Playing For The Other Team [REMAKE]

Chapter 11

By the time Nathan returns home, Jennie's cooking dinner. She seems lost in thought when he enters the kitchen, and he sits down to watch her pick between the spices she's laid out. "You're home later than I thought," she says once she picks the mix of pepper and herbs. "I was just about to call you."

Shrugging, Nathan leans his elbows on the kitchen island. "Been around," he says.

"Around where?" Jennie turns and sprinkles a healthy amount of spice into the frying pan on the stove - maybe a little too much. She puts the spices back on the rack above the stove and wipes her hands on her frilly apron.

"We went on a short trip to the hospital, and then we went back to Jonathan's place for a while."

Jennie turns to him with a very stern look. "And what were you doing at the hospital?" she asks, her hands already on her hips.

Nathan smiles at her, knowing that a mere mention of the hospital would cause concern with anyone. "We picked Jonathan's mom up and drove her home," he says. "Everyone is fine. I'm just messing with you."

"I do not appreciate those kinds of jokes," Jennie tells him, but she smiles at him nonetheless. "And it was very sweet of you to give them a ride. How is Jonathan?" she asks. It sounds almost as if Jonathan is a long-time friend.

"He's lovely," Nathan mumbles, catching even himself off-guard. "He's good. He told me to say hi," he quickly adds.

His step-mother glances at him from over her shoulder and flashes him a soft smile before turning back to the stove. "I like him. He seems like a nice young man," she says as she looks around for a spatula.

Nathan doesn't say anything else, but he remains until dinner is ready.

They eat in the living room, in front of the TV - which they only do when Aaron is not home. The two of them lazily watching a game show with too many contestants and not enough rules. They don't speak much, as none of them has anything that feels worth talking about. Aaron's trip is still a sore subject and won't be brought up in a while more, and neither of them wants to go into detail about how their days went.

After they've eaten and cleaned up, Nathan heads upstairs to his room for the night. It feels strange to be alone again after spending the entire day in the company of someone else. In a way, it's nice to relax and let your guard down. But at the same time, Nathan finds that he isn't sure of what to do with himself.

So he begins to clean up whatever mess there is in his room. He tosses an empty water bottle into the trashcan by his desk and starts picking up the laundry that's gathered both in and around the laundry basket. Just as he's about to take the basket downstairs into the laundry room, he stops and takes another look around the room to see if he's missed something. Stray socks or a t-shirt that's discarded somewhere it shouldn't be.

He spots a plaid shirt draped over the end of his bedframe and goes to grab it. He doesn't remember wearing plaid lately. In fact, he doesn't remember even owning one in this color. It's Jonathan's, he realizes. He hadn't noticed that Jonathan had taken it off, but when he thinks about it, he's sure that Jonathan had left without it.

He puts the shirt into the basket with the rest of the laundry, too full of thoughts to come with anything better to do with it.

After going downstairs and putting the basket by the washing machine, Nathan heads to bed.

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The next day is a Sunday, and Nathan sleeps in. When he wakes, he spends the majority of the morning in bed, lazily flipping through the book he'd decided to read.