Knox leads me down a side street I've walked past a hundred times without looking twice.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"You'll see," he says, smiling.
"Bold of you to assume my feet still work." I do a little hobble for emphasis. Full commitment. "That massage turned my muscles into pudding. I'm structurally compromised."
His head snaps at me in worry. "Sorry, it's been a long day, we can leave of course—"
"Knox. I'm kidding."
"Right. Yeah." He rubs the back of his neck. "I—I knew that."
We turn onto a gravel path, narrow and half-hidden, lined with silver birches. Then the path opens up, and I stop walking.
There's a pond. Still enough to mirror the sky back at itself, a wooden dock stretched out a few feet over the water, a single bench on the shore weathered to the color of driftwood. The grass around the edges is dotted with tiny white wildflowers I'd need to get closer to identify, and a turtle sits on a half-submerged log near the dock, motionless, committed to the bit. The whole thing looks like a screensaver.
"Turner's Pond," Knox says quietly, watching my face.
I don't answer. My brain has briefly gone offline and I just stand here with my mouth slightly open, feeling like I've been handed something fragile and private.
"How did you find this?" I finally ask.
He doesn't answer. Just moves past me toward the bench, shoulders a little drawn, his hand trailing along the top of the bench as he reaches it.
He sits down. "I actually found this place when I was sixteen. My parents had gotten my report card—a B-plus in AP History—and from the way they reacted you'd think I'd committed arson. So I left."
I sit next to him. Close. Our knees almost touching. "You ran away over a B-plus?"
"Iwalkedaway over a B-plus, technically." He picks up a pebble from the ground, turns it between his fingers. "Walked until my legs hurt more than my head. Found the pond. Sat on this bench for about four hours and watched the water do nothing."
He glances at me, then at the pond. "This—this place is special to me."
His left ear goes pink, the color creeping up from his collar like he's confessing something deeply embarrassing. Personally, I find it ridiculously endearing. A soft, involuntary smile breaksacross my face and I bump my shoulder gently against his. "Tell me more. Something I don't know about you."
He throws the pebble. It skips twice and sinks. "I can't sleep without socks on," he says.
"That's psychotic. But continue."
A surprised laugh. "I, uh—I collect those little state magnets from gas stations. The tacky ones. I've got thirty-eight states. Can't find Delaware anywhere."
"Delaware is deliberately withholding," I say, smiling.
"I'm not ruling it out," he replies with a chuckle. He pauses, leaning his forearms on his knees. "Oh, and I cry at dog movies. Every single time. I don't even try to fight it anymore."
"Which ones?"
"All of them. If a dog is on screen and appears to be in even mild emotional distress, I'm done."
"Even the Beethoven sequels?"
"Especiallythe Beethoven sequels," he says. "Those went to some dark places."
I'm laughing. "The paranormal romance. The state magnets. The dog movies. You are a deeply unusual man."
"Easy to mock when you've got information advantage," he says, and nudges my knee. "Your turn."
I reach down, pick up my own pebble, and attempt a skip. It plops straight into the water like a small, sad rock funeral.
