Kieran had always had a way of making me feel better. At leastthathadn’t changed.
Kieran pulled out his phone. “So remind me who you write as?” he asked, thumb poised over the keyboard.
“I never said.”
He looked up at me, lips pursed. I knew that look. Thestop fucking around, Felixlook.
“F. G. Harris,” I said, reaching for the glass of water Kieran had poured for me earlier.
Please don’t ask me what the G stands for, please don’t ask me what the G stands for…
“But your middle name is Wesley. After your grandpa.”
Dammit.
“Uh… yeah, the G is just…”
For Goode, because I always had this dumb fantasy that I was part of your family, I never forgot proposing to you even if I didn’t understand it back then, please don’t freak out.
“Aesthetic,” I finished, wondering if that actually sounded worse than confessing one of my most secret fantasies.
I’d never expected Kieran to find out, even if part of me had occasionally wondered what might happen if he stumbled across my books and loved them and decided to get in touch.
This wasn’t exactly the reunion scenario I’d been imagining, but it was probably better.
“Cool,” Kieran said. “These your books?” he asked, turning his phone around for me to see.
“Yeah,” I said, recognizing the redesigned covers that I didn’t exactly love, but that did apparently sell more books. “That’s me.”
“Awesome.” Kieran smiled down at his phone, tapping a few more times and then putting it in his pocket. “This is so cool. Holy shit. A real live author.”
The vinyl squeaked under me again. “It’s not that exciting. I’m not, like, Stephen King or anything.”
“It’s that exciting,” Kieran said, giving me that look again. “It’s that exciting tome, okay? Let me have this. I’m so proud of you.”
“Are you trying to kill me with embarrassment, here?” I asked, heat creeping up the back of my neck.
Itwasnice that Kieran was proud of me, though. I’d always kind of hoped that he would be, if he knew. Now hedidknow, and he was sitting right across from me, telling me so.
My best friend in the whole wide world from six to fourteen.
Hell, he was probably still the best friend I’d ever had. I’d never really stopped thinking about him, I’d compared everyone else I met to him.
No one ever quite measured up.
“Can I take a photo of you?” I asked, the thought only half-formed before I was saying it aloud.
Kieran was all grown up now, the man I’d always known he’d become, and I wanted a record of that.
More to the point, I wanted a picture of my friend. I wasn’t going to be here forever, and the longer I left it, the more likely I was to forget. If I forgot, I’d regret it.
Slow Falls wasn’t impossibly far from New York, but who knew when—or if—we’d see each other again?
Kieran shrugged. “Go for it.”
By the time I got my phone out of my pocket, he’d crossed his eyes and had his tongue sticking out at me.
I snapped a picture before he could react, grinning to myself. “Oh yeah, this is really attractive,” I said, waiting for him to laugh so I could take another burst of photos.
