Neither of us seemed big on small talk, so it was at least a full minute before he broke the silence. With a comment about the weather.
“I don’t know how you can stand it out here. It’s like an oven.”
I made a show of looking away and hanging my head back. “It’s better higher up. There’s a breeze.” Said breeze caught my ponytail and sent it dancing.
Another car drove past. Daniel took two quick strides, placed his hands on the cement block wall dividing our yards, and swung up. He followed it to where it bent and met my house and repeated the motion to pull himself onto the roof.
“Hey!” I said when he sat down next to me and rested his arms on his bent knees. “No joke, my dad will run you over if he hears you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have invited me.”
My eyebrows shot up. We had radically different opinions on what constituted an invitation.
Daniel sighed. “Look, I won’t stay long, all right?” He leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the stars.
Silence. I kept shooting glances at him from the corner of my eye, wondering if I was supposed to say something. It’d been easier in the shop. During the day. I wasn’t sure what to do with him on my roof. It was kind of a private place for me. And I barely knew him.
I was so focused on Daniel that I missed the car pulling up to his house. But Daniel didn’t. He went still as a statue, eyes locked on the sky above him. He didn’t even blink. It was the car door slamming shut that finally clued me in that his mom was home.
No wonder he preferred my roof.
When the night was silent again except for the distant hum of traffic from the 60, I decided I could do more than give him a place to hide. I could maybe help him forget what he was hiding from, at least temporarily.
I hugged my knees and nodded at the wall. “You made that look easy. You scale a lot of walls?”
He shrugged. “How’d you get up?”
I wasn’t about to describe the beached whale method I employed that involved a lot of squirming and flailing about. “Pretty much the same way.”
He half smiled. “Pretty much, huh? You’ll have to show me sometime.”
I laughed at the likelihood of that ever happening. And because Daniel no longer looked like he was going to leap off the roof. Also his half smile was kind of nice. Maybe.
A warm breeze swept over us and lifted the sweat-damp strands of dark hair on Daniel’s forehead. “Cooler, right?”
“I don’t think you can describe this as cooler, but it’s better.” Daniel tilted his head back. “So what exactly am I looking at?”
We weren’t sitting that close, but I was acutely aware of him stretched out next to me. It made me apprehensive somehow, like when Dad first taught me to drive stick and I was so worried about stalling that I ran a red light so I wouldn’t have to stop. “In Arizona, we call them stars.”
Another half smile tugged the corner of his mouth, but he kept his eyes on the sky. And away from his house. “I thought you might know a constellation or something.”
“Right there.” I pointed to a spot above his left shoulder. “Astronomers call that one the Big Dipper.”
He laughed, and I felt the sound tickle all the way down to my toes. I pointed higher. “Okay, that little cluster of stars…do you see it? I think that one’s called Centaurus.”
“What about that one?” Daniel shifted my still outstretched hand to another group of stars. It was the first time he’d touched me, and it sent a funny buzz up my arm.
“No idea. I don’t sit up here with a telescope or anything.” I’d remembered Centaurus only because it was named after the centaur Chiron. Sean used to be really into Greek mythology, and since I used to be really into Sean… Something much too close to guilt buzzed through me, and I pulled my hand from Daniel’s.
Daniel kept looking at the sky. There were tiny pricks of perspiration dotting his forehead and even from a couple feet away I could feel the heat his body was generating.
“I may have oversold the breeze.”
“Yeah, no kidding. I thought Philadelphia was hot in the summer, but holy hell. Does it get worse than this?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud. “You’ll get used to it. Plus the sunrises are really beautiful, so that helps.” Running with Claire and Sean so early had let me see quite a few.
“And you sit outside every night?”
