“Reading requires focus,” I said, taking refuge in lecture mode. “That’s the payoff, really. You get immersed, you get engaged with the story, you have this connection to the characters. But phones are addictive. Every time you hear that ping, it’s a dopamine rush. The problem is, it’s a short-term buzz. All the likes and comments and shares in the world are no substitute for a good book. Or a true friend.”
“No, yeah, I keep telling her that.”
“The problem is, teens have all this pressure to perform, to conform, to get good grades to get into a good school to get agood job they feel passionately about that will somehow also magically pay all their bills.” I waved my hands around, building steam. “And then something like the pandemic happens”—school shuts down or your job is threatened or your boyfriend moves to Atlanta—“and you realize that all the education in the world doesn’t actually prepare you for life.”
Except, oh, oops, that wasn’t teenagers, that was me. I flushed.
He arched an eyebrow. “Speaking from experience?”
“Iama teacher,” I pointed out. If I still had a job in the fall. And then honesty made me add, “Also, I can relate. Because I was a teenager.”
“I remember.” He held my gaze.
Something in the way he stood, cut in light and shadow, the snug fit of his Henley shirt across his shoulders, the smell of him, warm and male, made me remember, too.
The problem with blushing was the more I tried to stop, the worse it got. I bent to pet the dog, hiding my flustered face. “Yeah. I made a fool of myself.”
“That’s not what I remember.”
Was I relieved or offended he’d forgotten? “Prom night? Six years ago?”
There was a very faint, possibly imagined, smile on his mouth. “When you kissed me.”
So he did remember.Jerk.
“You said it was like kissing your kid sister.”
I thought he winced.Good.
“It wasn’t,” he said.
I cocked my head. “Glad to hear. Because at the time, it sounded kind of pervy.”
“I felt pervy. You were seventeen.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. It’s not like I was a virgin being seduced by the rakish lord in a Regency novel.” I tried to sound dismissive, but the truth was I loved those stories. All those cheerful, kindhearted heroines who found happiness with brooding, charismatic men simply by being themselves. “I’d been kissed before,” I added unnecessarily.
Will Butler when he caught me on the playground in fifth grade. (I’d punched him in the stomach.) A boy named Clay who’d been visiting the island with his parents the summer before. (Disappointing, but at least I could tell Daanis I’d done it.)
Joe regarded me impassively.
“Besides, you kissed me back,” I said.
“That was a mistake.”
“What every girl dreams of hearing. Thanks.”
He frowned down at me. “I was twenty-four.”
The same age I was now. Back then I’d been in high school, the age of one of my students. Which…You know what? I was an adult now. A teacher. I nodded. “Fair enough. Obviously, I put you in a really awkward position. Sorry.”
“No, yeah, I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to…”
“Reject me?”
“Hurt your feelings.”
My throat thickened. Because, yeah. I could handle the blow to my adolescent pride, the physical rebuff of my teenage self. But what hurt the most, even after all these years, was that for one moment, I’d seen myself reflected in his eyes—a brighter, better, starlit me. Before he pushed me away.
