Her pen hovers, then retracts. “Why?”
I look past her at the timberline. “Because Chad and Karen would love that version of the story.”
“Right.” She bites her lip. “They’re still… them.”
“More than ever.”
We sit with that for a second. She braces her heels on the plank, knees knocking my boot, and I have to look away so I don’t think about how easy it was to sit like this once, forever ago, in the loft with our notebooks and a bag of stale pretzels, pretending we didn’t know everything was about to tilt.
“What about you?” I ask, because she asked me straight and because I don’t get to keep my history with my mouth shut and demand hers. “You went to school. Wrote for the paper. How’d you decide to come back?”
She exhales like it’s a story she’s rehearsed and hates to tell.
“You know, the usual. I followed a boy to college. Stayed for the bylines.” She slips a smile on and it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You remember Derek? Our relationship went about as well as his football career.”
I frown. “I heard he works on tankers.”
“Exactly.”
“And then?” I ask, careful.
“He cheated two months into freshman year.” She says it so matter-of-factly. “I broke up with him, wrote a column that pissed off the administration, and learned how to splice video on a deadline. The paper paid me in clips and the TV station paid me in exposure and somehow I kept getting work with my portfolio.”
“Good,” I say. It comes out rougher than I meant.
She rolls the pen between her fingers.
“After graduation I thought I’d move farther, but Seattle had enough skyline to keep me dizzy. I did the morning show circuit, then the paper picked me up for a lifestyle column and a video package. It was… good. Busy. Loud.”
“Then you came home.”
“My grandma called,” she says, voice going soft. “Her knees are going. She can’t do the stairs. And I realized I’d been running so fast I couldn’t name a single thing I’d built that would still be standing in ten years. So I came back for the summer to help her. Then the summer turned into your season.”
Your season. Not our. Not mine. The correction happens in my brain on its own.
She glances up. “I told myself I’d split my time. Freelance for the paper here, keep my vlog going, help with Grandma.”
The urge comes in strong and out of nowhere. I want to lean in and kiss the corner of her mouth where the wind has left a dry crescent. To tell her she built good things even if they didn’t look like skyscrapers. To say I’m sorry I didn’t ask her out in high school like I should have.
Thank God, I catch myself.
I shift my weight, let the bench creak, and look anywhere that isn’t her mouth. “You want to see the zipline?”
She blinks, like she expected a different kind of question. “Is that a long way?”
“It’s a bit of a jaunt.”
She grins, all old-remembered mischief. “I’ve got boots. Let’s jaunt.”
I hop down and unhitch the wagon, dropping the pin back into the receiver with a clank. When I turn, she’s hesitating at the edge like she’s about to ask where she’s supposed to sit.
“Climb up,” I say, patting the narrow platform behind the seat. “Hands on the rail. Keep your feet clear. It’s not OSHA-approved, but it beats walking.”
“OSHA-approved,” she repeats, laughing under her breath. “That’s a phrase I’ll avoid putting in the column.”
“Please don’t.”
I offer my hand without thinking. She takes it. Skin, heat, history. Zing zing zing like I touched an electric fence—and I deserve the jolt for forgetting what it’s like.
