Dear Rosie - Page 218
He found me.
Saw me.
And falling in love with him is healing me.
Nathan holds his elbow out for me, and I take it.
We walk across the grass, the deep orange of the sunset lighting our way but telling us we don’t have too much time before it gets dark.
I half expect Nathan to stop in the middle of the open field and lay out a picnic. Even though we had food delivered to the hotel room.
But he turns us toward one of the pavilions, stopping at one of the freestanding grills.
Grill is a generous term, since it’s little more than half an iron box topped with a grill grate on top of a pole in the ground.
“You have me intrigued,” I tell him when he sets his bag on the picnic table nearby.
He smirks at me over his shoulder and pulls out items to start a fire.
Nathan works quietly and quickly, setting the fire starter brick in the bottom of the little grill, topping it with small pieces of wood. He uses a lighter to get the brick going, and while the fire slowly crawls across the wood, he turns back to the bag.
“If you pull a bag of hot dogs out of there, I’m going to be impressed.”
Nathan laughs and turns around with his arms full ofnothot dogs.
My smile falters as another wave of affection for this man crashes over me.
In his hands is a box of graham crackers, two chocolate bars, and a bag of plain white marshmallows.
“Nathan…”
“Rosie Edwards, will you make s’mores with me?”
I nod, and together we skewer the marshmallows onto the end of roasting sticks that Nathan also pulled out of his bag.
I control the roasting.
Nathan holds the crackers.
And we lean against each other as we eat them while the sun disappears behind the horizon.
“Thank you.” I look up at Nathan’s handsome features. “For everything. For this.”
His smile is soft. “We’re not done here.”
He takes the rest of the wood pieces piled on the table and puts them on the fire.
The flames grow, the glow getting brighter around us.
Nathan moves back to the bag, and the next thing he pulls out is a hoodie.
“Here, it’s getting cool.”
I take the sweatshirt from him, because he’s right; with the sun down, the temperature has dropped.
I pull it on, then look down at the front.
It has the HOP University logo on it. The school where he played college football.