Almost twenty-four hours passed before we spoke again.
Last night, being the big, bad, tough girl that I was, I sat on the porch as long as I could stand the cold, which had been, maybe, two hours. Nathan looked up from the couch when I sauntered inside, gathered the shorts and t-shirt I had bought to serve as my pajamas, and made my way to the bathroom to change. Though I felt his eyes on me as I crawled into bed, he hadn’t said anything, and neither had I.
He was gone—playing outside in the shed—when I got up, and didn’t come inside until late in the afternoon. From my seat on the couch, I watched as he retrieved a change of clothes.
“Get ready. We’re going into town,” he called over his shoulder as he retreated to the bathroom.
I was still in my seat when he emerged a moment later, dressed in jeans and a black thermal long sleeve shirt that made it irritatingly impossible not to notice how his biceps strained against the fabric. I forced myself not to stare and, when he saw me disobediently sitting on the couch, my gaze met his crisply.
He sighed. “Please?”
I resisted the urge to laugh, and buried my nose in the five-year-old Sports Illustrated magazine I was reading for the third time today. “How did that taste coming out of your mouth?”
“Like shit,” he muttered. “Now, come on. We have to go.”
I licked my fingers and flipped a page. I had no intention of doing as he requested. I was done following him blindly. I wanted answers and explanations. I was a reasonable person.
He shifted and stuffed his hands into his pockets uneasily. A small smirk lifted the corner of my mouth as I watched out of the corner of my eye.
“Did you know Tiger Woods started golfing when he was only two years old?” I flipped to another page. “I had no idea.”
“Kris...”
“He was three when he played his first nine holes. Now that’s impressive.”
“I tried to call Gran yesterday,” he blurted out.
With that statement, he had my full attention. I felt the color drain from my face as I looked up. The mysterious phone call had been to Gran? I should have known. That should have been my first assumption. Not some secret girlfriend. Not some other commitment. I felt like an idiot.
Worse, she didn’t answer. What did that mean?
“Is there a way for us to find out what happened to her?” I asked.
“That’s why I want to go into town.”
Oh. Great, now I really felt like an idiot—giving him a hard time when all he wanted to do was check on Gran.
Way to go, Kris.
But how was I supposed to know? He never told me anything.
Have faith in the guy. He’s never led me wrong.
Not yet. Not that I was aware of.
Only after I shut the bathroom door behind me did I realize I was having a conversation with myself in my head. I stared at the optimistic version of myself in the mirror, and told her to shut up. I didn’t want her opinion, and I most definitely didn’t want to hear her defending him.
Besides, crazy people had conversations with themselves, and I preferred to think I wasn’t crazy. She was going to have to keep her thoughts to herself.