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“Well, they live longer than that. Maybe he remembers. Maybe— hey, what?”
I was sidling away from him, shaking my head. The goose stayed locked on him, burbling deep in its chest.
“I took that goose to the vet,” I said. “And it was a Canada goose. And that one hates you, so— Hey, you okay?”
Spencer hobbled to a bench and half-sat, half-crumpled. I darted to join him, the mean goose forgotten.
“Is it your stitches?”
He shook his head. “No, charley horse.” He kneaded his thigh, teeth bared in a grimace. “Ow, ow, it’s spreading. Damn it, foot cramp.”
I stroked his arm. “Relax. Stretch it out.”
“I’m trying. I… ugh.” He jerked his leg up and down, sweat beading his brow. His eyes squinched shut and I did what I could, soothing him through it with my hand on his back.
“Breathe, yeah, that’s good. In and out, let the muscles go loose.”
Spencer groaned, then went limp. He wiped the sweat from his brow. I squeezed his free hand.
“Better?”
“Still twinging a bit, but yeah. Yeah, it’s loosening.” He leaned back on the wall, catching his breath. “I didn’t stretch yesterday, or the day before. It’s all this sitting around — it’s weird sitting still.” He rubbed at his leg some more, and the tense muscles twitched. “Sorry to worry you.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“I’ll be riding the bench for a while, till my stitches come out.” He frowned at the goose, still patrolling outside. “That’s probably what’s getting him, my pent-up frustration. Animals sense these things.”
“Or he’s just an asshole.”
We both laughed at that. Spencer tested his leg. Once his cramp had quit twinging, we got up and moved on. I got a jump scare from a sneaky green snake. Spencer got into a staring context with a thin-lipped brown lizard. We snuck out the back while the goose wasn’t looking, and managed to stay clear of it all the way round the loop. It didn’t catch us again till we were ready to go, heading out through the visitors’ center arm in arm. Spencer jerked at the first honk.
“No way. Is that?—”
“Run!”
We raced for his truck, breathless and laughing. The goose trumpeted, thwarted, as we piled inside, then strutted around with his wings spread wide. I leaned back, watching, hand on my heart.
“What do you think he’d have done if he’d caught us?”
Spencer shrugged. “I don’t know. Goosed us, maybe?”
I groaned. “Oh, that’s bad.”
He laid on his horn so the goose cleared our path. “I don’t know about you, but I could skip that escape room. I feel like with the goose and all, we’ve been there, done that.”
We went for coffee instead, then for a stroll round downtown. I showed Spencer where the condos would be I was building with the douchebros. He showed me where he broke his arm when he was a kid.
“Right there,” he said, pointing at a stone fountain. “That wasn’t there, or this whole little garden. It was a park, with a swing set right there. This kid Gerald Pugh dared me to jump, only not the normal way. I had to jump backward.”
I raised a brow. “You had to?”
“It was a double-dog dare.” Spencer rubbed his right arm. “But you can’t jump off backward. It doesn’t work. Your legs get caught and you drag, and you break your arm. And your mom comes and yells at you, how could you be so stupid?”
“That was pretty stupid.” I leaned in and kissed him. “I remember that park, though. I went there as well. Isn’t it weird we didn’t meet sooner?”
“Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t.” Spencer took my hand. “If we’d gone to the same schools, we might’ve been rivals. Like me and whatzername, Veronica Clemens.”
I shot him a narrow look. “Veronica Clemens? Did she do debate club?”
