Page 10 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

Now

One last hit, just to taste you again.

I almost wish someone was recording me because I’m sure I looked like a fucking idiot.

When I spotted Nate leaning against the column on the other side of the courtyard, my eyes went wide before I snapped my head down, eyes locked on my open-toed heels. A second later, I figured I probably looked odd staring at my feet, so my head shot back up again.

Part of me expected him to disappear in the half-second I looked away because I was somehow shocked all over again to see him still standing there when I looked back up.

I blinked, frozen in place as he turned to speak to the other members of Crescent Light—Jared, Leo, and Miles. I didn’t want to see him.

I didn’t.

So I looked to my left, feigning a casual adjustment of my hair around my shoulder. Then I looked up at the sky, willing there to be a fucking blimp or something just to justify it. I finally settled on keeping my head low as I turned, walking back to where I’d left Kieran and Michael.

“I, uh, I’m going to step outside for a minute and get some air. ”

Kieran gave me a mildly puzzled expression like he was waiting for the punchline to the joke. “Babe.” He took a tiny step forward, throwing an amused glance at Michael. “We are outside.”

Shit.

“Right, yeah. It’s just getting pretty crowded.” I scratched my scalp. “Plus, I want to take a look around the property a bit more. See if Gemma needs anything. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Want me to come with you?” He was asking to be nice, obviously not wanting to end his riveting football conversation.

“No, it’s fine.”

I turned on my heel before he could respond.

The problem was that the only exit I knew of was in the direction where Nate was standing. I dared a glance to see if he was still there and found it vacant.

I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Keeping eyes on the source of my anxiety felt safer than letting him roam free, but at that point, it wasn’t worth the risk to locate him.

I scanned the perimeter until I found a sign pointing to the opposite corner of the building from where we entered. Another exit.

Thankfully, a narrow brick path, similar to the one at the entrance, wrapped around the other side of the building. Following it, I snagged another glass of red wine from a server on my way out. I took a long gulp, wincing at the dry, bitter aftertaste.

I walked the path as quickly as I could without tripping in my heels until the music from the welcome party faded. Until I could find a quiet place to calm my racing heart.

A few other party attendees mingled ahead, huddled together in the designated smoking area. My steps slowed, narrowly avoiding getting close enough to risk any of them talking to me, and I leaned my back against the building, letting my eyes close.

I counted to ten in time with my breathing.

RSVP or not, I knew he was going to be here. I knew it in my bones. Maybe I can hide out here forever. Or at least until I can find another escape route.

Don’t be stupid.

I counted to ten a second time. Then, a third.

And as if the universe was laughing at my torment, a phantom, familiar voice sounded from my left.

“You’re drinking red wine now?”

I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t have to. I knew who was standing there.

I cursed myself, cursed the wine clutched in my hand, cursed the world. As much as I wanted to stand there with my eyes closed until the earth rose and swallowed me whole, there was no escaping it. I had to face him.

When I turned my head and cracked my eyes open, Nate was there, leaning against the brick, mirroring me a few paces away.

How Nate managed to look sheepish while maintaining a fair share of that cool confidence he always carried with him was a mystery to me. He studied me with his head cocked to the side—sizing me up or waiting on an answer; I wasn’t sure.

A silent challenge? Or a taunt? An olive branch, perhaps?

Either way, someone had to be the first to fold.

He assessed me, jaw flexing and relaxing like he was focused on controlling his breathing as much as I was. I imagined he was trying to discern if I would talk to him cordially, blow him off, start crying, or rip him a new one.

I didn’t know which I would choose, either .

Smoke from the cigarette I only just noticed he was pinching between his first two fingers filled the space between us.

I sighed, dropping my shoulders, and looked down at the glass clutched in my hand. Fighting was pointless. And besides, I didn’t have any fight left in me when it came to Nate. Our history, what was said, what was done. It simply was what it was.

“Yeah.” I relented. “Red wine.”

The corner of his mouth pulled up by a centimeter, though his brows pulled together a fraction, too.

That’s how it was with Nate. He was all micro-reactions, small adjustments, subtle changes. If you blinked, you missed it. He said nothing while saying everything, as long as you knew how to read him.

He pushed off the wall, taking a slow pull of his cigarette as he closed the distance between us in two long, tentative strides.

I eyed every movement of his long frame, grinding my teeth together in frustration that, even after stewing on the possibility of facing him in the last few days, I still had no clue what to do around him.

When he got close, he held the cigarette out to me, the movement reminding me of a dog handler offering a treat to a feral mutt in return for a modicum of trust.

I wasn’t a smoker. Never fell into the habit, except for the few nights a year when I was just drunk enough that it sounded like a good idea.

I wasn’t nearly drunk enough. I was barely even buzzed, but something about the cigarette felt inviting, and I wasn’t about to turn down an excuse to do something with my hands.

I accepted the cigarette and deliberately met his eyes as I lifted it to my lips and took a long inhale, noting the subtle taste of whiskey on the end. Something in the back of my mind was vaguely aware of the fact that this was the closest I’d been to feeling his lips on mine since …

It doesn’t matter.

Nate had always been prone to picking up and doing away with his smoking habit.

I remembered going months and months without seeing him with a cigarette, never smelling it on his clothes or tasting it on his mouth.

Then, out of the clear blue sky, I would show up at his apartment to see him standing out on his small balcony, having a smoke between writing sessions.

The last I saw him, on that final night when everything went to shit, he told me he’d quit for good.

“I thought you quit,” I said, stifling a cough as I handed the dwindling cigarette back to him between pinched fingers.

His deep blue eyes met mine for a fraction of a second as he took it. “I did.”

I raised my eyebrows.

He laughed through his nose.

The dimple on the right side of his face appeared.

Yeah, I can’t do this.

I wrapped my arms around my middle and turned to make my way back toward the party, hoping that putting distance between us would ease the tightening in my chest. When the unsettled feeling inside me didn’t relent, I walked faster.

“You know,” he started from behind me, a hint of hesitation in his voice, “nights like this always remind me of the night we met.”

Always the one to break the silence. Even when I didn’t want him to.

I pivoted on my heel, facing him once more, willing myself not to be distracted by the tendril of smoke rising from his full lips.

“We met in December on the other side of the country,” I pointed out. “It’s October.”

The corners of his mouth pulled tight, stifling a smile, but he continued. “It was December, but it wasn’t that bad outside that night. I remember you pretended not to be cold in that useless jacket you were wearing, but you were shivering.”

I shifted, my arms still hugging close around my middle to ward off the chill. He offered the cigarette to me again from where he stood. I would have to be the one to bridge the gap this time.

Closing the space between us again, I took it with a defeated sigh and leaned against the brick.

We stood in silence as I took another puff and handed the butt back to him.

With one last short inhalation, he put it out against the wall and stuffed the extinguished paper into his pocket.

I downed the rest of my red wine in one hefty gulp, breathing through the bitter aftertaste.

“You okay?” he asked, all the genuine concern in the world dripping from his words, even as he stared at his booted feet, toeing a few loose pieces of gravel.

I let out an exasperated laugh and leaned my head against the cold stone, staring up at the autumn sky. I couldn’t help but shake my head at the sheer surrealism of standing and talking to Nate as though it were normal. As if he was still part of my life. As if we were friends.

“I’ve never been your fucking friend.”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’m good.”

His eyes, deep blue and ever-perceptive, narrowed. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered back.

All I could do was blink toward the sky and bite my tongue. There were too many feelings flooding my senses and no time to form them all into coherent thoughts, much less words. I met his eye and shook my head—the only answer he was going to get on that particular subject—as if to say, Drop it .

He nodded his understanding.

The wordless kind of communication always did work well for us, in more ways than one.

The weighted pause lasted a little too long, so I turned again without a word to walk back to the party.

I wanted to crawl under a big rock and go to sleep. Or maybe walk right into the fucking ocean and disappear under the dark waves. Anything to not be here, exposed in front of so many people, before I had the chance to process my feelings.

When I was far enough from him to feel like I could breathe, Nate spoke again, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Well, you look really pretty, Oli.”

I stopped cold in my tracks. As much as I wanted to rebuke the butterflies that still, even now, after everything that had happened, flooded through my core, I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel like a caress from a long-gone lover. Because it did.

He always felt like a safety blanket I could lay back down in no matter what happened, no matter how long it had been. It was just too easy with him. It always had been. And I’d been bitten in the ass before because of it.

No. I wasn’t going to let him make me feel all those feelings again. I wasn’t that girl anymore. The one who felt things for him so fully, so completely. The girl who needed to feel those feelings reciprocated, whether she knew it or not.

I thought back to the girl I was five years ago and felt so sad for her.

Because how could she want someone so badly?

How could she crave someone who was never going to be what she needed, no matter how much he was exactly what she wanted?

How could she see herself with someone who made her feel disposable?

Who made it clear he didn’t want to share his life?

So, I forced my feet to keep walking.

He didn’t get to talk to me like that. He didn’t get to give me compliments and tell me sweet nothings like he was oblivious to how they used to make me feel. He didn’t get to say the things I used to lie awake at night wishing he would say.

No, that wasn’t who he was, and it never would be, even if part of me used to ache that it could.