“That picture is…really good. Can I have it?” he asks nervously.
“Really?” I sit up excitedly before realizing that he’s probably just messing with me.Way to play it cool, Westin. Jesus.I can’t play it cool with this guy, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
“Yeah, really.” Ty nods, opening his sketchbook and grabbing a pencil from his bag. “I’ll draw you and we’ll exchange. Sound fair?”
My heart beats faster, excited at the chance to see myself through his eyes.
“Sounds fair,” I agree, pulling my book out to keep working on his portrait, we get comfortable and start working.
We sit in comfortable silence for a while. When one of us breaks the silence, it’s because we have a specific question to ask, but other than that, it’s quiet.
I can hear the birds sing and chirp around us, the softwhooshof the wind through the trees, Ty’s steady breathing that matches my own, the soft drag of our pencils on paper.
“Where’d you live before Haven?” he asks, breaking the companionable silence.
“Tonstown, just about three hours west of here.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” Ty shakes his head and I chuckle.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t. It’s the smallest town I’ve ever seen. One school for all the grades. Pre-K through twelfth. It’s got a stoplight and a gas station.”
“Wow, and I thought Haven was small.”
“Haven’s not bad. I’ve lived here before, a few times actually. I prefer it to the other places I’ve lived,” I confess, not bringing my eyes up from the page.
“When did you live here before?” Ty asks, and I ignore the gaze of his that I can feel on me.
“Uh.” I close my eyes, trying to remember the years. “First half of kindergarten, then back for all of first grade, then first half of third I think, but then gone until second half of fifth grade, and the last time was the first month of seventh grade.”
“Mierda,”he says in Spanish, and based on how he spits it out and both of his eyes widen, it’s a curse word.
“What does that mean?”
“Fuck,” he translates, but shakes his head and leans forward slightly. “You’re telling me that they moved you mid-year like that? That must be so hard.”
I shrug. I’m used to it by now. “It is what it is.”
“I’m surprised we haven’t met before,” Ty says softly, and he almost sounds far away like he’s trying to remember if we had.
“Maybe.” I shrug. It’s a possibility, Haven’s bigger but notthatbig.
He doesn’t say anything, but I can still feel his eyes on me. It makes my skin tingle like he’s touching me. My heart beats a little faster and it makes me feel uncomfortable—in a good way.
“What?” I ask, half-snapping, half-softly, and my hair falls to the other side.
“Nothing,” Ty stutters, and turns back to his drawing, moving himself so that I can no longer see it.
“Okay.” I let the word trail between us because I know he’s thinking something, but if he doesn’t want to share, I’m not going to push.
We work silently for a few more moments before my stomach growls embarrassingly loudly and I want to crawl into a hole anddie.
“Someone’s hungry, huh?” Ty smirks, looking at his phone to see the time. “It is lunch time. Past lunch time actually.”
Damn it.
“We’re going to need to start walking back soon. I, unfortunately, have a fi—work tonight,” Ty says, his eyes widening just a bit as he catches himself before a slip up.
What was he going to say?
