All because of this gentle confession, this effort at making me feel better.
I clear my throat, watch as he looks back toward the signs.
“No one from school?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It’s my own fault. I was . . . difficult in school.”
Difficult?I try to picture it: Reid launching spitballs, mouthing off to teachers, not doing his homework. I can’t see it, and something must show on my face, because when he looks over, he smiles briefly and speaks again.
“I was bored. Always done with my work early. It frustrated my teachers, and obviously . . . ah, did not endear me to other students.”
I can picture that better. Serious, studious Reid. Probably cracking whatever code they gave him, and getting no reward for it. Getting the kind of mystified, slightly put-off responses that’d make a kid feel small, embarrassed. That particular mouth-pulling on Reid’s little-boy face.
Pendulum swing, firmly to the murder feeling. Basically for all of Reid’s former teachers and any kid that did not . . . feel endeared to him. I should probably be extremely worried about how fully endearedIam, except that I’m too invested in asking more questions. It’s not a game anymore; it’s not for inspiration. But it still feels so, so important.
“But it must’ve been better,” I say. “When you went to college? Or—your graduate school?”
Reid looks up at the signs again, waits a long moment. “I was fifteen when I went to college.”
“Fifteen?!” I still slept with a stuffed animal at fifteen, which I have the good sense not to say out loud.
“Community college for the first semester. An extension program through my high school.”
“Oh, sure,” I say, still processing my shock. “Thatmakes it better!”
He gives me the sad eyes. Those are the worst. They make my stomach feel like Hell’s Kitchen.
“Not better. I only mean . . . it doesn’t make it any less surprising. Or less impressive. It’s—wow. You aresmart, huh?”
Heswoonshes, and I’ll bet if I scooted closer, I could watch that blush spread across his cheekbones.
“At math,” he says.
“Well, you must be in hog heaven now, at your job. Surrounded by math people!”
Theswoonshfades, his face closing off again.T-E-N-S-E.
“Money people. It’s different.”
For a second he looks so drawn and hollow that all I can think about is making him feel better. Some blister pack of something to take that look away.
And then I realize: Maybe Idohave something in my metaphorical jacket pocket. Sitting here in this park, beside Reid, learning more about him, letting some of my own lowest feelings out into the open air—I don’t even have to pretend to feel cheerful and light. I can actually . . .becheerful and light.
My mouth curves into a smile, and I nudge him gently, teasingly, with my foot. I try to ignore the way touching him, even in this completely platonic way, doesn’t feel all that much like teasing to me.
“Would you say . . . would you say that money is the . . .common denominatorfor your colleagues?”
For a second, he says absolutely nothing, and I think,Nice job, Meg. It wasn’t the time to be light and cheerful.With amathjoke.
But then he looks over at me, blinks once, and he . . . helaughs. A real, full laugh. An in-person laugh.
And it is the most gorgeous combination of sounds, the same sounds I heard him make when we walked together on the phone the other night: that groan, but this time at how utterly terrible my joke was. That warm, tight chuckle, a bit louder this time, then quieting and giving way to a sigh, a small exhalation of air. A sigh ofrelief.
It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard. Nothing I could ever put in letters. I frolic right past another warning clutch in my heart.
“Thank God you laughed! That’s one of maybe ten math terms I know. Want to hear the others?”
He smiles, breathing out only the chuckle now.
