He purses his lips for a moment, and then they curve into a smile. “Deal. You go first though. I need some time to think of mine.”
I scoff. “I need to think of one too. You didn’t exactly give me many instructions.”
“That was by design. I’m letting you be creative!”
“Okay, okay, I got one,” I say finally. He nods at me, encouraging me to continue. I watch eagerness grow on his face. “When I was little, I had a favorite stuffed animal named Lucky. My grandpa got him for me when I was three. He was this plush black puppy, and I took him everywhere with me. I believed by naming him Lucky, he would actually give me good luck.” I laugh a little with embarrassment.
“When I was six, I took him with me on a family trip to New York. I accidentally left him in the hotel room, and I wound up getting a double ear infection before the trip ended, which made the plane ride home absolutely miserable. I was in tears, and I insisted it was because I didn’t have Lucky with me. Once we got home, my grandpa came to visit me while I was sick. He brought me soup, told me stories, and he even brought me what I thought was Lucky. I later found out he bought me a new Lucky, but he washed him a whole bunch of times to make his fur look worn like my original one. It was really sweet of him.”
He smiles warmly. “When did you find out that wasn’t the real Lucky?”
“I didn’t find out until after my grandpa passed away. He didn’t have the heart to tell me, but Dani did. She thought it was worth telling me the story to show how much he cared for me.”
“You still miss him a lot, don’t you?”
I hesitate. “It’s gotten easier. You kind of start to adjust to your new life without that person, but it doesn’t mean I don’tstill miss him all the time. You just get used to the ache, I guess? Certain times are harder than others though. Christmas is always harder. We used to go to my grandparents’ house for a week around Christmas and bake cookies and open presents on Christmas morning.”
“That’s sweet,” he says, without a hint of judgment.
“Your turn,” I say gleefully, trying to turn the discussion back around after the serious turn it just took.How’d we get from superheroes to losing my grandpa? Whoa.
Joy breaks out on his face in response to my excitement.
“Let’s see… oh, here’s something you might enjoy. Did you ever have those days at school when you did nothing else but read?”
I nod. “Yeah, those were my favorite days! We got to come to school in our pajamas and bring blankets to curl up with, and we’d just read as much as we could in a day to encourage kids to read more and boost the number of books they read during the year.” I buzz with excitement at the memory.
“They were my favorite days too! One year, probably fourth grade, the all-day reading day got canceled for whatever reason, so I pretended to be sick. My mom and dad both had to go in for work, so they left me home alone. The second I knew they were gone, I built a fort in the living room and spent the whole day reading.”
I gasp. “You little rebel! I love that you built a fort though. That’s so fun!”
He chuckles. “It was, until my mom caught me taking the fort down. She came home early, and she knew right away I wasn’t sick. I thought for sure I was going to get in trouble, but I think she thought it was funny. She pretended like she was mad at me for skipping school because ‘school is important,’ but I didn’t get grounded or anything.”
“I guess it’s kind of hard to punish your kid forenjoying reading.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I used to read in my parents’ bathtub with pillows and blankets,” I tell him.
He bursts into laughter. “What? Why the bathtub? There’s got to be more comfortable places.”
“I’m not sure. I think one of my teachers who was really into reading had mentioned it to our class one time, so I was determined to try it. Honestly, I couldn’t get it to be that comfortable, but when my teacher talked about it, it seemedlike such a good idea.”
“You’re weird,” he laughs, “but it’s what I love about you.”
Blushing, I ask him my next question. “What’s a dream you have that you’re too afraid to dream?”
I can tell he’s taken aback. He blinks a few times. “What do you mean?”
“You know, the thing that you wanted as a kid, but growing up you were taught you couldn’t achieve it, so that dream got pushed down into the deepest parts of you, but it’s still silently there, begging you to make it happen one day.”
“Well damn. I’m kind of speechless right now.”
“Because you know exactly what I’m talking about,” I reply confidently.
“You seem to know this pretty well. You must have one too.”
I can tell he’s trying to turn the conversation back to me, to deflect. I don’t blame him. This is a hard question. I don’t even know what made me ask it because I can’t imagine saying my own out loud. I’m not even sure if I’m in tune with my younger self enough to know what the answer would be.
