Page 58 of The Professor's Wife

His fingers spread against my back.

“Good.”

We continued down the trail and found a hidden stream where I kicked off my new flip-flops and lowered my feet into the cold water.

Later, we rested on a blanket near the van, napping lightly and talking about nothing. He played soft, ambient music through the van’s speakers, leaving the doors open so it drifted out toward us.

I thought about the past.

Memories from long ago.

Pulled out of the rubble, haunting me suddenly.

“There was a boy named Robert,” I began quietly.

Tristan turned his head toward me. “Yeah?”

“He was my first crush.” I smiled faintly at the memory. “He was eleven. So was I.”

“Did he like you?”

“God no,” I paused then. “I had serious competition, Tristan.”

“It’s tough being eleven, Daze.”

“Yeah, well, I knew him, but…I doubt he really cared to know much about me. That was the embarrassing part. We talked. Played. Did all that, but I wasn’t part of the It Crowd. Anyway, I just thought he was beautiful.” I picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “He had dark hair and always carried a basketball under one arm. His t-shirts were always so long, and that was all the rage, to have them stop at your knees. I usedto hope he would notice me, but every time he came near me, I forgot how to speak.”

Tristan’s mouth shifted. “Hard to imagine.”

“I was painfully shy.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.” I nudged him lightly with my elbow. “One day, he walked right past me in his gigantic orange t-shirt. We’d done Art that day and he’d sat in my group, and he’d goofed around and called me a shrimp because I was smaller than him. He was close enough that I could have said something, like bring that up, but I didn’t. I looked at the ground and let him go. I really should have said something, Tristan.”

The teasing left Tristan’s face.

“There was a shortcut a lot of kids took on the way home,” I continued. “Someone had torn a gap in the chain-link fence, and instead of walking all the way around, kids would squeeze through and cross the train tracks. It was stupid, but everyone did it.” I picked at the skin around my nail. “Less than an hour after I saw him, his basketball slipped away from him and rolled onto the tracks. He ran after it.”

Tristan went still beside me.

“There was a train…”

The music continued softly from the van as I took a moment to collect my thoughts.

“For months afterward, I would lie awake crying and stare at the ceiling,” I said. “I used to reach one hand into the air and wonder if he was somewhere above me, reaching back.”

“Daze…”

“I know. Silly thoughts from an eleven-year-old.” I swallowed. “But sometimes I still think about him walking past me. If I had been braver, I might have said hello or make a joke about being the shrimp. Maybe he would have stopped. MaybeI could have delayed him by a minute, and the train would have already passed by the time the ball reached the tracks.”

“That isn’t on you.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I looked over at him. “Mostly.”