“Don’t do that.”
“What am I doing?”
“That.” I waved my hand at his face. “It’s condescending.”
“My face is condescending?” he asked, not sounding entirely surprised. I doubted it was the first time he’d heard it.
“Very.”
“I’m not trying to be condescending,” he said. “It’s interesting to hear how your brain works.”
I froze, a twig crunching under my foot. Dex paused, swiveling to face me.
“What does that mean?” I asked, my voice quiet. Something about his tone dug under my skin, or maybe I was simply desperate for an excuse to feel anything other than fondness for this man. Maybe I wanted an excuse to drain the water from under that bridge.
“You’re an optimist.”
He said it so plainly, the same way someone would say the sky was blue. I was taken aback by how easily he came to that conclusion when I’d spent the last year grappling with my slippery beliefs until all I had was reciting three measly things to keep my head above water.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I challenged.Hurt me, I begged silently.Hurt me now so it doesn’t hurt so much later.
“I’m not insulting you,” he said quietly, snuffing out the emotions roiling in my chest. “It’s admirable, Violet. Not many people can retain that sort of optimism, especially in grief.”
I studied him for a moment. “Right. And you’re the pessimist.”
“I’m nothing. Life sucks most of the time,” he said. “That’s just how it is. I try not to think about it so I don’t go out of my mind.”
I inhaled sharply. This man who’d flinched when we found out where he went to college was now admitting a devastatingtruth that surely stemmed deeper, Marianas Trench deep, protected by booby traps. But he’d said it out loud. To me.
I stepped toward him. “I’m not an optimist because I’m impervious to negative emotions.” Overhead, birds twittered and tree branches creaked in the wind. Dex’s shoulders sank in a small exhale, his eyes so much warmer in this light. “It’s a survival tactic. Ihaveto look on the bright side. I have to believe things get better or else what’s the point? I don’t want to live in a universe where everything sucks and only gets worse forever, the end.”
“Sounds like our universe to me.”
“Except it’s not! Twenty minutes ago you and Phoebe laughed over a dumb joke on top of a mountain. For a minute, things were good.”
“For a minute,” he said, widening his eyes.
“Yeah, and there will be a thousand more like it this week. Billions in our lifetime,” I said, watching as his eyes softened. “Things get fucked, but there’s always something good. Even if it’s just another minute.”
“Is that enough?” he asked softly.
I shrugged. “It has to be.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “You’re dangerous.”
“Because I haven’t let life beat me into hopelessness?”
“You make me want to be an optimist.”
He was already turning as he said it, following Phoebe’s speck in the distance. My mouth went dry. Damn him for coming up with a string of words that would tie my heart up for good—someday maybe I’d be senile, but I would remember those words. I’d remember the reverent look on his face. And I understood the danger he mentioned, the curse that plagued optimists for all their days.
Hope. It spilled over, rushing around me in a steady, uncontrollablecurrent. There was no stopping it with Dex existing beside me. Maybe there was no stopping it at all.
“Maybe,” Phoebe said gravely back in our room at the inn, hands on her hips after our fourth consecutive tick check, “there was something seriously wrong with Dad.”
“Oh, there was definitely something wrong with him,” I agreed. I shuddered at the thought of those bloodsucking creepy crawlies lurking in the woods, ready to strike at any moment, whereas Dad, fearless or out of his mind, laughed anytime he plucked one off his skin like it was a dandelion seed.A fellow traveler, he’d say. Real-life vampires, more like.
“Like, that was so fun,” Phoebe went on, shuffling over to her bed. She sat at the edge and stripped off her socks, giving her feet another glance. “I would spend all day outside. But the ticks. I don’t think it’s worth it.”
