Happy Place(52)

“But you didn’t stick with the soccer team.”

“I never loved it,” he says. “And I couldn’t keep up with it and school at the same time. It was all harder than I expected. The schoolwork, the social stuff.”

“Everyone loved you, Wyn,” I say.

He looks at me through his lashes, his mouth curling. “No, Harriet. They wanted to hook up with me. That’s not the same thing. I never fit there.”

I pull my fingers away from the icy fence and touch the spot where his dimple belongs. The corners of his mouth twitch, and the dip appears under my middle finger. “You fit with me, and I was there.”

“I know,” he says. “I think that’s really why I went. To find you.”

“That’s a very expensive dating app,” I say.

“You get what you pay for,” he replies.

My hands fall to the collar of his coat, the tops of my fingers tucking in against his hot skin. “Did you at least figure out what you wanted too?”

In the dying light, the green ridges in his eyes glitter like bits of mica underwater. His work-coarsened hands circle my wrists, his thumbs gentle on the delicate skin there.

“This,” he says. “Just this.”

Me too, I think. I can’t bring myself to say it, to admit that the rest of my life, everything I’ve worked for, has started to feel like set dressing. Like loving him is the only essential, and everything else is garnish.

He shows me the workshop too, the exact place where the heavy armoire fell on him one New Year’s Eve while his parents were out, where he lay for four and a half hours in the cold, waiting to be found.

It makes my heart ache. Not just the memory but the smell, the cedar and sawdust and that touch of something that’s all Wyn to me. “You don’t mind being out here?” I ask, walking along the table in-process, its top sanded down to be refinished.

“I always loved it out here,” he says. “So after the accident, my parents were adamant about getting me back out before I started fixating. It worked, mostly.”

I pause, fingers stilling on the table, and look back at him. “I like seeing you here.”

He crosses toward me, gently takes my hips in his hands. “I like seeing you here,” he says, voice low, a little hoarse. “It makes me feel like this is real.”

“Wyn.” I look up into his face, searching his stormy eyes, the rigid lines between his brows and framing his jaw. “Of course it’s real.”

He folds his fingers through mine and brings my hands to the back of his neck, our foreheads resting together, our hearts whirring. “I mean,” he says, “like I can make you happy.”

“This is me, happy,” I promise.

On our last night in town, we sample more of Hank’s scotch and play a highly competitive game of dominoes, and then sit in front of the hearth and watch the fire crackle and pop.

On a sigh, Hank says, “We’re gonna miss you, kiddos.”

“We’ll come home again soon,” Wyn promises, lifting my hand, brushing the back of it absently across his lips.

Home, I think. That’s new.

But it’s not. It’s been growing there for a while, this new room in my heart, this space just for Wyn that I carry with me everywhere I go.





18





REAL LIFE

Wednesday


I TAKE MY time in the movie theater’s neon green bathroom.

I wash my hands, then wipe down the sink area and wash my hands again.

On my way back through the burgundy-carpeted arcade in which the bathrooms are tucked, I nearly collide with Wyn.

“Sorry,” we both huff, stopping short.

My eyes drop to the smorgasbord of paper cartons he’s carrying: Twizzlers, Nerds, Red Hots, Whoppers, and Milk Duds.

“Going to a slumber party?” I ask.

“I was thirsty,” he says.

“Which explains the cup of water and nothing else,” I say. “You think shortbread’s too sweet.”

“Thought you might want something,” he says.

His eyes look more green than gray right now. I’m finding it hard to look at them, so I train my gaze on the candy. “It looks like you thought I might want everything.”

His eyes flash. “Was I wrong?”

“No,” I say, “but you didn’t have to do that.”

“Trust me, it wasn’t intentional,” he says. “I walked up for the water, and next thing I know I’ve got a wagon filled with corn syrup.”

“Well, that’s the Connor family thriftiness. If you buy a wagon, refills are free.”

His laugh turns into a groan. He runs the back of his hand up his forehead. “I’m so hungover.”

“Didn’t you have one drink last night?”

“If we’re ignoring the half bottle I drank in the cellar,” he says.

“We should probably ignore everything that happened in the cellar,” I say.

He studies me for a second. “Anyway, I have no tolerance anymore. I drink less than ever these days.”

“Wow, humblebrag,” I say.

He laughs. “Actually, it’s just that I’ve been using edibles.”

At my surprise, he says, “They’ve been really helping my mom, but she gets kind of embarrassed. About taking them on her own. So a couple times a week, I’ll split a brownie with her. She’s funny. She’d never even tried weed before, and she gets super giggly. I sort of think it’s a placebo effect, but it doesn’t matter.”