“Too cold for Hawaii. But maybe a mountain. Colorado.”
“Do you always have to be right?”
“Of course,” I say. “Don’t you?”
He chuckles. “What now, Mr. Right?”
“Hm, Mr. Right,” I say, trying it out. “I’ve never been called that before.”
“Glad I could be your first.”
“You actually were my first,” I say. “I don’t think I ever forgave you for that.”
“Bullshit,” he says, rolling his head toward me. “You were a fuckboy when we moved to Faulkner.”
“You were my first experience with a guy,” I admit.
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. “Damn, Colt. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
I lower myself all the way, so we’re shoulder to shoulder. “Yeah.”
“If it makes you feel any better, that was my first experience with a guy too.”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “See a good wishing star?”
“Is that a falling star?”
“I always heard it was the brightest star in the sky.”
“What’d you wish for?”
“You can’t tell someone that, or it doesn’t come true.”
For a minute, we search the sky. I think he’s right. I can see more than when we came up here already. I find one twinkling brightly in the stark black sky, and I make my wish.
“Did you find one?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Did you wish?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
I try not to think about the height of the building, the edge just a few feet past where we lay. Just the idea makes my stomach drop out. I think back to the market, how strange it was to run into him of all the people in the city. How awkward it felt, and how easy it is to be with him now. I can feel the time that’s passed, each year a maturing, a shedding of old hurts, a softening toward ourselves and each other. There’s no animosity anymore, just the facts of a shared history.
“So, you going to tell me who the hat is for?” I ask after a while.
“You’ve been dying to ask that all night, haven’t you?”
“A little,” I admit, smiling at the sky. “A girlfriend, I take it?”
He laughs quietly. “No, definitely not a girlfriend. I haven’t had one of those… Well, ever, actually.”
“My sister was your girlfriend.”
He winces beside me. “Yeah. I guess that’s the last girl I was with.”
