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“And I’m thirsty.” She swallowed hard and turned to me. “Yes.”
“I’m thirsty, too. Maybe we can just…forget about what this means and just…be thirsty together.”
“I always said you were smoother than you realized, Wyatt Johansen.”
I shrugged. “Nah, it’s you. Just being around you. It’s always been…special.”
“Even when I’m awful to you?” she asked, her eyes looking pained.
“I would never say awful.” I cleared my throat as we passed under the street light, which shined on her porcelain skin. Her face, her complexion was still as perfect as ever.
“I would,” she said softly. “It’s just a lot to take in, you know? You’re back…and I have no idea how I feel about it.”
I stopped and looked into her eyes. “I’m not here to pressure you or make you feel like you have to give me an answer. There’s no deadline or time frame or anything. I just want to have a conversation and get to know you again. Even if just a little bit. Can we do that?”
Tilly inhaled deeply, looking away and then back into my eyes. “I think so. I mean, let’s give it a try.”
“Great.” A peaceful calm filled the space between us as we continued our way through my neighborhood. We passed Veronica’s house, and I gestured to the mailbox. “How is she?”
Veronica and I had become pretty tight when Tilly and I were a couple. But once I moved, and Tilly wouldn’t respond to my letters, I had to let that friendship go. If I wrote to Ronnie, there was no way for her to know that I wasn’t using her to get information on Tilly. And so, I’d let it go, but part of me had always missed that friendship, the kinship that we had.
Veronica was good people, and I genuinely wanted to know how she was doing.
“She’s all right. It’s so good to see her. It never feels like enough time, you know?”
“That’s what my mom says whenever I’m home. It’s just never enough.”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Hard to believe I’m almost halfway through my college career.”
“How’s that going?”
“Good,” she said. “I have a few solos in the concert next week, and my choir director thinks I have real promise. He wants me to make an audition reel; you know, like for commercials and stuff.”
“Well, that’s exciting. It’s, like, your childhood dream realized, right?”
“Hmm,” she said, a crease forming above her nose. “No, actually. I wanted to be an astronaut for the longest time. Singing came later.”
“Really?” I asked, shocked. “I mean…really?”
It was hard to imagine Tilly as an astronaut. She was so full of life, so artistic. Not that she wasn’t smart or capable. No, she was gifted and smart, but to me, astronauts were the scientific kids, the kids who saw the world in black and white. And Tilly always thought and acted in bright technicolor. She couldn’t help it; her light just shined that bright.
“Oh, yeah, but didn’t every eighties kid want to be an astronaut at some point?”
I clenched my teeth. “Not really.”
My parents had been so vocal and heartbroken over The Challenger explosion that I was never encouraged to pursue that career. In fact, I was steered away from it at every turn.
“Don’t you remember all those commercials for space camp? They made it look so cool. My cousin, Kelly, and I even tried out for Double Dare to try to win a free trip to space camp. The winners always got to go there.”
“Double Dare?”
“That game show for kids—you had to answer trivia questions or complete a physical challenge.”
“Oh, right. I saw it a few times.”
“Oh, my God, a few times—that’s it? I was obsessed with it. I watched it every single day.
“So, did you get on the show? You know, when you tried out?”
