A long lane at night

2.12. WORK BITCH Part 1

** JACK **

'JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER, SUNBEAM,' NATE SAID, guiding me by the arm into a door I couldn't see.

'But, Munchkin, did you really need to blindfold me all the way back down the corner?' I ask with a tease. 'That old lady will never look at black cloth the same way again.'

I didn't hear anything from him. I knew my fiancé, my best friend, well enough to know he was flustered. I started laughing.

'Nate Wyatt! Tell me that you didn't apologise to that poor woman! She was already embarrassed enough!'

'Mu'ruv.'

'What's that, Munchkin?'

'I might have, okay?! I saw the way she was looking at us like we were some sort of kinky crazy men who'll do it anywhere they can! Be careful now, we're going up some stairs.'

'How dare she?' I couldn't stop laughing. 'How very dare she? Who does she think she is to mistake us for something we one hundred per cent are?'

More silence followed. I wish I could see just how red he was right now. Not that I needed it, anyway. I knew exactly how.

'Okay, here's the landing. But we'll go round and up another flight and do it once more, all right?'

'Oh. Third floor. Fancy.'

Nate was trying to carefully hold my arm, but I held his hand in mine instead.

'I'm not worried, Nate. After all, I know you're half a step behind me anyway. But even if you weren't.'

Nate rubbed his thumb on my hand as an appreciative gesture and I gave his hand a light squeeze. We didn't talk much more until we were safely on the third-floor landing.

'Can I take it off now?' I asked.

'Almost. Just a few more steps. Okay. Stay here. Ready?'

'Ready.'

Nate removed the blindfold from my face and I stared ahead to look at a glass door. It had a matted film hiding the interior and thin letters at eye-level read 'Nate A.L. Wyatt, Family Law'.

'Does it suck that I paid for it mostly with the money I got from that nasty divorce I settled last month?'

'Why would evolving in your career with its own fruits suck?' I asked. I still can't make him see his true value and I hate it, but now is not the moment for this. 'Nate, this is awesome! I'm so proud of you!'

I grabbed him in my arms and kissed him, caressing the hair on the back of his head.

'And...' for someone who was showing me his very first own law office, he was certainly lacking the confidence. He pointed to his name and said, 'do you mind, uh ... I thought it would be too expensive to redo them in only four months, so I went a bit ahead of myself.'

'Nate, when was the moment that you realised I was the love of your life?' I asked, hoping I sounded as serious as I felt. 'And I don't mean "I think I'm in love with my best friend", I'm talking about "I'm positive I want to spend my life with this man".'

He seemed a little bit lost, but he looked up at me to answer.

'The first sign was the way I felt that year you were already at Uni and I wasn't. I spent a few weeks thinking I was just missing you, that we just needed to adjust to our routine that was new, but days turned into weeks and then they turned into months and I understood that a life away from you wasn't the life I wanted for me.'

He looked confident. I returned his look with an extra pinch of tenderness.

'Everything was so new for me,' I said, holding his hand in mine again. 'It was all supposed to be so exciting and fresh, but it all just felt so wrong. What was the point of discovering a whole new life if you weren't there to share it with me? You know I hate to waste my time with "maybes", but who knows, we could've been a real couple for so much longer.'