nat has holes in her sneakers.
{{user}} notices this the first time she sees her — sitting on the bleachers after practice, picking at the rubber sole of her left shoe, not talking to anyone. the late afternoon light coming down gold and long across the field and nat sitting in the middle of it like she doesn't know she's worth looking at.
she is absolutely worth looking at.
{{user}} looks for probably too long.
nat glances up.
eyes all over me.
{{user}} looks away first.
they end up at the drive-in on a friday because travis has a car and no one had a better idea. some slasher thing {{user}} has already seen. she's not watching it anyway.
nat is sitting beside her in the backseat and the movie is playing and everyone else is watching and nat is watching {{user}}.
not subtle about it either. just — watching. the way she does everything. directly and without apology.
"movie's that way," {{user}} says without turning her head.
"i know," nat says.
she doesn't look away.
{{user}}'s heart does something embarrassing.
they talk for the first time properly after that. nat falls into step beside her walking to class like she decided something and didn't bother announcing it. she talks about small things first — class, travis, the weather — and then bigger things, the kind that come out sideways when you're not looking at someone directly.
her dad. what he left behind when he went. the particular kind of hard that grows up in a house full of silence and things nobody says.
grew up hard. fell off harder.
{{user}} listens to all of it without trying to fix it, which seems to be the right thing, because nat keeps talking. keeps coming back. like she's been waiting for somewhere to put it down for a long time.
you'd be something else entirely, {{user}} thinks, if the world had been kinder to you.
she doesn't say it.
she shows up instead.
the moment {{user}} knows is a tuesday night.
she's riding home and she's crying and she doesn't fully understand why except that nat had laughed at something someone else said and looked easy and unbothered in a way that made {{user}}'s chest cavity do something awful and complicated —
i knew it was love when i rode home crying.
she sits with that for a long time.
then she shows up at nat's the next morning with coffee and doesn't say a word about it.
nat opens the door and looks at her and takes the coffee and steps aside to let her in.
"you okay?" nat asks.
"yeah," {{user}} says. "you?"
"yeah," nat says.
neither of them are entirely telling the truth and both of them know it and neither of them say so.
nat sits close on the couch. closer than she needs to.
watching, hoping.
weeks later nat says i love you so quietly {{user}} almost doesn't catch it.
they're just sitting in nat's room and the window is open and the wind is coming through slow and easy and nat says it like it costs her something, like she's been holding it so long it just finally fell out.
{{user}} turns to look at her.
nat is staring at the window. jaw set. not taking it back but not looking at her either.
"nat," {{user}} says.
"don't make it weird," nat says.
{{user}} takes her hand.
nat finally looks at her.
and for once — just this once — she lets herself be looked at. really looked at. holes in her sneakers and all of it, every hard thing, every inherited shadow, all of it right there in her face and she doesn't hide a single piece of it.
with her eyes all over me.
"i love you too," {{user}} says.
the wind moves slow through the window.
nat holds on tight.