The Arrangement

Nathan dropped Beast to my bed before laying down himself. He positioned himself so that his head was right alongside mine.

“How’d they take it?”

“Well my mother thinks I’m absolutely nuts,” I said. “But that’s the best case scenario. Right now she’s still in denial. Says it’s a ‘sex thing’ and I’ll get bored of it quickly.”

Nathan laughed. “Bored of it, huh? She doesn’t know you very well, does she?”

“I know, right?”

“What about your father?”

I took a little longer to answer. Where my mother had been genuinely surprised, my father had been… well, he’d actually been hurt.

And damn. It really pained me to imagine him that way.

“Wanna hear something funny?”

“Shoot.”

“He thinks I did it as a publicity stunt. Like we actually staged the photo, in order to draw attention to the book launch.”

Nathan considered my words for an extended moment. “Well shit. That actually might not have been a bad idea.”

I elbowed him in the ribs. “C’mon!”

“Is your father available as a consultant?” he went on. “We could put him in charge of marketing, and—”

“Be serious for a moment,” I said. “Honestly. What do you think?”

“I think this position sucks,” he said. “How do you lay like this? All the blood is rushing to my head and— OW!”

He flinched as I elbowed him even harder. Eventually he sat up.

“Kayleen, look. Wha

t we’ve got going on here… it’s not something we can explain to anyone, much less our families. Not in any way that would do it justice, really.”

He was right of course. The situation was as complicated as it was unorthodox. You had to be in it to understand it. And even then…

“Look at it this way. Could you really explain falling in love to someone who’s never experienced it?”

I shook my head. “Of course not.”

“I mean sure, you could explain the concept. But to someone who’s never fallen in love before, it would sound crazy. Thinking about someone all the time? Wanting to spend every waking minute with them? From the outside, it sounds like obsession. From the inside…”

“From the inside you wouldn’t trade it for the world,” I finished.

“Exactly.”

We stopped talking and I could hear the wind howling outside. I wondered how long I’d been sitting in my room. The phone call to my parents seemed like hours ago. It realized it probably was.

“What do you think your father’s going to say to you,” I asked Nathan. “When you’re on speaking terms with him again?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged. “Don’t care either. In a strange way, I’m glad this happened. And you know why, too.”

“Because you wanted independence.”

He nodded. “More like I needed it,” said Nathan. “For too long I’ve been relying on him for everything. It’s been too easy for me. It’s made me complacent.”