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“He doesn’t do it anymore?”
I swallow; it feels like I just ate a shard of glass. It’s been years since his death, but it doesn’t take much to bring the feelings back. That chasm in my heart is all too happy to open, releasing dozens of memories. Good ones, like the quarters and slightly-warm sodas at the Shore, and bad ones, like the moment Dad picked me up from school—a rarity—and turned to me with heaviness in his expression to tell me the news.
“He passed away when I was fifteen. Heart attack.”
“I’m sorry, Mia.”
I sit up properly. “It’s fine. It’s been a long time now.”
“Doesn’t mean the feelings go away,” he says softly. “What was he like?”
“What?”
“Tell me about him. You know more about my family than I do about yours.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Not much, or don’t want to?”
I rip up the leaf he rescued from my hair. “Both, I guess.”
“We could play a new game.”
“Oh yeah?”
“A truth for a truth.”
“Tired of the dares?”
“I want to know everything there is to know about you, Mia.” His voice is quiet, even though there’s no one around to overhear us. “I want to understand you. The other night, at the ballgame…”
The pieces of leaf fall to the floor. “Sebastian—”
“You can choose what to tell me. And when, and how. But I want to know all of it eventually. Everything about you, the big things and the small things, too. I didn’t know until tonight that you like Coke and Junior Mints. I want to know that shit as much as I want to know about your family. Tell me your past and what you want for your future, and I’ll tell you mine.”
He reaches out, entwining our fingers. He’s gazing at me like I’m the aurora borealis. A beautiful force of nature, a ribbon of light that he’d be content to stare at forever. I love him. I can trust him. If there’s anyone I want to talk about Nonno with, it’s him.
“My nonno was the one who got me interested in space. He never went to college, he didn’t even finish high school, but he was always interested in the world—history, philosophy, science. He had this telescope, and I still remember the first time we looked at the stars together. He made me want to explore them, and he’s the one who encouraged me to keep pushing. I kept it up after he died. Got myself into McKee with a big scholarship.”
“I didn’t realize.”
I shrug one shoulder. “It was here or MIT, and McKee offered me more money.”
“And yet you tell me you’re not a genius.”
“I’m really not. I’m just curious, and stubborn, I guess.”
“I’m sure he was proud of you.”
My breath catches in my throat.
Some part of me knows that Sebastian brought me here because he knew there wouldn’t be distractions. No work to bury my head in, or other people to talk to instead. The resentment I expect to feel doesn’t come; I want to give him more. We left things on a precarious note after the Binghamton game, even though the night ended up being so perfect.
“He’s the only one in my family who tried to understand me, and he’s been gone for years. It’s like I said, my family thinks I’m here to get my teaching degree. They think—they think that I’m going to teach science for a few years before marrying some guy and settling down and having a bunch of kids, same as all the women in my family. There’s no other option. That’s it.”
Sebastian rubs my knee comfortingly.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “They don’t know that I’m trying to get into this study abroad program in Switzerland, or that I want to get my PhD, or that I want to work for fucking NASA.”
