The Spectator

Chapter 27: Friends

     A few weeks later, Nate and Ella found themselves where they usually were on a Saturday night—on Ella's couch, watching basketball. Well, Nate was watching basketball. Ella was lying down, her feet in his lap and her laptop on her chest, working on a few pieces she felt were still too rough for publishing on Monday. Nate absently massaged her feet. The Lakers weren't his team, but they had an interesting line up this year, so he was watching the game with absorbed interest.

     Ella was trying to focus on her work, but she kept glancing at him. He looked so... normal. Like he was just a fixture in her everyday life. And she supposed that, in some ways, he was. Their little secret affair was working out and no one at the office suspected a thing. Even the non-judging breakfast club had been minding their own business-- though Blair and Chuck still gave them odd looks from time to time. Ella should have been happy. She'd wanted to fuck Nate Archibald? Well, now she got to, regularly. But... her anxiety had been flaring up again. Her nails were chewed down to nubs. For a while, she'd tried to blame this solely on stress over her father, who wasn't responding to treatment as well as he should have.

     The blood stained coughing was one of the most disturbing parts of his illness. Every time he hacked up a lung when they were Skyping, she froze, staring at the truth of what her father was going through. He was angry a lot these days, sneaking drinks again. But her mom wasn't backing down, either. As much as she feared her husband's temper, she feared his death more

     What a complicated situation. So many old toxic patterns being disrupted. It would either leave her father a better, healthier person... or it would kill him. Ella felt more and more homesick, watching all of this from afar. Her mom could have used her help, but she was stuck in New York because of work.

     It lead to a constant feeling of guilt that the situation with Nate was definitely not helping. He'd been slowly coming over more and more often until, suddenly, he was sleeping over on weekends. Then came the ever more frequent slip ups where he'd call her "baby" by accident and, when Valentine's day rolled around, she'd come home to find a bouquet of irises on her doorstep. By this point, Nate was spending from Friday afternoon all the way until Sunday morning with her and even had a designated toothbrush in her bathroom.

     ... Which were all good things, right?

     Wrong.

     Because, while he had turned her apartment into a home away from home and treated her basically how he would treat a girlfriend in their alone time, it must be reiterated that the inside of her apartment was the ONLY place they could be this way. As in... She'd never seen the inside of his apartment. She tried not to let it bother her, since it would be much easier to be caught with him if they were hanging around the Upper East Side together, but... it did bother her. They couldn't go out together or tell anyone or hang out like normal people. Even that beautiful bouquet of black irises he'd had delivered was a tainted gift-- not only were they black irises (the note had held a joke about the color she most liked to wear, obviously) but when she'd googled the meaning of the flowers (because this was Nate and he'd surely been trained in flower meanings at St. Jude's), it turned out... Irises were the flowers for fucking friendship.

     He was a great fuck buddy, she couldn't deny that, always being supportive and affectionate when they were together. But the lying and the secrecy was weighing on her. It seemed more and more, in her tired irrational moments, that their status as Employer and Employee was just an excuse he wielded to avoid letting them get closer. She knew deep down that wasn't true. She knew she was distorting the whole situation because of her insecurity.

     The problem was, there was no way to know for sure where she stood with him without confronting him and possibly ruining everything. And if there were two things that triggered her anxiety most it was 1) not knowing things and 2) not being able to express herself honestly. She wanted to throw herself into this with him as enthusiastically as she threw herself into everything else in her life. She wanted more... but felt incapable of asking for it.