“So,” she said later, after the sky had gone fully dark and the birds had all gone to bed and the lights of the city made the whole world glow. “What else don’t I know about you?”
He looked thoughtful. “I can juggle.”
“No, I meant—wait, you can?”
“Yup. And I also hate peanut butter.”
“Who hates peanut butter?”
“People with refined palates,” he said. “And I know some good card tricks. And jokes.”
“Like what?”
He considered this a moment. “Why did the scarecrow win the Nobel Prize?”
“Why?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“For being outstanding in his field.”
In spite of herself, Lucy laughed, but Owen’s face had gone serious again.
“And I decided to go to college next year.”
At this, she sat up. “Really?”
“Really,” he said with a smile. “University of Washington.”
“That’s perfect,” she said. “Your dad must be really happy.”
“He is,” he said. “We both are.”
“Okay, then,” she said, shaking her head. “So there’s apparently a lot I don’t know about you. But I was actually talking about the smoking thing.”
Beside her, Owen stiffened. “What smoking thing?”
“The morning after the blackout,” Lucy explained, “there was a cigarette on the kitchen floor. I’d totally forgotten about it, but I found it again on the plane, and—”
His face had gone ashen. “You still have it?”
“Yeah,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I guess it was sort of like a souvenir.…”
“So you kept it,” he said, watching her intently.
She nodded. “It’s downstairs in my wallet.”
To her surprise, a look of genuine relief passed over his face. “Thank you.”
“Sure,” she said, frowning. “But what’s the deal? You’ve been waiting for a smoke all this time?”
“Something like that,” he said, his eyes shining, and she realized just how much there was she didn’t know about him. He was like one of her novels, still unfinished and best understood in the right place and at the right time.
She already couldn’t wait to read the rest.