“Remember how that worked out last time, though,” I reminded her. “Maybe it’s not the best indicator.”
“True,” she agreed. “I guess you never know.”
Leo had wrapped up his conversation and was now making his way toward us, winding through the growing crowd. My date, even though I wasn’t supposed to call him that, and yet now all I could think about was Jilly and Ambrose, together. It would never happen. Would it?
“Hey there,” Leo said, sliding in beside me. “Where’d you get the beers?”
“Outside,” I told him. “Follow me.”
We cut through the kitchen, which boasted an impressive display of hot sauces stacked on the wide windowsill,and out onto the side deck, where the keg was set up under a tangle of Christmas lights. Ira, tied nearby, saw me immediately and began wagging his tail.
“Hey there, bud,” I said, bending down to scratch his ears. He’d had a haircut and smelled like powder, clearly freshly bathed. “Ten to one Ambrose met a pretty dog groomer,” I said out loud. “Am I right?”
“What?” Leo asked from the keg.
“Nothing,” I said, standing back up and facing him. “Do you want to go back inside? Or—”
“Let’s stay here for a bit,” he replied. “Less chance of bumping into more people from high school.”
We walked over to a bench that ran along the deck, where I took a seat. Ira, now on a diagonal from me, let out a whine and then lay down, his head on his paws. “You’re from here, too?” I said, as Leo leaned on the nearby railing. “I didn’t realize.”
“Born and bred,” he replied. “Class of 2015, Kiffney-Brown.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So you’re smart.”
“By the numbers. I was a big-time math nerd before I started writing.”
More new information. “You write?”
A nod. “I’m in the program at the U. Workshops, independent study, all that stuff. I was doing both tracks, but now I’m strictly fiction.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“The novel I’m working on right now is kind of astream-of-consciousness take on the dwindling of human contact in society,” he replied, as easily as anyone else might rattle off their birthdate and astrological sign. Clearly, he’d said this before. “It’s futuristic, but also set in present day. I’m playing with time a lot. It’s challenging.”
“Huh,” I said, before realizing this was about the stupidest response I could have offered. I added, “I love to read. But I’ve never been very good at writing if it wasn’t, like, papers for school.”
“Oh, it’s totally different,” he said, taking a sip of his beer as two girls in thick sandals clomped over to the keg. “Anyone can be taught to present a basic argument or summarize information. Fiction is a skill. You either have it, or you don’t.”
“And you do.”
“Well, yeah.” He must have known this sounded arrogant, because he smiled at me, diluting it somewhat. “But I’m still learning. I have this awesome professor, McCallum McClatchy. You ever read his books?”
I shook my head, not exactly wanting to share that the current novel onmybedside table was a fantasy novel about girls put under a spell that made them into tigers. They then had to fight a series of other tigers, also former humans, in order to turn back. I’d once been a big fan of contemporary fiction. Since I lost Ethan, though, real life had been bad enough all around me on a daily basis. Between the covers of a book, I wanted anything else.
“Oh, he’s great,” Leo continued. “Irish born, really sparse in terms of his prose, but with thick language. His whole firstbook takes place in a potato field over the course of one day, and it’s told from the point of view of theplow.”
“Wow,” I said.
“It’s incredible.” I’d never seen him this excited about coffee. “I’ll loan you one of my copies. If you don’t mind highlights and margin notes.”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Great. I’ll bring it to work tomorrow.” He smiled at me again. “It can be kind of a tough read, with all the footnotes and flashbacks. McCallum is my inspiration when it comes to time shifting on the page. But I can walk you through it.”
I’d said I wasn’t good at writing fiction, not reading it, I thought, but then told myself to stop being so judgmental. When you loved something, you wanted everyone else to love it in the same way. Right? Right.
Just then, my phone rang. With it buried in my bag, which was over my shoulder, it took a second to grab it, during which Leo raised his eyebrows at my ringtone. Who was being judgmental now?
