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“The future.” I point at the strawberry and vanilla for myself. “College, if I ever make it. Life after.”
“After what?”
I accept my cone and frown. “After I turn into someone else.”
What do I mean? I’m not even sure. I watch as Jessica gives him his cone. She’s smiling at him, sort of batting her lashes. Good God, do women actually do that? And wait, is she flirting with him?
“People don’t change, Tati,” he says, smiling at her before turning back toward me.
“Of course they do,” I snap. “People change all the time.”
I don’t know why I’m arguing with him. Maybe I’m just annoyed at Jessica for grabbing his attention while he’s here with me, for me. And he’s right. Stripped down to their core, people probably don’t change.
It’s the surface that changes—the daily thoughts, the everyday problems, the short-term goals. What you really want…what you truly need, that won’t change.
And how do you know what’s so essential? What will remain once you strip the veneer?
“There you go again,” Adam says as we slowly walk back. “So quiet. Still thinking about the future?”
He’s smiling. The moon is shining, I’m walking next to a cute boy and eating ice cream. It feels like a dream.
“It’s hard not to. Sometimes I wish… I wish I had the money to leave for college right now. Tonight. Other days I wish I’d already finished college and I were back for good, with a job waiting for me. Only I know that won’t happen that easily. And sometimes I wish…”
I wish I stayed here forever and never went off to college. Because what I really want… God, I wish I knew that, too.
He chuckles. “Such deep thoughts on such a warm night.”
“What about you? Do you think about the future?”
“Sure I do.” He stares up at the sky, munching on his cone. “And the past. It’s all linked together. One long road, and this is just a brief stop on the way.”
I look up at the few, scattered clouds, ghostly ships sailing into dark space. “Mom always says that the past doesn’t define us.”
“She’s wrong,” he says, his clear voice rising over the quiet of the street. “The past defines us all, and sooner or later it catches up with us.”
It sounds ominous, like there’s a story there, a scar, and I itch to ask about it.
But for some reason I don’t, instead watching the clouds sail away.
“I don’t want it!” Mary wails and stomps her small foot. “It’s not right.”
“Not right?” I look dubiously at her plate and try to figure this out.
I’m not a Michelin chef, but I can make mac and cheese with the best of them. Plus, I have Mom’s super recipe. Even when Gigi was going through her most difficult eating phase and wouldn’t eat almost anything else, she’d still finish up Mom’s mac and cheese without failing.
“It’s not cheesy enough,” Mary explains, her mouth trembling. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I won’t eat it.”
Cole shovels the macaroni into his mouth, staring at her sadly.
What’s going on here?
“You’ll be hungry, honey. And there won’t be any dessert if you don’t eat your food.”
Her eyes well up. “Grandma made it more cheesy.”
“Cheesier,” I say automatically.
Right?
