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“Me? I’m fine.”
“Thinking about what happened back there? Because I am.”
“Hm? No… nope. I was thinking about… about Outlaw.”
“Oh, yeah?” He sounds skeptical. Rightfully so.
“I think he’s done acting out about Pansy’s departure,” I say, “but you never know. This is the first evening I’ve left him alone. Hopefully I don’t walk through that door to the tune of a half-dozen destroyed throw pillows.”
“I bet he was good. If you want, you can let him sleep at my place tonight. Mittens would probably like that. I bet she’s missing him, right about now.”
“You’re greedy with these pets of ours. Always wanting the company for yourself.”
“I’d send Mittens over to you, but she’s sort of a homebody.”
“I guess being geriatric probably does that to a being. When I’m the equivalent of seventeen cat-years, I’ll probably want to stay home all day, too.”
“The cat-years formula is confusing. Way worse than the dog-years math. I think I tried to figure it out once, and she’s about a hundred these days.”
“You think you’ll live to one hundred?” I ask him.
He glances over at me. Shadows play across his chiseled features. “Don’t know. You?”
“No clue. My grandma thinks uncertainty is fun. I disagree. I want to know.”
He laughs. “Yeah, I like a good plan. A mapped out sequence of events. I want to know what to expect, so I’m prepared.”
His hand feels so good, wrapped around mine. Especially when I don’t think about what it means.
“I guess that’s not how life works, though,” I say.
He strokes his thumb across the back of my hand. “There are surprises. Like you coming back to town.”
I spot Pansy’s mailbox, up ahead. She has an explosion of little wooden stars around the thing, so it’s hard not to miss. Next I see her slate walkway, the front porch. The house looks gray instead of lavender, and the white trim has a peach tint, thanks to a street light.
Nick’s house is a boxy shadow, behind it.
“And like what happened back there, at the diner,” I say. “That sorta happened out of the blue, right?”
“Did it, though?” he asks.
We walk a few steps, quiet now.
I bite my lip.
No, that kiss was not a surprise. The seed was planted up in Nick’s bedroom, when he pulled me in close.
Or even before then.
Our hugs, that last too long. Handshakes. High fives. Any excuse to touch, really. Lingering looks…
What are we doing?
When we reach Pansy’s mailbox, I know that I have to walk away from him. This night is about to end. Tomorrow will come, all bright sunlight and logical reasoning, and, most likely, regret.
But tonight still has a dreamlike quality. And I don’t want it to end.
Instead of pulling my hand away from his, I turn my palm so our fingers are interlaced. “Maybe it wasn’t atotalsurprise,” I tell him.
