was January, and the temperature was due to take another nosedive. We might even get snow.
I'd kept the coat in my car all morning, but I'd promised her I'd wear it to Nate's rock. So after she and I clicked off, I tugged the eyesore around me and trudged to the main building. The icy wind tortured my face ... but the rest of me was cozy. I really should've known by now not to question Claudia's genius.
"Nice coat," Nate said as I perched next to him. He had barely looked up from his guitar, but a sly smile played on his face. I was still trying to figure out if he was being genuine or sarcastic, when in a single motion he slid the guitar to his side, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me in for a kiss.
Did I say "a kiss"? That didn't do it justice. Our lips seemed to melt together, and his tongue rolled over mine in a way that made me dizzy.
A beautiful eternity later the kiss ended, but Nate still held me and my blanket of a coat tucked close under one arm. "I had a great time Friday," he said.
"Me too."
Do not ask why he didn't call, I screamed inside my head. Don't do it. Do not ask why he didn't call.
"I was kind of surprised you didn't call, though," I said.
WHY? Why did I say it? No good could come of that statement!
"Whatever," Nate said.
He peeled his arm off me, spun his guitar back around, and started playing.
"Not that I would have answered if you had," I said, trying to dig my way out. That sounded mean, though, so I added, "Not that I wouldn't want to talk to you—it's just that I was away from home and I forgot to pack my phone cord, so I couldn't charge it up after it ran out of power, which it did pretty much right after I saw you..."
What it really came down to was that I couldn't be trusted to function on my own as anything close to a normal human being. Nate hadn't moved since I'd started babbling, but I could feel him pulling further and further away. I thought about Claudia's football players and hot dog eaters and realized I had only one hope to save this encounter.
I let the silence take over for a few minutes as Nate strummed, then casually stepped away from the rock.
"I'm gonna take off," I said. "See you around."
Nate stopped playing. "Why?"
I shrugged, lifted my hand in a bored farewell, and turned back toward the school.
"Wait. Stay," Nate said. "I want to play you something. I wrote it Saturday. I was thinking about you."
Hold up—he wrote a song because he was thinking about me? This was huge! I couldn't show it, though. I folded my arms and silently dared him to impress me.
"I don't have the words yet," he said. "It's just a melody."
He started playing.
It was the most beautiful song I'd ever heard. Of course it was—it was the first song I'd ever had written for me. And writing a song wasn't a quick thing, was it? If he had been thinking of me when he'd written it, he must have been thinking about me a lot. I imagined him sitting in his room, strumming his guitar as he replayed every second of our evening together.
"Did you like it?" he asked.
"It's beautiful," I told him. I sat next to him on the rock again. "Thank you."
"I meant getting high," he said. "I could tell you really liked it. That's what I was thinking about when I wrote the song: your trip. I've never seen anyone get so high that they couldn' t move. You must have some kind of super-sensitivity. It was incredible, right?"
"It was ... you know." That was the best I could do. Terrifying, horrifying, the-closest-thing-to-being-buried-alive-I-ever-want-to-experience were all more accurate, but I was pretty sure they weren't what Nate wanted to hear.
"Yeah, I know." He smiled.
He started playing again, and I felt so sad for him, because I got it. Of course being so overcome by pot that you couldn't function sounded like heaven. Look what he had to deal with when he functioned. This was the perfect time to start helping him, to talk about everything he was masking with his DangerZone persona.
I put an understanding hand on his thigh. "You know," I said gently, "I've been thinking about your mo—"