Page 44 of First-Time Caller
I shrug.
“Do they make you cry?”
The scene fromField of Dreamswhere his dad shows up in the cornfield certainly does. “Sometimes.”
Lucie frowns at me. Her face is so damn expressive. I wonder what it’s like to walk around with your heart on your sleeve. Mine is buried so deep in my chest I’m not sure I could find it if I wanted to.
“That’s sad, Aiden.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah,” she says, still looking at me. “That’s really sad. It’s a weird secret.”
“That’s why it’s a secret, Lucie. It’s supposed to be weird.”
Her frown turns contemplative. “Do you have any other ones?”
“That one wasn’t enough?”
She shakes her head.
“Fine. My name isn’t really Aiden Valentine.”
She rolls her eyes. “Very funny.”
“I’m serious.”
“Is it James Bond? Perd Hapley?”
“I wish I had a name as cool as Perd Hapley.”
“All right, Aiden-who-apparently-isn’t-named-Aiden.”
“My first name is Aiden.” I take another long sip of coffee. “But my last name is Valen. Valentine is my radio name. Because of the romance thing.”
I liked having the differentiation when I first started. Aiden Valen might struggle with believing in good things, but Aiden Valentine never did. Not until the world beat the optimism out of him.
She blinks at me. “You’re serious.”
I nod. “I told you I was.”
I turn my chair back to my monitor. She stares unseeingly at the coffee machine. I check the countdown and adjust my headphones.
“Are you processing?” I ask.
“You’ve handed me a lot tonight.”
“I understand.” I gesture at her headphones. “Can you process and listen at the same time? We’re about to head back on.”
She nods, but she doesn’t move to put her headset on. I can hear Eileen in my ear counting us down, but Lucie doesn’t. Because she’s still not wearing her headset.
I reach forward and brush my hands beneath her hair, my knuckles ghosting against her neck. My hands must be cold because she shivers, her eyes jumping to mine. They really are the prettiest green. Pale emerald in the center, a dark ring at the edges. Like treasure beneath still waters. I tug her headphones off her neck and push them carefully over her ears, making sure I don’t catch any of the shiny silver hoops looped around her earlobe. I tuck her hair beneath the band and my hand lingers.
“Good?” I ask. My thumb rests at the hollow beneath her ear. I can feel the faintest flutter of her pulse there, steady and sure. She’s looking at me like I’m a puzzle she doesn’t know how to solve.
I know the feeling.
“Yeah,” she says. She gives me a small, tentative smile. An assurance, maybe. Or her own type of secret, I don’t know. All I know is it feels like something different and delicate. Something tremulous. Secrets shared in the middle of the night. Dark pressing in on the windows. A whole city spinning out at our feet.
