Ughh.
My patience is running thin.
"Come here you stupid fish." I yell at the swimming animal.
How were cavemen able to capture fish when they were dumber than I am?
We are still hiding on the covert. Three days passed since the wolves' incident, and for my calculus this means that this is our fifth day on the woods, and we remain clueless of our location. Today morning we chatted about leaving but Sarah was hesitant to go because of the wolves and Lucy was saying that this was a good place to stay because we had shelter and water.
Unlike her I don't plan on sticking in this forest for long, so I don't want to stay on the den if not necessary I want to go home and that is exactly what I will do. All the boys agreed with my way of thinking, but since the girls weren't ready to leave we decided to stay here one more day hidden. While that we noticed that we were running low on food.
And for some reason I ended up here. On the river trying to fish.
How wonderful.
"The fish keeps getting away from me."
"Were you waiting for the fish to die willingly?" Nathan's voice sounds by my side, he is supposed to find nuts.
I crease my eyebrows, "Well, sort of... They could at least make the task easy for me."
"You don't understand anything of camping." He laughs.
"Sure, says the boy that is nuts but is trying to find nuts." I stick my tongue in his direction and that yearns me a frown on his face.
"I'm not nuts."
"All the crazy people say it. That is the first stage. Denial." I say while looking at the river and try to stick my piece of wood on another fish.
"Want to play a game?" I stop my movements and look at him.
"What game?"
"21 questions. Each of us asks the other 21 questions. I feel like I don't know you."
"That's because you don't."
"Let's start the game then" A cheeky smile appears on his lips.
"I never said I wanted to play."
"Don't be a party pooper." He pouts and his big green eyes lock with mine. He looks so sweet, lovely and innocent.
"Don't look at me that way." I turn my head to the water and try to focus on something, anything else.
His reflection shows up on the water, he is still pouting and making that look that only Puss in Boots has. Or at least I thought that he was the only one having it. "Please, Kate." He whines.
"Nope."
"Pretty please?" He joins his hands as if begging.
"Fine, fine." I sigh.
"Yes." He jumps and starts doing a little dance, kicking his feet and arms all over the place, he looks like a monkey, but I can't control myself and start laughing like a mad woman.
He stops and looks at me with a smile on his full lips but I'm not able to stop my laugh. Soon enough we are both laughing, not even knowing why, I have tears in the corner of my eyes and my belly is hurting.
Nathan is lying on his back and I'm on my knees, since I couldn't stand up straight for long. "Wow."
He breathes.
"Yeah." I let a few more laughs before finally stopping.
"What's your full name?" He speaks, startling me for an instant.
"What?"
"The game," It takes me a minute to remember what he is talking about before something clicks.
"Oh, that game," He nods "Katherine Rose Blair. Rose was my grandmothers' name."
"Such a beautiful name." A blush starts to appear on my cheeks. God damn it.
"Your turn." He says.
"Where are you from?" I ask, as I hide my flushed face with my hair, "I noticed that you have an accent."
"I'm from England, from a small place called Staithes, up North in Yorkshire."
"Never heard of it."
"It's normal, not a lot of a people know where it is. I've moved to America when I turned 18," He props himself on his elbows so he can get a better view of my position, even though I'm sitting only a few feet away from him, "What's your favourite food?"
"That's a question without an answer, I love food, I can't simply choose the best of all the food on Earth, the others would be jealous." He starts laughing till he realizes that I'm serious.
"Oh. Really? Oh, then what about favourite sweet or dessert?"
"Do you know how many different sweets exist and how many delicious desserts are in this lovely world we call Earth?" I arch my brow. He can't be really asking me these questions. Food is a really important subject to me.
"Okay then... What is you-"
"You already asked two questions, it's my turn." I tilt my head to the side and smirked.
"What? No, it's my turn, you didn't answer them."
"But I did, I said that it was impossible to choose a favourite."
"I wanted a simp-"
"Nope, it's my turn." I interrupt him again "What's your favourite colour?"
"Grey." He replies while looking at the gray sky.
"Hmm, okay and if you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go?"
"Atlantis"
"Excuse me?"
He looks at me and laughs, I'm going to risk it and say that it is because of my dumbstruck expression, "I'm serious."
"No, you aren't. You are laughing and Atlantis doesn't exist Nathan."
"Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean that is not there."
"Now you sound like Ed." A chill passes through my body, to the tip of my big toe to my neck.
"Probably. You have one more question and then it's my turn again."
I ponder over my next question I know that I still have others, but I don't want to ask a stupid thing. I can feel Nathan's gaze on me while I watch the fish swimming in the river. An idea for a question pops in my mind.
"Why do you always protect me? Not that I mind, I just think that it's weird that you keep protecting someone you just met." I keep my eyes on river, for what I can tell the current is strong and it reminds me of the incident I had.
"I know you for a long time actually." I freeze.
My body tense, my heart skips a beat and I swear that I stopped breathing for a minute. Tension is thick in the air around us, but the tension must come all from me. I raise my head to him and fix my eyes with his. "What do you mean?"
"I've seen you before at school, I used to see you at lunch and at the parking lot at the end of classes with Sarah and Beth. Sometimes I would also see you at your locker. You are no stranger to me Kate."
"Stalker much..." I whisper, "Why didn't you tell me?" I say, this time loud enough for him to hear.
He shrugs, "I didn't know how to. And by the way you asked more questions than necessary. My turn."
"No, I'm not do-"
"Shh. Don't interrupt."
"But I-"
"My turn." He chants, that little piece of an idiot.
"Is your father a terrorist?" What the he-"Cause he created a bomb."
You must be kidding with me.
"Are you serious?"
"Sorry, sorry." He sits straight and faces me, "Are you a virgin?"
"You did not ask that," Is his brain working properly? Maybe when he laughed some vein in his brain exploded and now he has gone mad, or even madder than he was.
"That is a yes?"
"It's a no. I'm not a virgin." I cross my arms and look defiantly at him.
"Was it Steve who took it from you?"
"What did you say?" I must have heard wrong. Maybe I've finally gone mad, the tension, the drama, the fear may have messed up with my head.
"Was Steve your first? You know li-"
"You knew him?" My voice a simple whisper.
"Yeah, I mean everyone knew him. He made himself present wherever he was."
Nathan is right. Steve was always the center of attention. He was handsome, sexy, funny, flirtier but still nice and polite, he was everything that a girl could wish for. Till you knew is inner demons.
"Was he?" Nathan asks again.
"Why would that matter?" Without looking at him I stand up and leave. I don't want to hear anything else about him, I want to be left alone. I've been trying to move on, and my tentative was successful. I can't break my walls, people can't break my walls. Nathan will not break the walls around my heart.
I did not get much time on my own, I moved only two steps from my initial position to feel Nathan's hand around my arm.
"Kate. I'm sorry if I upset you with my question, it wasn't my intention."
"Oh, lucky me. I'm fine, just leave me alone." I try to rip my arm from his large hand, but he keeps a firm grip on it, not enough to hurt and leave a bruise but enough to keep it in place.
"I know that you were close to him, I'm sorry, I should have thought better before I let the words slip from my mouth." He tries to make eye contact with me, but I keep my ground and look anywhere except his green eyes.
"We weren't that close, and to answer your question I did not lost my virginity to him. Now let me go." I grab his hand and try to release his hold on my arm.
"Cupcake, please."
"Stop calling me that. It's a stupid nickname." I shout at him.
I notice that he tenses after my words because his hold on me got tighter, I can also feel his gaze on me put, I keep my focus on his hand. His rings almost piercing through my skin.
"Talk to me Kate and stop pushing me away."
"But I want you to go away, I can't stand the sight of you right now." I scream in his face. His eyes have gone darker and a few locks have fallen from his headband.
"I've already told you, that I was sorry." He says quietly, so calmly, as if talking with a child.
"I don't care what you say. Your sorry means nothing to me." I finally manage to take my arm from his grip and start marching away from him, but it seems that he does not want to let me go, next thing I know I'm being hugged from behind.
I kick and scream, I try to hit him with my legs where the sun doesn't shine. I shout profanities and curses like a sailor. I try to move my arms, but they are trapped between my body and his muscled arms.
He turns me around so we are facing each other, "Kate, I didn't know that you would react like that. It was stupid from me to ask it since he was your boyfriend."
I cease my movements, I stop fighting and simply freeze, my lips are moving but no sound comes out. Nathan lowers his head, so our foreheads are inches to each other, "I'm so sorry." he breaths.
"H-he wasn't my boyfriend." My voice breaks at the end of the word, I can feel the gashes of my heart opening.
"He wasn't?" I look into his eyes and see disbelief.
I shake my head, "He had problems, you could say. He would see and say things without sense. But only a few people knew about it. Sometimes he had attacks, violent ones where he would punch and break everything or anything in his way. And once I was in his path," my eyes lower to the ground. I can see the memories flashing before my eyes in slow motion.
Nathan lifts my chin, "What happened?"
I shake my head. I can't... I can't tell him. I feel his thumb rubbing my chin gently.
"Please Kate, I don't mean to push you, but you can trust me, and you seem to be in so much pain... I want to take that pain away."
I close my eyes. I want him to take the pain away, after all, it has been there the whole time, I simply hid it from everyone and tried to hid it from myself. It worked vaguely and for a short time. I still feel it, but I tried to conceal it all along.
I want to let it go, I want someone to hold me and tell me that it's alright and remake my heart, just like Beth said I wanted. And she was right, I want someone to glue me, to fix me, to help me...
"I was in his house a-and he started talking about a vision that he had. His parents and I knew that it was his brain that had problems and was messing up with him, making him see and hear things that weren't real. We tried to explain it to him, but he never heard and cared. That evening I-I said that he should go to the hospital and do more exams, m-maybe he would even have to stay there," My breathing starts to get elaborated and my lips are trembling.
"Then it all happened so quickly he got mad, or better furious, I had never seen him like that. It was like he was possessed. He accused me of not loving him, of betraying him and that I wanted him to go to the hospital so I could be free and live my life without him," I can feel a sob building inside of me.
"He then began to break his things, the lamp, the chair, he sent the bookshelf to the floor and then... he grabbed a scissor and he came running at me, with it held high. I don't know how, but I escaped, if I had moved a tiny minute or second later, I wouldn't be here. I fled out of the room, falling of the stairs and run back home for dear life," I can feel Nathan's arm tightening around my body pulling me closer to him.
"I wasn't able to sleep that night and at the dawn I received a message from him. It was a goodbye message saying that he was so sorry for what he did to me that he could not forgive himself. The rest everyone knows, he committed suicide, he throwed himself out of the window. I may have escaped from death that day, but I left with scars, on my mind and body and some of them will never heal."
I was shaking from head to toe, I was only aware that I was crying when Nathan kissed my tears, slowly and passionate, as if the kiss would stop the pain, as if the kiss could replace my tears. We stayed like that, not saying anything just hugging each other while he kissed all my face, not letting an inch of skin without a touch of his lips.
"I'm sorry cupcake." He says with his lips on my forehead and a sob passes my mouth.
"I went to his funeral you know?" I look at him surprised by his statement, with my now puffy eyes, I shake my head with water filled eyes, the tears have stopped running down my face, but they were now caged in my eyes.
"We weren't friends or anything close to that, but I felt like I had to go, like I needed to go. The speeches were heartbreaking, if I must say it was a beautiful goodbye to him."
I'm still not able to talk, words can't seem to form on my mouth so once again I use my head to answer him, this time with a nod, agreeing with him. The funeral was beautiful, yes. His mom speech was probably the most disturbing and agonizing thing that I've ever witnessed. She lost her son after all. I remember that the sky was dark, and it was a windy day, like even the weather was also in grief and was having compassion for him.
"I did not see you there." Are the first words that I say.
"And I wasn't expecting you to," He gives a last kiss on my forehead and hugs me tight "So, would you help a nut boy finding nuts? Hm?" He tries to lighten my mood.
"Sure," He takes a step back and looks at me up and down, to make sure that I'm fine I guess. He takes my hand and makes the way back to the river, "The squirrels must have eaten all the nuts."
"But I thought they eat acorns?"
"Who cares cupcake? Who Cares?"