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“Hiking, fishing... you were an outdoorsy kid.”
“At times,” he says.
The trail turns too narrow to walk side by side, and he steps ahead of me, doing most of the work to hold back the branches or shrubs that hang in our way.
I watch his broad shoulders and narrow waist, and the muscles shifting beneath his T-shirt and backpack. He’s so stupidly attractive. Far more than he has any right to be.
Tearing my eyes away, I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. “What did you want to be then? Growing up?” I ask.
He looks over his shoulder, his eyes amused. “You don't think I grew up dreaming of being a corporate lawyer?”
“Something tells me no.”
He chuckles and keeps walking, trudging up the hill on legs that are longer and probably stronger than mine. I’m glad he can’t see me panting.
“An astronaut,” he says.
“Wow, really?”
“Yeah. My mom made the ceiling in my room into a planetarium.” Then, he shrugs and looks back at me again. “What about you?”
“I wanted to be an author growing up.”
“An author?”
“Yeah.”
“How come you ended up teaching instead?”
That makes me laugh. “Well, it’s not exactly easy to land a publishing deal. And, well, I loved school and enjoyed tutoring. It was something I did part-time in high school and in my freshman year of college.”
“You were good at it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “So, I’m a teacher now.”
“Do you write in your spare time?”
“Some,” I say. There’s no point in admitting the rest of it. Because it really is hard to get a publishing deal… but I had, five years ago, on my debut novel. And that book sold terribly.
And now the publishing house has no interest in buying another from me.
Phillip walks on ahead of me. “So what do you write?”
“All kinds of things, really. Whatever I feel like,” I say with a shrug, my cheeks heating up.
“Something Eden doesn’t like talking about?”
“It’s a shocker, I know.” I duck under a branch and run my hand over the leaves. They have sharp edges and are crisp to the touch.
“That’s it?” he asks. “That’s all I’ll get? What happened to the Eden who loves to ramble?”
“Very funny,” I say. “Don’t you have emails to answer?”
“No, I’m all done for the day. But, you can still become an author, right? There’s no time limit on that dream.”
“No, I suppose not,” I say. Except I’d already tried and failed, and opening myself up again to the same kind of disappointment appeals as much as jumping into one of the thorny shrubs we walk past.
“The enthusiasm,” Phillip says. “It’s overwhelming.”
