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“Yeah, that sounds like a great reason to miss class,” he says irritably.
“You’re just mad I called you a square.” I nudge his thigh with my fingers.
“I’m not mad. Since it’s completely untrue.”
“It’s very true. You’re a hot, athletic version of Carlton from Fresh Prince.”
He winces and puts a hand over his heart. “Damn. That hurt.”
I laugh and he eyes me and shoots me a sly smile deepening the ever-present dimples in his cheeks.
“If I’m Carlton, you’re Will. You know… the cousin from the hood?” He waggles his eyebrows and I know I should probably be offended, but I’m not.
“Okay, I deserve that.” We laugh, our eyes hold and there’s something in the way he’s looking at me that sets those flutters loose inside me again.
God, he smells so good. I
glance over at him and put on my best I don’t care at all face, but inside the butterflies have multiplied.
He turns on the radio and I turn and pull out my notebook and open it to the spot where I stopped last night.
“I can’t even read in a moving car; how can you write?” His question comes when I’m only two sentences in. I give him a sidelong glance. He’s watching the road. His profile is a study in perfection and suddenly, I wish I could draw because I’d like to capture him right now when he doesn’t know he’s being watched and he doesn’t have that cocky smirk on his face.
When I take too long to answer, he looks at me and smiles.
“Yeah, I know. I have the same problem every time I look in the mirror. It’s pretty damn breathtaking.”
“Ugh, okay, Carlton,” I joke and when his eyes dart toward mine in surprise, I laugh out loud.
“Whatever. What are you writing, Will?”
“More happy endings.”
“You started again?” He gives me a knowing smile.
“I forgot how much I enjoyed it.”
“Tell me yours… the one you wrote,” he says.
“No, it’s silly.”
“Tell me,” he says softly, but his voice has a demanding edge to it. I don’t know why, but it excites me.
I trail my fingers over the words I’ve just scribbled and can’t help but smile at them. I’m not good at anything but this. Everything else, cooking, drawing, singing, talking to people, cutting out snowflakes, I just get by. But when I have a pen in my hand and a piece of paper under it, and a set of inconclusive facts to pore over, I know why I was put on this planet. I close my notebook and look at him.
“My happy ending is me living somewhere I can see the stars. I’ve never left the city. I’ve never seen a really starry sky?”
“Really?”
“Nope. Never.”
“And what are you doing in this place where you can see the stars?”
“Playing with my kids, sitting next to my husband reading a book. I have the investigative journalist job of my dreams where I travel around trying to figure out something that no one else has been able to. I’m not afraid to answer the door or the phone for fear of debt collectors.”
“That’s a very specific happy ending.”
“Yeah. I’ve always known the kind of life I wanted. Because it’s the exact opposite of the life I had.”
