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“I know,” I said. “Nate, I should have told you. I wanted to so many times but didn’t want you to think. . .” I trailed off.
“To think what? What didn’t you want me to think?”
He was going to make me say it.
“Zoe?”
I usually loved the way Nate said my name. But not tonight.
“I didn’t want you to think you were a rebound.”
“I could see why you’d think that, being it was right around the same time. A few days in between? A week? Couldn’t have been too much more.”
Fucking Erik, still screwing up my life. But to be fair, I should have told Nate about him. We’d talked about past relationships. I’d told him about everyone but Erik, and that had been a mistake.
“I can’t remember exactly,” I hedged.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Nate, I’m so sorry. I absolutely should have told you, but I was just scared.”
“You never have to be scared to tell me anything, Zoe. I thought you knew that. We said, ‘nothing held back.’ Didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you held back probably the most important thing in your life at the time.”
“I forgot about him so quickly that. . .” Then I remembered. Operation Distraction. How would he feel about that particular tidbit? And the fact that the New Orleans trip where we had so much fun dirty texting had actually been organized as a distraction from Erik?
Should I tell him?’
Probably.
“Also--”
“I think I’m gonna stay here for the night.”
Was he serious? “I thought maybe you were just stopping there to cool off. You’ve got to be joking. After all this time. . . seriously? You’re less than five minutes away from me and aren’t coming over?”
What the actual fuck?
“I just think it’s best for now. This isn’t how I want our meeting to play out.”
“This? What do you mean exactly?”
Now I was pissed. I got it, he was upset. I would be too. But not to see me? How could he possibly be in the same town instead of halfway around the world and be content to sit in Lucas’s apartment and shoot the shit knowing I was within arm’s reach?
“You know what I mean.”
Ahh, so now I got the closed-off Nate. I’d heard lots about him but had only seen the faintest of glimmers of this guy. “Be nice, please.”
“I’m always nice.”
“Except for tonight.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Okay, then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, because I don’t think you’re being nice at all right now.”
