Page 83 of When We Had Forever
He looks startled, but recovers in moments. “That’s easy. Riding a bike.”
“Oh. That’s it?”
“Yep.”
I deflate. I’d imagined a bar fight. Or maybe a jilted husband taking a golf club to him after finding him in bed with the cheating wife.
Not that I would’ve preferred that. But my mental image of six-year-old Grayson cartwheeling over the handlebars of a bicycle doesn’t have quite the same impact.
“My turn,” he says, when I land on Tennessee Avenue. “Tell me about your first kiss.”
I freeze. Damn. Why is his question so much better than mine? “That depends,” I say.
He frowns. “How can it possibly depend?”
I fidget with my token, turning the dog around on its orange rectangle. “Do you want to know about the first time my lips touched someone else’s lips? Or the first time a guymeantto kiss me?”
“Well, now I really need to hear this.” He ponders. “First time your lips touched.”
Old habit makes me clamp down on the answer, but the curiosity on his face soon frees my tongue. God, I haven’t thought about this in years. I doubt Michael would have approved. “It happened when I was fourteen. Margo dared me to pretend to drown in the town pool, and the lifeguard pulled me out.”
He stares. “The... Wait, what?”
I duck my head. “Yeah. The lifeguard. He was in the grade ahead of us, and I’d had a crush on him for like, three years. Margo was so sick of hearing about it that she came up with this cockamamie plan to get him to kiss me. Which, looking back, I realize was not even remotely okay. But Margo had this...effect on people. Being around her made you braver than you really were.”
Grayson’s eyes slit like he’s trying to decide whether I’m joking. “So this kid pulled you out of the water and gave you mouth-to-mouth? I thought that only worked in movies.”
Heat scalds my cheeks. “Yeah. I’m ashamed of it now. I probably scared him half to death. I even found out later that he’d had a crush on me, too. He was trying to work up the nerve to do something about it, but after the pool thing, I was so embarrassed that I took off running every time I saw him in the hallway. So I guess, in the end, I got what I deserved. Which was nothing.”
“Well, damn. That still might be the most badass first-kiss story of all time.”
My lips spread into a startled smile. Not the reaction I was expecting, but I’ll take it. “Your turn.”
Minutes slide into hours. When the fire dies, we play on by lantern light. I learn that Grayson’s favorite country is Egypt, that he used to be penniless before he started working forNational Geographicand hated being poor because it made him feel like a failure compared to Michael, that despite his many conquests, he’s never slept with a married woman—“Come on, I havesomemorals”—and has a lifelong phobia of injuring himself and not being able to climb mountains anymore.
“Really?” I say. “Why’s that so important?”
He glances sidelong at the dying embers. “I think it’s because mountain climbing is one of the only things I can actually control. I mean, look at me.”
I do, though I’ve been doing little else all evening.
“I’m somehow forty years old,” he continues, “entirely against my will.”
“You’re thirty-nine.”
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Okay,almostforty. A number I never imagined I’d actually reach. I especially never imagined being forty and lonely, but I can’t seem to fix that, either. So the mountain-climbing thing, it’s kind of like a consolation for me.”
“Because it’s the only battle you can actually win?”
“Yeah. Exactly.” He dips his chin affirmatively. “You get it.”
“Ithinkso. It sort of sounds like me and running.”
A line appears between his brows. “How so?”
I hesitate, but the evening’s honesty permeates the air. “When I was with Michael, running was a way to...distract myself. To convince myself I was happy when sometimes I really just wanted to scream.”
His eyes flare. He looks more than a little disturbed by that confession. “Why on earth would you have wanted to scream? And more importantly, why wouldn’t you have?”
