Page 26 of My Unfinished Heart

“Well, he might not be glad right this second, but ultimately…”

I turn to see he’s leaning a hip on the counter a few feet away. “Would you rather help me in here?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Sure.”

“Grab some newspaper.”

He takes a pile from the opposite counter and comes to stand next to me. I move the bowls toward him, and I start on the coffee mugs. We pack in silence for a minute. I want to say something, but grabbing a conversation topic from my head is like trying to catch a bubble.

“Archer, can I ask you something?”

Thank God. “Anything.” That was a stupid thing to say, but I brace myself for whatever his question is, determined to be as honest as possible.

“Why’d you stay gone for so long?”

Oh. That one’s not that hard. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Luckily, I’ve got time for a long story,” he says.

“The truth is, I wasn’t planning to leave forever. I just wanted to get away for a while, but the longer I was gone, the less I wanted to come back. And I liked Seattle. I started school there, so I ended up staying. It started to feel like home.”

“Austin didn’t?”

“It never has. I lived in New England from the time I was ten. I didn’t come back to Austin until senior year.”

“Oh…right. I forgot about the boarding school thing.”

Most of the kids I went to boarding school with resented being sent away, but not me. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me, but I don’t tell very many people about it. It’s strange talking to someone who knows that kind of thing about me. Part of me likes it. It makes opening up feel almost easy.

“How’d you end up in Seattle?”

“I liked how far away it was, and I got into the University of Washington.”

“You went there for school? Specifically?”

I stop packing for a second and turn to face him. “Why’s everyone so shocked I went to college?”

Without missing a beat, he says, “First of all, that wasn’t shock. It was a normal question. But also, you didn’t seem like the type of person who was poring over admissions essays back then.”

“What did I seem like?” Because this could be interesting.

He wraps a bowl in the sports page. “You just seemed angry. Like you were gonna go join a death metal band and overdose in L.A.”

His candor catches me off guard, and I laugh. “I was angry, but I actually wasn’t that angry.”

“No?”

“No. Senior year, my friend West’s mom made West and me go through all these college flyers and make lists of what we needed to do to get in. During dinner she’d read us SAT questions. West wanted to get all the applications out of the way before baseball season started, so we both applied early to a few places.”

“What was your SAT score?” Tristan asks.

“That’s pretty personal. You want to know my social security number too?”

“Oh, come on, it’s just a number.”

“I did fine on it.”

He makes a pouting noise. “Archer…”