Free Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller by Demelza Carlton Page B

28
    Nathan looked hesitant as he came back
in, but he didn’t back out. He took me downstairs and made sure I
was seated at a table in the coffee shop, before asking what sort
of coffee I liked.
    Rather than betray my limited knowledge
of coffee, I asked him for a cappuccino. I could count on one hand
the times I’d asked someone else to make me a coffee. To me, coffee
meant whatever instant blend was available, mixed with enough sugar
and milk to help me choke the bitter brew down.
    He didn’t ask me about cake and I
wondered if he’d forgotten about it. Or is he one of those
domineering men who orders for you because he feels girls are too
helpless to make their own decisions? I was betting on the
first option.
    I looked around. The cafe was perhaps a
third full. I wasn’t the only patient there, though I was probably
the only patient who wasn’t wearing pyjamas. There were a few
people in the same scrubs I wore, but their name badges identified
them as staff who were supposed to wear them. I couldn’t suppress a
sigh and looked away.
    I’ll get there, I told myself. I’ll go back to uni and one day I’ll get there. All I have to do
is recover so I can.
    I closed my eyes and listened to the
music over the speakers. It was an old song, something cheerful. I
tried to remember the words, but the sound of the coffee machine
hissing drowned out the music.
    I looked over at the counter. It was
Nathan’s turn.
    He ordered and paid for something, then
came and sat across from me, empty handed and smiling nervously.
"They’ll make the coffee and bring them out together."
    "So, what kind of cake did you get?" I
asked brightly.
    He looked rueful. "I don’t know."
    Puzzled, I opened my mouth to ask a
question that began with how ...
    He cut me off. "I didn’t know what you
wanted, so I got a bit of everything. There wasn’t much to choose
from." He looked apologetic.
    Right on cue, a waitress came with a
fully loaded tray and started putting plates down on our table.
Some kind of cheesecake, something that looked like an overgrown
chocolate brownie, some sort of tart that was covered in
strawberries... and two frothy cups of coffee.
    "Decaf cappuccino?" she asked, waving
the hot drink dangerously close to me.
    "Mine," Nathan said quietly, indicating
the space on the table in front of him.
    Decaf? You don’t want any caffeine?
Odd, I thought, avoiding looking at the diabetic coma waiting
to happen, spread across the remainder of the table.
    I looked down at the coffee the
waitress set in front of me, trying to work out how best to drink
it. Maybe if I turned it this way, I could get both hands around
it. If I was careful, I might be able to do it, but I’d get froth
on my face...
    Nathan unwrapped a straw and stuck it
in my coffee.
    I looked at him. He just smiled and
picked up a cake fork. "So, which one would you like first?"
    I reached for the plate with the
strawberries at the same time he did. I expected a fight, but he
held the edge of the plate with one hand and sliced a bite off the
cake with the other.
    My heart sank. I couldn’t handle a cake
fork yet.
    Nathan hadn’t missed my expression. He
held the fork out to me, cake first. Like that first bite of egg, I
took it.
    "Is it good?" he asked, taking the fork
to the cake again.
    "Yeah," I admitted, my mouth full. I
tried to cover it with a bandaged hand.
    He popped the next bite in his own
mouth. "You’re right," he agreed.
    He set the fork on the table, the tines
resting on the edge of his saucer. Picking up a clean fork, he
loaded up another bite. "More?" he asked with a smile.
    He waited until my mouth was full
before he asked. "So, when you were sitting here with your eyes
closed and your mouth open, what were you thinking about?"
    He was watching me , I realised.
I waited until I’d swallowed before I spoke again. "The music
playing on the radio," I told him.
    He looked surprised for a moment, then
sat, listening.
    I did, too. The song had changed –