Chapter 21
Evie
On the ride to his house, Nate seems to sense I need a minute to process everything that just happened, so he holds my hand and turns up his music, giving me the time to get my thoughts in order. And just like his dad said, with a glance at the clock in Nathaniel’s fancy dashboard, I see it only took eight minutes to get here. I look out the windshield at the sprawling… I can’t even call it a house. It’s a freaking mansion if I’ve ever seen one, and Nate laughs at the first thing that comes out of my mouth.
“You said your mom does everything herself? She must clean from sunup to sundown.”
“Nah, we have housekeepers, but Mom cooks and does all the decorating and stuff herself. She’s a homemaker minus the maidly duties,” he explains, and I nod, my eyes never leaving the freaking castle before me.
“She’s living the good life,” I murmur, and he chuckles.
“Let’s go in before my dad has an aneurism because I’m late.”
I scoff. “You mean before you have an aneurism for being late.”
“Tomatoes, to-mah-toes.” He gets out and comes around the hood, opening my door and leaning across me to unbuckle my seatbelt as always. Something I’ve never questioned, since it makes me feel so taken care of. I place my hand in his and he helps me down from his truck, and then he leads me up the steps to the giant front doors, my eyes trying to take everything in at once.
The door opens just as he reaches for the knob, startling me a bit, especially when I see his mom standing there with an expression I can’t quite decipher. But I take it as excitement when suddenly she grips me by the shoulders and hauls me over the threshold and into a tight hug. It all happens so fast I stand there stiffly for a second, but then Nathaniel’s “Mooom, stop suffocating my girl” echoes throughout the huge foyer, and I relax against her, bringing my arms up to lay my palms flat against the middle of her back. She’s shaped a lot like me, petite and thin, but her hips are a little wider and she’s got about an inch of height on me. Her scent is a pleasant floral.
She feels like home.
When she finally pulls back, Nate closes the door behind us, and she brings her palms up to cup my jaw for a moment before grasping my upper arms gently. “Let me look at you. Oh, how I’ve been dying to meet you,” she confides, and I glance up at Nate nervously as he circles to stand behind his mom. “You’re right, my boy. She’s absolutely lovely,” she tells him over her shoulder, and my face flames.
“Thank you,” I whisper, still not quite registering what’s happening right now, and I lift my hand to push my glasses up my nose just to have something to do with my hands.
“Come, sweet girl. You can help me plate the food while Nate goes and showers,” she says, linking her arm with mine and pulling me to the right. But Nathaniel speaks up.
“I’ll just shower later, after I take Evie back to her car. I’ll set the table, Mom,” he replies and walks ahead of us. Mrs. Black stops, her arm tightening through mine, and brings me to a halt, and when I look over at the woman, her mouth is dropped open, and I see tears fill her eyes. She turns the look on me then closes her mouth, blinking back the tears and letting out a little laugh.
“I don’t know what you did, sweet girl, but thank you. Thank you for healing whatever it was inside him that his father and I and countless doctors never could,” she says in a low tone, and she pulls me in for another hug that I melt into. When she stands back up, she seems to shake off the thick emotions, gives me a big grin, and pulls me along to the kitchen, which is straight out of a freaking lifestyle magazine.
Nate is washing his hands in the giant trough-style sink, and I watch him curiously, noting that he no longer seems to count inside his head. He doesn’t wash them rigorously a certain number of times front and back and between his fingers. He just… soaps up, looking over his shoulder to wink at me, rinses them after several seconds, and then turns off the faucet, snatching off a random number of paper towels instead of counting them out like he did once before at my house, and dries them, tossing the towels into the garbage on his way to pull open the silverware drawer. And then he disappears into what must be the dining room.
Mrs. Black chuckles softly beside me. “My water bill thanks you too,” she whispers, and it startles a snort out of me. As if these people have to worry about their bills being high. They look like they could afford to run the Niagara Falls.
Twenty minutes later, I’m next to Nathaniel at a six-seated dining room table, his mom and dad across from us. I was surprised at the intimate setting, expecting the table to stretch for a mile with a countless number of seats, and Nate picked up on it without me saying a word.
“This is our family dining room. The formal has a table that seats forty,” he informed me, and I pulled my lips between my teeth before whispering to him, “Of course it does.”
“So, Evelyn,” his dad says, laying his napkin across his lap and turning his plate a fraction of an inch, a move so similar to something I’ve seen Nathaniel do with his pencils and books that it’s endearing if I were to ignore the fact that it’s an actual disorder that causes him to need things to be just right. “Nate has told us so much about you—all of it good, so
