“I’d never read or watched anything that had two male protagonists before. Lucy and I became friends. I would go with her to the bookstore and the library, or out for coffee, and we would discuss the books we were reading.”
I loved this so much. “Oh, she sounds amazing.”
“She’s now at a veterinarian clinic in Boise. I haven’t seen her for a while, though we do email occasionally. She gave me the little Yuri figure as a farewell when we graduated.”
“Aww, that’s so cool.” Then I caught up to what he said. “Wait. Which bookstore in Boise did you go to?”
“Pages. It was close to?—”
“No way!” I cried. “That was my store! I was one of the managers there. Are you saying we could have totally crossed paths before?”
He blinked a few times, his brow furrowed, and his eyes met mine briefly before they went back to the bookshelf. “I don’t remember seeing you.”
“There were a lot of people,” I said, not wanting him to feel bad. “Isn’t it funny that we were in the same place though? Crazy to think we could have walked past each other without knowing it.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
I pointed to the plane ticket stub. “What’s this?”
“My first time on a plane. When I was little, I was very into planes. I loved them. I studied them, drew them, watched endless documentaries.”
“The plane on your desk,” I said.
He nodded. “The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. It’s an American family of single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole combat aircraft...” He trailed off with a shrug. “I had many more, all kinds, but they’re in a storage box now. I keep that one out because it was the first one I bought with my own money. But I kind of lost interest after a few years.”
“That happens.”
He nodded again. “The plane ticket was my first time on a plane. I was six. We flew to Seattle.”
“You must have been so excited.”
“I was, yes. But it was loud and there were a lot of people. It was overwhelming. I appreciated it more when it was over.”
“I can totally understand that.”
He went back to the tray. “The soda cap was from my first day at high school.” He shrugged. “The rock I found at a science excursion in fifth grade.” He picked it up. “See the white vein of calcite. It runs right through it, perfectly symmetrical. It fascinated me to think what significant geological event must have happened to produce such a thing.”
I held my hand out and he gently placed it on my palm. I could see the line of white calcite. It was kinda cool. “Like a volcano eruption? Is that what did this?”
His eyes met mine and he smiled. “Possibly. A seismic shift, perhaps.”
“That’s so cool. Isn’t it fascinating that they can tell what happened however many millions of years ago bylooking at the geological formations? And fossils. Like how crazy is it to think that whole animals were preserved in sediment or whatever, and humans find them sixty-five million years later. It’s like a snapshot of history.”
His eyes met mine then, that intense burning stare that pinned me in place, making my heart rate spike and butterflies flood my belly.
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Okay, boys,” his mom called out. “Dinner!”
Only then did he look away and I could suddenly breathe again.
Wowzers.
What a rush.
My heart was still hammering when he ducked his head and went to his door. He paused before opening it, glancing at me again, his smile shy, cheeks pink, as if he wanted to burn the image of me standing by his bookcase into his memory.
Then he opened the door and nodded to the hall. “Dinner is ready.”
