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“Autobiographies. Fiction. Crime. Thrillers. Romance.” I sighed, thinking of the pile of books in my room. “I’m not picky about genres. I just have to like the blurb. If the back of the book can suck me in, then I’m sold.”
Johnny watched me while I spoke, his gaze intense and searching.
“You’re a reader,” he finally said.
It wasn’t a question. It sounded more like he was banking that piece of information away in his mind.
“That’s really good.”
“Do you read?” I asked him.
He grimaced. “Not as much as I should.”
“So, not at all?” I teased.
“Honestly, no,” he admitted with a lopsided grin. Shifting closer, he said, “The last book I read that wasn’t school-ordered was about Chicken Licken and the sky falling down on all the little talking animals. Do you know the one?”
“Yeah,” I snickered, thinking about Johnny reading children’s fairy-tale stories. “I’ve read that one a couple of times to Sean.”
“Sean?”
“My youngest brother,” I explained. “The three-year-old.”
“You shouldn’t,” Johnny warned, suppressing a shudder. “That book scared the bejesus out of me. I haven’t read for fun since.”
My mouth fell open. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Hell fucking yes, I’m being serious,” Johnny shot back, looking comically wounded. “I was only small. It was one of those read-it-yourself books with the pictures in place for words and all that shite. They should have rated it PG because I swear to god, I genuinely believed the whole fucking sky was going to cave in on me.” He shook his head at the memory. “I slept under—rather than on—my bed for three fucking weeks until my da finally caved and moved me into one of the bedrooms downstairs.”
“Why?” I laughed loudly. “What good was moving downstairs going to do if the sky was falling?”
Johnny grinned and his dimples deepened in his cheeks.
“Ah, see…” He chuckled, tapping his head with his forefinger. “In my naive six-year-old mind, I was thinking that if the sky did in fact fall, it might break the roof, but it couldn’t possibly break the downstairs ceiling, too. I’d have a better chance of surviving on the ground level.”
“You were a clever little fella, weren’t you?”
“I was something alright,” Johnny replied, laughing along with me. “A bleeding eejit.”
“Wow,” I snickered between fits of laughter. “That’s survival at its finest.”
He gave me a wolfish grin. “Original Boy Scout right here.”
“Were you in the Boy Scouts?”
“Like fuck I was,” Johnny shot back, laughing harder now. “I was messing.” His eyes danced with amusement. “Why? Were you in the Brownies?”
“Ah, definitely not.” I shook my head, stifling a giggle. “My survival skills are terrible.”
Johnny’s voice was a little deeper when he said, “I don’t know about that.”
His expression shifted then, growing more intense.
Unable to take the heat, I turned my face away and glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It read 8:25. God, how long had we been sitting here talking?
“Tell me something,” Johnny distracted me by saying. He was still smiling, and his eyes were warm, his tone soft when he asked, “Why’d you transfer to Tommen?”
His question caught me off guard.
