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Chapter 18
Colby found herself holding her breath as Nate stepped up to the mic. Was this why Zane wanted her to come? No, it couldn’t have been. Zane looked shocked when Nate tried to take the mic. The whole transition was awkward, clearly not planned. Zane, Todd, and the girl that was part of their team all looked incredibly uncomfortable, as though they feared whatever it was Nate would say.
Nate looked almost ashen, his skin paling as soon as he stepped forward on the stage. She could see a slight tremble in his hand until he switched the mic over and began spinning a ring that was on his forefinger. It brought back a memory from class years ago, when he wore a black leather cuff on one wrist. During their conversations he would snap and unsnap the cuff, again and again. Once she put her hand over his and told him she couldn’t concentrate, smiling. But he’d looked seriously back at her and didn’t say much the rest of class. The next time she saw him, he hadn’t had the cuff. These nervous tics…were they a part of something he needed to do? A sign of something he struggled with?
Watching him now, she sensed his strength as he continued to stand there, swallowing and trying to get ready to speak. He was terrified, but he was trying.
It broke her sense of anger toward him. She wanted to go up and rescue him from the uncomfortable moment as people were whispering and turning to others in the audience.
Come on, Nate. Talk. Just speak.
Just like the week before, here she was, urging Nate to say something. He looked right at Colby and his shoulders visibly relaxed.
“I’m Nate,” he said, finally. “And I have anxiety.”
“Hi, Nate!” a few people from around the room called out. There was some laughter. Nate looked surprised, then smiled and looked down.
“I guess that did sound like the start of some 12-step meeting, huh?”
More laughter. It was friendly, though, and Colby could see people quieting around the room, turning to look at Nate.
“I have anxiety specifically around public speaking, actually. So, you’ll have to bear with me. I’m not as smooth or good-looking as my buddy Zane.”
Zane flexed behind Nate and people laughed. The girl with them rolled her eyes and punched Zane. He pretended to be hurt, rubbing his arm. Nate shook his head at them, smiling, then looked back out at the audience. At Colby. Her stomach fluttered with nervousness.
“Zane and Todd and I met at Rice.” Someone in the audience cheered. Nate smiled again and scanned the audience, then dropped his gaze back to Colby. “Go Owls! Anyway, we met there and we, uh, became best friends and roommates and then had this big senior project. We were big geeks, if you can’t tell.”
The audience chuckled again as Zane and Todd looked offended. “Speak for yourself!” Zane said, but he was hard to hear without the mic. The first few rows laughed.
A surge of pride ran through Colby at the way the audience in the room was transfixed on what Nate said. She could see how uncomfortable he was, but he was being himself—the charming, funny, unassuming guy she’d always seen. The crowd ate it up. His team behind him looked proud too, their nervous expressions giving way to confidence, but also curiosity. This was clearly not at all what they had planned for today.
“I started getting more and more terrified of the part of the project we had to present in front of the class. I didn’t tell these guys, though. I just thought it was regular nerves. Stage fright. At the same time, I had met a girl.”
Someone wolf-whistled and Nate grinned, then looked down at his feet, shuffling them. Colby’s heart began pounding and she tried to manage the smile that was trying to take over her face.
“Took me all semester to ask her out, but I finally did, a week before school let out and before the project was due. Bad timing, right? I was really worried that she wouldn’t like me. I mean, she liked me, but I didn’t know if she would like me like me.”
The room laughed again. Colby knew she was grinning like an idiot. Nate looked at her again, smiled, and then looked down. He was still spinning his ring. For a moment, he got quiet. The room stilled, too, hanging on every word.
“When I went to the hospital, I thought I was dying. I was sure it was a heart attack or some kind of fast-acting cancer or I don’t know what. I had gone in before with chest pains and abdominal pains and shortness of breath, but they never found anything. This was much, much worse. It took just the right doctor to tell me that I wasn’t dying—I was suffering from a panic attack. The physical symptoms were real, but it stemmed from my anxiety. I didn’t know that it wasn’t typical to sit for hours and play over the exact same conversation in your head. I would sometimes think about every possible worst-case-scenario for any event and how I might handle it. One worry would sometimes just repeat itself over and over in my head. I was getting fixated on things. That week, I had the most important date in my life coming up and also the scariest presentation. It got to be…too much.”
Nate cleared his throat. He stopped spinning the ring on his thumb and began rubbing the back of his neck. Colby’s smile faded and she realized she was crying again when a tear fell onto her hand. She brushed her palms over her cheeks and the movement caught Nate’s eye. He looked up, right at her, again. She clutched her hands to her chest. Everything in her ached for this man and the pain etched on his face. But seeing her, his face shifted. He seemed to draw strength from seeing her. He smiled.
“I missed my presentation and my date. Passed the class, though I had to have a doctor’s note.” The audience chuckled, and Nate shook his head with a wry grin. “The girl, though…she wasn’t so forgiving. Or, at least, I didn’t give her a chance to be. I was too scared to tell her the truth, so I never called her again. It was the stupidest decision of my life.”
A few people in the audience said, “Awwww.”
Zane and Todd were starting to look unsure again. Nate glanced back at them. “Speaking of nerves, I know I’m making these guys nervous. Since this is all ad lib and I’ve already said public speaking isn’t my thing. I promise, I’ve got a point related to the First Sight app.”
Todd nodded and Zane clapped him on the back. “Fast forward to four years later. I haven’t been on many—okay, any—dates. I’ve got a regimen of meds and daily habits that help me manage my anxiety but dating still freaked me out. So, I had this idea for an app. One where it wasn’t about swiping or rating or hooking up. One where you would really get to know the person over time, the way I got to know Colby over that semester.”
Hearing her name on his lips made her jolt in her seat. His eyes met hers again and she felt like he was talking just to her.
“That’s how we developed First Sight—so that people could get to know each other a bit first and ease into that first date. It might be love at first sight, built on a foundation of communication and conversation. We built a compatibility algorithm to match people up based on personality types and psychology. And before you get any ideas, I also got a patent.”
Nate grinned and people laughed. He seemed more at ease now. Colby wondered what a relief it must have been for him to share this. Not just out loud to the room, to anyone, but to her. She only wished that he had told her. She wouldn’t have judged him for this. She wouldn’t have thought any less of him. But despite what she might have said or thought a few days ago, it wasn’t too late.
“We all decided to try it, just to see how the algorithm fared. Of course, we looked at the results of who it paired us with from a pool of local beta testers. We wanted to see if the people we were matched with seemed like a good fit to us. We weren’t supposed to date the people, though the beta testers did date and we’ve got a few successful relationships right now. Anyway, when I looked at my results, I couldn’t believe it. The algorithm matched me with the girl I let get away.”
