Love Expectations (Season 1 of Nata and Phillip's Romance) ✔️

4. 'You with a brood of your own'

Natalia

Phillip and I stand just as close to each other as we did when he was holding me in his arms. His tuxedo-clad frame shields me from some of the wind, but I shiver not from the cooling air but the almost touch of his body. I smell his probably expensive cologne I'm not familiar with, laced with the unmistakable whiff of menthol cigarettes.

That scent slips into the recesses of my memory. Images I buried long ago resurface. Forgotten reflexes kick in. Goosebumps speed up my arms, and I swallow to mask the trembling of my chin. My fingers prickle, urging me to rest my palm on his lapels. I clench my hand into a fist. For the first time in years, I'm flustered.

This is embarrassing.

I hold my breath to get rid of the source of this nonsense and to calm the reaction I've not had to a man since Phillip's and mine last hug at our graduation party. The naive girl of fifteen years ago thought that was the moment Phillip would no longer see me as his tutor, that he'd ignore my brain for once and register my fevered promises to keep in touch and see my silent request for him to kiss me.

The recollections heat my skin. The eighteen-year-old Nata spent two years fantasizing of Phillip Van der Heuvel suddenly telling her he was into nerdy, science-obsessed braniacs, that he was not asking her out because of how much he valued their tutor-tutee relationship, but that now that college was over, he couldn't deny the feelings he had for her. My lungs burst, as I struggle to regain control of my faculties.

The romance novels I was reading then by a heapful didn't help my longing for the guy who was so out of my league we might as well be different species. When I imagined the Scottish Laird ravaging the girl who grew up and who he finally noticed, I saw Phillip's likeness in my dreams. Those were some steamy dreams. I can't hold my breath any longer and allow myself a tentative inhale.

The cigarette smell is all around me now. That was always my least favorite part about Phillip. I cling to the thought. Phillip has never been perfect. Smoking was just one of his many other negative traits. I resurrect the list of why Phillip and I were not a good idea I created to stop daydreaming about spending days and nights in his arms: loud, loves parties, womanizer, doesn't understand the value of money, loves himself too much, and smokes.

I'm no longer that girl. I no longer judge the suitability of men by their looks or my desire to sleep with them. I'm looking for a partner in life, not a playboy to fulfill my fantasies. I still my gaze and really look at the man in front of me. "Still smoking?"

He finally blinks, glances down, and ruffles the closely cropped hair along his neck. "Still hate smokers?"

Phillip's no longer his college self I tutored, but his smile, his mannerisms of a teenager who was caught doing something he shouldn't, yet who knows he can get out of it. They're all there. Familiar. Too familiar.

"You're ruining your health. I've shown you the black lungs of the smokers." My mouth curdles at the thought of the poor women who had to kiss him and the stale smoke that probably coats his tongue. I would never be able to get over the yuck of kissing someone whose mouth tastes like licking an ashtray, not that I've ever licked one. My upper lip curls in disgust. "Don't understand how that didn't scare you."

"I don't smoke. . .that much." The Phillip of my college days always had a cigarette in his fingers or behind his ear when we ran into each other outside of our tutoring arrangement he didn't want anyone to know about. "Just when I'm stressed." He laughs without humor and glances at his empty hands.

The stormy wave in the pit of my stomach unsettles me. I'm not dizzy, but I see in triplicate. My brain scrambles to differentiate between the Phillip I tutored, the Phillip from TMZ, and this all too human and evidently stressed guy. "What are you stressed about?"