“Wait!” Mateo says. “It’s fine. You should know what I wrote.”
He looks at me nervously, like he thinks I’m some major anti-reader.
He braces himself, and suddenly I am Napoleon and he is all of Britain.
Mateo is silly sometimes.
I readwhat he says.
“You like tall handsome men with foreign accents,” I ask.
Mateo’s cheeks turn pink. “Uh…”
I laugh. Then a thought occurs to me. “You liked me… before.”
“Well…”
“Before you really knew me, you liked me.”
“Maybe…” he says.
“That is brilliant!” I exclaim.
“Is it?”
“I liked you so much that I was going crazy. I was avoiding you everywhere!”
“I wasn’t really everywhere.”
“Reality and non-reality,” I say. “Non-reality is when you are in my daydreams.”
He grins. “You are ridiculous.”
“Maybe if I’d never written in the book, you wouldn’t have thought that I was your boyfriend.”
“Thank goodness you wrote in the book then. You manifested me.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “It is nice. Our love is metaphysical.”
Mateo looks confused, and I kiss him instead of explaining metaphysics.
“You’ll be leaving Gina,” I say.
“I know. I’ll miss her. But twins normally leave home at age eighteen,” he says.
“And you’ll be leaving Boston.”
“I’ll be living in Nashville,” he says.
I grin. “With me.”
And then there is a bit more kissing.
Then Mateo and I finish packing up his room, and we go to find Daniela.
We walk down the hallway, then stop at Daniela’s door.
