Chapter 6 It Was Never Difficult
Nathan kept his head lowered. With careful, practiced movements of his long fingers, he unpacked the takeaway, setting each item out on the table. “I just saw a branch downstairs,” he murmured quietly. “So I bought it.”
“Oh.” Chloe bit her lip.
Of course. How could he possibly remember?
For her, it had been a matter of hours. For him, it had been twenty-three years. He would have forgotten a random text message from over two decades ago long before today.
She couldn’t help but wonder, though, if he had bought this exact same meal and waited for her at the station all those years ago.
The boy he used to be definitely would have.
“Eat,” Nathan urged when she didn’t move. He opened the cardboard box and pushed it toward her.
Chloe picked up a spicy chicken tender, practically shoving it into her mouth, and finished it in three bites. She immediately grabbed another, taking a huge bite.
She knew that if she didn’t keep her mouth full, she was going to start crying. Food was the only thing stopping her from completely falling apart.
“Slow down,” Nathan said, unable to stop himself.
“I can’t. I haven’t eaten in so long, and it tastes so good,” Chloe mumbled thickly, chewing as fast as she could.
Nathan didn’t say anything else. He just sat there, watching her in silence.
Gradually, the rims of his eyes began to redden. He forced his head away, staring at the far wall.
When he finally looked back at her a moment later, his deep, dark eyes were heavy with a profound, suffocating sadness that he refused to put into words.
When she finished eating, Nathan silently cleared the table.
Watching him tidy up so efficiently and quietly felt unnervingly alien to Chloe. Not knowing what to say, she drained the last of her milk and shifted uncomfortably in her seat, unconsciously rubbing her knees.
Nathan’s eyes flicked down, catching the movement instantly.
He lowered his head and said nothing. The room sank into another heavy, awkward silence.
A hard lump formed in Chloe’s throat.
Just a few hours ago—before she got into that van—she had been so excited to get home. She had been looking forward to throwing her arms around her husband, to being intimate with him, to finally talking to him about having a baby.
Now, everything was ruined.
He was sitting right in front of her, physically the same man, yet she didn’t feel like he was her husband anymore. His profound restraint, the serious, impenetrable aura around him—it eclipsed every memory she had.
Finally, Chloe couldn’t bear the quiet. “Aren’t you going back?” she asked softly.
Nathan lifted his eyes and looked at her.
Chloe’s stomach dropped as she remembered that this was his house. Her question sounded exactly like she was trying to kick him out.
She let out a hollow, awkward laugh and scrambled to cover it up. “I mean… how have you been these past few years?”
“Alright.” His gaze remained locked on her face.
Chloe nodded stiffly. “You look like you’ve been doing really well. You look so successful now. Rich, even.”
The words hung in the air, pathetic and hollow. Why was she offering him cheap, polite flattery like they were strangers at a networking event?
“More or less,” Nathan replied, his tone equally detached.
A fresh wave of grief washed over her, making the back of her nose sting. Desperate to break the suffocating tension, Chloe turned, grabbed the remote control from the coffee table, and jabbed the power button.
She flipped frantically through the channels, but the screen stayed a blank, static blue.
“Why aren’t there any channels?”
“I didn’t renew the cable,” Nathan said smoothly, stepping out of the kitchen after tying off the rubbish bag.
“Oh.” Chloe placed the remote down. Right. He didn’t live here.
He probably wasn’t even her husband anymore. After all, she had been legally dead for years.
Noticing how quickly she had deflated, Nathan reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Hardly anyone watches TV anymore anyway. Everyone just uses their phones.”
“What’s so fun about phones?” Chloe asked, trying to pull herself together. “Playing Snake?”
Nathan gave a faint, nostalgic smile. “Not just that. There are apps for everything now. You can read the news, watch videos, play games.”
“Really?” Chloe leaned forward slightly. “Can I see?”
Nathan nodded and handed her the sleek black device.
She took it eagerly, turning it over in her hands. She had been staring at it out of the corner of her eye during the entire car ride. It was impossibly thin, entirely made of glass, and looked more like a futuristic prop than a telephone.
But after prodding at the smooth surface for several seconds, she couldn’t get the screen to wake up.
“How do phones twenty-three years in the future not even have buttons? How do you turn it on?”
Nathan let out a soft laugh.
He stood up from the armchair, crossed the room, and sat down on the sofa right beside her. Reaching over, he pressed his thumb to the bottom of the glass. The screen instantly bloomed with light.
“Just tap here,” he murmured softly, his voice suddenly very close.
“That’s so advanced! It’s amazing!” Chloe beamed, her eyes sparkling as she looked up at him.
Nathan froze. He stared at her bright, unguarded smile, lost in the sight of it for a long second, before a soft smile touched his own lips.
He looked back down at the device, swiped his finger across the glass, and said gently, “If you want to watch shows, you just use these apps here.”
“Wait, why doesn’t it do anything when I touch it?” Chloe asked, her awkwardness momentarily forgotten as she jabbed at the screen with her fingernail.
“You have to use the pad of your finger. A light swipe, not your nail.” Nathan demonstrated the motion in the air between them.
“Oh!” Chloe nodded eagerly. She flattened her finger and swiped the screen exactly as he had shown her. The menu glided smoothly to the next page. “Oh, I see! That’s actually pretty simple.”
Nathan didn’t say anything. He stood up slowly and walked back over to the single armchair, putting the distance back between them.
He lowered his gaze to the floor. “It was never difficult,” he murmured, almost unconsciously.
Hearing those words, Chloe went completely still.
Nathan used to say that exact phrase to her all the time.
Back in middle school, he had skipped two grades. Even though he was the youngest boy in the class, he was untouchable at the top of the rankings. She used to sit behind him and poke him in the back, constantly asking him to explain the maths problems she couldn’t solve.
His explanations were always so incredibly clear that she would understand the concept immediately and exclaim, “Oh, that’s so simple!”
And he would always reply with that infuriatingly arrogant, perfectly natural expression: “It’s not difficult at all.”
Years later, when he had first asked her to marry him, she had panicked. She was older than him. She went to a worse university. Her family was entirely ordinary. She couldn’t see how they made sense together.
But he had just looked at her and said, “Don’t overthink it. I just like you.”
“But marriage… is it really that simple?” she had asked, terrified by the weight of it. Wasn’t marriage about more than just a feeling? Wasn’t it about taking full responsibility for another human being’s life and future?
But Nathan had looked at her with absolute, unshakeable certainty. “It’s not that difficult.”
She knew perfectly well that Nathan’s mother had never really liked her. But because of Nathan’s quiet, relentless persistence, they had sailed through the marriage without a single major obstacle.
With Nathan by her side, no matter how terrifying or massive the problem was, everything seemed to become simple. All she had ever had to do was follow his lead.
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked, his brow furrowing when he noticed Chloe had completely stopped moving.