STANDING ON THE OLD STONE ARCH BRIDGE, June looked down at the brown waters of the Mississippi River. Slow swirls of foam, floating leaves, and bits of trash rode the current, flowing from the north, disappearing beneath the bridge.
“All the way to the Gulf of Mexico,” she said.
Wes said, “We could take a boat. Or a raft, like Huck Finn.”
During the two weeks June had been in Minneapolis, they had spent every evening together. They had gone for long walks, seen a movie, tried some of the nearby restaurants, and visited a museum. Just the two of them, mostly — except for the time they’d eaten KFC with her dad. They didn’t see any of their friends at all. June hadn’t even told Britt, Jess, or Phoebe that she was in town. The only person she was interested in was Wes.
“I should probably get back,” June said. “Dad’s going to be home at six.”
“Where’s he taking you?”
“Some fancy restaurant. He says we’re celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?”
“I don’t know. He’s being very mysterious.”
“Maybe he’s going to tell you you’re not really his daughter. You’re the secret love child of a powerful wizard, and you have superpowers. With a single gesture, you can make all those shredded checks put themselves back together. Or go back in time and save them from the evil shredder monster.”
June laughed. “Do you have any idea how silly you are?”
“I know exactly how silly I am,” Wes said with a grin.
“You’re still invited, you know.”
“I’m still recovering from the last dinner with him. Anyway, my mom’s been giving me grief about never having dinner at home anymore.”
They walked back to June’s building without talking. June kept thinking of things to say, but the silence between them was too comfortable to break.
The silent times — the two of them together, without talking — had been getting longer the last few days. Was that okay? Was she boring when she didn’t talk? Did she talk too much? Maybe she should be more mysterious. Maybe he’d gotten to know her too well, and now she wasn’t interesting anymore. Was it possible to get to know someone too well? Was it possible she could lose interest in him? She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. What was he thinking right now?
She had no idea. Once, after some boys had teased her at school — she had been about thirteen — she had asked her mom, “What’s wrong with boys, anyway? What are they thinking?”
“Boys only think about one thing,” her mother had said. “Sex.”
But Wes wasn’t like that. He thought about all kinds of things. But he had to think about sex sometimes. Maybe even as much as she did.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked him.
“Huh?”
“What were you thinking about. Two seconds ago?”
“Oh. Um … I was thinking about what my mom was going to make for dinner. Why?”
“Never mind,” she said.
Food would have been her second guess.
What Wes was thinking about — he would never have admitted this to June — was how nice it would be to go home and shower and eat with his sister and his parents, and watch some TV without having to talk about what he was watching, and then go to bed early. Because even though June was the most important person in the universe and spending time with her was, mostly, all he wanted to do … it wore him out sometimes.
And he was thinking about last week’s fried chicken dinner with Elton Edberg, how Mr. Edberg had asked him a thousand questions: Where do you plan to go to college? What do you want to do with your life? Have you considered banking? Have you considered the military? Who do you plan to vote for in the next election? It’s not too soon to open an IRA account. Do you go to church? What does your father do?
Most of the questions had been about things Wes had never thought much about. By the end of the evening, his brain had been in complete overload.
He kissed June good-bye in front of her building, then walked down the block to where he’d parked. As he got closer to the car, the tension flowed out of his neck and shoulders. Being in love is hard, he thought — wanting to be perfect for her every second they were together, and trying not to think too much about the scary, murky future when they would be apart. Between the tree planting and his time with June, he was exhausted.
He had never been happier in his life.