Her Purpose | ✓

Chapter Eleven

The sun beamed down on the beach, warming the sand beneath our feet. Despite the breeze tugging at our hair and clothes, it was a lovely day to be outside. I watched as Meri ran back and forth between the shoreline and our spot, bringing buckets of water for our sandcastle.

"Careful, Meri!" I called as she stumbled slightly. "Don't spill it all before you get here."

Nathan chuckled beside me, patting down the walls of our creation. "She's doing her best, Beth. Look how determined she is."

I had to smile. At six years old, Meri took her sandcastle-building duties very seriously. Her little face was scrunched up in concentration as she carefully poured water into the moat we'd dug.

"There!" she declared proudly. "Now the bad guys can't get in."

"Good thinking," Nathan said, giving her a high five. "We're practically impregnable now."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Impregnable? Bit of a big word there, Mr Vocabulary."

He stuck his tongue out at me. "I'll have you know I've been expanding my lexicon."

"Alright, settle down, Shakespeare," I laughed, throwing a handful of sand at him.

As Meri searched for shells to decorate our castle, Nathan turned to me with an odd look. He seemed... nervous? But that couldn't be right. Nathan was never nervous around me.

"So, Beth," he started, fiddling with a twig. "I was wondering... are you busy tomorrow night?"

I blinked, surprised. "Um, no, I don't think so. Why?"

"Well, there's this film showing at the cinema. A romance, I think. Meant to be quite funny. We could go? If you wanted to, I mean."

"Oh," I said, my heart doing a weird flip. "Like... the two of us?"

Nathan's cheeks went pink. "Yeah. I mean, unless you wanted to invite others. That's cool, too. I just thought... might be fun."

I found myself smiling. "No, that sounds nice. Just us. Is it anything like that last disaster we watched?"

He laughed, the tension easing from his shoulders. "God, I hope not. I don't think my brain could take another one of those."

"Fair enough," I giggled. Then, a thought occurred to me. "Wait, are we going to the drive-in cinema?"

Nathan nodded, a grin spreading across his face. "Yeah, I thought it might be fun. Why?"

I felt a surge of excitement. "That's another thing to tick off the list then!"

"Definitely," Nathan beamed. His smile was so bright, so genuinely happy, that I felt my cheeks grow warm.

We sat there momentarily, smiling at each other like idiots, until a small voice piped up.