“What are the rules?” he asks promptly.
“It’s secret for secret. That’s it. Those are the rules,” I explain.
“Are we allowed questions?”
“Questions?”
“Yeah, for clarification, or maybe to dig deeper into the secret.”
“Yes,” I answer. “That’s fine. Let no secret detail go unturned.”
He squeezes my hand again, which is something I’ve been trying to not think about. That we’re holding hands. It seems like such a simple thing, and yet it doesn’t seem simple with Boone. It seems real, and real is usually the opposite of simple. It’s usually complicated and messy and, well, honest.
Which is why I haven’t yet let go. I appreciate Boone’s honesty, and if he wanted to let go, he would. I’m not going to be the first to break our honesty when the truth is, I want to hold his hand, too.
“You go first,” he says. “You’re the veteran.”
I smirk. “Only by experience, not by age.”
Boone laughs. “I wondered if you were going to say anything about my age reveal earlier. What do you think about it? Do I seem forty-one to you?”
“My dad was forty-two when he died,” I reveal, which immediately sparks the reaction from Boone of squeezing my hand again. “But that’s not my secret. Oh, I’ve got one. I called the police on my upstairs neighbors twice this year for loud music late at night. I thought they were having a party. Turns out, it was just their thirteen-year-old son learning to play the drums. Still, noisy, but I’m not one to discourage learning, so naturally, I had cookies made in the shape of drums and drumsticks for them and delivered the cookies myself.”
“To apologize?” Boone asks.
“Oh, no. I didn’t let them know it was me that called the police. To encourage their son—Liam, I learned—to keep up the good work. That I was a huge supporter of the musical arts,” I add.
“Honest Kate wasn’t honest?” Boone’s eyes widen in amusement.
“Not when it meant having a tiff with my upstairs neighbors,” I laugh. “Listen, enough people in New York are rude just for the fun of it. I didn’t need people I lived in my building with to be rude for a reason.”
“Fair enough,” Boone agrees. “Plus, they got cookies.”
“Exactly!” I exclaim. “Expensive ones, too. And now Liam even says hi to me in the elevator. Okay, your turn.”
“Hmm,” he mutters. “I don’t do myown laundry, and I know, I’m a grown man who should be doing his own laundry, but I don’t have a washer and dryer up here, and my mom insists. It’s not that I can’t do laundry. I can and have. It’s just that I don’t do it currently, or really for the last five years.”
My eyebrows arch. “Your mom still does your laundry?”
“I know. It sounds bad, but it’s notstill does. She stopped when I moved to California. I had some unfortunate experiences with learning that you don’t dump three capfuls of detergent in the washing machine and that it really does matter if you wash clothes on hot or cold. But when I moved back, my mom thought it was a way she could help me out while I was sorting out everything during that time, and she just never stopped.”
“She seems like a good mom,” I remark.
“She is,” Boone agrees. “Keeps me in banana bread and clean clothes.”
I smile at him. “My mother did my laundry when I lived at home, but only because she didn’t want me to mess any of it up. She had strict rules for what was allowed to be worn to ensure my brother and I looked appropriate by her definition of it. When I was sixteen, I really wanted a pair of ripped jeans. Of course, she refused. Said they were pants for hoodlums. Soon after, my dad made up an excuse to get me out of school. He took me to the mall and bought me a pair. I kept them hidden in my Mustang and would change into them on my way to parties.”
Boone laughs. “I think I would have liked your dad.”
“He was a good person,” I reply. “He wasn’t perfect, but he was good.”
“Those are the best kind of people,” Boone remarks. “Now, your turn.”
And because I like the shock-and-awe effect, I decide to reveal something that might scare Boone away. “I’ve never had a real boyfriend. I mean, I’ve had boyfriends and they were real, not imaginary. But not the kind of boyfriend where I thought it could be more—that it could be life. And I know that sounds ridiculous, because I’m fast approaching forty and you’d think…there would’ve at least been one.”
“Did you love any of them?” Boone asks.
My eyebrows furrow together. “I mean, I liked them. I’ve even said, ‘I love you’ a few times and heard it back. But real love? No. Not the kind of love that actually means something bigger than a moment.”
