all the other patrons were thinking because I’d thought the same thing myself sitting in their places.

The corner booth was reserved for couples in love. You knew this by the design of it. It was a round table, instead of a rectangular one, with a curved, cushioned seat. Overhead hung a pendant light in Valentine’s red, and draped over it was a matching tablecloth. But it was the decorations on the wall and the center table display that told you what it was for – shiny metallic hearts, photos of couples kissing, a vase of roses.

Old Man Frizelli, whose restaurant this was, always said, “Red is for lovers,” in his heavy Italian accent.

Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t, but given the number of couples who’d sat in that booth, the atmosphere of it tonight, and the way we were dressed, I was self-conscious, to say the least.

Paterson didn’t act like it was any big deal, but slid in the booth after me, releasing my hand. A waitress appeared and handed us a pair of menus, then took our drink order before leaving. I buried my head in the plastic wrapped pages, though I knew what I wanted, only looking up at the thunk of glasses on the table.

We placed our order and
were left with minutes to fill. I fiddled with my skirt beneath the table. “What do we talk about?” I asked.

We talked all the time about anything a
t all, but this was different. It being a first date, we should share something of ourselves with each other like ordinary couples, but trouble was, we already knew all there was to know.

“
The future?” he suggested.

I cupped my fingers together in my lap. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about the future
because at this point, it was uncertain. I didn’t even know how this evening would end, much less what would happen tomorrow or next week. But I had no other suggestions, so I went with it.

“Okay. What about it?” I asked.

“Well, we talked about college,” he said.

Yes, we did
, ages ago, and we agreed we’d go locally. I had no desire to run off to the state university and live with somebody I didn’t know. Besides, that would separate me from Paterson.