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The late afternoon air turned chilly as we walked along the sidewalk, the hospital growing smaller behind us. I dragged in lungsful of the crisp air, the taste of fall intermingling with the brown leaves and yellowed grass.
“I love fall,” I said suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence between us.
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Hayden grinned. “You play guitar and have a green thumb, youdespisethe sun and you have a Bulbasaur snow globe on your bookshelf.”
“What does Bulbasaur have to do with any of it?” I giggled.
Our hands swung between us, our fingers laced together.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “From what Reid has forced down my throat, Bulbasaur and the dragon seem like they’d fit into the fall season.”
“Reid is the one who taught you about Pokemon?”
“Oh yeah,” she scoffed. “Reid’s entire empire is built on that genre of media. Pokemon, fantasy, anime, anything that can be turned into a marketable video game. Pokemon was the only thing I was ever really able to remember, so…”
A laugh bubbled up my throat, and Hayden laughed along with me.
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I spent my childhood watching it and I still only know a handful of them by name.”
“Watching it?” She frowned. “I thought it was a game.”
I laughed, and we bickered while the sun crept below the horizon, the sky turning a sparkling indigo.
“Okay, but the bottom line is that Pokemondid, in fact, originate as a game, correct?”
“I guess so,” I grumbled, glaring at the results on my phone from my quick search. “It was a video game.”
“Whew, I thought I was gonna have to chew Reid out for feeding me lies,” she joked.
I shook my head and slid my phone back inside my pocket. My thoughts turned to more serious matters, my heart a weight pressing down on my chest.
We were nearing the park, the roads turning to pretty cobblestone paths lined with golden streetlamps and food vendors.
“I’ve never been here at this time of the evening,” Hayden mused, her gaze on the bustling lines crowding the food vendors. “Is it always this busy?”
“Hm?” I asked, distracted by my train of thought. “Oh, I think so. It could also just be a weekend thing.”
“You’re distracted.”
I grimaced. “Sorry,” I mumbled, not bothering to lie. I didn’t have to with Hayden.
“Tell me about it.”
“I was thinking about us,” I told her, my breath thin with a sudden pulse of anxiety.
“Us?”
“Yeah. I was wondering… what we are, if we had a label.”
Hayden was quiet, so I continued, “Or if we even need a label.”
Hayden hummed in thought, her eyes focused on the path ahead of us.
“I know you’ve given this a lot of thought,” she told me, her voice gentle. “I want you to tell me everything.”
I chuckled a little. “We’ve been unofficially athingfor a while now,” I began, my cheeks heating up almost instantly. “And the longer we spend time together, the less inclined I am to think I might want anything else. Or anyone else.”
Hayden’s pensive frown turned to a rueful smirk. “I’m inclined to agree with you,” she said. She halted and I did too, waiting as she turned her head this way and that. “Follow me.”
