Near to You
{'cause near to you, I am healing, but it's taking so long}
Chapter Two: the beginning after the end
It took her a moment to regain the power of speech. "Nathan!" she cried when she finally did. "Oh my God, hi; what're you doing here?!"
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?" he spluttered, laughing through his words. "Get over here and give me a hug!"
She laughed as well, in the same delighted way, and rushed forward to throw her arms around him. He had filled out a little more since high school, but his arms still felt the same as they closed around her securely. He smelled the same, too, she realized as she buried her face in the fabric of his shirt. "It's so good to see you," she muttered, clinging to him for a moment. As she pulled back, she remarked, "You look good."
He grinned down at her. "And you look amazing. Really, Peyton…damn." He spoke teasingly, but there was a seriousness in the undertone of his words.
Blood rose to her cheeks and her chest, all the skin exposed by her strapless dress turned red. "Thanks," she replied, suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that his arms were still locked loosely around her waist. "Seriously, Nathan…how are you here?"
He held out both arms, gesturing to the gym as a whole. "I'm the new basketball coach. And you?" He was just as eager to hear her story as she was to hear his.
"I've been teaching here for two years. And I'm coaching cheerleading."
"You tell people how to be cheerful?"
"Shut up!" she protested. She was never going to live that down.
"Hey, Peyton, are you coming?" Ethan stepped into the gym, pausing when he saw her standing so close to Nathan. "Uh…hi," he said uncertainly.
"Hi," Nathan replied, taking the interrupting in stride. He walked over, extending his hand confidently. "I'm Nathan Scott. The new basketball coach."
"Ethan Cooper. Do you two, uh…know each other?"
"Old friends," Peyton explained. "Same hometown."
"And you dated?" He was asking for clarification and clearly jealous.
Nathan chuckled in sort of a proud way. "Is it that obvious?"
"Back in high school. Way back," Peyton added, shooting Nathan a warning glance.
Ethan nodded. "Listen, we're kind of getting late…"
"Right," she said softly. "We should get going."
"Don't let me keep you," Nathan added, keeping his tone neutral and friendly, but she caught a flicker of something else in his eyes. Disappointment? It couldn't be. "Listen, Peyt, how about you find me tomorrow? I'd love to…"
"Yeah," she agreed before he could even finish. "Definitely." She wanted to hug him again, but that would just be cruel, considering the expression Ethan was already wearing. "Bye," she added lamely.
{x}
"So, wasn't he, uh…a big time basketball star?"
"Yes. He was in an accident."
"But…I thought I heard somewhere that he was married."
"Divorced, now."
"Didn't he –"
"Ethan," Peyton interjected as kindly as she could. "We've been here for nearly an hour and all we've talked about is Nathan Scott. I don't know what you had in mind for tonight, but I really doubt this was it."
Ethan sighed and wiped his sweaty palms on the napkins that rested on his lap. "Sorry." He cleared his throat. "I guess I want to know what his being here means for…you and me."
"Ethan," she sighed.
"Right," he muttered. "You and I are just friends."
"Really good friends," she insisted, hating herself for using such predictable lines for letting someone down easy. "And for the record, Ethan, that's all Nathan and I are, too."
He stared at his plate and sighed. She could tell how much he disliked the weakness he was currently showing. "Is there a reason?" he asked hoarsely. "A reason I can't be the guy?" He was all earnestness and solemn compassion, just like he'd been when they first met.
Peyton's grip on her fork tightened. "Not a good one," she admitted.
{x}
She was standing on the front step of Nathan's faculty house the next morning only minutes after seven o'clock, two cups of coffee clutched in her hands a box of donuts in the bag looped loosely around her thin wrist. She hadn't been able to sleep much over the previous night. She was restless from the moment Ethan walked her to her door and disappeared into the night, hanging his head.
Nathan's eyes were bleary when he opened the door, blinking out at her in confusion, dressed only in his boxers. "You're early," he said, stating the obvious.
Her mouth had suddenly gone dry. She swallowed hard and offered, "Sorry?"
He grinned as if he couldn't help it. "Come on in."
"Classes start in a little over an hour, you know," she informed him, holding out one of the coffee cups after he closed the door behind her.
He accepted it and took a drink. "For you, maybe," he laughed. "But my early morning practices don't start until I actually pick my team."
She'd forgotten that. She was suddenly shocked by her own eagerness to see him, and searched the room for a distraction, a new source of conversation. She found herself giggling nervously. "I see you're doing the minimalist thing," she said dryly.
His living room featured a bed, a television resting on the floor, several pairs of sneakers, and an open bag of chips.
"Yeah…the movers messed up. The rest of my stuff should be here soon."
"Good. But until then, where do you suggest we eat the food I oh-so-kindly brought you?"
He shrugged and smirked. "We've got the bed."
Peyton rolled her eyes, ignoring the way her stomach flipped. "This reminds me of something," she teased, sitting comfortably on the side of the bed he hadn't slept on. "Talk to me," she requested as she opened the bag of donuts. "Tell me what brought you out here."
Nathan indulged her: "Probably the same things that brought you out here. I needed a change and this was a good opportunity. Tree Hill is home, but it gets…hard there, sometimes."
"You and Haley…?" she pried.
He shrugged, looking a bit more serious. "I really hurt her, with the ways I acted after the accident. She has such a good heart, though. I think she's forgiven me. Sometimes it seems like she'd even consider…getting back together. But I don't know. I think that in the end, things worked out…for the best. It's all about Jamie right now."
Peyton smiled softly, sympathetically. "You must miss him so much."
"I do. Yeah. But we're talking on the phone twice a week, and I get him on the holidays." His smile reappeared. "What about you, Sawyer?"
"What about me?"
His tone lost some of its mirth. "Have you talked to Luke lately?"
She averted her eyes. "Nope," she said tightly.
"Well…uh…you and that guy…"
"Ethan," she supplied. "We're friends."
He cracked a grin. "He's completely in love with you."
"Don't say that!" she protested, grimacing. "I feel horrible about it. No matter what I say or do I always feel a little like I'm leading him on."
"It's not your fault," Nathan reasoned. "Not how he feels or how you feel. The heart wants what it wants."
She groaned. On most days, she thought that Haley had changed Nathan for the better, but when he dropped lines like that she had to disagree with herself. "That's such a line."
There was a knowing quality to that smile of his as he looked deep into her eyes. "Yeah," he agreed easily. "But it's a line for a reason."
{x}
She hated that she had to force her students to unlearn. They spent years with teacher that didn't have much training, learning the "right" ways to draw trees and houses and the human face. She found herself having to coax creativity out of them.
At least most of them were eager. They handed in their watercolour paintings at the end of the period. There were a few confident expressions, but most of the ninth graders gazed at her shyly as they filed out of the room. A couple hung back, looking a little apprehensive.
"What's up, girls?" she asked kindly as she sat down behind her desk.
"Can I ask you something?" one of them requested.
"Sure."
"Did you really have a psycho stalker fake brother?"
She stifled her sigh and reminded herself to keep smiling. "Unfortunately, every bit of that is true."
The other girl piped up, clearly under the impression that her question was much more important. "Why aren't you married to Lucas?"
Her jaw clenched, but before she could reply, a deep voice interjected: "Touchy subject, girls. I'd watch out – she learned a vicious right hook when she was fighting off that psycho stalker fake brother."
"Nate!" she hissed in a scolding tone as she watched her students' eyes widen. "He's joking," she added to them.
"Yeah, you're right," he agreed. "I totally taught you that right hook."
"Nathan," she huffed, but before either of them could say another word, the girls rushed out of the room, their cheeks red.
Peyton pushed her chair back and fixed her gaze on him, trying to hide her smile. "I forgot you were Nathan Scott," she said, playfully batting her eyelashes. "It's nice that there's finally someone else famous on campus."
He leaned against the doorframe. "Glad to be of service."
She let herself smile openly. "How was your day?"
"Good. Yours?"
"Fine. Kinda tiring."
"Too bad."
She eyed him suspiciously, expecting some kind of innuendo in the next words he spoke. "And why's that?"
"All my stuff arrived this afternoon. I was hoping you'd come help me unpack. I'll spring for pizza," he tempted her, and in that moment she felt fifteen years old again.
"Sounds perfect," she admitted.
{x}
"Nathan! Stop eating and come help me!" she yelled down the staircase, struggling not to laugh.
"I'm almost done!" he insisted, words a bit garbled from the food in his mouth.
"Bottomless pit," she muttered as she turned back to a box labeled miscellaneous, as many of his boxes were. He'd never been very organized. She liked that she knew that about him.
The box contained a myriad of items, everything from kitchen cutlery to DVDs. Near the bottom, she found a photo album; Jamie grinned out at her from every page. Haley, she noticed, was entirely absent. Peyton understood that. She was healing at the same slow, agonizing rate.
She set aside the album and her breath caught in her throat when she saw what was resting on the bottom of the box.
It was a framed photograph of two people she hardly recognized. She and Nathan, fifteen years old and at the beach. They looked happy to a degree she couldn't remember feeling in recent years. God, she looked so at peace and in love, the sun flowing off her longer, tighter curls as she leaned back into Nathan's arms. It had been one of the best days of their relationship, maybe even one of the best days of her youth. She remembered the extreme she felt, the way every inch of her body seemed to heat up as he kissed her, the contrast of the cool shock of the waves crashing against her skin.
"Whatcha got there?" Nathan asked casually, interrupting her trip down memory lane. He reached around her on both sides, bracing his weight on the dresser she stood in front of as he peered over her shoulder.
She held the photograph up. "I can't believe you still have this." She twisted around in the enclosed space he'd created with his arms to get a better look at his face.
"Yeah…" he said softly, looking a little embarrassed. "It's been with me every move I've made since I was sixteen. It'd be weird to go somewhere without it." He plucked it from her hands and placed it in the middle of the flat surface above the dresser. "There," he said grandly, stepping back to admire his handiwork. He smirked at her. "What do you think?
She rolled her eyes at his antics. "I think you need to hire an interior decorator. "
"Hey!" he protested, scowling as though she'd deeply offended him. "I can decorate," he added lamely.
"Whatever you need to tell yourself," she said condescendingly, sticking her tongue out playfully as she brushed past him and opened a couple more boxes. She sighed as she examined the contents. "Do you have any music?"
"Somewhere…"
She perched on the edge of his bed, now in the bedroom where it belonged, as she watched him search through his boxes. He was different but also the same. Just like she was.
"Here we go," he announced, lifting a box. He walked over and set it down on the mattress at her side. She stood up just as he moved to sit down, and they found themselves tripping over each other's feet. After a moment of awkward limbo in which they both tried to recover, Peyton fell backwards onto the bed, taking him with her.
They both had the wind knocked out of them, and she found herself breathless as she peeked up at him through her eyelashes. She let out a laugh that was more of a sigh. "Well, this is comfortable." Sarcasm was always her first defense mechanism, and she felt vulnerable.
"The bitch is back," Nathan commented teasingly as he hovered over her, though his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. She batted weakly at his chest in an attempt to reprimand him.
"I missed you," he told her, sounding as though he was just realizing it. In a rare outpouring of emotion, he continued, thoughtfully, "I miss who I am around you."
She nodded, keeping her eyes locked with his for a moment to show that she understood, that she felt the same way. Then she broke eye contact and cleared her throat. "I, um…I should go."
His disappointment was easy to see as he stood up and offered her his hands. "Already?"
She got up on her own. "Yeah, I have…lesson plans to make. But I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" she asked as she inched toward the door.
"Yeah, sure," he said, a bit uncertainly. "I could walk you back…"
"I'm a big girl," she assured him, losing a bit of her hurriedness, touched by his concern. "Bye," she added with finality before she slipped out of his room and rushed down the stairs and out the door.
Her faculty house was barely a block away, but she had to stop and catch her breath halfway there, feeling strangely off balance. It wasn't lost on her that Nathan had zero photographs of his ex-wife, the supposed love of his life, anywhere in his house. It wasn't lost on her that he had a picture of her, of the two of them, sitting in the middle of his dresser like it belonged there.