“Yeah, it does sound like that. I could lie here all afternoon.”
“Do you?” I ask him curiously as I open my eyes.
“Sometimes,” he says. “I work a lot, so not as much as I’d like. But at night, I like to just hang out.”
“Do you read?”
“Sometimes. I do a lot of film study during football season.”
I gesture at a crack in his ceiling. “That looks like the Big Dipper. The big crack and then those dots around it.”
“I see it.” He points above his head. “That looks like an elephant.”
I laugh. “There are no elephants in the sky at night.”
“This isn’t a night sky, Leleila.” His tone is amused. “It’s a white ceiling. We can make whatever we want to on it.”
I point out a swirl of paint on the ceiling that looks like a puffy cloud, and Brayden finds another swirl that he claims looks like Rain Man.
“Rain Man? That’s a character!”
“Well, it looks like Dustin Hoffman, then. Look more closely and tell me you don’t agree.”
“Fine. I actually see what you mean.” I smile. “But you’re still crazy for seeing it in the first place.”
“Creative. I’m creative.”
I laugh before closing my eyes again and listening to the rain and remembering the deer. I wonder if animals in the wild do this, just lie together and feel the rain.
“Are you hungry?” Brayden asks me. “I could make us some dinner if you’d like.”
His thoughtful invitation brings me back to reality, and I sit up slowly. “Actually, I think I should wait for Phillip.”
As if on cue, my phone rings, and I stand up as I answer.
But when I grab it, it’s Sophia. “Hey, Soph.”
“Lei, I’m at my apartment if you want to come by. Or should I pick you up?”
“Um…”
Brayden reaches for his car keys on the coffee table, and we make eye contact. He holds up his keys, signaling that he can drive me.
As he goes to retrieve my clothes from the dryer, I say to Sophia, “I’ll be right there, Soph. Thanks.”
* * *
After I change back into my top and jeans, Brayden locks his front door, and we walk in silence to his truck. As I step up into the cab and close the door behind me, I debate how to articulate what I want to say to him. But I’ve never been good at this sort of thing.
So as soon as Brayden sits down in the driver’s seat, I burst out with, “I kept your hat.”
He jerks his head in my direction. “What?”
“Your cowboy hat that you gave me all those years ago? I still have it,” I say as I buckle my seat belt.
He stares at me in silence. His blue eyes flash with an unnamed emotion, and when he opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes out.
Oh, God.
