Page 63 of Crash Out
Not the performance laugh. Not the one I used when something was supposed to be funny. The real one, the one that came from somewhere I didn't usually let people see. It was out before I knew it was happening, and when I looked up Nathan was watching me with that expression—the one I'd been collecting for months—and it was closer to the surface than I'd ever seen it.
I put my fork down.
Leaned across the small table.
Waited to see if he moved away.
And when he didn’t?
I kissed him.
Easy. Unhurried. Not like in the corridor, not desperate or making a point. No, this time I kissed him because I wanted to and had decided that was sufficient reason. His mouth was warm, and he went still for exactly one second, the way he went still when he was processing something. Then he kissed me back with that thoroughness he brought to everything, his hand coming up to the side of my face. The office was quiet and the facility was empty and none of the usual rules seemed to apply.
I pulled back.
"This okay?" I said.
Nathan looked at me. Something in his face that I was going to spend a significant amount of time learning to read.
"Yes," he said.
I kissed him again.
Longer this time, his hand still at my jaw, the table between us not quite enough of a barrier to be inconvenient and not quite enough to be ignorable. When I finally pulled back we were both breathing slightly differently and Nathan’s tie was more loosened than it had been and his hand was still at my face, not gripping, just resting, like he'd forgotten to move it or hadn't wanted to.
"I should shower," I said. "I came straight from practice."
Nathan’s eyes were very blue in the low light.
"I know," he said, which were his favorite two words.
I held his gaze.
This was probably a terrible idea.
"Want to shower with me?"
18
He saidlet me finish these notes,and I sat back in my chair and waited, which I did not do, normally. Waiting was not a skill I had, but I sat in Nathan Cross's office while he finished his notes with the fountain pen. I watched the clock on the wall and felt something that was either anticipation or a mild cardiac event.
Both?
Five minutes. Felt like twenty. Then he closed the notebook. Capped the pen. Put his jacket on the hook behind the door in the way he put things places, with intention.
Then he looked at me.
"Okay," he said.
We walked through the dark facility without discussing it, the emergency lighting doing its amber thing, our footsteps the only sound. The locker room at this hour was a different place, all the usual noise and gear and bodies gone, just the space itself, which was larger and quieter than it ever felt during the day.
I pushed the locker room door open.
We stood in it for a second.
I had been in this locker room approximately four hundred times. I had never once stood in it with Nathan Cross and thought about what came next.
"So," I said.
