Page 86 of In a Word, Yes

I huff a laugh. “Oh yeah,that. Honestly, it tends to slip my mind. It’s just the way things have been for so long, you know?”

“I guess she’s been following your mom’s career for a long time. Pointed out a bunch of her books on her shelf.”

I smile. “My mother is pretty amazing at what she does. She doesn’t really think of it as a career, though. More like it’s just who she is, following her calling. Did ... did your mom also happen to tell you about my little brother?”

He frowns. “I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up. That must have been so...” His voice trails off.

“Cancer changes everything.”

“Isn’t it weird how, when you’re a kid, you know pretty much nothing about your classmates’ real lives?”

I hitch a shoulder. “We’re too busy overtweezing our eyebrows, being awkward, and trying to figure out who we are.”

Wyatt’s eyes glitter. “Mm,” he says, lifting his mug, “for me, not so much the tweezing thing. But I really like whoyouare, Lucy Montgomery.”

Can’t he see it? I’m kind of messed up. But he’s not looking at me that way.

I like you back, Wyatt Hayes, I don’t say. Instead, I clink mugs with him under the string lights, resist the magnetic pull of his gaze, and simply tell him thank you.

I like making this man smile. And I really like the way he makes me smile. The kind of smiles that begin in my toes, run out to my fingertips and send tingles all the way to my eyelashes. Is it possible for eyelashes to tingle? I think yes.

I may like this too much.

“This has been an amazing night. Thank you,” he says. His voice is husky.

I smirk. “It’s the tea.”

Wyatt searches my face. “Good tea.”

Thirty-Two

coterie(n.): an intimate group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose

After Wyatt left last night, and in the sudden, cold absence of his nearness, I tried to bring my thoughts into alignment. But it was as if there was all this space junk floating around in my head.

As if every pragmatic thought I possessed had been thrown into a blender with dark chocolate syrup and caramel and rainbow sprinkles.

This isn’t friendship. It’s chemistry.

And my heart keeps spamming me.

Mark it as spam. Mark it as spam.

How is it that I could sit there afterward, snug inside my chunky-knit blanket and carefully curated, vine-cloaked life, and feel anything but safe?

I can’t distinguish whether it’s danger that frightens me so much as possibility.

Anyway, I decided to skip tonight’s meeting of the Charity FallsWriting Society, having made no new writing progress. And then, of course, there’s the whole Wyatt thing. The whole how-do-I-behave-in-public-with-Wyatt-now thing.

While Chase is at tae kwon do and I have a quiet house to myself, wouldn’t my time be better spent with Smitty, allowing for whatever kind of words might flow?

But when I settle in at my bedroom desk, I’m confounded. Already there’s a sheet of paper in the typewriter. And on it, two lines of type that didn’t exist before last night. Before Chase and I hosted a certain copper-eyed bike cop.

OBVIOUSLY hanging out with you tonight was superfun. What would you say to a hike? (just the two of us)

And there go all my great intentions of rendering deep thoughts onto the page. Out the window they fly. In flies an entire regiment of those devilish butterflies.

There’s no point denying the way I feel when I think about Wyatt or how often I replay snippets of our conversation. His mannerisms, now so familiar. His glances, infused with tender meaning.