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His expression neutral, Nate shrugged. “That’s okay. Sounds like fun anyway. I’m game to give it a try.”
“I think they serve beer too. Actually, I know they do at the winery, but I’m just not sure about the cruise. Or we can skip the cruise—”
“It’s fine. Honestly.”
For some reason, it didn’t seem fine. I didn’t want to burst the happy bubble we’d been in after working through Friday’s issues, but I simply couldn’t resist.
“It doesn’t seem fine. Everything okay?”
Despite the fact that one of his hands played with a strand of my hair and Nate had just kissed me like it was our first time, he felt more distant than usual.
“I wish I liked wine.”
Oh my God. That was all? “It really doesn’t matter. Almost all of the wineries have beer now. One even just opened a new brewery this summer. That’s nothing.”
“But it’s not nothing. You’re the kind of woman who deserves a wine guy, Zoe.”
So, this wasn’t about wine. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“You know what that means.”
Every once in a while, Nate said something so direct it took me aback for a second. If I were at work talking to my boss, or even in college talking to a professor, a comment like that wouldn’t even make me blink. But from my boyfriend? It just felt. . . emotionless.
“Maybe explain,” I said, probably overthinking the emotionless thing.
“It means a guy like me, an army grunt with no career ahead of him, a blue-collar guy. . .” He shrugged, without finishing.
My gut instinct was to tell him he was out of his mind. That I could take care of myself and couldn’t give two shits about that. He’d served his country admirably, was in a transition period after having the rug pulled out from under him, and that was that.
But Nate wouldn’t take kindly to being told he was wrong. That his train of thinking was wrong. So, I tried a different tactic.
“Why do you think that?”
For a second, I thought he might open up. Tell me. And then I could explain that he made me feel something no one ever had precisely. That maybe he wasn’t so far off claiming never to have loved a woman, because it seemed crazy, but maybe I hadn’t been in love with Erik either. If I were forced to put into words the way I’d felt last Friday, realizing I wasn’t going to see Nate. . . incredibly, there was no comparison.
The bond we’d forged before becoming intimate physically was unbreakable.
“Forget it,” he said, pulling me toward him.
But I wouldn’t be waylaid. “Nate?”
Resisting him for the first time ever, I refused to be sidetracked by his eyes, which suddenly became hooded. Or his lips, which now parted. He wouldn’t close me out that easily.
“Talk to me.”
Sighing, he gave up trying to kiss me. His fingers no longer threaded my hair.
“There’s nothing to talk about. We’re very different, that’s all.”
“You called yourself an army grunt with no career ahead of him. That’s not ‘nothing.’”
“Zoe,” he said in a tone I wasn’t accustomed to, one that was more hard-line than usual. “That’s just the truth.”
“No career, huh?”
“None to speak of. A job? Sure. But I’m not a college guy, never will be. Is what it is.”
“So what? You’re not going to college? What does that have to do with anything?”
