‘Wales? Really?’ He looked pleased when I nodded. ‘That’s where my family is from. Originally, I mean, generations back. I’ve never been.’
‘You should go if you can, it’s beautiful there,’ I told him,equally as delighted by the connection. ‘The weather isn’t always all that great and we lived in a pretty remote part of the country – lots of sheep, not a lot of people – but I really did love it.’
‘Sounds good to me. And for what it’s worth, your accent isn’t weird. I think it’s kind of pretty.’
I took another chomp out of my ice cream to hide the size of my smile.
‘If you loved Wales, what brought you back to Savannah?’ he asked and just like that, my smile was gone. ‘You don’t have to answer if that’s a difficult question,’ he added when he saw my discomfort. ‘If you’re an alien or a super spy, do not tell me. I do not hold up well under questioning, I would give you up right away.’
‘My dad passed away,’ I said simply. Better to get it out the way now. ‘It was just me and him, my mom died when I was a baby, so I came here to live with my grandmother.’
Wyn faltered for a second before falling back into step beside me. ‘I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
‘Most of the time when people say that, it means they really don’t want to talk about it.’ I laughed lightly even though it wasn’t really funny, but it was true. ‘I know it’s not exactly something people like to think about.’
‘Well, if you do want to talk about it, I’m a good listener.’
His face was warm and open as he popped the last bite of his cone into his mouth and something in the air shifted between us, pulling a little tighter, binding us closer together. I did want to talk about it. I wanted to talk about it with him.
‘Whenever I would get upset about my mom, Dad would say death is only sad for the people left behind,’ I began, the words coming more easily than I thought they would. ‘He always told me wherever she was, she wouldn’t want us to be sad forever, so that’s what I keep telling myself. Either his energy is outthere somewhere, floating around in the universe, or he’s someplace else with my mom. Whichever one it is, I have to keep reminding myself he wouldn’t want me to be sad forever either.’
We reached a busy main road and stopped at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change.
‘That’s a good way to look at things,’ Wyn said. ‘Kind of beautiful.’
I was so lost, staring into his green-grey eyes, the sensation of his hand covering mine took me by surprise. I looked down as our fingers wove themselves together, then back up at him and the smile on his face knocked the air out my lungs. A beeping sound sliced through my wonder, the walk sign turned white, and with one quick squeeze of my hand, he led me across the street and safely to the other side.
‘That’s how I feel today,’ I admitted, struggling to focus on the subject at hand. My palm was hot and sweaty against his and walking in a straight line became a complex manoeuvre. ‘For the first couple of weeks I was a total zombie, just stayed in bed, staring at the wall. Then it started to get, not better, but bearable. Like, I could get through a day without losing itcompletelybut who knows? Tomorrow I might want to cry for three hours straight or punch a wall, it’s hard to say.’
‘Definitely don’t punch a wall,’ he advised with what sounded like earned wisdom. ‘It looks cooler than it feels.’
‘I think that’s more of a guy thing,’ I replied, laughing. ‘And let’s be honest, it doesn’t lookthatcool. You should call a meeting, let the menfolk know they’re not impressing anyone with that stuff.’
Our arms swung easily between us, like holding his hand was the most natural thing in the world and I wasn’t testing the limits of my twenty-four-hour antiperspirant with every step. I’d never met anyone so easy to talk to. It felt as though we’d known each other forever.
‘I can’t imagine growing up in such a small family.’ Wyn squinted against the midday sun and grinned. ‘No siblings, no cousins, nothing. Wow.’
‘You have siblings?’
Surely there couldn’t be more than one like him.
‘One brother and four girl cousins,’ he said with comically bulging eyes. ‘I grew up with the cousins, they’re practically my sisters.’
‘I can’t imagine growing up in such a big family,’ I replied truthfully. ‘What was it like?’
‘We aren’t that close these days, everyone is busy all the time.’ He sounded a little regretful but not really sad. ‘The girls are all older than me. Jennifer and Susie, the twins, they both moved out last year. Susie got married in the spring. Lena is the middle kid, she moved to Canada with her girlfriend a couple of months ago and Sara, the youngest, still lives at home but she’s in college all day and works evening shifts at a bar in Asheville so I never see her anymore. Her mom, my Aunt Rue, she’s cool. She runs an art gallery in town. Sometimes I hang out with her there. My gramps lives with us too but he’s getting older. Mostly he just reads and sleeps.’
It sounded like the dream to me.
‘What about your parents?’ I asked.
He shrugged as I swallowed the last bite of my ice cream cone.
‘Busy, busy, busy. Mom is an artist, she paints mostly, practically lives at her studio. Dad is the one I see the most but that’s only because he’s the art teacher at my high school. He’s way more popular than I am.’
I didn’t believe him for a second.
‘So many artists in one family,’ I remarked. ‘What about your brother, is he an artist too?’
