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He is too excited to go to sleep.
This boy he’s just met—Avery—only left a few hours ago.
And in a few more hours, he’ll be back.
Date number two.
When he left the dance, he wanted to call right away, continue the conversation even though Avery was driving. He cautioned himself to be cool, to take it slow…but that only lasted two hours, tops. He called. And when he heard Avery say hello on the other end, it was a lifting of clouds, a power surge within his nervous system. How else to explain why he invited Avery back to Kindling the next day? And Avery’s response—so welcoming, so eager.
“I warn you,” Ryan said. “There isn’t much to do here.”
Then he went on and on about how little there was. He could’ve gone on even more, but Avery interrupted and said, “As long as you’re there, it will be enough.”
Who says that?
More specifically: Who says thatto Ryan?
Nobody. Ryan is positive of this.
The unreal part isn’t that he’s found someone awesome.
The unreal part is that someone awesome wants to see him again.
This is what keeps him up most of the night: He has no idea what he did right at the prom, and because he can’t figure that out, he doesn’t know how to do it again. He is sure he’ll be a disappointment to Avery, because at heart he believes he’s been a disappointment to everyone else, including himself. It doesn’t occur to him to question why something to get excited about also provides a reason to beat himself up. The two things should be separable, but in his mind they aren’t.
The only reason he invited Avery back to Kindling was because there was no way he could invite himself over to Avery’s town. But now he’s stuck, so stuck, because there’s nothing at all about Kindling he wants to share.
He can feel his heart beating faster, and knows it isn’t love but fear stomping on the accelerator.
Calm down,he tells himself.You have to calm down.
Like other nights when he can’t sleep, he imagines himself away from his bed. He imagines himself floating on his back, riding slowly down a river. He feels his limbs untense.He feels his mind getting control of his heart. He rides it along and along…and there, right before he finally falls asleep, he realizes what they’re going to do.
—
Avery drives toKindling the next morning with the fervor of someone retracing his steps to pick up something important he’s left behind. Only it’s not his wallet he’s going back to get, or a suitcase. No, it feels a little like his future fell out of his pocket as he was driving away last night, and now he needs to go back to reclaim it.
On one level, he feels ridiculous, upending his Sunday to see a boy he’s only just met. There’s homework he needs to do. There are lines he’s supposed to be learning for tomorrow’s rehearsal. He isn’t being responsible at all.
But, truly, he doesn’t care about any of that.
He is trying desperately not to overthink it, anticipate what will happen, or script what he’ll say ahead of time.
No. He’s riding a spontaneous tide here, a tide that didn’t hit last night as much as it welcomed them both in, carried them onto the dance floor and then into conversation.
What he feels is faith. Faith that Ryan likes him, too. Faith that Ryan is a gentle soul who won’t hurt him with games or lies. Faith that when he gets to Kindling, the future will be there, right where he left it.
He is nervous to hope. Nervous to expect.
But underneath the nervousness is the tide, and the tide is telling him he’s driving in the right direction.
Hope needs to be earned. But you can’t know if it’s earned until you offer yourself to it and see what happens.
—
Ryan doesn’t knowwhat kind of car Avery drives, but he’s pretty sure there’s no one else with pink hair who’d be pulling into his driveway.
His parents are off at church, which is about enough to make Ryan believe in God. There’s been no one to witness his vigil at the window, the number of times in a minute he could check his phone to see that a minute hadn’t yet passed. And now he alone is here to welcome the car, to welcome the driver.
