Fic: (You) I Thought I Knew You (Sports Night/The Good Wife; Will/Natalie)
Title: (You) I Thought I Knew You
Author: empressearwig
Pairing/Fandom: Will Gardner/Natalie Hurley; Sports Night/The Good Wife crossover
Spoilers: All aired episodes for both shows.
Rating: R
Word Count: 8709
Disclaimer: I most decidedly do not own either show, and this didn't actually happen, much as I wish it might have.
Summary: The one where Natalie and Will date in college.
Author's Notes: To say that I wrote this for torigates because she asked nicely would be a lie. I wrote it for her because she nagged. Also, thanks to normative_jean for fixing my mistakes, even she attempted to make that come with strings attached. Finally, title is from R.E.M.'s Nightswimming, which I listened to at least 100 times while writing.
They meet Natalie's first week of college, before the small-town-girl-in-the-big-city light has a chance to fade from her eyes. Will is older, a senior to her freshman, and Natalie doesn't know yet what a difference that is. She doesn't know anything about college, about Chicago, about boys who pretend to be men.
He will be the one to teach her all these things, but she doesn't know that yet either.
There's a party at Sigma Kappa Pi and Natalie's roommate, Melissa, drags Natalie along with her. Natalie doesn't really want to go; it's been a long week and all she wants to do is sleep. But Melissa insists, picking through Natalie's wardrobe with a fine tooth comb, looking for something that doesn't, in her words, scream "I'm from Ohio and I don't know any better." This is Natalie's first sign that she and Melissa are not destined to be best friends. It will not be the last.
When they finally get to the frat house, it's already crowded, the smells of cheap beer and weed and sweat mingling together in a way that turns Natalie's stomach. Melissa presses a plastic cup into her hand and Natalie drinks, the taste of the beer bitter against her tongue. This, at least, is familiar. She's not that sheltered, that naive, no matter what Melissa might think of her tiny hometown.
They have beer in Ohio, too. Natalie didn't like it any better there.
It takes less than an hour for Natalie to lose sight of Melissa, and she can't tell if she's angry or relieved. Because now she can escape, go back to the dorm and wash the smoke out of her hair, but she remembers the warnings from freshman orientation all too well, the ones where they tell you not to walk down dark streets on your own, especially not when you've been drinking. She's also not sure she remembers how to get back to her dorm. She thinks that could be a problem.
Natalie ditches her cup on a window sill and steps out onto the wide front porch, takes a deep breath of the night air that's already colder than it has any right to be. It's only September, how can it be cold?
Someone bumps into her from behind and she jolts. A warm hand settles on her shoulder, steadying her.
"Sorry," comes a voice from behind her. A boy's voice. "Are you okay?"
Natalie turns and sees Will for the first time. He's got a Cubs hat on and is wearing a ragged flannel shirt, and he is smiling at her. She is instantly smitten.
"I'm fine," she says, blushing a little under his gaze. "Thanks for asking."
"No problem," he says, and he sounds like he actually means it. He nods his head towards the door. "Coming or going?"
"Going," she answers, but for the first time all night she finds herself wanting to stay. "Well, that's if I can figure out how to get home by myself." She cringes. "I shouldn't have said that."
He laughs, shaking his head. "No, you probably shouldn't have," he agrees. "Roommate ditch you?"
Natalie just nods, too mortified to do anything else.
He sees the look of embarrassment on her face and touches her arm gently. "Hey, it's fine. Want me to walk you back?"
She does, badly. But the part of her brain that's screaming at her to use her common sense won't shut up. "I don't even know your name."
He laughs again, and she really likes the sound of it. "I'm Will," he says, offering her his hand. "Will Gardner. I'll make sure you get home safe, I promise."
She shakes his hand, liking the way it feels against his, the way it fits. "Natalie. That would be really great of you."
Will leads her down the steps and out onto the sidewalk. "So," he says, "which way are we going?"
It's an innocent question, but it's not all at the same time, and they both know it. Will walks her home and acts like a perfect gentleman. When he leaves her in the lobby of her dorm, it's with her phone number and with a not insignificant part of her heart.
Natalie never entirely gets it back.
***
Will takes her for pizza on their first date, and it's the first time Natalie eats Chicago-style deep dish. He laughs when her eyes go wide at the waiters walking by with pizzas that look more like actual pies, but he teaches her the best way to eat it and he finishes what she has left on her plate when she finally puts her fork down and admits defeat. They talk about their majors (hers, broadcast journalism; his, political science), their families, the differences between growing up in a small town versus the big city. Will tells her he's on the university's baseball team, and later, Natalie will think that might be the exact moment that she fell in love with him.
After, they walk along the edge of Lake Michigan, their fingers twined together in a careless tangle. It's there that he kisses her for the first time, beneath the setting sun and the falling dark. His hands cup her face, and his lips are soft against hers, and it's the type of perfect moment that only happens in romantic comedies.
It's the type of perfect moment that can never last, but Natalie doesn't care about that, not now. She winds her arms around Will's neck and kisses him back.
When Natalie gets back to her dorm that night it's late, and her roommate looks at her with an obnoxious knowing smile. Natalie ignores her. She dreams happy dreams.
***
It's a month before they sleep together, a month of parties and watching the football team lose games and goodnight kisses that make Natalie's brain melt and her knees buckle. Each night, when she finally manages to open her door and stumble through it, alone, she wonders just what the hell she's waiting for. She's not a blushing virgin, and she wants Will more than she's ever wanted anyone, including the boy that she lost her virginity to.
When Natalie tries to talk to Melissa about it, in the hopes of actually bonding with her roommate, it's clear that Melissa doesn't understand it either. She takes to making snide comments about Will getting bored and moving on, all of which Natalie pointedly ignores. Melissa's just mad that the boy she slept with the night of the Sigma Kappa Pi party never called, and no matter what Melissa says, they both know it. The other girls on their floor are simultaneously jealous and a little in awe, and Natalie's been cornered in the bathroom with wet hair and wearing only a towel on more than one occasion, with girls demanding to know just how she did it.
They never believe her when she says she has no idea. She doesn't blame them; Natalie doesn't quite believe herself.
There's nothing special about the night that she says yes. They're studying at Will's apartment instead of the library, and he orders pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms, just the way she likes it. Eventually they give up on the pretense of studying and they watch the Tonight Show, curled together on Will's futon. Her legs are in his lap and he plays with her hair and Natalie is the one that kisses him first.
She is the one who makes it more than a kiss, sliding all the way onto his lap and straddling his hips. Will kisses her neck and she tugs his shirt up. "Off," she says, and it's not a request. He obediently raises his arms and she works the shirt up over his head, throwing it to the side.
"Feeling a little bit bossy, are we?" he asks, grin on his face.
She nods, biting at his ear. "Got a problem with that?"
He shakes his head immediately. "No, ma'am."
Natalie laughs and lets him pull her sweatshirt off. She's still laughing when she kisses him again, and when she feels his lips smiling beneath her own, that is the moment that she knows she won't be going home. Not tonight.
They sleep together for the first time that night, on Will's lumpy futon. After, she wears his shirt and they curl up under a quilt that he tells her his grandmother made him when he was just a kid. She falls asleep with a smile on her face, and in the morning, Will pours her a bowl of Rice Krispies, and she fights back the urge to tell him that she loves him.
It's already true, but she knows that it is too soon. She hopes it won't be for long.
***
Before Natalie knows what's happened, the quarter ends and Christmas break arrives. Her parents make the drive from Ohio to pick her up and plans are made for Will to go to lunch with them before they leave.
Natalie is less than enthusiastic about the idea.
"You need to calm down," Will says from his spot on her bed, as he watches her pace the length of her dorm room. They are waiting for her parents to call up from the lobby, and they're alone. Melissa has already left to go back to Connecticut, with terse goodbyes exchanged on all sides. Natalie wasn't sorry to see her go. "what's the worst that could happen?"
Natalie pauses, mid-pace and gives him an incredulous look. "Do you really need me to answer that question?"
"Nat," Will says with a laugh, tugging on her wrist and pulling her onto his lap. "It'll be fine. Parents like me."
She wrinkles her nose at him. "You haven't met my parents yet."
"No," he agrees, nodding his head. "But I could provide you with a list of parents that I have impressed if you'd like."
Her jaw drops. "Will!" she exclaims, elbowing him in the ribs. "Not funny."
He grins at her, totally unrepentant. "It was a little bit funny."
"It really wasn't."
"It really was," he says, and then he ends the back and forth by kissing her, threading his hands through her hair.
As a distraction technique, Natalie has to give him credit; it very much works. She kisses him back, and lets herself get lost in it, in the things that he makes her feel without even trying. And of course, that is when the phone rings.
She scrambles up off his lap immediately, straightening her skirt and combing her hair with her fingers, and Will laughs.
"They can't see you," he says. "Answer the phone."
She does, sticking her tongue out at him. "Hello?"
"Natalie?" her mother says.
"Hi, Mom," she answers. "We'll be down in a minute, okay?" She doesn't wait for a reply, just hangs up.
Will is already on his feet, and has pulled on his beat up leather jacket, the one that she steals whenever she can. "Ready?" he asks, her coat in hand.
"How do I look?" she asks instead, looking anxiously down at herself.
"Beautiful," Will says, and he helps her into her coat. "Now let's go before they start to think that I'm up here doing immoral things with their daughter."
"Oh, they already think that," she assures him, as she locks the door behind them. "But that's not your fault, it's mine."
He raises an eyebrow at that. "It sounds like there's a story in there somewhere. Will I hear about this at lunch?"
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Natalie says, taking his hand and dragging him towards the stairs.
They bicker about this for three flights and then they are in the lobby and her parents are standing there in front of them. Natalie is suddenly very happy to see them. She lets go of Will's hand and hugs her mother and then her father. "I'm so glad your here," she says to them both, squeezing them tight. "So glad."
"And you must be Will," her father says, extending a hand in his direction. "Roger Hurley."
"Will Gardner," Will says, returning the handshake. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. And you too, ma'am," he says to her mother, holding his hand out to her. "I'm sure people tell you this all the time, but and your daughter look exactly alike."
Natalie rolls her eyes at his, but her mother looks pleased, and it is true enough.
"It's always nice to hear again," her mother says, smiling at Will. "We've heard an awful lot about you."
Will gives her his most charming smile. "All good things I hope."
Natalie looks up at her father and mouths, "help," and her father nods.
"Enough flirting with Natalie's boyfriend, Kate. We have a reservation."
Natalie cringes. That wasn't quite what she'd had in mind, but it seems to have worked, because her mother and father start heading towards the exit and she falls into step with Will. "Ready to run in the opposite direction yet?"
He shakes his head. "You're stuck with me, I'm afraid."
She melts. She takes a quick look at her parents and sees that they're still walking ahead of them, and so she kisses Will, there under the lightly falling snow. "I love you," she says, without meaning to. It is the first time she has said it.
Will brushes snow off her cheek. "Yeah?"
She nods, holding her breath.
Will bends his head closer, whispers the words against her lips. "I love you, too," Then he kisses her and Natalie forgets everything -- lunch, her parents, the snow -- and all she knows is the boy standing in front of her.
The sound of her father saying her name breaks the spell, and Natalie steps back into reality. She takes Will's hand in hers and they join her parents in the car.
Lunch goes better than she ever could have expected. She kisses Will goodbye outside the restaurant and he tells her that he loves her again, and Natalie holds on to that for the next three weeks when she's missing him so much that it hurts.
It is a very long three weeks.
***
School starts again the first week of January, and it is like they have never been apart. Natalie spends most nights at Will's studio apartment, and she has never been happier. Even Melissa annoys her less, but then Natalie is seeing her far less often. She is self-aware enough to admit that is probably the reason why.
February brings a blizzard that dumps a foot of snow on the city, and the start of the baseball season. Natalie is enthralled by the former, by the sheer volume of the snow, the way it doesn't slow the city down at all, walking through it, hand in hand with Will and him kissing her until her nose was red from the cold. The latter is not as much fun. It's nice, in theory, to be dating an athlete, especially when being a sports reporter has been your dream since you were eight years old. But it also means less time spent together and Will constantly being tired and less sex. Natalie had kind of gotten used to the sex.
Still, she loves Will. She loves the time that they spend together, and she tells herself that college is supposed to be about more than boys anyway. She goes for coffee with Leslie from her psych class, and to dinner with Gina from her floor. She starts working at The Daily Northwestern. She falls in love for the second time in her life.
It's one thing to know what you want to do with your life, and it's an entirely different thing to know. Her high school had a newspaper that came out once a month, and there was barely any sports coverage in it, mostly because no one wants to read about games that happened a month before. The first time Natalie steps into the newsroom at The Daily Northwestern, she knows, instinctively, that she is home.
And so Will has baseball and she has the newspaper and they have each other, and it's as close to perfect as Natalie can imagine. Until one day when suddenly it's not.
Big Ten games start in March, and Will is scheduled to pitch in the second of them, versus Ohio State. The entire week before, he acts like it's not a big deal, but Natalie's not stupid and she tells him, over and over again that she wants to be there. The day of the game it's clear, but bitterly cold, and Natalie is wearing her hat and gloves as she sits in the stands with Leslie at her side.
"So how does this work?" Leslie asks, shivering against the wind. "And how long does it take?"
Natalie laughs, and then turns to look at her friend who looks more than a little pissed. "Oh my God, you were serious."
Leslie nods. "Not all of us are sports freaks, you know."
"I know, but," Natalie says, shrugging her shoulders helplessly, "it's baseball. The American past time. I thought everyone knew baseball. I'm sorry."
Leslie waves the apology away. "Just explain. How long am I going to be sitting out here in the cold, freezing my ass off?"
Natalie grimaces. "It could be awhile? I'm sorry!"
"It's fine," Leslie sighs. "Just tell me that Will has a cute friend that he can introduce me too."
"Now that I can help with," Natalie says, with a grin. "Let me know which one of them you want to meet after the game."
Leslie laughs, and the PA system crackles to life asking them all to stand for the playing of the national anthem. The crowd rises to their feet, and Natalie finds Will standing among his teammates on the field.
An elbow hits her ribs, and Natalie turns to Leslie with an indignant look on her face. "Stop staring at Will's ass," Leslie says out of the corner of her mouth. "Save it for when we're not honoring our country."
Natalie tries to choke back her laughter with less than successful results, but luckily the anthem ends and she claps along with the rest of the crowd, letting the laugh spill out. "Don't do that," she says when they sit. "I could have died."
"Sure," Leslie says. "Death by laughing. I hear that happens all the time."
"You know what I mean," Natalie says, rolling her eyes. She looks back out at the field and sees Will jogging out to the mound. She cups her hands around her mouth and yells, "Let's go, Wildcats!"
This time Leslie rolls her eyes, and then Will throws the first pitch and the game starts. Will pitches well, holding them to one run through the first four innings. It's the first batter of the fifth inning and Natalie can see that he's starting to lose it. "They should have pulled him," she says, shaking her head. "I have a bad feeling."
"A bad feeling about what?" Leslie asks, and then it happens.
Will throws another pitch and immediately grimaces in pain, clutching at his elbow.
"Oh no," Natalie says, rising to her feet. "This isn't good."
"What isn't good?"
"He's hurt, can't you see that?" Natalie snaps, pushing her way through the people on the bleachers. She shakes her head. "Sorry. I'm just worried."
"I get that," Leslie says. "But people get injured all the time, right? No big deal?"
"When someone is grabbing their elbow -- when a pitcher is grabbing their elbow," Natalie corrects herself, "it's usually not a good sign."
They make their way to the locker rooms, and they wait for what seems like hours. When Will comes outside, his face is ashen. Natalie knows what he's going to say before the words leave his mouth. She goes with him to the hospital to confirm the diagnosis, and she's holding his hand when the doctor tells him that his playing career is over.
That night, she holds him when he cries. In the morning, she tries to make him his favorite chocolate chip pancakes, but she burns them. Will kisses her and eats them anyway.
***
Natalie learns almost immediately that Will is a terrible patient. For the first week after his surgery, he's not allowed to move his elbow, not even to use his hand to feed himself. Natalie stays with him every night, making sure he doesn't do anything he's not supposed to and making him endless amounts of ramen since it's one of the few things he can eat without any help. (And he doesn't want any help.) Will doesn't want to let her help him shower either, but after she leaves all the windows open and sprays air freshner everywhere, he gives in. He won't let her help him shave, though, and for the first time she sees what he looks like with a beard. It's not a good look for him.
After a week, he gets a new brace, and he starts physical therapy. The first night, Natalie's already waiting for him when he gets back from the trainer's office, and she's shocked at how drained he looks.
"You look terrible," she says, kissing his cheek. "Was it that bad?"
"Gee, thanks, Nat," Will says, dumping his bag to the floor and flopping on the futon. "So supportive."
Natalie fights the urge to bite her tongue. "Sorry," she says. "You just look really tired. I didn't think you'd be that tired."
He shrugs one shoulder. "It hurts mostly. I'm shouldn't have snapped. I'm sorry."
She crosses the room to sit next to him, swinging her legs over his lap. She runs her fingers through his beard. "I wish you'd let me shave this."
He shakes his head. "No."
Her lower lip slips out into a pout. "Please?"
He kisses her instead of answering, and his beard scratches against her skin. He runs his tongue along the length of her throat in the way that he knows that she likes and she moans, just a little. She feels him laugh against her neck, and he says, "I don't hear you complaining now."
"Shut up," she says, yanking his face back up and threading her fingers through his hair.
Will laughs again, but kisses her back, biting at her lower lip. He presses her down onto her back, following her with his body, his weight heavy against her. She tugs his shirt up, but it gets caught against his elbow brace and Will hisses in pain.
"I'm sorry," she says, leaning up on her elbows. "Are you --"
He shakes his head and lifts the shirt himself, more slowly than she had done. "It's fine," he says, and when he's free of it and he's tossed it to the floor, he kisses her. "Where were we?" he asks between kisses to her neck, his good hand sliding up under her shirt and palming her breast. "Here?"
She arches into him. Even with only one hand, he knows just how to make her lose her mind. She feels like maybe he shouldn't be able to do that so easily. And then he hits the spot where her neck meets her shoulder and a shudder runs through her and she stops thinking at all. "Something like that," she gasps.
Will pulls at her shirt and says, "Off," and she wiggles underneath him, sliding it up over her head.
"Off," she says with a triumphant smile, and he grins down at her.
"God, you're hot," Will says, smoothing her hair back from her face. "Seriously hot."
Natalie feels herself going red. "Stop that," she says, trying to pull his face down to kiss him.
He shakes his head. "I don't think so," he says. "I'm crippled, remember, so I'm not going to be able to do everything I want to you. Which means I'm going to have to tell you them instead. And you're just going to have to lay there and take it."
Her breath catches in her throat. "Um, okay?" she manages to squeak out, and Will's eyes darken.
He bends his head and kisses her shoulder, sliding her bra strap down her arm. "I'm going to start here if you don't mind." He doesn't wait for an answer.
It's the best sex they've ever had. After that, neither of them hate the elbow brace quite so much.
***
In April, Will makes the decision that Natalie's been dreading for the past six months: where he's going to law school next fall. The decision is between three schools, the University of Chicago, Columbia, and Georgetown, and Natalie has been hoping against hope that he's going to choose Chicago.
He doesn't choose Chicago.
They meet for dinner the night he mails his acceptance, after his physical therapy and her last class. Will's waiting for her when she arrives at the restaurant, and she kisses him when she slides into the booth across from him. "You look happy," she says. "What's up?"
Will raises an eyebrow. "I can't just be happy to see you?"
"Aw, that's sweet," Natalie says, pretending to wipe a tear away from her eye. "And no. Spill."
"I finally mailed in my acceptance letter," he says. "It's relief, I think. I'm glad it's finally over."
There's suddenly a very large knot in her stomach. "Oh?" she says, trying for casual. It sounds fake to her own ears. "And?"
If he notices, he gives no indication. "Georgetown."
The knot gets bigger and she forces a smile onto her face. "That's great. That's really... great."
"Hey," he says, frowning like he's finally noticed that something's not right, "is everything okay?"
She nods, blindly. There's something in her eye, that's all. "I'm just going to run to the rest room. Order me a Diet Coke, okay?" She doesn't wait for him to answer, just bolts from the table. Somehow she makes it to the bathroom without running into anyone, and she thinks, more than a little bitterly, that someone must be looking out for her after all. She can feel the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she holds them back. She is not going to cry. She kicks the trash can instead.
What she fails to do is calculate how much it's going to hurt. She falls backward against the sink, taking the weight off her now throbbing foot. "Well, that was a really shitty idea," she says aloud to herself. "Goddammit."
She looks in the mirror. Other than her eyes being a little red, and more than a little pissed, she looks normal enough. She takes a testing step on her foot and manages not to limp. She doesn't exactly want to go back out to the table and pretend to be happy that Will's moving halfway across the country. But she doesn't see a way out and he's so happy and she knows that at least a part of her will end up happy for him, too. It's just that a bigger part will be sad for herself.
She makes her way back out to the table and gives Will her brightest smile. "Let's celebrate," she says. When she says it, she finds she even sort of means it.
***
School ends, summer begins, and Natalie stays in Chicago. She gets an internship at the Trib, which consists mostly of sorting the mail, and a job waiting tables at Uno's where she learns the value of comfortable shoes and to hate tourists from Tulsa. She slips away to meet Will for lunch every day that she can, and they trade stories about how horrible their jobs are. He's stuck in the file room at Davidson, Stern & Mayer, and he hates the copier more than it's rational to hate a piece of office equipment.
Will laughs at her stories, and Natalie laughs at his, and when lunch is over, they kiss and go back to work. When work is over, they go back to Will's apartment, where she is not officially living, and they have sex. As routines go, it's one that Natalie could very easily let herself get used to.
She won't let herself get used to it, though, no matter how much she wants to. She can't let herself get used to it, not when there's a calendar taped to his wall where he crosses off every day until Georgetown, and there's a clock running in her head that ticks away all the minutes and seconds that they have left together.
Still, it's a good summer. And if Natalie has to constantly bite her tongue to stop herself from asking what comes next, then that's not such a big deal. Not when what she has, right this instant, is so good.
It's the hottest day of the year when the question finally slips out, and they're both lying on Will's floor in their underwear, the ceiling fan whirling on it's highest setting above them. They're just far enough apart so that they're not touching, because touching would make it that much hotter and that much worse, and neither of them wants that.
"I'm not going to miss this weather," Will says, and it's a totally innocent sentence, but something in Natalie snaps. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's four months worth of silence, but enough is enough.
"What are you going to miss?" she asks, still staring up at the ceiling. "I mean, are you going to miss me?"
She feels Will sit up next to her, feels him looking down at her. "Are you serious?" he asks, and she can tell from his voice that he doesn't think she is.
She doesn't look at him. "Yes."
"Natalie," he says, and he reaches out to take her chin in his hand, forcing her to look at him. "Yes, I'm going to miss you."
She pushes his hand away and sits up, too, drawing her knees up to her chest. She feels too exposed for this conversation. "But what does that mean, Will? You're going to miss your dog, too. Am I your dog?"
He still looks confused and if it weren't so damned hot, she swears she would hit him. "I don't understand what we're fighting about right now. Can't we do this when it's not over a hundred degrees?"
"No!" she snaps, absolutely fed up. "We're going to do this now."
"Then you're going to have to explain to me what we're fighting about, Nat. I can't read your mind."
"Are you going to break up with me when you leave for Georgetown?"
The words come out all rushed together, practically as one, and for a minute she thinks that he's going to make her repeat them. But then he shakes his head, and for the first time in months, she lets herself have the smallest shred of hope.
"No," he says, reaching out to take her hand in his. "I mean, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it. Of course, I thought about it. But Nat, I love you. I don't want to break up with you. Do you want to break up with me because I'm leaving?"
She shakes her head. "No."
"Well okay, then," Will says, like it's all settled. He tugs on her hand. "Come here."
"Will," she laughs, even though she does what he wants and falls into lap. "It's too hot."
He kisses her anyway, his palms hot against her sticky skin. "That's your fault. Fights call for make up sex, I'm sure that's a rule somewhere."
"There must be a heat wave exemption," she argues half-heartedly, wrapping her legs around his hips.
"No," he says, kissing her throat. "But there is a shower sex provision."
"With cold water?" she asks, intrigued. "But won't that --"
"And now I feel the need to prove myself," he says, pushing her off his lap and standing. He pulls her to her feet, and then down the hall to the bathroom. he turns the water on and she strips off her underwear, and he proceeds to do exactly that.
They don't mention him leaving again for the rest of the night.
***
Will leaves for D.C. Labor Day weekend, and they kiss goodbye on the curb outside the apartment that's not his anymore.
"Call me when you get there?" Natalie says, her hands grasping at his t-shirt. "I don't care what time it is."
"I promise," he answers, kissing the corner of her mouth. "I should go."
She nods, but she doesn't let go. "I know."
He kisses her again, and she tries to memorize the feel of his mouth against hers, the scrape of his stubble against her skin, the way the cotton of his shirt feels under her hands. She tries to remember, so that when it's three o'clock in the morning and she's alone, she will at least have this.
The kiss ends too soon. "I'll call," Will says, stepping back and getting into his car. "Love you, Nat."
"Love you, too," she says, forcing herself to smile. She raises a hand to wave goodbye.
He grins at her, and puts the car in drive. He's gone.
Natalie goes back to her room in the sublet that she's barely seen all summer and she cries for an hour. After, she pulls on her shoes and goes for a run. She wants to be too tired to cry again. She can excuse it once. Once is okay. But she's not going to be that girl, no matter how much she loves Will.
When she falls asleep that night, she does not dream. Will calls at six am, and wakes her (and her roommates) up. After she hangs up, she goes out onto the fire escape and stares at the rising sun.
This will be a good day. She believes that.
***
A month passes, and Natalie's classes start, and she's almost too busy to miss Will. She's living with Gina this year, and every time Gina sees Natalie getting even the slightest bit mopey, she rushes Natalie out the door and to do something fun. And then there are the newspaper and her classes and her life, and she realizes just how much she missed out on last year when she spent so much time caught up in him.
Which isn't to say that her heart doesn't beat a little bit faster every time he calls or that she doesn't miss him on Friday nights when she sees girls on her floor getting ready for dates or on a Tuesday night, when they used to go to the library together and sneak off to make out in the stacks. She misses him all those times and more.
But she knows that this is good for her. And unlike the vegetables that her mother always used to make her eat, she kind of likes it. She doesn't tell anyone that.
When Will calls, he's always happy to talk to her, and says the right things about missing her and them and she knows that he means them. But she can tell, too, that she never has all of him, that part of him is still there in D.C. with new friends and his new school and his new life. She knows she shouldn't hate that, because it's not like she's not making a life of her own without him, but a part of her can't help it. She doesn't tell anyone that either.
In the middle of October, Will comes back for Homecoming and Natalie is on pins and needles waiting for him to arrive. Gina eventually leaves, she gets so fed up with Natalie's pacing and constantly checking her watch, saying she'd be back on Monday and that they'd better stay off her bed. The phone finally rings an hour after Natalie expected him, and she snatches it off the cradle. "Hello?"
"Come tell the security guard to let me up," Will says, and she lets out an embarrassing little squeal and bolts for the door, not even bothering to put on shoes. She races down the stairs and out through the locked door. She runs straight into his arms and peppers kisses across his face. "You're here," she says again and again, between kisses.
Will laughs, and she feels the rumble go straight through her. "Hi," he says, wrapping his arms around her and boosting her up.
"Hi," she says, her mouth curving into a smile against his lips. "I missed you."
"I could tell," he answers, and then he kisses her like she's wanted him to kiss her for the last month and a half. It makes her realize just how much she'd been missing this, missing him.
"We should go upstairs," she says, and Will drops her to her feet in an instant.
"Why didn't you say so?" he asks, hefting his bag over his shoulder and taking her hand. Natalie laughs and leads him up the stairs to her room, and her bed.
They don't leave until the next morning, and when they do, it's to go out to brunch and the football game. After that, it's straight back to bed. As far as weekends go, it's as perfect as they come.
Yet after Will's gone, Natalie's left with the nagging sense that it should have been something more. She pushes it aside. There's nothing else she can do.
***
The next time Natalie sees Will is on New Year's Eve. She went home to Ohio for Thanksgiving and he stayed in D.C., and her Christmas break started two weeks before his and her parents would have killed her if she hadn't come home to spend that time with them. But her classes start January 3rd, and she manages to convince them to let her go back early.
Will picks her up at Union Station, and if it's not the big dramatic reunion that she had secretly hoped for, well, he's double parked and doesn't want to get a ticket. She understands this. There is plenty of time.
They're heading up Lake Shore Drive when he finally turns to her and smiles. "Sorry," he says. "I'm not even sure I said hello."
She lets herself smile back, tentatively. "You did."
He takes her hand in his, leaving the other on the steering wheel. "How was your trip?"
"Long," she groans. "I don't care how much cheaper it is, I'm not taking the train again."
Will laughs, and rubs his thumb over the inside of her wrist. "Well, you're here now," he says. "That's all that matters."
"Yes," she agrees, turning her hand over and twining their fingers together. "So what's the plan for tonight? Is there a party or something?"
"There's one at the frat that I thought might be fun," he says. "Unless you've gotten a better fake and want to go to a bar or something."
"My fake is just fine," she protests. "I've gotten into plenty of bars with it this fall."
"Yeah, but that's because I wasn't with you when you were trying to get in. A bouncer is always going to let a group of hot girls in. Unless there's something you haven't told me?" he asks the last with a raised eyebrow, and it irritates Natalie more than it should.
"Of course there isn't," she says, dropping his hand and folding her arms over her chest. "It's cold, can we turn up the heat?"
"Nat," he sighs. "Don't be like that. I didn't mean it like that."
"Really? Because I think you did. And it's not fair, because I don't ask you questions like that, not even when all of your stories are about your new best friend, Alicia."
Will's face goes tight and he turns his attention back to the road. "Let's not do this now," he says.
"Fine," she says, slumping back in her seat.
They don't speak for the rest of the trip back to Evanston.
***
When Will comes to her dorm later, neither of them mentions the fight. They're careful with each other, both of them acting happier than they really are. It's awkward and uncomfortable and Natalie hates every single second of it. They go to Will's old frat, and someone hands them shots the minute that they walk in the door and Natalie downs hers gratefully. If ever there were a situation that alcohol was meant for, this is it.
Will watches her with half a smile on his face. "Want to get drunk?" he asks. She knows it's a peace offering.
"Yes," she answers, and the smile on his face turns into a real one.
"Cheers," he says, downing the shot that's still in his hand. He drops the plastic cup to the floor and he wraps a possessive arm around her waist. "Let's go find more."
***
Natalie loses track of how much she drinks that night, but she never loses track of Will, who is always by her side, always touching her, kissing her, like he's afraid that she'll vanish into thin air if they're separated for even a second. At midnight, he kisses her like he's trying to consume her, and she kisses him back the same way.
"Get a room," someone calls, and Will grabs her hand and before she knows what's happened, they're outside on the cold street. They practically run back to her dorm, and he makes it impossible for her to unlock the door, pressing himself against her back, kissing the side of her neck, his hands trailing up under her skirt.
"Hurry," he says, "or --"
He doesn't get a chance to finish the thought, because the lock finally gives way and they fall through the door. She turns in his arms and his mouth finds hers, and they trip up the stairs together, pulling at clothes, at buttons and zippers. When they make it inside her room, Will pins her to the door, bracketing her wrists over her head.
"I love you," he says, and his eyes are fogged with alcohol and lust, but she can hear in his voice that he means it. "You believe me, don't you?"
She nods, and he kisses her before she can say a word, all teeth and tongues. It's messy and hot, and Natalie loses her ability to think at all. He pushes her skirt up over her hips and she fumbles with the button on his jeans. His hand slips between her legs, and she grinds down into it, chasing the feeling. She takes his cock in her hand, and runs her hand along it's length. She smiles when he hisses against her throat, pushes her hand away. He lifts her leg up around his hip and they have sex, there against the door. He mumbles words into her neck that she can't hear, doesn't understand. She wraps her arms around him and when she comes, it's with his name on her lips.
They stumble to her bed, and they fall asleep half dressed. In the morning, Natalie remembers that they didn't use a condom.
***
The next three weeks pass in a blur of counting down the days until she's supposed to get her period. Whenever she talks to Will, she can hear the question he's not asking, and she tries to answer it without actually answering it, and she hates that he's six hundred miles away. If they're both going to be freaked out beyond belief, at least they could be freaked out together.
Her period comes right on schedule, and she breathes an enormous sigh of relief. When she calls Will that night to give him the good news, it is the first time they have directly talked about it since the night it happened.
"Everything's fine," she says.
"Oh thank god," he returns, and she can hear his sigh of relief. "I just --"
"Yeah," she says. "I understand."
There's a long silence, but this time it's a comfortable one, not like all the silences they'd shared since that night, the ones of that screamed what happens if and what are we going to. Natalie had hated every one of those silences.
"Come to D.C. for spring break," Will says suddenly. "Please."
"Really?" she asks, more than a little surprised. She'd mentioned visiting him before, but he'd never seemed that interested. In fact he'd seemed to be completely against the idea.
"Yeah," he says. "I want to see you."
"I'll be there," she promises, and when she hangs up the phone, she is smiling for the first time in weeks.
***
Natalie doesn't actually count down the days until spring break because that would be more than a little pathetic, but she crosses each one of them off in the planner where she keeps her paper deadlines and the dates of her midterms. She lets herself flip ahead to see how many more days it is once a week and no more, because if she learned anything last quarter it was that she should be present where she is and not where she wants to be.
She buys her bus ticket a month in advance, groaning at the prospect of twenty hours on a bus. It will be worth it, she know that. But that doesn't mean she has to look forward to it.
Will picks her up at Union Station at five o'clock in the morning, and she's gross and disgusting and smells like the bus. He tries to kiss her hello, but she shakes her head.
"Can we save that until after I've showered?" she asks. "I might feel human again after that."
He laughs and throws her bag over his shoulder, and steers her towards his car. "Absolutely."
They go back to his studio and she takes a twenty minute shower, and emerges from the bathroom wearing one of his t-shirts and with her wet hair piled up on top of her head. Will's sitting on his futon and she crosses the room to sit in his lap, brushing her nose against his throat. "Hi," she says. "I'm glad I'm here."
"Me, too," he answers, tilting her head back so that he can kiss her. "Feel better?"
"Yes," she says, sliding her hands up under his shirt. "Much."
"Good," he says, shifting them so that she's pinned to the mattress. "Because I think we have just enough time to before I have to go to class."
"Wait, what?" Natalie asks, propping herself up on her elbows. "You have class?"
"I told you that," he says, and it sounds condescending to her ears. "It's just for today."
"You did not," she counters, but she lets him pull the shirt up over her head. "What am I supposed to do all day?"
"See the city? You're a big girl, Nat, I didn't think you'd mind." He gives her his most charming smile, but it leaves her cold somehow. "Okay?"
She forces a smile onto her face. "Okay."
The sex is rushed and not what she'd imagined it would be like after more than two months apart. It's good -- that has never been one of their problems -- but it's not what she'd imagined. Will takes a hurried shower and bolts for the door, calling back over his shoulder that she should decide what type of food she wants to get for dinner that night and they'll go out. The door slams shut behind him, and Natalie is alone.
***
She goes to the Mall, which is the one place she really remembers from her ninth grade class field trip, and she spends most of the day wandering around the American History Museum. And it's not that she doesn't enjoy herself, she does. But like this morning, it's not what she thought it was going to be. She wants what she thought it was going to be.
Will is waiting for her when she gets back to his apartment, only he's not alone. There is a woman with him, and they're sitting just a little too close together on the futon, the way you sit with someone when there is something going on between you.
"Nat," Will says, scrambling to his feet. "I'm glad you're back." He crosses the room to kiss her, and to draw her closer to this stranger that Natalie already sort of hates. "This is Alicia," he says, making the introductions. "She's in my study group."
"Hello," Alicia says, extending her hand with a warm smile on her face. "Will's told us a lot about you."
Natalie shakes it automatically, plastering the polite smile that the nuns drilled into her head onto her face. "Nice to meet you."
Alicia says something else to Will and Natalie tunes them out, using the opportunity to study this stranger that she's heard so much and so little about. Will's told her all about how smart Alicia is, how she makes their professors furious with how easily she picks up the material, but he never told Natalie that Alicia was beautiful. And she is. She's got long, dark hair that curls riotously down her back, and the palest skin that Natalie's ever seen. The contrast is striking. Alicia is striking. Natalie wants to know why Will never told her any of this.
Will is shaking her, and Natalie blinks herself back to focus. "Sorry," she says. "What?"
"You were a million miles away," Will says affectionately, and it makes her want to hit him. "Did you hear what I asked you?"
"No," Natalie answers, shaking her head.
"Did you decide what you wanted to eat for dinner? Because I told Alicia I'd give her a ride home if it was on the way."
"Oh," Natalie says. "Thai?"
"Sure," Will says. He turns to Alicia. "We can drop you, if you want."
"Are you sure?" Alicia asks. "I know Natalie just got in this morning and you must want to be alone."
"It's fine," Will says, turning to Natalie. "Right?"
"Of course," Natalie answers. What else can she say?
"Great," Will says. "Let me grab my keys."
***
The rest of the week passes in the same way. Alicia is always there, even when she's not, and Natalie doesn't know how to not be jealous of that. Maybe she should be able to, maybe she should be a bigger person, but all she can think is that Alicia is there, with Will every day and Natalie's not.
When she goes back to Chicago, it's with a knot in her stomach that says that it might be over.
Gina picks her up at Union Station and when she asks how the trip was, Natalie looks out the window and says, "Fine."
The hardest lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
***
Will gets a summer internship in DC, and Natalie knows that the time has come to end things. They can't keep on the way they are, and they both know it. He tells her that he is coming home for Memorial Day weekend, and she knows that is when it will happen.
He comes to her dorm, the way he has so many times before. This time, she does not run down the stairs to greet him. She sits on her bed, and he sits on Gina's. Neither of them speak.
The silence grows too heavy to bear, and Natalie stands, walking to the tiny window. "It's over, isn't it?" she asks, only it's not a question. She hears him stand, and him cross the room to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders. He turns her to face him, and his face is sad.
"I think it has to be," he says, touching her cheek. "Don't you?"
She nods, and presses her face into the front of his shirt. She suddenly wants to cry very badly, and she didn't think she'd want to cry. Will's arms come around her, and he strokes her hair. She doesn't know how long they stand there, wrapped in each others arms.
He kisses her before he go, and whispers in her ear, "I love you." He leaves before she can say it back.
***
When Natalie is twenty-two, she moves to New York for an internship on a brand new show on a brand new network. Her first day, she steps off the elevator and straight into someone else.
"I'm so sorry," she moans, mentally cursing at herself for not looking where she was going. "Are you okay?"
"Are you?" a man's voice asks, and Natalie looks up. The gasp slips out before she can stop it. He looks exactly like Will, just older. More sure, like he's grown into himself. He looks exactly like Will. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Natalie shakes her head, slowly. "No," she says. "You just look like someone I used to know."
Author: empressearwig
Pairing/Fandom: Will Gardner/Natalie Hurley; Sports Night/The Good Wife crossover
Spoilers: All aired episodes for both shows.
Rating: R
Word Count: 8709
Disclaimer: I most decidedly do not own either show, and this didn't actually happen, much as I wish it might have.
Summary: The one where Natalie and Will date in college.
Author's Notes: To say that I wrote this for torigates because she asked nicely would be a lie. I wrote it for her because she nagged. Also, thanks to normative_jean for fixing my mistakes, even she attempted to make that come with strings attached. Finally, title is from R.E.M.'s Nightswimming, which I listened to at least 100 times while writing.
They meet Natalie's first week of college, before the small-town-girl-in-the-big-city light has a chance to fade from her eyes. Will is older, a senior to her freshman, and Natalie doesn't know yet what a difference that is. She doesn't know anything about college, about Chicago, about boys who pretend to be men.
He will be the one to teach her all these things, but she doesn't know that yet either.
There's a party at Sigma Kappa Pi and Natalie's roommate, Melissa, drags Natalie along with her. Natalie doesn't really want to go; it's been a long week and all she wants to do is sleep. But Melissa insists, picking through Natalie's wardrobe with a fine tooth comb, looking for something that doesn't, in her words, scream "I'm from Ohio and I don't know any better." This is Natalie's first sign that she and Melissa are not destined to be best friends. It will not be the last.
When they finally get to the frat house, it's already crowded, the smells of cheap beer and weed and sweat mingling together in a way that turns Natalie's stomach. Melissa presses a plastic cup into her hand and Natalie drinks, the taste of the beer bitter against her tongue. This, at least, is familiar. She's not that sheltered, that naive, no matter what Melissa might think of her tiny hometown.
They have beer in Ohio, too. Natalie didn't like it any better there.
It takes less than an hour for Natalie to lose sight of Melissa, and she can't tell if she's angry or relieved. Because now she can escape, go back to the dorm and wash the smoke out of her hair, but she remembers the warnings from freshman orientation all too well, the ones where they tell you not to walk down dark streets on your own, especially not when you've been drinking. She's also not sure she remembers how to get back to her dorm. She thinks that could be a problem.
Natalie ditches her cup on a window sill and steps out onto the wide front porch, takes a deep breath of the night air that's already colder than it has any right to be. It's only September, how can it be cold?
Someone bumps into her from behind and she jolts. A warm hand settles on her shoulder, steadying her.
"Sorry," comes a voice from behind her. A boy's voice. "Are you okay?"
Natalie turns and sees Will for the first time. He's got a Cubs hat on and is wearing a ragged flannel shirt, and he is smiling at her. She is instantly smitten.
"I'm fine," she says, blushing a little under his gaze. "Thanks for asking."
"No problem," he says, and he sounds like he actually means it. He nods his head towards the door. "Coming or going?"
"Going," she answers, but for the first time all night she finds herself wanting to stay. "Well, that's if I can figure out how to get home by myself." She cringes. "I shouldn't have said that."
He laughs, shaking his head. "No, you probably shouldn't have," he agrees. "Roommate ditch you?"
Natalie just nods, too mortified to do anything else.
He sees the look of embarrassment on her face and touches her arm gently. "Hey, it's fine. Want me to walk you back?"
She does, badly. But the part of her brain that's screaming at her to use her common sense won't shut up. "I don't even know your name."
He laughs again, and she really likes the sound of it. "I'm Will," he says, offering her his hand. "Will Gardner. I'll make sure you get home safe, I promise."
She shakes his hand, liking the way it feels against his, the way it fits. "Natalie. That would be really great of you."
Will leads her down the steps and out onto the sidewalk. "So," he says, "which way are we going?"
It's an innocent question, but it's not all at the same time, and they both know it. Will walks her home and acts like a perfect gentleman. When he leaves her in the lobby of her dorm, it's with her phone number and with a not insignificant part of her heart.
Natalie never entirely gets it back.
***
Will takes her for pizza on their first date, and it's the first time Natalie eats Chicago-style deep dish. He laughs when her eyes go wide at the waiters walking by with pizzas that look more like actual pies, but he teaches her the best way to eat it and he finishes what she has left on her plate when she finally puts her fork down and admits defeat. They talk about their majors (hers, broadcast journalism; his, political science), their families, the differences between growing up in a small town versus the big city. Will tells her he's on the university's baseball team, and later, Natalie will think that might be the exact moment that she fell in love with him.
After, they walk along the edge of Lake Michigan, their fingers twined together in a careless tangle. It's there that he kisses her for the first time, beneath the setting sun and the falling dark. His hands cup her face, and his lips are soft against hers, and it's the type of perfect moment that only happens in romantic comedies.
It's the type of perfect moment that can never last, but Natalie doesn't care about that, not now. She winds her arms around Will's neck and kisses him back.
When Natalie gets back to her dorm that night it's late, and her roommate looks at her with an obnoxious knowing smile. Natalie ignores her. She dreams happy dreams.
***
It's a month before they sleep together, a month of parties and watching the football team lose games and goodnight kisses that make Natalie's brain melt and her knees buckle. Each night, when she finally manages to open her door and stumble through it, alone, she wonders just what the hell she's waiting for. She's not a blushing virgin, and she wants Will more than she's ever wanted anyone, including the boy that she lost her virginity to.
When Natalie tries to talk to Melissa about it, in the hopes of actually bonding with her roommate, it's clear that Melissa doesn't understand it either. She takes to making snide comments about Will getting bored and moving on, all of which Natalie pointedly ignores. Melissa's just mad that the boy she slept with the night of the Sigma Kappa Pi party never called, and no matter what Melissa says, they both know it. The other girls on their floor are simultaneously jealous and a little in awe, and Natalie's been cornered in the bathroom with wet hair and wearing only a towel on more than one occasion, with girls demanding to know just how she did it.
They never believe her when she says she has no idea. She doesn't blame them; Natalie doesn't quite believe herself.
There's nothing special about the night that she says yes. They're studying at Will's apartment instead of the library, and he orders pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms, just the way she likes it. Eventually they give up on the pretense of studying and they watch the Tonight Show, curled together on Will's futon. Her legs are in his lap and he plays with her hair and Natalie is the one that kisses him first.
She is the one who makes it more than a kiss, sliding all the way onto his lap and straddling his hips. Will kisses her neck and she tugs his shirt up. "Off," she says, and it's not a request. He obediently raises his arms and she works the shirt up over his head, throwing it to the side.
"Feeling a little bit bossy, are we?" he asks, grin on his face.
She nods, biting at his ear. "Got a problem with that?"
He shakes his head immediately. "No, ma'am."
Natalie laughs and lets him pull her sweatshirt off. She's still laughing when she kisses him again, and when she feels his lips smiling beneath her own, that is the moment that she knows she won't be going home. Not tonight.
They sleep together for the first time that night, on Will's lumpy futon. After, she wears his shirt and they curl up under a quilt that he tells her his grandmother made him when he was just a kid. She falls asleep with a smile on her face, and in the morning, Will pours her a bowl of Rice Krispies, and she fights back the urge to tell him that she loves him.
It's already true, but she knows that it is too soon. She hopes it won't be for long.
***
Before Natalie knows what's happened, the quarter ends and Christmas break arrives. Her parents make the drive from Ohio to pick her up and plans are made for Will to go to lunch with them before they leave.
Natalie is less than enthusiastic about the idea.
"You need to calm down," Will says from his spot on her bed, as he watches her pace the length of her dorm room. They are waiting for her parents to call up from the lobby, and they're alone. Melissa has already left to go back to Connecticut, with terse goodbyes exchanged on all sides. Natalie wasn't sorry to see her go. "what's the worst that could happen?"
Natalie pauses, mid-pace and gives him an incredulous look. "Do you really need me to answer that question?"
"Nat," Will says with a laugh, tugging on her wrist and pulling her onto his lap. "It'll be fine. Parents like me."
She wrinkles her nose at him. "You haven't met my parents yet."
"No," he agrees, nodding his head. "But I could provide you with a list of parents that I have impressed if you'd like."
Her jaw drops. "Will!" she exclaims, elbowing him in the ribs. "Not funny."
He grins at her, totally unrepentant. "It was a little bit funny."
"It really wasn't."
"It really was," he says, and then he ends the back and forth by kissing her, threading his hands through her hair.
As a distraction technique, Natalie has to give him credit; it very much works. She kisses him back, and lets herself get lost in it, in the things that he makes her feel without even trying. And of course, that is when the phone rings.
She scrambles up off his lap immediately, straightening her skirt and combing her hair with her fingers, and Will laughs.
"They can't see you," he says. "Answer the phone."
She does, sticking her tongue out at him. "Hello?"
"Natalie?" her mother says.
"Hi, Mom," she answers. "We'll be down in a minute, okay?" She doesn't wait for a reply, just hangs up.
Will is already on his feet, and has pulled on his beat up leather jacket, the one that she steals whenever she can. "Ready?" he asks, her coat in hand.
"How do I look?" she asks instead, looking anxiously down at herself.
"Beautiful," Will says, and he helps her into her coat. "Now let's go before they start to think that I'm up here doing immoral things with their daughter."
"Oh, they already think that," she assures him, as she locks the door behind them. "But that's not your fault, it's mine."
He raises an eyebrow at that. "It sounds like there's a story in there somewhere. Will I hear about this at lunch?"
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Natalie says, taking his hand and dragging him towards the stairs.
They bicker about this for three flights and then they are in the lobby and her parents are standing there in front of them. Natalie is suddenly very happy to see them. She lets go of Will's hand and hugs her mother and then her father. "I'm so glad your here," she says to them both, squeezing them tight. "So glad."
"And you must be Will," her father says, extending a hand in his direction. "Roger Hurley."
"Will Gardner," Will says, returning the handshake. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. And you too, ma'am," he says to her mother, holding his hand out to her. "I'm sure people tell you this all the time, but and your daughter look exactly alike."
Natalie rolls her eyes at his, but her mother looks pleased, and it is true enough.
"It's always nice to hear again," her mother says, smiling at Will. "We've heard an awful lot about you."
Will gives her his most charming smile. "All good things I hope."
Natalie looks up at her father and mouths, "help," and her father nods.
"Enough flirting with Natalie's boyfriend, Kate. We have a reservation."
Natalie cringes. That wasn't quite what she'd had in mind, but it seems to have worked, because her mother and father start heading towards the exit and she falls into step with Will. "Ready to run in the opposite direction yet?"
He shakes his head. "You're stuck with me, I'm afraid."
She melts. She takes a quick look at her parents and sees that they're still walking ahead of them, and so she kisses Will, there under the lightly falling snow. "I love you," she says, without meaning to. It is the first time she has said it.
Will brushes snow off her cheek. "Yeah?"
She nods, holding her breath.
Will bends his head closer, whispers the words against her lips. "I love you, too," Then he kisses her and Natalie forgets everything -- lunch, her parents, the snow -- and all she knows is the boy standing in front of her.
The sound of her father saying her name breaks the spell, and Natalie steps back into reality. She takes Will's hand in hers and they join her parents in the car.
Lunch goes better than she ever could have expected. She kisses Will goodbye outside the restaurant and he tells her that he loves her again, and Natalie holds on to that for the next three weeks when she's missing him so much that it hurts.
It is a very long three weeks.
***
School starts again the first week of January, and it is like they have never been apart. Natalie spends most nights at Will's studio apartment, and she has never been happier. Even Melissa annoys her less, but then Natalie is seeing her far less often. She is self-aware enough to admit that is probably the reason why.
February brings a blizzard that dumps a foot of snow on the city, and the start of the baseball season. Natalie is enthralled by the former, by the sheer volume of the snow, the way it doesn't slow the city down at all, walking through it, hand in hand with Will and him kissing her until her nose was red from the cold. The latter is not as much fun. It's nice, in theory, to be dating an athlete, especially when being a sports reporter has been your dream since you were eight years old. But it also means less time spent together and Will constantly being tired and less sex. Natalie had kind of gotten used to the sex.
Still, she loves Will. She loves the time that they spend together, and she tells herself that college is supposed to be about more than boys anyway. She goes for coffee with Leslie from her psych class, and to dinner with Gina from her floor. She starts working at The Daily Northwestern. She falls in love for the second time in her life.
It's one thing to know what you want to do with your life, and it's an entirely different thing to know. Her high school had a newspaper that came out once a month, and there was barely any sports coverage in it, mostly because no one wants to read about games that happened a month before. The first time Natalie steps into the newsroom at The Daily Northwestern, she knows, instinctively, that she is home.
And so Will has baseball and she has the newspaper and they have each other, and it's as close to perfect as Natalie can imagine. Until one day when suddenly it's not.
Big Ten games start in March, and Will is scheduled to pitch in the second of them, versus Ohio State. The entire week before, he acts like it's not a big deal, but Natalie's not stupid and she tells him, over and over again that she wants to be there. The day of the game it's clear, but bitterly cold, and Natalie is wearing her hat and gloves as she sits in the stands with Leslie at her side.
"So how does this work?" Leslie asks, shivering against the wind. "And how long does it take?"
Natalie laughs, and then turns to look at her friend who looks more than a little pissed. "Oh my God, you were serious."
Leslie nods. "Not all of us are sports freaks, you know."
"I know, but," Natalie says, shrugging her shoulders helplessly, "it's baseball. The American past time. I thought everyone knew baseball. I'm sorry."
Leslie waves the apology away. "Just explain. How long am I going to be sitting out here in the cold, freezing my ass off?"
Natalie grimaces. "It could be awhile? I'm sorry!"
"It's fine," Leslie sighs. "Just tell me that Will has a cute friend that he can introduce me too."
"Now that I can help with," Natalie says, with a grin. "Let me know which one of them you want to meet after the game."
Leslie laughs, and the PA system crackles to life asking them all to stand for the playing of the national anthem. The crowd rises to their feet, and Natalie finds Will standing among his teammates on the field.
An elbow hits her ribs, and Natalie turns to Leslie with an indignant look on her face. "Stop staring at Will's ass," Leslie says out of the corner of her mouth. "Save it for when we're not honoring our country."
Natalie tries to choke back her laughter with less than successful results, but luckily the anthem ends and she claps along with the rest of the crowd, letting the laugh spill out. "Don't do that," she says when they sit. "I could have died."
"Sure," Leslie says. "Death by laughing. I hear that happens all the time."
"You know what I mean," Natalie says, rolling her eyes. She looks back out at the field and sees Will jogging out to the mound. She cups her hands around her mouth and yells, "Let's go, Wildcats!"
This time Leslie rolls her eyes, and then Will throws the first pitch and the game starts. Will pitches well, holding them to one run through the first four innings. It's the first batter of the fifth inning and Natalie can see that he's starting to lose it. "They should have pulled him," she says, shaking her head. "I have a bad feeling."
"A bad feeling about what?" Leslie asks, and then it happens.
Will throws another pitch and immediately grimaces in pain, clutching at his elbow.
"Oh no," Natalie says, rising to her feet. "This isn't good."
"What isn't good?"
"He's hurt, can't you see that?" Natalie snaps, pushing her way through the people on the bleachers. She shakes her head. "Sorry. I'm just worried."
"I get that," Leslie says. "But people get injured all the time, right? No big deal?"
"When someone is grabbing their elbow -- when a pitcher is grabbing their elbow," Natalie corrects herself, "it's usually not a good sign."
They make their way to the locker rooms, and they wait for what seems like hours. When Will comes outside, his face is ashen. Natalie knows what he's going to say before the words leave his mouth. She goes with him to the hospital to confirm the diagnosis, and she's holding his hand when the doctor tells him that his playing career is over.
That night, she holds him when he cries. In the morning, she tries to make him his favorite chocolate chip pancakes, but she burns them. Will kisses her and eats them anyway.
***
Natalie learns almost immediately that Will is a terrible patient. For the first week after his surgery, he's not allowed to move his elbow, not even to use his hand to feed himself. Natalie stays with him every night, making sure he doesn't do anything he's not supposed to and making him endless amounts of ramen since it's one of the few things he can eat without any help. (And he doesn't want any help.) Will doesn't want to let her help him shower either, but after she leaves all the windows open and sprays air freshner everywhere, he gives in. He won't let her help him shave, though, and for the first time she sees what he looks like with a beard. It's not a good look for him.
After a week, he gets a new brace, and he starts physical therapy. The first night, Natalie's already waiting for him when he gets back from the trainer's office, and she's shocked at how drained he looks.
"You look terrible," she says, kissing his cheek. "Was it that bad?"
"Gee, thanks, Nat," Will says, dumping his bag to the floor and flopping on the futon. "So supportive."
Natalie fights the urge to bite her tongue. "Sorry," she says. "You just look really tired. I didn't think you'd be that tired."
He shrugs one shoulder. "It hurts mostly. I'm shouldn't have snapped. I'm sorry."
She crosses the room to sit next to him, swinging her legs over his lap. She runs her fingers through his beard. "I wish you'd let me shave this."
He shakes his head. "No."
Her lower lip slips out into a pout. "Please?"
He kisses her instead of answering, and his beard scratches against her skin. He runs his tongue along the length of her throat in the way that he knows that she likes and she moans, just a little. She feels him laugh against her neck, and he says, "I don't hear you complaining now."
"Shut up," she says, yanking his face back up and threading her fingers through his hair.
Will laughs again, but kisses her back, biting at her lower lip. He presses her down onto her back, following her with his body, his weight heavy against her. She tugs his shirt up, but it gets caught against his elbow brace and Will hisses in pain.
"I'm sorry," she says, leaning up on her elbows. "Are you --"
He shakes his head and lifts the shirt himself, more slowly than she had done. "It's fine," he says, and when he's free of it and he's tossed it to the floor, he kisses her. "Where were we?" he asks between kisses to her neck, his good hand sliding up under her shirt and palming her breast. "Here?"
She arches into him. Even with only one hand, he knows just how to make her lose her mind. She feels like maybe he shouldn't be able to do that so easily. And then he hits the spot where her neck meets her shoulder and a shudder runs through her and she stops thinking at all. "Something like that," she gasps.
Will pulls at her shirt and says, "Off," and she wiggles underneath him, sliding it up over her head.
"Off," she says with a triumphant smile, and he grins down at her.
"God, you're hot," Will says, smoothing her hair back from her face. "Seriously hot."
Natalie feels herself going red. "Stop that," she says, trying to pull his face down to kiss him.
He shakes his head. "I don't think so," he says. "I'm crippled, remember, so I'm not going to be able to do everything I want to you. Which means I'm going to have to tell you them instead. And you're just going to have to lay there and take it."
Her breath catches in her throat. "Um, okay?" she manages to squeak out, and Will's eyes darken.
He bends his head and kisses her shoulder, sliding her bra strap down her arm. "I'm going to start here if you don't mind." He doesn't wait for an answer.
It's the best sex they've ever had. After that, neither of them hate the elbow brace quite so much.
***
In April, Will makes the decision that Natalie's been dreading for the past six months: where he's going to law school next fall. The decision is between three schools, the University of Chicago, Columbia, and Georgetown, and Natalie has been hoping against hope that he's going to choose Chicago.
He doesn't choose Chicago.
They meet for dinner the night he mails his acceptance, after his physical therapy and her last class. Will's waiting for her when she arrives at the restaurant, and she kisses him when she slides into the booth across from him. "You look happy," she says. "What's up?"
Will raises an eyebrow. "I can't just be happy to see you?"
"Aw, that's sweet," Natalie says, pretending to wipe a tear away from her eye. "And no. Spill."
"I finally mailed in my acceptance letter," he says. "It's relief, I think. I'm glad it's finally over."
There's suddenly a very large knot in her stomach. "Oh?" she says, trying for casual. It sounds fake to her own ears. "And?"
If he notices, he gives no indication. "Georgetown."
The knot gets bigger and she forces a smile onto her face. "That's great. That's really... great."
"Hey," he says, frowning like he's finally noticed that something's not right, "is everything okay?"
She nods, blindly. There's something in her eye, that's all. "I'm just going to run to the rest room. Order me a Diet Coke, okay?" She doesn't wait for him to answer, just bolts from the table. Somehow she makes it to the bathroom without running into anyone, and she thinks, more than a little bitterly, that someone must be looking out for her after all. She can feel the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she holds them back. She is not going to cry. She kicks the trash can instead.
What she fails to do is calculate how much it's going to hurt. She falls backward against the sink, taking the weight off her now throbbing foot. "Well, that was a really shitty idea," she says aloud to herself. "Goddammit."
She looks in the mirror. Other than her eyes being a little red, and more than a little pissed, she looks normal enough. She takes a testing step on her foot and manages not to limp. She doesn't exactly want to go back out to the table and pretend to be happy that Will's moving halfway across the country. But she doesn't see a way out and he's so happy and she knows that at least a part of her will end up happy for him, too. It's just that a bigger part will be sad for herself.
She makes her way back out to the table and gives Will her brightest smile. "Let's celebrate," she says. When she says it, she finds she even sort of means it.
***
School ends, summer begins, and Natalie stays in Chicago. She gets an internship at the Trib, which consists mostly of sorting the mail, and a job waiting tables at Uno's where she learns the value of comfortable shoes and to hate tourists from Tulsa. She slips away to meet Will for lunch every day that she can, and they trade stories about how horrible their jobs are. He's stuck in the file room at Davidson, Stern & Mayer, and he hates the copier more than it's rational to hate a piece of office equipment.
Will laughs at her stories, and Natalie laughs at his, and when lunch is over, they kiss and go back to work. When work is over, they go back to Will's apartment, where she is not officially living, and they have sex. As routines go, it's one that Natalie could very easily let herself get used to.
She won't let herself get used to it, though, no matter how much she wants to. She can't let herself get used to it, not when there's a calendar taped to his wall where he crosses off every day until Georgetown, and there's a clock running in her head that ticks away all the minutes and seconds that they have left together.
Still, it's a good summer. And if Natalie has to constantly bite her tongue to stop herself from asking what comes next, then that's not such a big deal. Not when what she has, right this instant, is so good.
It's the hottest day of the year when the question finally slips out, and they're both lying on Will's floor in their underwear, the ceiling fan whirling on it's highest setting above them. They're just far enough apart so that they're not touching, because touching would make it that much hotter and that much worse, and neither of them wants that.
"I'm not going to miss this weather," Will says, and it's a totally innocent sentence, but something in Natalie snaps. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's four months worth of silence, but enough is enough.
"What are you going to miss?" she asks, still staring up at the ceiling. "I mean, are you going to miss me?"
She feels Will sit up next to her, feels him looking down at her. "Are you serious?" he asks, and she can tell from his voice that he doesn't think she is.
She doesn't look at him. "Yes."
"Natalie," he says, and he reaches out to take her chin in his hand, forcing her to look at him. "Yes, I'm going to miss you."
She pushes his hand away and sits up, too, drawing her knees up to her chest. She feels too exposed for this conversation. "But what does that mean, Will? You're going to miss your dog, too. Am I your dog?"
He still looks confused and if it weren't so damned hot, she swears she would hit him. "I don't understand what we're fighting about right now. Can't we do this when it's not over a hundred degrees?"
"No!" she snaps, absolutely fed up. "We're going to do this now."
"Then you're going to have to explain to me what we're fighting about, Nat. I can't read your mind."
"Are you going to break up with me when you leave for Georgetown?"
The words come out all rushed together, practically as one, and for a minute she thinks that he's going to make her repeat them. But then he shakes his head, and for the first time in months, she lets herself have the smallest shred of hope.
"No," he says, reaching out to take her hand in his. "I mean, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it. Of course, I thought about it. But Nat, I love you. I don't want to break up with you. Do you want to break up with me because I'm leaving?"
She shakes her head. "No."
"Well okay, then," Will says, like it's all settled. He tugs on her hand. "Come here."
"Will," she laughs, even though she does what he wants and falls into lap. "It's too hot."
He kisses her anyway, his palms hot against her sticky skin. "That's your fault. Fights call for make up sex, I'm sure that's a rule somewhere."
"There must be a heat wave exemption," she argues half-heartedly, wrapping her legs around his hips.
"No," he says, kissing her throat. "But there is a shower sex provision."
"With cold water?" she asks, intrigued. "But won't that --"
"And now I feel the need to prove myself," he says, pushing her off his lap and standing. He pulls her to her feet, and then down the hall to the bathroom. he turns the water on and she strips off her underwear, and he proceeds to do exactly that.
They don't mention him leaving again for the rest of the night.
***
Will leaves for D.C. Labor Day weekend, and they kiss goodbye on the curb outside the apartment that's not his anymore.
"Call me when you get there?" Natalie says, her hands grasping at his t-shirt. "I don't care what time it is."
"I promise," he answers, kissing the corner of her mouth. "I should go."
She nods, but she doesn't let go. "I know."
He kisses her again, and she tries to memorize the feel of his mouth against hers, the scrape of his stubble against her skin, the way the cotton of his shirt feels under her hands. She tries to remember, so that when it's three o'clock in the morning and she's alone, she will at least have this.
The kiss ends too soon. "I'll call," Will says, stepping back and getting into his car. "Love you, Nat."
"Love you, too," she says, forcing herself to smile. She raises a hand to wave goodbye.
He grins at her, and puts the car in drive. He's gone.
Natalie goes back to her room in the sublet that she's barely seen all summer and she cries for an hour. After, she pulls on her shoes and goes for a run. She wants to be too tired to cry again. She can excuse it once. Once is okay. But she's not going to be that girl, no matter how much she loves Will.
When she falls asleep that night, she does not dream. Will calls at six am, and wakes her (and her roommates) up. After she hangs up, she goes out onto the fire escape and stares at the rising sun.
This will be a good day. She believes that.
***
A month passes, and Natalie's classes start, and she's almost too busy to miss Will. She's living with Gina this year, and every time Gina sees Natalie getting even the slightest bit mopey, she rushes Natalie out the door and to do something fun. And then there are the newspaper and her classes and her life, and she realizes just how much she missed out on last year when she spent so much time caught up in him.
Which isn't to say that her heart doesn't beat a little bit faster every time he calls or that she doesn't miss him on Friday nights when she sees girls on her floor getting ready for dates or on a Tuesday night, when they used to go to the library together and sneak off to make out in the stacks. She misses him all those times and more.
But she knows that this is good for her. And unlike the vegetables that her mother always used to make her eat, she kind of likes it. She doesn't tell anyone that.
When Will calls, he's always happy to talk to her, and says the right things about missing her and them and she knows that he means them. But she can tell, too, that she never has all of him, that part of him is still there in D.C. with new friends and his new school and his new life. She knows she shouldn't hate that, because it's not like she's not making a life of her own without him, but a part of her can't help it. She doesn't tell anyone that either.
In the middle of October, Will comes back for Homecoming and Natalie is on pins and needles waiting for him to arrive. Gina eventually leaves, she gets so fed up with Natalie's pacing and constantly checking her watch, saying she'd be back on Monday and that they'd better stay off her bed. The phone finally rings an hour after Natalie expected him, and she snatches it off the cradle. "Hello?"
"Come tell the security guard to let me up," Will says, and she lets out an embarrassing little squeal and bolts for the door, not even bothering to put on shoes. She races down the stairs and out through the locked door. She runs straight into his arms and peppers kisses across his face. "You're here," she says again and again, between kisses.
Will laughs, and she feels the rumble go straight through her. "Hi," he says, wrapping his arms around her and boosting her up.
"Hi," she says, her mouth curving into a smile against his lips. "I missed you."
"I could tell," he answers, and then he kisses her like she's wanted him to kiss her for the last month and a half. It makes her realize just how much she'd been missing this, missing him.
"We should go upstairs," she says, and Will drops her to her feet in an instant.
"Why didn't you say so?" he asks, hefting his bag over his shoulder and taking her hand. Natalie laughs and leads him up the stairs to her room, and her bed.
They don't leave until the next morning, and when they do, it's to go out to brunch and the football game. After that, it's straight back to bed. As far as weekends go, it's as perfect as they come.
Yet after Will's gone, Natalie's left with the nagging sense that it should have been something more. She pushes it aside. There's nothing else she can do.
***
The next time Natalie sees Will is on New Year's Eve. She went home to Ohio for Thanksgiving and he stayed in D.C., and her Christmas break started two weeks before his and her parents would have killed her if she hadn't come home to spend that time with them. But her classes start January 3rd, and she manages to convince them to let her go back early.
Will picks her up at Union Station, and if it's not the big dramatic reunion that she had secretly hoped for, well, he's double parked and doesn't want to get a ticket. She understands this. There is plenty of time.
They're heading up Lake Shore Drive when he finally turns to her and smiles. "Sorry," he says. "I'm not even sure I said hello."
She lets herself smile back, tentatively. "You did."
He takes her hand in his, leaving the other on the steering wheel. "How was your trip?"
"Long," she groans. "I don't care how much cheaper it is, I'm not taking the train again."
Will laughs, and rubs his thumb over the inside of her wrist. "Well, you're here now," he says. "That's all that matters."
"Yes," she agrees, turning her hand over and twining their fingers together. "So what's the plan for tonight? Is there a party or something?"
"There's one at the frat that I thought might be fun," he says. "Unless you've gotten a better fake and want to go to a bar or something."
"My fake is just fine," she protests. "I've gotten into plenty of bars with it this fall."
"Yeah, but that's because I wasn't with you when you were trying to get in. A bouncer is always going to let a group of hot girls in. Unless there's something you haven't told me?" he asks the last with a raised eyebrow, and it irritates Natalie more than it should.
"Of course there isn't," she says, dropping his hand and folding her arms over her chest. "It's cold, can we turn up the heat?"
"Nat," he sighs. "Don't be like that. I didn't mean it like that."
"Really? Because I think you did. And it's not fair, because I don't ask you questions like that, not even when all of your stories are about your new best friend, Alicia."
Will's face goes tight and he turns his attention back to the road. "Let's not do this now," he says.
"Fine," she says, slumping back in her seat.
They don't speak for the rest of the trip back to Evanston.
***
When Will comes to her dorm later, neither of them mentions the fight. They're careful with each other, both of them acting happier than they really are. It's awkward and uncomfortable and Natalie hates every single second of it. They go to Will's old frat, and someone hands them shots the minute that they walk in the door and Natalie downs hers gratefully. If ever there were a situation that alcohol was meant for, this is it.
Will watches her with half a smile on his face. "Want to get drunk?" he asks. She knows it's a peace offering.
"Yes," she answers, and the smile on his face turns into a real one.
"Cheers," he says, downing the shot that's still in his hand. He drops the plastic cup to the floor and he wraps a possessive arm around her waist. "Let's go find more."
***
Natalie loses track of how much she drinks that night, but she never loses track of Will, who is always by her side, always touching her, kissing her, like he's afraid that she'll vanish into thin air if they're separated for even a second. At midnight, he kisses her like he's trying to consume her, and she kisses him back the same way.
"Get a room," someone calls, and Will grabs her hand and before she knows what's happened, they're outside on the cold street. They practically run back to her dorm, and he makes it impossible for her to unlock the door, pressing himself against her back, kissing the side of her neck, his hands trailing up under her skirt.
"Hurry," he says, "or --"
He doesn't get a chance to finish the thought, because the lock finally gives way and they fall through the door. She turns in his arms and his mouth finds hers, and they trip up the stairs together, pulling at clothes, at buttons and zippers. When they make it inside her room, Will pins her to the door, bracketing her wrists over her head.
"I love you," he says, and his eyes are fogged with alcohol and lust, but she can hear in his voice that he means it. "You believe me, don't you?"
She nods, and he kisses her before she can say a word, all teeth and tongues. It's messy and hot, and Natalie loses her ability to think at all. He pushes her skirt up over her hips and she fumbles with the button on his jeans. His hand slips between her legs, and she grinds down into it, chasing the feeling. She takes his cock in her hand, and runs her hand along it's length. She smiles when he hisses against her throat, pushes her hand away. He lifts her leg up around his hip and they have sex, there against the door. He mumbles words into her neck that she can't hear, doesn't understand. She wraps her arms around him and when she comes, it's with his name on her lips.
They stumble to her bed, and they fall asleep half dressed. In the morning, Natalie remembers that they didn't use a condom.
***
The next three weeks pass in a blur of counting down the days until she's supposed to get her period. Whenever she talks to Will, she can hear the question he's not asking, and she tries to answer it without actually answering it, and she hates that he's six hundred miles away. If they're both going to be freaked out beyond belief, at least they could be freaked out together.
Her period comes right on schedule, and she breathes an enormous sigh of relief. When she calls Will that night to give him the good news, it is the first time they have directly talked about it since the night it happened.
"Everything's fine," she says.
"Oh thank god," he returns, and she can hear his sigh of relief. "I just --"
"Yeah," she says. "I understand."
There's a long silence, but this time it's a comfortable one, not like all the silences they'd shared since that night, the ones of that screamed what happens if and what are we going to. Natalie had hated every one of those silences.
"Come to D.C. for spring break," Will says suddenly. "Please."
"Really?" she asks, more than a little surprised. She'd mentioned visiting him before, but he'd never seemed that interested. In fact he'd seemed to be completely against the idea.
"Yeah," he says. "I want to see you."
"I'll be there," she promises, and when she hangs up the phone, she is smiling for the first time in weeks.
***
Natalie doesn't actually count down the days until spring break because that would be more than a little pathetic, but she crosses each one of them off in the planner where she keeps her paper deadlines and the dates of her midterms. She lets herself flip ahead to see how many more days it is once a week and no more, because if she learned anything last quarter it was that she should be present where she is and not where she wants to be.
She buys her bus ticket a month in advance, groaning at the prospect of twenty hours on a bus. It will be worth it, she know that. But that doesn't mean she has to look forward to it.
Will picks her up at Union Station at five o'clock in the morning, and she's gross and disgusting and smells like the bus. He tries to kiss her hello, but she shakes her head.
"Can we save that until after I've showered?" she asks. "I might feel human again after that."
He laughs and throws her bag over his shoulder, and steers her towards his car. "Absolutely."
They go back to his studio and she takes a twenty minute shower, and emerges from the bathroom wearing one of his t-shirts and with her wet hair piled up on top of her head. Will's sitting on his futon and she crosses the room to sit in his lap, brushing her nose against his throat. "Hi," she says. "I'm glad I'm here."
"Me, too," he answers, tilting her head back so that he can kiss her. "Feel better?"
"Yes," she says, sliding her hands up under his shirt. "Much."
"Good," he says, shifting them so that she's pinned to the mattress. "Because I think we have just enough time to before I have to go to class."
"Wait, what?" Natalie asks, propping herself up on her elbows. "You have class?"
"I told you that," he says, and it sounds condescending to her ears. "It's just for today."
"You did not," she counters, but she lets him pull the shirt up over her head. "What am I supposed to do all day?"
"See the city? You're a big girl, Nat, I didn't think you'd mind." He gives her his most charming smile, but it leaves her cold somehow. "Okay?"
She forces a smile onto her face. "Okay."
The sex is rushed and not what she'd imagined it would be like after more than two months apart. It's good -- that has never been one of their problems -- but it's not what she'd imagined. Will takes a hurried shower and bolts for the door, calling back over his shoulder that she should decide what type of food she wants to get for dinner that night and they'll go out. The door slams shut behind him, and Natalie is alone.
***
She goes to the Mall, which is the one place she really remembers from her ninth grade class field trip, and she spends most of the day wandering around the American History Museum. And it's not that she doesn't enjoy herself, she does. But like this morning, it's not what she thought it was going to be. She wants what she thought it was going to be.
Will is waiting for her when she gets back to his apartment, only he's not alone. There is a woman with him, and they're sitting just a little too close together on the futon, the way you sit with someone when there is something going on between you.
"Nat," Will says, scrambling to his feet. "I'm glad you're back." He crosses the room to kiss her, and to draw her closer to this stranger that Natalie already sort of hates. "This is Alicia," he says, making the introductions. "She's in my study group."
"Hello," Alicia says, extending her hand with a warm smile on her face. "Will's told us a lot about you."
Natalie shakes it automatically, plastering the polite smile that the nuns drilled into her head onto her face. "Nice to meet you."
Alicia says something else to Will and Natalie tunes them out, using the opportunity to study this stranger that she's heard so much and so little about. Will's told her all about how smart Alicia is, how she makes their professors furious with how easily she picks up the material, but he never told Natalie that Alicia was beautiful. And she is. She's got long, dark hair that curls riotously down her back, and the palest skin that Natalie's ever seen. The contrast is striking. Alicia is striking. Natalie wants to know why Will never told her any of this.
Will is shaking her, and Natalie blinks herself back to focus. "Sorry," she says. "What?"
"You were a million miles away," Will says affectionately, and it makes her want to hit him. "Did you hear what I asked you?"
"No," Natalie answers, shaking her head.
"Did you decide what you wanted to eat for dinner? Because I told Alicia I'd give her a ride home if it was on the way."
"Oh," Natalie says. "Thai?"
"Sure," Will says. He turns to Alicia. "We can drop you, if you want."
"Are you sure?" Alicia asks. "I know Natalie just got in this morning and you must want to be alone."
"It's fine," Will says, turning to Natalie. "Right?"
"Of course," Natalie answers. What else can she say?
"Great," Will says. "Let me grab my keys."
***
The rest of the week passes in the same way. Alicia is always there, even when she's not, and Natalie doesn't know how to not be jealous of that. Maybe she should be able to, maybe she should be a bigger person, but all she can think is that Alicia is there, with Will every day and Natalie's not.
When she goes back to Chicago, it's with a knot in her stomach that says that it might be over.
Gina picks her up at Union Station and when she asks how the trip was, Natalie looks out the window and says, "Fine."
The hardest lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
***
Will gets a summer internship in DC, and Natalie knows that the time has come to end things. They can't keep on the way they are, and they both know it. He tells her that he is coming home for Memorial Day weekend, and she knows that is when it will happen.
He comes to her dorm, the way he has so many times before. This time, she does not run down the stairs to greet him. She sits on her bed, and he sits on Gina's. Neither of them speak.
The silence grows too heavy to bear, and Natalie stands, walking to the tiny window. "It's over, isn't it?" she asks, only it's not a question. She hears him stand, and him cross the room to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders. He turns her to face him, and his face is sad.
"I think it has to be," he says, touching her cheek. "Don't you?"
She nods, and presses her face into the front of his shirt. She suddenly wants to cry very badly, and she didn't think she'd want to cry. Will's arms come around her, and he strokes her hair. She doesn't know how long they stand there, wrapped in each others arms.
He kisses her before he go, and whispers in her ear, "I love you." He leaves before she can say it back.
***
When Natalie is twenty-two, she moves to New York for an internship on a brand new show on a brand new network. Her first day, she steps off the elevator and straight into someone else.
"I'm so sorry," she moans, mentally cursing at herself for not looking where she was going. "Are you okay?"
"Are you?" a man's voice asks, and Natalie looks up. The gasp slips out before she can stop it. He looks exactly like Will, just older. More sure, like he's grown into himself. He looks exactly like Will. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Natalie shakes her head, slowly. "No," she says. "You just look like someone I used to know."