“Damion?”
“Mm?”
“How…how’s work?”
He lifts a brow. “Work’s fine.”
I wait. Nothing more comes. Deflating, I whisper, “I don’t think I know how to carry a conversation.”
He puffs. “Where are you trying to carry it?”
“I don’t know. Out of the silence? I don’t want to bore you. Aren’t we supposed to be talking so much we can barely find time to eat? I don’t think we’re supposed to just sit here quietly. How will we get to know each other that way? What if we don’tclick? What if we don’t share any interests? What if the generation gap is too large?”
His other brow shoots up to meet the first. “Did you just call me old?”
“N-no. Youareolder, but that doesn’t make youold.” I avert my gaze.
“Mirabelle.”
I tense.
“Please tell me you know what a VHS is.”
“Of course I know what a VHS is.”
“And Blockbuster?”
My eyes roll.
“RadioShack?”
“I’m notthatmuch younger than you.”
“Huh. Then I guess I’m not that much older.” He takes a bite of his food.“It was sad when they stopped delivering milk in glass bottles, though. You remember that? What an uproar my parents caused[1].”
I…do not remember that. Because that stopped being popular in the sixties. “You aren’t old enough to remember that. Surely.”
He shrugs. “Really? What do I know? The paint was full of lead and science hadn’t been invented yet. Whenever I got sick, my mother would pour eight glasses of whiskey and my family would gather round screamingshots, shots, shots. I’d down everything, and be off to school. Uphill. Both ways. In the snow. With thirty…no,fiftypounds of books in my backpack.”
I stare at this outrageous man for a good long minute, then I laugh. “You areunbearable.”
“Well, we know how I feel about the soft-core insults, but is my tendency to be unbearable a con in your little book?”
No. Not even a little bit.
“Your family,” I say, “what are they like?”
His gaze roves the ceiling for a moment, then he starts talking about his parents and a little sister, which reminds me I’ve always wanted a little sister, but never got one, which descends into a conversation about things we’ve wanted but couldn’t have, including a story about how Damion’s parentsrefusedto get him a toy one of his friends had as a means to teach him that even though they had money, that didn’t mean they could have everything they wanted just because they wanted it.
“It’s good to want, they’d always say,” Damion murmurs, eyes fixed and heavy on me. “It makes you ambitious, and someday…you’ll want something that isn’t effortless to get. But you won’t give up on it when it isn’t just handed to you. Nomatter what, you will want, and you will fight, until it’s yours.” He smiles, so soft, so at peace. “It was mad frustrating when I was a kid, but, what can I say? They were right.”
From that point on, I don’t know if we remember to breathe in between talking and eating. I laugh more than I think I have in my entire life, and we walk the streets of downtown, over and over, as shops close all around us just so we can pretend that the night doesn’t have to end.
When it inevitably does, though, I find a list of pros in my little book headed by two cons, which I cross out.
Chapter 26
?
