“Oh my God.” He dropped his hands to his knees as soon as he saw me sitting in the grass with Honey curled in my lap. “Thank fuck. Mom would have killed me. Where was she?”
I pointed to where I found her. “Under the McNallys’ deck.”
“Damn, and I ran right by it.” Sully shook his head, walked a bit closer, and then dropped into the grass a good fifteen feet away from me.
Looking down, I smiled at the form of the small, malnourished puppy curled between my legs. I wondered what her backstory was, where Mrs. London had found her. She seemed so sweet and young; I couldn’t imagine anyone giving her up.
“Adorable,” Sully murmured.
“Yeah, she is.”
“Hmm.” The grass rustled, and I spied him inching closer out of the corner of my eye, tentative-like. “Thank you for finding her so that I can live to see another day.”
“Do you think your mom would let me keep her?” I asked, still staring down at Honey’s cute little face and the way she wiggled her nose.
“Honestly, yeah. If you got your mom to agree to it.”
I sighed. “That’s not going to happen.”
“We always have dogs at our house,” Sully said encouragingly. “You should come over more, Eleanor.”
I glanced at him, the corner of my lips tugging up. “You’re so lucky.”
“Well, sometimes it’s loud. And chaotic. And smells like puppy pee.”
“Better than being quiet,” I countered.
“My dad might disagree.”
“Is she going to get adopted soon?”
Sully shrugged, but the corner of his mouth twitched as he watched me pet Honey. “Not totally sure. Mom hasn’t mentioned anything.”
“I hope you stay a little longer,” I whispered, leaning down to give her a kiss on top of her head. She popped up then, climbing up my chest to return the gesture. Laughing, I fell onto my back, trying to escape the puppy kisses as Honey began attacking my face.
Sully was no help. He sat there smiling. Watching.
“I’m glad she didn’t go into the woods,” I said, pointing to where he’d come running from—the thick mass of trees behind my house. “I’ve almost gotten lost in there, so I can only imagine she would.”
Sully’s brows drew together as I picked Honey up, putting her on my chest, where she curled into a ball. “What are you doing in the woods?”
I shrugged, suddenly feeling sheepish. “Sometimes being inside makes me feel…claustrophobic, you know?” He probably didn’t know. Because being inside his house was a lot different than being in mine. I decided to divert to a different topic. “And I don’t know. Sometimes I think the trees hold magic.”
He perked up. “Magic?”
I plucked absently at the grass. “Or I like to pretend they do.”
I liked to pretend a lot of things. I spent a large part of my childhood alone, my only company the worlds I created in my head. Sometimes I tried to translate my imaginings onto my computer, but old technology made it hard, so then I began searching for a little fantasy in real life, despite knowing it was a lost cause.
“I guess sometimes I just like to pretend we live in a world where magic is real.”
“Maybe it is,” Sully said, oddly confident.
“It is in stories,” I acknowledged. “And they’re my favorite kind.”
“Really?” His knees were bent, bare feet planted flat on the ground. He leaned forward, and I noticed the way his short-sleeved shirt stuck to his skin a little, likely from the humidity. He wore jeans, which I thought was odd for how hot it was, but they were rolled at his ankles, as if he’d been wading in water. “Me, too.”
The grass tickled my ear as I turned my head to look at him better.The earth was cool beneath me, the evening dew wetting my skin. When I opened my mouth to ask him more, maybe about the stories he liked, wondering if they were ones I knew, or if he also had secret reasons to escape reality, he said, “Next time, come get me.”
