Page 41 of Noticing Natalie
To talk about holding his hand and jogging to catch a ferry out to my favorite restaurant while we laughed in the rain was wonderful. The smiles on my friends’ faces were genuine, and many of them were smiling through the tears on their faces.
Right before I sat down, I made eye contact with Tim Summers. I swear it felt like the world stood still for a half hour while we stared at each other. It was probably only fifteen seconds or so, but it still felt like it was noticeable to the congregation. I pulled it together, smiled, laid a peony on Dad’s casket—Mom’s favorite flower—and sat down.
At the gravesite, there were only a few people. It was just me, Sabine, Imani, my roommate from Baltimore, and the Summers family.
Sabine held one of my hands and Lynne held the other as they lowered his casket. They’d held me as I cried.
Afterwards I stood around talking to everyone. It had been a year or more since I’d spoken to some of them.
Including Tim.
“Well, I’m going to go on back to the house to get food ready, if that’s okay,” Lynne said. She was, of course, hosting a small get together at the Summers’ house. I’d already brought Anne and Gilbert over ahead of time so that they could have some outside time while we all sat around and talked.
They didn’t get much of that in Baltimore.
I hung around after everyone else left. I wanted to say a few words over Dad’s grave after everyone left. When I turned to walk to my car, Tim was leaning against his truck. I paused for a moment, then started walking towards him. He had no business looking as good as he did, and I felt a little guilty for noticing at my dad’s funeral.
He could fill out a suit, that was for sure. He looked a bit older, like he’d grown up some while I was gone. He looked like a grown man. There was nothing of the boy I’d loved so much left in him. At least not that I could see.
He was still the best-looking man I’d ever seen. I was hoping I’d overplayed his physical beauty in my mind and that time away would show me that he wasn’t really all that handsome. Yeah. That didn’t happen. I kept trying to do that, and it never worked.
“Hey,” I said.
He smiled at me. “Hey. Are you doing okay?”
I shrugged. “It hurts, but yeah. I’m okay. I had some time with him at the end, and we spent a lot of quality time together over the past year.”
“I’m glad.” His blue eyes studied me. They’d always seen too much, and it made me uncomfortable. I looked away.
“Nat.”
I looked back, my eyebrows raised in question.
“I’m sorry. I swear I’ll do my best to make it up to you, but in the meantime, can we be friends again?”
I gave him a half smile. “You’re trying to catch me in a moment of weakness, huh?”
He looked horrified. “No! That’s not what I was trying…”
I started laughing. “Calm down. I was just kidding. I didn’t expect you to fall for it.”
“Well, you are the same woman who threatened to call the police if I showed up at your apartment in Baltimore.”
I felt my face turn pink. “That might have been a little over the top.”
“You think?” He grinned.
“Maybe,” I said and suddenly he was sticking his hand out, and before I knew it, we were doing our old, complicated hand shake we’d made when we were about twelve years old.
It felt strangely good to do it again, and we both laughed at the ease with which it came back to us.
“You want to ride to the house with me? I’ll bring you back to your car afterwards.”
I shook my head. “No, I’ll follow you.”
He looked disappointed. “Okay.”
He had the wrong idea. “It’s not that I don’t want to ride with you. It’s that I don’t think I can handle coming back to the cemetery again for a while.”
