Page 13 of When We Had Forever
Michael’s amused expression makes me suspect he knows what I’m doing, but he doesn’t protest. He answers all my questions, though his terse responses regarding architecture soon spur me elsewhere. When I ask about his hobbies, he catches me off guard by waxing poetic about books and nature. He hikes. He camps. Hedoesread—fifty pages a day, without fail, apparently as a form of mental self-discipline.
“You seem surprised,” he says when my writer’s heart swells to such a size that words fail me.
“I am.”
“Why, because I look like a jackass who doesn’t know what an altruist is?” Light dances in his maybe-turquoise eyes. He’s teasing again. Or fishing for compliments.
Either way, I’d have to be dead not to engage. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I just meant...” I sweep a hand up and down to indicate his sheer male exquisiteness. “You know. Don’t make me say it out loud.”
He flutters his lashes. “But it’d be so much more fun if you did.”
My god. He’s incorrigible. “Okay, you look like the kind of guy who lives at the gym and breaks a different girl’s heart every weekend. Not the kind whoreads. There. Happy?”
He laughs. “Well, you wouldn’t beentirelyoff base with that. But I probably don’t do either of those things as often as you think, and I’m more than just a pretty face.”
Again, it should sound cocky, but again, it doesn’t. Probably because there’s no debating whether or not he’s attractive. He is. Statement of fact.
“Clearly,” I say. “But I can’t believe you read actual books, every day. No one does that anymore.”
“I know.” His voice roughens, mournful. “Focusing on anything more than a scroll through Instagram is like a dying art. But that’s exactly why I read. So I can stay capable of actual thinking.”
My inner nerd begins to salivate. “Did you read this morning?”
“Yep.”
“Which book?”
“It’s calledConsumed. About evolutionary psychology and its impact on consumer behavior. It talks about how, on a subconscious level, our genes govern our buying habits, which essentially means—”
“Yeah,” I say. “I get it. Behavior that evolution grafted into us a long time ago still affects our choices today, right? Like, people might do things that seem irrational, buy things they can’t afford for no apparent reason. But deep down, thereisa reason, buried somewhere in our DNA. You just have to go back a few millennia to figure out why it’s there.”
He looks startled. “You’ve studied evolutionary psychology?”
“No.” I laugh. “I have an English degree.”
He zeroes in on my face. “Then how’d you know what I meant?”
“I’m a nerd, remember? I read everything. Similar to someone else, apparently.”
Michael’s gaze returns to the road, but something in his posture tells me I still have every ounce of attention not dedicated to driving. “Well, there you go. Even if we ignore what you look like, the fact that you said what you just did tells me I was staring at exactly the right girl yesterday.”
My face heats. I don’t know which part of that to address first. “Ignore what I look like? What do I look like?”
“Like the kind of girl who could break my heart. Forget the other way around.”
A beat passes. “Are you making fun of me?” Not that I’m unattractive—I actually like the wide-set blue eyes and dainty doll’s mouth I see in the mirror. But I don’t usually stun people like Kate does, and palling around with her hasn’t exactly led to a flood of choices in the romance department. Guys almost universally gravitate toward her first, and I’ve never had any interest in her leftovers.
“No.” Michael chuffs a ragged laugh, almost to himself. “You’re not one of those weekend conquests you just talked about. You’re the kind of girl that leaves permanent scars. I can tell.” The way he says it strikes me. He sounds, of all things...pleasedby that.
My blush blossoms in full. I angle away, hauling myself back from the brink of some luscious abyss I don’t dare jump into.
On any other day, I’d dive in headfirst. Even now, I want to so badly it hurts not to. But I can’t. Won’t.Patrick. Work. Greece.Freedom.
I need to keep this guy at arm’s length.
I have my work cut out for me, though, because no matter how benign the topic, Michael always veers toward something deeper. It’s like he doesn’t have a setting calledsmall talk. He’s unabashedly interested in the world and its ways, and has thoughts, theories, about everything. He wants to know mine, too. As the miles melt away, he asks about my innermost dreams, my writing, what I’d do if today was my last day on earth. Then he listens, rapt, as if I might say something ingenious and it’s his job to watch for it.
“One day to live?” I echo. I don’t even have to think about it. “That’s easy. I’d leave the country.”
