This Is Falling(27)

“Thank you,” I say, my lips still quivering, partly from the cold and partly from my desire to be kissed.

“Well, it is sort of my fault. I ran you through the sprinklers,” he says, reaching his arm around me and pulling me into his side. We walk through the field, our feet squishing in the grass.

“Are we supposed to be out here?” I ask, noticing the deep feet prints we’re leaving in our wake.

“Oh god no. I’m going to get my ass chewed, too. There are cameras all over the place. I bet security is on it’s way right now.”

I start to pick up my pace, my heart thumping with panic now. But then his laugh registers, and I stop. “Not nice,” I say.

“I know. I’m kidding. There are no cameras. We’re probably not supposed to be here, but no one will know.”

We climb over a small pony wall into the dug out, and Nate reaches for my hand to help me down. His hands are somehow warm, despite everything on my body feeling so cold. I want to hold his hand, feel my fingers intertwine with his, but his touch leaves me as soon as my feet meet the ground. And I can’t ignore the sharp pain it causes in my heart.

The dugout bench is wide; I sit sideways on it, pulling my knees up to hug them closely to me. I tuck my legs into his shirt for a bit, trying to warm the rest of my body. Nate sits in front of me, crossing his legs and tugging at my shoelaces.

“I meant what I said, you know,” he says, looking up at me with one eyebrow raised. “That you’re beautiful?”

Sucking in my bottom lip to hide the smile on my face, I nod once and whisper “Thank you.”

“Oh Nate, and by the way, I find you incredibly handsome,” he says, putting on his best female voice to imitate me. I laugh and stare down into my lap, not knowing what to say next.

“You’re…not bad,” I say, shrugging for emphasis. “I mean, you’re kind of big and gangly. And I bet your knees crackle and pop from catching, so you’re probably going to suffer from massive arthritis. But, you’re all right.”

He pushes up my feet without warning, tipping me over on my back. “Damn, and here Ty and I thought Paige was the bitchy one,” he jokes.

“Nope. It was I all along. In fact, this isn’t even what I look like. If I ripped off this layer of skin, underneath I would smell like sparkly body spray, and my skin would glitter, and my hair would feel like wire from all of the product I put in it.”

“Wow! Now that’s what I was really hoping you looked like. Go on, baby, rip it off. Show me the real you,” he says, laughing and reaching for my hand to pull me back up to sitting. This time, though, he leaves his fingertips on mine, shifting his touch from one finger to the next, like he’s not sure if it’s a good idea to hold onto me too tightly.

“You don’t want to see the real me,” I swallow, and look away.

“Sure I do,” he says, and I can feel his eyes on me. They’re burning, and I know I can’t wait this one out.

“Tell me about Ty. How’d he get hurt?” His hand drops from mine, and he grips both sides of the bench underneath him, lifting his entire body up a few inches from the seat, like a gymnast. He lets out a big breath when he rests his arms again, folding his hands together in his lap. His gaze stays there the entire time.

“Ty was sixteen. I was twelve. We were at this big lake, near New Orleans. My grandparents owned some land there. Ty taught me to swim in that lake when we were real little. I mean, that place was like a second home. So many memories.”

Watching him remember his youth is incredible. The way he talks about his brother just gushes with affection, and I’m envious he has something in his life that feels like that.

“Well, this one year, we were both feeling a little adventurous. There was this big ledge that I had watched some teenagers jump off of the year before, and the entire year after, all I did was talk about that ledge to my brother, begging him and making him promise to take me back there so we could jump off together. Only, when we climbed up on the ledge, I got really scared. I’m not really good at heights, and I started crying. Now, keep in mind, while twelve sounds kind of young to you right now, it’s not that young for a boy who’s crying. I felt like a loser, and my brother felt bad for me, so he said he’d go first and show me how easy it was. He, uh…he didn’t come back up.”

I’m covering my mouth because I don’t want Nate to see the complete reaction on my face. I know I can’t mask my eyes, and I can feel the tears pooling already, threatening to fall down my face.

“He injured his L2 and L3. No, I’ll be blunt—he smashed them to pieces. I ran down the hill and screamed bloody murder. A few fishermen heard me and helped me pull him out. Getting to the hospital is all one giant blur, and I remember my thinking the entire time that my parents hated me. I hated me. Because I made my brother do something so stupid.”

“But it wasn’t your fault,” I say, reaching for his hand on instinct. His breath pauses when my fingertips touch him, and he hooks his fingers into mine a little more this time.

“I know that now. Ty snapped me out of it pretty quickly. You may have noticed, my brother doesn’t really do pity,” he says, his eyes still watching our hands as they fight to hold on harder to one another.

“You’re brother is pretty awesome,” I say, waiting for his eyelashes to flick up and for his gaze to reach mine. But he keeps his eyes down, at our hands.