I thought of Brad from high school. Chase had hooked up with him a bunch of times and had come back afterward all flushed and sweaty. The way things had been at home, we’d sneaked out together because no way in hell was I staying in our bedroom alone, and no way would Chase expect me to. So while he was off meeting Brad, I would wait in the vacant lot by the tire place near our house, and Chase would collect me on his way back.
I’d just sit there. Sometimes I’d read a book, if I had a flashlight with me. Sometimes I’d count cars. Sometimes I’d just look at the stars. And not once would I have preferred to be in Chase’s shoes instead of mine. The idea of letting someone touch me—someone apart from Chase, and in a way that wasn’t familiar to me—made my stomach hurt. I’d never wanted to do what Chase was doing. I wasn’t wired that way. At least, that was what I’d thought.
Mr. Conrad leaned back in his chair. “Has something changed recently?”
I nodded, then shrugged.
“I’ll take that as an unequivocalmaybe,” Mr. Conrad said with a smile, then nodded in the direction of his small kitchenette. “There’s soda in the refrigerator if you’re thirsty.” He gestured at the tubs of blocks. “We might be here a while.”
I stood and got a soda, then sat down again. “Mason’s keeping the dog.”
Mr. Conrad nodded slowly.
“It’s good,” I said, swallowing around the ache in my throat.
“Is it?” Mr. Conrad asked.
I nodded. “It makes sense.”
“It does,” he said. “But you can still be upset about it. Two things can be true at the same time.”
“I shouldn’t want to kiss the guy who stole my dog,” I whispered, and immediately felt stupid for saying it aloudbecause Mason hadn’t stolen Dog.Ihad. “I just wanted to keep him, that’s all.”
“No wonder you were pacing back and forth out there.” Mr. Conrad unfolded the Lego instructions. “It sounds like you’re having a lot of conflicting emotions right now. You like Mason, yes? And you trust him?”
I nodded.
“And you’re attracted to him?”
“I think so. Maybe.”
“Well, the good news about attraction is that it’s your choice whether or not to act on it,” Mr. Conrad said. “Just because you feel something for him, that doesn’t mean anything has to change, unless you want it to and unless you’re ready for that. And you can take as long as you want figuring that out.”
I fiddled with a piece of Lego. “What should I do?”
“Oh, son.” Mr. Conrad shook his head. “I can’t tell you the answer to that because you’re the only person who knows exactly how you’re feeling. And Mason’s the only one who knows how he’s feeling, which means that if you want to see if you’re on the same page and explore this attraction, you’re actually going to have to talk to him at some point.”
Talk to him.
Like it was that easy.
Except when I thought back to the times I’d spent with Mason, I realized that, okay, it hadn’t been easy talking to him at first, but I was doing it more and more now, and I didn’t have to push the words out while they fought against me the whole way. I didn’t talk to him much, but the words I did speak came out a lot easier than they had at the start, and even if the idea of talking to Mason about how I maybe felt—and how he maybe felt in return—made my stomach clench and my palms sweat, at least it didn’t feel totally impossible. And that was huge for me.
“I can do that,” I said, nodding. Then I shrugged. “Maybe not right away, but I can do that.”
“I know you can,” Mr. Conrad said. “Because you’re not afraid of the work, and there aren’t too many people out there who can say the same thing.” He nodded at the Lego. “Now, talking of work…”
I reached for the instructions, and we got back to reconstructing the Colosseum.
That nightI sat on the back porch with a beer in the dark and just listened. The television was on inside, a background hum of car chases and gunshots and explosions. Chase liked some really dumb movies. I heard Lee laughing at one point, which ended in a sudden “Ooof!” and then some other muffled sounds, and then both he and Chase laughed.
The floorboards in the kitchen creaked before there was a blast of water into the sink, and Danny said, “Just let it soak, and it’ll come right off tomorrow.”
Miller’s reply was too low for me to make out the words.
Next door at Avery and Wilder’s place, the lights were on, spilling out of the windows into the yard. They had a little flower garden under the kitchen window now, where Avery and Gracie had planted marigolds and zinnias. In the moonlight, the flowers looked ghostly, but during the day they were bright and attracted bees and butterflies.
Out on the street, an unseen car drove past, bass thumping through closed windows.
