He’s walking with his hands in his pockets, and he bumps my arm lightly with his elbow. “So you think I’m nice, huh? Maybe I’m actually a complete jerk with ulterior motives.”
I tap my lip with a finger, peering at him. “You’d have to be a nefarious individual with seriously evil intentions, to bring me coffee and be a jerk at heart.”
He looks down at me, eyebrows raised. Out here in the sunlight his eyes, while still dark, seem more deep caramel, less onyx. His hair has a reddish tint in the sunlight, too, something completely invisible inside. It’s like being outdoors turns his color dial a notch or two lighter.
“Good deducing. And use of the word nefarious,” he says. “Especially with the hangover and all.”
The day is warm already. I assumed as much, and dressed in shorts and the pink t-shirt I’d left on the bed last night in favor of the black tank. I grabbed my red canvas Chucks instead of flip-flops, since I had no idea just how much walking Graham had in mind. Good thing, too, because we’ve walked about a hundred blocks by now.
“How much farther?” The good news is I may actually feel like having brunch at some point in the near future. The bad news is I don’t know if we’re planning on walking to the next county first.
“I take it you’re a suburbs sort of girl. I grew up in New York City—lots of walking. This feels like nothing.” This guy is a freaking master at dodging questions.
“Yes, I’m a lazy suburbian girl… who, lest we forget, is suffering from a killer hangover because I don’t weigh a hundred pounds more.”
“Seventy. And I hate to tell you, but—” He takes my shoulders and turns me, guiding me up a pathway to the front door of the restaurant, located in a renovated old house. “We’re here.”
I give him a haughty look. “In that case, I’m glad I don’t have to kick your ass, since I’m too pooped from walking a thousand miles for that type of exertion.” He smiles and shakes his head, pulling the door open for me.
Twenty minutes later, I’m eating the fluffiest blueberry muffin ever made and mumbling an apology. “Sorry about the cranky.”
He forks a bite of omelet, dabs it into the pool of salsa he poured on one side of his plate, and sticks it in his mouth. Chewing, he appears puzzled. “What cranky?” He lines up another bite. “Oh, you mean when you looked like you were about to stage a mutiny for having to walk a couple of blocks?”
“A couple? It was at least fifteen!”
“Actually, ten.”
“Nuh-uh.” I was certain it was closer to twenty.
“Yep. Ten exactly.”
God, I’m in worse shape than I thought. “Huh.”
“That’s five,” he says, before I even have time to hear myself and cringe.
“Know-it-all.”
He laughs. “Would you rather be in your room, buried under your pillows?”
“No.” I sound like a sullen toddler. Sipping my chicory-flavored coffee, I relax, and the house seems to sigh with me, the refinished wood floors creaking as a waiter walks by with a full tray over his head. “This place is great.”
“Told ya.”
After brunch we backtrack and spend a couple of hours at the bookstore. There’s a puppet show going on in the kids’ area, and he insists we sit on the floor and watch. This is when I learn that Graham and his older sisters used to make sock puppets and put on shows for their parents. This whole idea is so foreign to me that I’m sure he’s making it up. On the walk back to the hotel, I ask him what kinds of shows.
“We’d make puppets of ourselves, or our favorite book characters, like Where the Wild Things Are, gluing on wiggly eyeballs and yarn.” I try to imagine a sock puppet Graham. “One time we made penguins, coloring popsicle sticks like lightsabers and hot gluing those to the flippers, and then we did a Star Wars reenactment for my Dad’s birthday. He loves penguins, and anything Star Wars.”
Penguins puppets with lightsabers? There’s no way he could make this up.
“So according to one of the shots you tossed back last night, you’re an only child,” he says. “What was that like—being the center of attention all the time?”
My first thought is that after my mother died, I felt more like the invisible kid than the center of attention. And then I begin stressing about how I’m going to talk about my mother being dead. The subject of family always, sooner or later, brings the story of my mom forward. There’s no simple way to say it, no way to fully express everything those two words mean to me: she died. The feelings are muted most of the time, something only accomplished by the passing of time, but they’ll never go away. I know that now. There are moments I wish the pain would disappear, but mostly, it’s a comforting ache. I lost her, and I feel it—sometimes like a bruise that doesn’t hurt until it’s pressed, sometimes like a knife.
“I bet you were spoiled rotten,” Graham says, slowing at the window of a narrow storefront of skateboards and boarding gear.
“I seem like a brat?” I pout, ruining any defense against it.
“I didn’t say that. But I can picture you as a little girl: adorable, no one else around to steal the spotlight. That’s all it would take to wrap your parents around your little finger. I mean at that point it’s self-preservation, right? Darwin’s lesser-known theory: survival of the cutest.”