“So,” I said as he worked his way down the line, “about yesterday.”
“You look like you feel better.”
“Define better.”
“Well,” he said, glancing at me, “you’re upright. And conscious.”
“Kind of sad when that’s an improvement,” I said.
“But it is an improvement,” he replied. “Right?”
I made a face. Positivity anytime was hard for me to take, but in the morning with a hangover, almost impossible. “So,” I said, holding out the sweatshirt, “I wanted to bring this back to you. I figured you were probably missing it.”
“Thanks,” he said, taking it and laying it on a chair behind him. “It is my favorite.”
“It does have that feel,” I replied. “Well worn and all that.”
“True,” he said, going back to the bags. “But it also reflects my personal life philosophy.”
I looked at the sweatshirt again. “‘You swim’ is a philosophy? ”
He shrugged. “Better than ‘you sink,’ right?”
Hard to argue with that. “I guess.”
“Plus there’s the fact,” he said, “that wearing that sweatshirt is the closest I might get to the U now.”
“I thought you had a scholarship,” I said, remembering the guy who’d called out to him in the parking lot.
“I did,” he said, going back to dropping things into the bags. “But that was before I quit swim team. Now I’ve got to get in strictly on my grades, which frankly are not as good as my swimming.”
I considered this as he moved down the next row, still adding things to the bags. “So why did you quit?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I was really into it when I lived in Arizona, but here . . . it just wasn’t that fun anymore. Plus my dad needed me for the business.”
“Still, seems like a big decision, giving it up entirely,” I said.
“Not really,” he replied. He reached down, picking up another box. “So, was it bad when you came in last night?”
“Yeah,” I said, somewhat surprised by the sudden change in subject. “Jamie was really pissed off.”
“Jamie was?”
“I know. It was bizarre.” I swallowed, taking a breath. “Anyway, I just wanted to say . . . that I appreciate what you did. Even if, you know, it didn’t seem like it at the time.”
“You weren’t exactly grateful,” he agreed. Clunk, clunk, clunk.
“I was a bitch. And I’m sorry.” I said this quickly, probably too quickly, and felt him look up at me again. So embarrassing, I thought, redirecting my attention to the bag in front of me. “What are you putting in there, anyway? ”
“Little chocolate houses,” he replied.
“What? ”
“Yeah,” he said, tossing one to me. “See for yourself. You can keep it, if you want.”
Sure enough, it was a tiny house. There were even windows and a door. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?” I said.
“Not really. This client’s a builder. I think they’re for some open house or something.”
I slid the house into my pocket as he dropped the box, which was now almost empty, and pulled out another one, which was full of brochures, a picture of a woman’s smiling face taking up most of the front. QUEEN HOMES, it said. LET US BUILD YOUR CASTLE! Nate started sliding one into each bag, working his way down the line. After watching him for a moment, I reached across, taking a handful myself and starting on the ones closest to me.
“You know,” he said, after we’d worked in silence for a moment, “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you by showing up yesterday. I just thought you might need help.”
“Clearly, I did,” I said, glad to have the bags to concentrate on. There was something soothing, orderly, to dropping in the brochures, each in its place. “If you hadn’t come, who knows what would have happened.”
Nate didn’t speculate as to this, which I had to admit I appreciated. Instead, he said, “Can I ask you something?”
I looked up at him, then slid another brochure in. “Sure.”
“What was it really like, living on your own?”
I’d assumed this would be a question about yesterday, like why I’d done it, or a request for further explanation of my twisted theories on friendship. This, however, was completely unexpected. Which was probably why I answered it honestly. “It wasn’t bad at first,” I said. “In fact, it was kind of a relief. Living with my mom had never been easy, especially at the end.”
He nodded, then dropped the box onto the floor and pulled out another one, this one filled with magnets emblazoned with the Queen Homes logo. He held it out to me and I took a handful, then began working my way up the line. “But then,” I said, “it got harder. I was having trouble keeping up with bills, and the power kept getting turned off. . . .” I was wondering if I should go on, but when I glanced up, he was watching me intently, so I continued. “I don’t know. There was more to it than I thought, I guess.”
“That’s true for a lot of things,” he said.
I looked up at him again. “Yeah,” I said, watching him continue to drop in magnets, one by one. “It is.”
“Nate!” I heard a voice call from outside. Over his shoulder, I could see his dad, standing in the door to the main house, his phone to his ear. “Do you have those bags ready yet?”