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My heart skips several beats.
“I’ll go first. To test the ladder,” he says.
As I watch him climb into the attic and turn on a light, I have a strange déjà vu feeling: high school. Butterflies and flop sweat and lust, I think as he leans back down over the ladder.
“We’re good,” that low voice rumbles. “Come on up.”
He hovers near the top of the ladder as I climb. I’m watching his face as I step fully up into the attic space, so I see him opening his mouth, seemingly to protest. Then I get a peek at the room behind him and my jaw drops.
The room looks like—it is—a little library. It’s a rectangular space about the size of a school classroom, with a cedar floor, exposed rafters, and whitewashed walls. Right out in front of me, punched into the wall that forms the top line of the rectangle, there is a quilted, queen-sized bed that folds out of the wall. The long wall to my right is nothing but built-in shelving, packed with books, trinkets, and even a little lantern. To my left, along that long wall, there is an antique desk, a fish-shaped floor lamp beside a cozy leather armchair, and—perhaps the room’s most awesome feature—the most giant window seat I’ve ever seen: about the size of my kitchen table. The window is three giant sheets of glass arranged like the top of a hexagon.
My eyes rove the room again as my hand covers my mouth. “Holy hell, this is beyond adorable.”
I turn a circle, noting an antique rocking chair, a circular woven rug, a random gnome statue, and tiny wind chimes hanging from the ceiling near the window seat.
The only thing I’ve ever heard about the Haywoods’ attic was something about a homemade telescope. I search the room for it, and when I don’t see it, my gaze boomerangs to Barrett.
He’s got his arms folded in front of his chest, and I’m pretty sure the look on his face is a smug one.
“This is fabulous,” I say. “I may move in.”
He smiles. “Turn to your left.”
“That window seat is awesome. I think I should sit in it.”
I’m almost to it when I notice the left sheet of glass seems to have a hole at the bottom, near the seat’s padding.
Another step and I can it’s not a hole; it’s a little electronic panel of some kind, looking at first glance like a smaller version of the black Wii U box
. One more step, and the low lamplight reveals the box to be a giant, T-Rex-sized pair of goggles. I climb up onto the seat’s padding and pull them out of the window—or rather, off a little shelf I can now see they’re sitting on—and watch, confused, as they trail a small, plastic-looking tube in from outside the window.
“It’s some kind of fiber optics,” Barrett says, coming up to stand behind me. “He had it set up so the telescope is on the roof and sends the image through that little tube that runs from telescope to goggles.”
I blink down at the goggles. “How random. And cool. I want to see.”
I turn them over, but I have no clue how to make them work, so when Barrett climbs up onto the padded cushion beside me, I hand them to him.
I watch his brows notch as he looks down at them, pressing a few buttons. He brings them up over his eyes, and I see his lips twitch.
“Nice,” he says, passing them to me. “Tell me what you see.”
I pull the goggles to my eyes and almost gasp.
“Is that— It looks like…the Milky Way? Like, the whole of it, right?”
It’s disconcerting to see such a vast view of the sky while sitting cross-legged on a padded seat. I blink a few times, awe-struck by the lovely spread of stars and soft light against the black of space. Maybe I wobble a little, because I feel Barrett’s hands on my shoulders, and I’m aware of being laid down. I pull the goggles off my face and see my head is on a long pillow that lines the bottom of glass pane that juts farthest out.
“I think you’re meant to lie down like that.” He’s right; there’s plenty of room for me to rest my head up against the top window pane, my legs out with the knees bent, so my shoes are against the cushion.
My eyes fly from the space beside me to Barrett, and then I put the goggles back over my eyes.
“There’s a manual downstairs that I’ve been thumbing through. When you want to see a different view, just let me know.”
I pull the goggles down. “What are my options?”
He takes them from me, punches a few buttons, and passes them back with a funny little smile.
I bring them to my eyes and find a molten-looking image that, though stained dark amber, I am sure must be the sun.
