Chapter 35 - "Do you want to live with me?"

The last couple of weeks had been magical. Italy itself had been great, for a variety of reasons. It was my first Christmas with a boyfriend, which made it extra special. Nathan had integrated well with my family, and in turn my parents had got along brilliantly with Peter and Georgia. I couldn't wish for more. Christmas was supposed to be a magical time, and it had certainly felt that way.

After a week in Rome, we'd returned home, but Nathan had joined us. He'd spent a few nights at my house — my parents were desperate to return the favour in some form — and then I'd spent the remainder of the Christmas holidays with him at his flat.

For the last few weeks, I'd effectively been living in a little bubble of Nathan, a fantasy world in which we could spend every day together without a worry about anyone else.

We'd woken up next to each other, washed together, cooked together, gone shopping together, and fallen asleep next to each other. It was almost like a little taster of living together, and now the thought of it excited me more than anything.

When I thought about going back to halls at uni, it filled me with dread. I didn't want to be part of the drama and the student lifestyle that I was expected to partake in. I was perfectly content going about my business with Nathan and getting on with my life separately.

Admittedly, I'd barely given a thought to the Jack and Hayley situation. I'd learnt to move on and let them make their own decisions regarding it.

"What are you thinking about?" Nathan asked me, interrupting my thoughts.

We were on the sofa watching Saturday night television. Nathan was sitting at one end whilst I laid lengthways with my feet resting in his lap. Though his hands rested mainly on my calves, every now and then he would treat me to a foot massage, digging his thumbs into the balls of my feet.

"Just uni," I replied with a sigh.

"Be positive!" he said brightly, pinching my big toe.

"I'm trying, but there's not much to look forward to."

"I'm sure things with Jack will be absolutely fine," Nathan assured me. "It's been a few weeks now. Him and Hayley will have fizzled out over Christmas."

"It's not just that," I said. "It's the housing thing. They'll want to start looking for a house soon and, well..."

"Just be honest and tell them you'll be living with me. I doubt they'll be surprised."

"But we haven't decided that yet," I said. "This is the issue. What if I tell them that I'm going to live with you, but then we decide that it's not practical? I'll either have nowhere to live or I'll have to make them look for a bigger house to fit me in last minute."

Nathan was quiet for a few moments. His fingertips caressed the soles of my feet as his mind wandered off to other places.

"Do you want to live with me?"

It was a simple question, but the direct way in which he asked it, coupled with the action of turning his head to look at me, made it seem much more intense.

"Yes, of course," I said quickly. "This past week has been amazing. I've loved every second of being around you."

"Well, that's settled then," he replied with a shrug. "No need to worry."

I fought down the excitement that was building within me. "Wait. You said there was much more to discuss. We have to talk about commuting distances, costs of living, the length of the contract—"

"Bella, every problem has a solution. As long as we want to live with each other, then we can make it work. One weekend we'll sit down together and we'll make a list. We'll work out how much we can both afford, bearing in mind that I've got a job—"

"Nathan, I can't let you pay a greater percentage of the rent. It's fifty-fifty."

"Just hear me out. We'll work out how much you can afford and how much I can afford. Then we'll look at contracts. If we can't have it for more than a year, then who's to say I can't carry on living there by myself? I'm going to need one bedroom, and as a couple we'll only need one bedroom, so it shouldn't make a difference."

I could see his point. It was going to be a one-bedroom flat anyway, regardless of how many people were paying the rent. They charged per room, not per person.

"And, if worse comes to worst, there's still this flat. It's not brilliant and it's quite small, but I reckon I could cope being in a confined space with you." He winked. "The only issue is the commuting distance but it's do-able. You'd just have to get up earlier for morning classes, and perhaps stay the whole day at uni rather than coming home in between lectures."

"It sounds like you've given this a lot of thought."

He reached down the sofa, took hold of my waist, and pulled me effortlessly into his lap.

"You're not the only one who's sad about you going back to your uni flat tomorrow," he told me, his hands coming up to cup my face. "I've loved having you around, and every now and then I've played a little game in my head where I pretend we're actually living together."

I laughed at that and intertwined my hands in his hair. Though his tone was playful, his words were serious.

"It's made me realise what I want," he continued. "And I want to live with you more than anything."

"Me too." I smiled.

"We may not be doing long distance," he said. "But it's still distance. It's still going stretches of time without seeing each other, whether that's for one week or two. And, in fairness, to most people that isn't a long period of time at all..."

"...But it is for us," I finished quietly.

He nodded. "It is for us. Because, Isobel Smith, I really cannot get enough of you." And then his lips locked onto mine and we spent the rest of the evening demonstrating just how much of each other we couldn't get enough of.

*

Being back in the uni flat felt like I'd never left. Hayley's door was shut, but I could hear both her and Gemma chatting inside. As I unpacked my things, Jack came into my room and threw himself onto my bed, proceeding to chat to me as if nothing had ever happened between us.

"I have been so bored," Jack said. "And I've only been back for a few hours."

"Where are Shaun and Phil?" I asked him as I separated my clothes into piles for folding into drawers and piles for hanging up.

"They went to the supermarket," he replied. "But I'm gonna do that tomorrow. Pizza, tonight? Or have you had enough of pizza in Italy?"

I laughed. "Pizza sounds great. Although I'll probably still go shopping at some point this afternoon."

"Awesome." He grinned. "I'm not inviting the girls. If they can't be bothered to leave Hayley's room, then they're not getting an invitation."

"They've not left her room?"

"Nope. And they both got back a week ago. It's weird."

"A week ago? Why the hell did they come back so early?"

"Nights out apparently." Jack shrugged. "That's what Phil was saying anyway. He's been texting her quite a lot over Christmas."

I bit back my automatic comment about Hayley making her way through the boys in the flat.

"Odd," I simply said instead.

"Indeed. So tell me all about Italy."

*

I didn't think much of Jack's comment about Hayley, until things actually did start to get weirder. Normally Hayley's door was always open. She'd boasted about being carefree and integrating with student life, yet shutting her door made it seem like she was hiding away.

Sometimes her and Gemma would go out, and not tell us where they were going. Even stranger was the night when they emerged from Hayley's room, all dressed up, clearly going on a night out together.

Jack made a comment about them being bitches for not inviting the rest of the flat, but Hayley just flipped him off and told him to grow a pair of balls if he wanted to hang with the cool crowd. That silenced him.

To be completely honest, the whole arrangement suited me perfectly. I got on with the boys better than ever and didn't have to worry about Hayley and Gemma making snide comments, because they were never around. Nobody could deny that something was definitely off with the two of them but at the same time, nobody could work out what.

If anything, it delayed talks of houses, because Hayley and Gemma were never there for the conversation. The boys were also beginning to doubt whether they'd actually want to live as a flat anyway, since they weren't exactly spending much time with everyone else. Perhaps they'd made new friends elsewhere.

As it happened, Nathan had his own news regarding living arrangements when we Skyped on Friday evening.

"Do you remember, a few months ago, that I mentioned an opportunity my boss had given me? The exchange abroad?"

"Yeah... But you haven't mentioned it since so I assumed the opportunity had come and gone."

"Not exactly," he said. "I told Louisa to do some investigating for me and find out all the facts and the options."

"Like what?"

"Like how much flexibility I have. Do I get to choose where I go or do I get placed somewhere? Do I have my own accommodation or do I share with someone?"

"Okay..." I said.

I could see where this was going but I didn't dare get my hopes up. Nathan had mentioned once before that he could possibly move to Italy for his exchange abroad, but it was a very hypothetical situation, and we hadn't discussed it in any detail.

"I mean, I don't know where you'll be spending your year abroad yet," he said. "But there's the possibility that I can have some say in where I'm placed."

"It'll probably be Italy," I said. "Italian is my weakest language so it makes sense to go there."

"Perfect." Nathan smiled. "And even if we're not in the same town, it'll be of some comfort knowing we're in the same country."

As it began to sink in, I felt a smile of my own coming to my lips. "Yeah," I replied. "It will be."

My year abroad was still over a year away, and I wasn't too nervous about it yet. More than anything, I was nervous about the impact it could have on our relationship. It sounded like that could potentially be lessened, but I didn't dare to get my hopes up. Nathan was simply an employee in his company. His boss had plenty of staff to manage, and I doubted he'd give Nathan any special treatment.

"So would all this go through Louisa?" I asked. "Or did she just do the digging for you?"

"Not entirely sure to be honest," he said. "She's my assistant, so I think most of it goes through her until final decisions have to be made. But it's actually one of the reasons I hired her. Remember I was telling you about all her responsibilities at school, like the prom committee et cetera?"

I nodded, signalling for him to continue.

"Well, obviously she needed influence then to bring people round to her way of thinking...so I sort of hoped she'd still have that skill of influencing people."

I kind of got where he was coming from but I couldn't help making a bitchy comment for some reason.

"Were you not worried she'd influence you?"

I don't know what brought it on or why it slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. Nathan had opened up to me about his past with Louisa and I'd been fine with it. Obviously it wasn't nice to hear those things, but they were his past and I accepted that.

But something stirred inside me when he'd said about Louisa influencing people in the company to give Nathan special treatment. He said he didn't want to be friends with her because he didn't want to know about her personal life, and yet now he was expecting her to pull strings in the company because of how influential she can be?

"Erm," came his slow, awkward reply. "No...obviously not. What...? Why...? You seem mad all of a sudden."

I took a deep breath. "Sorry. I didn't mean to...I don't know. I was just thinking about everything we talked about. You claimed you didn't want anything personal to do with Louisa these days. And now you're expecting her to do favours for you? You're playing on an aspect of her past, to benefit yourself."

"No, Bella, to benefit us."

"I know, I'm sorry. I just tried so hard to be accepting of your past with Louisa, and I thought I was doing okay. I suppose just the thought of you and Louisa plotting together at work got to me."

"Okay. Firstly, we're not plotting—"

"I know. That was a poor choice of word. I just meant, you know..." I was babbling, panicking about a potential argument I was causing due to a careless slip of the tongue.

"No, I know. I get it. You don't like that we're planning ways to find loopholes or whatever. I get why you'd be uncomfortable about that because obviously it's not a very professional relationship, but that's not the case. We do have a professional relationship. That's not going to change. I simply asked Louisa to find out as much as possible about the work placement. Hell, I even explained why I wanted to know so badly! If it was still like that between Louisa and me then she wouldn't help me to move abroad with my girlfriend, would she?"

I felt ashamed for even mentioning it. "I'm really sorry, Nathan. I didn't mean it."

"No, it's fine. I obviously brought it up in the wrong way or phrased it badly. I was amazed at how well you took it in Italy when I admitted all that stuff to you. I'm still thankful you've not left me for it. I always get scared that one day my past will just become too much for you."

"Nathan, that's not going to happen," I said quietly, feeling even worse for mentioning it now. Nathan was so ashamed of his past; there was no way he'd plot with Louisa like that.

"I feel like I'm constantly having to prove there's nothing going on," Nathan told me. "And that's not because you doubt me. It's for my own insecurities. I know how easy it would be for you to suspect something and so I try really hard to keep you reassured that nothing will ever happen. Genuinely, Bella, I think you're the only girl who would be cool with this whole arrangement, especially after everything I told you at Christmas."

"Well, maybe my subconscious isn't as cool with it as I am," I joked.

Nathan forced a smile. "Look, when we see each other next weekend, how about we all go for a drink?"

"What, like you, me and Louisa?"

He nodded. "You and Louisa have gone for drinks before, and you said that went well. If I'm there too then you can see how Louisa and I act, and hopefully you'll realise that the past really is the past and that there's nothing but professionalism between us these days."

"Going for a drink is hardly professional," I pointed out.

"Well, it's the best I can do without smuggling you into the office..."

I was about to reply when my phone chimed with a text.

"It's Pedro," I said.

Pedro was asking if I'd had a nice Christmas and wondering if I fancied doing something this weekend.

"He wants to know if I'm free this weekend," I told Nathan.

"I hope you're not asking my permission." He laughed. "You don't have plans, do you?"

"No," I said. "Not since you and I aren't seeing each other."

"Go for it then," Nathan encouraged. "It'll do you good to get out of that weird flat for a bit."

"This is sort of what Jack and I argued about too," I admitted. "Jack seems to be under the impression that I'm leading Pedro on."

"Leading him on?" Nathan frowned.

"Yeah, I don't know why. Apparently I should make it clearer I've got a boyfriend."

"Does Pedro like you or something?" Nathan then asked.

"I don't think so," I said. "He's never mentioned it or made a move."

"Does he have you on Facebook?"

"Yep."

"I wouldn't worry. If he has you on Facebook, then there's no way he's failed to see all those cringe-worthy couple photos of us..."

"They're not cringe-worthy!" I defended with a glare. "And that most recent one got fifty likes!"

"Why don't you invite him along?" Nathan suggested. "Then you can prove to me that there's nothing going on," he added with a wink.

"Right, so it'll be you and me, who are a couple. Then your ex-fling, Louisa, who now works for you. Plus a guy on my course who may or may not fancy me..."

"Sounds like the perfect dinner party!" Nathan grinned.

"Yeah, perfectly awkward!"

Nathan just laughed. "Look, I've got nothing to hide. You've got nothing to hide. It's up to Louisa and Pedro if they want to make it awkward."

I nodded. "Okay, fine, I'll mention it to him."

"Great. Four people is less awkward than three if anything."

"That's probably true," I agreed.

I replied to Pedro saying that I'd love to meet up with him this weekend, and then I mentioned drinks next Friday. As I waited for his reply, I briefly pondered about how it was going to go. Undoubtedly it was a very strange combination of people: Me, Nathan, Louisa and Pedro, along with plenty of alcohol...it promised to be an interesting night at least.

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