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Shaun’s penis sat limply on the sand between his legs like a raw sausage. I wanted to laugh, but I knew that was impolite. It had gotten to the stage now where the talking was done, and I just wanted to go home. I was tired after a long day of learning new stuff, and all the fake laughing I’d been doing with Shaun made my cheeks hurt. I vowed to myself then never to pretend a boy is funny ever again. Shaun really wasn’t that great, and it was an important lesson for me that looks aren’t everything. Not just good looks, but the look of a person—like that they might be a nice guy or even a jerk. Shaun looked like a nice guy; David looked like a jerk, but they were polar opposites. Still, I wouldn’t want to be sitting here with a naked David either. I was done with boys and penises for a while. And I was certain now that I really did not want that anywhere near me, especially not after it’d been sticking its head in the sand. It looked crusty and the tip of it had a sandy-coated wetness, like the slimy trail behind a snail.

Shaun stopped talking then and his head whirled around on his shoulders, both of us looking up to the cliff as a set of bright headlights beamed down on us.

“Shit. Move!” He jumped up and dragged me sideways by the arm as his car slowly and rigidly rolled down the slope, bouncing and jerking about over the shrubberies before it came to a rolling stop a meter from where we’d been sitting. The whole thing happened relatively slow but we both just stood in stunned horror and watched.

“You didn’t put the handbrake on,” I said.

“Even then…” He frowned, walking over to his car, which had unfortunately but hilariously positioned itself right on top of his clothes. “It couldn’t have gone over the edge without a damn good push.”

A line of heads started to gather on the cliff edge, short bursts of laughter amalgamating as they all witnessed the scene below. I took a few steps back to hide in the shadows. I did not want to be the topic of tomorrow’s conversations at school, or the punchline of the jokes.

“Yeah, laugh, idiots!” Shaun yelled, tugging at his jeans to get them from under the tire. “But when I find out who did this, I’m gonna skin you alive!”

People backed away, leaving us to our humiliation, and I scanned the slope for a path the car could take back up. But there was none. There were only thin paths carved by foot traffic, so the only way that thing could come up that hill again was with a tow truck.

I checked my phone, opening the map I’d loaded earlier with directions on how to get back. It would only take me ten minutes to walk from here to a road, and then twenty minutes home from there. I’d made sure of that before I agreed to let him pick me up.

“Shaun,” I called.

“Yo!” He slipped his leg into his jeans.

“I’m gonna walk home.”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

I didn’t let his snappy tone get to me. After all, he was in a bit of a predicament, considering he told his parents he was at a friend’s house tonight—not at the lookout, with a girl.

The ocean pushed a cool and very strong breeze across the land then, twisting it halfway up the slope where it gathered sand in a slight whirl, making my ankles itch. I stopped for a moment to admire it, casting my eyes out then to the black nothingness that was the ocean. Above it, thousands of stars that would normally be drowned out by the light of a town twinkled like holes in a black blanket, and without Shaun as my chaperone, without Brett standing at a safe distance, I actually felt free and independent, and alone—in a good way—for the first time in my entire life.

I breathed the newness of this experience deeply and shut my eyes, appreciating every second of it. Until a broad hand touched my shoulder. “Hey, you okay?”

I looked up into a square face. “I’m fine. But my friend needs some help.”

“Yeah. I can see that.” He looked down at the beach, his hands on his hips. “My daughter was up here with some thug, and I saw a few kids push the car over.”

“Don’t describe the perps to that guy then.” I pointed at Shaun. “He’ll hurt them if he thinks he knows who did it.”

The man laughed. “My lips are sealed. Hey, do you need a ride home?”

“Thanks, but I can walk.” I wouldn’t accept a ride with a stranger. Even if he did claim to have a daughter.

“No worries then.” He winked at me and headed down the slope toward Shaun, who was cursing and kicking his car.

A part of me—the part that had never walked home in the dark before—was feeling adventurous and excited about this. But the cautious part—the same one that knew I couldn’t actually come to any harm—was still a little bit nervous.

As I walked down through the pitch-black carpark toward the road, I saw a glowing light in the distance, on what I assumed was a hill, but it was hard to tell with nothing but black behind it. When I heard a few loud cheers, I was sure it was a bonfire party, which made this empty dark a lot less menacing. I even thought about wandering over there to see if I knew anyone, but decided against it by the time I reached the road. I’d be home soon enough. I just needed to be brave and remind myself that I was immortal and inhumanly strong. I had nothing to worry about out here.

I drew my phone out again to call Brett and let him know where I was, but before I pressed call, the very loud, very off-key song of a drunkard reached my ears. I recognized the singer’s voice straight away and a pang of relief liquefied all of the tension in my chest.

“Arrrraaaaa!” David tossed his arms up drunkenly, stumbling to one side. “What are you doing out here so late, m’friend?”

“I had a date with Shaun tonight.” I motioned back toward the lookout. “It ended early.”

“Everything all right?” he asked, stumbling closer.

I had to laugh, recalling the look on Shaun’s face when his car came over the rise, and the way his penis flung around as he ran away. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just headed home. Wanna walk me?”

“Sure,” he slurred. “I was headed there myself.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

I laughed. David could be quite funny when he was drunk.

“Want some?” He offered me a square silver flask. If it smelled anything like the way his breath did, I couldn’t see any reason why I’d want to put that in my system. Then again—I shrugged—with my metabolism, it couldn’t possibly get me drunk. And I felt safe with David, so I took the flask and tossed the liquid back. It was bitter on my tongue and burned my throat, worse than human blood did, but it subsided quickly and pleasantly to a warmth that made me feel kind of giddy.

“You like?” David asked, taking a swig without even wiping the rim of the flask first.

“Not bad. What is it?” I wiped my mouth on my arm, moving it straight back in to my body to keep out the chill.

“Whiskey,” he said, slipping his jacket off without missing a beat. The smell of leather and that sweet kind of David smell—like citrus and maybe brown sugar—wrapped around me with his jacket, making me feel like I was wearing him, but it was warm and nice and not altogether as unpleasant an experience as I might once have thought it would be. It was a sweet gesture too. No one had ever done that for me before, aside from Brett, and I guess it showed me a different side to David. One I wasn’t sure he had in him. Until now.

“Want some more?” He offered the flask again.

“Yeah. Why not?” I decided that it might be nice to hang out with David for a bit—alone. There was clearly more to him and I knew I’d never see this side while he was playing Alpha Male with Cal. “But I’m just gonna call my brother first and let him know where I am.”

“Sure thing.” David moved back and leaned on a dead lamp post.

I whipped my phone out again and dialed Brett, who picked up on the first ring. “Ara. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just wanted to let you know I’m walking home—”

“Where are you? I’ll come get you.” He sounded panicked.

“I’m fine. David’s walking with me.”

“David?” The confusion came through the line with a strong image of his concerned face. “What happened? I thought you were hanging out with that other kid tonight—”

“He had car trouble, so I’m gonna hang with David for a bit—maybe get drunk.”

“Drunk?”

“I’m old enough, Brett, you know that.” Fact was, I was nineteen human years old—and the legal age for drinking here was eighteen—so he couldn’t say a darn thing about it. Not in fairness.

“David’s not old enough, is he?”

“No. But he’s not your problem,” I said playfully. “I’ll be fine, Brett—”

“I know you will. I trust you. And I trust David.”

“I know. Just don’t tell his mom he was drinking if you see her at the library tomorrow, okay?”

“I promise.”

I hung up and dumped my phone in my back pocket, smiling across at David, who seemed to be watching the ground closely, as if he was sure it was moving.

“Hey, Ara.” He motioned me over. “Check this out.”

I leaned on the lamppost beside him and studied the ground with the same intensity he did. “What are we looking at?”

His arm slowly extended, finger aimed at the ground. At first, with him wobbling sideways and struggling to stay upright, I thought he was imagining something there, but then I saw it too.

“An egg!” I squatted down and cupped my hands under the tiny oval-shaped egg, hardly able to believe it belonged to an animal. “What kind is it?”

“The dead kind.” He tossed back some more whiskey.

“How do you know it’s dead?”

“See the crack?”

I turned it slightly and, sure enough, there was a thin crack there, but it hadn’t split open yet. A sniff of the air suggested that it had come from far away, maybe carried by another animal, because I couldn’t smell anything similar at all.

“Come on,” he said, stumbling away. “Leave it be. Let nature take its course.”

I closed my hands around the egg to keep it warm, feeling the slight pulse of life within—weak life, but life all the same. It was the same feeling as walking into a room and sensing a person before you actually spot them, and for some reason I couldn’t just let it go—couldn’t just walk away from the egg.

After looking up to see how far away David was, making sure that he wouldn’t notice, I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. A strange warmth flooded my limbs then, moving from my feet to my arms quickly, like the rush you get when touching someone you’re attracted to. As my heart picked up, I brought the egg to my lips, words finding their way there that I’d never heard before and didn’t understand. I whispered them against the shell, and no sooner had I breathed them out did a flickering come from within the egg. I wasn’t sure what I did, or how I did it, but I could feel the fighting chance this little guy now had.

“How did you do that?” David asked, suddenly standing right over me.

I got to my feet slowly, sliding my spine up the lamppost to stand. “Do what?”

“You glowed blue.”

I laughed, carefully placing the egg in the pocket of David’s jacket. “You’re drunk.”

He held my gaze firmly for a moment, my heart in my throat, and then he laughed—a crass, snorting sound—folding over as the insanity of a glowing teenager obviously struck him.

“This must be some crazy whiskey,” he said.

I snatched the bottle from him and unscrewed the lid. “Then give me some more. I wanna see people glow blue too.”

David stood miraculously still as he watched me drink—too still for someone so drunk—and I sucked the liquid down a little slower then, wondering if his inebriation was just an act or if he’d sobered so quickly because he’d seen me glow and wasn’t, for all the whiskey in the world, going to brush it off as his imagination.

I knew then that I would one day have to tell David the truth about me, and if he asked again tonight, it would be sooner rather than later. But I felt like I could trust him. I liked that I could trust him.

“Why do you always stare at me?” I asked, feeling braver with my bottle of Dutch Courage.

He wobbled forward slightly and just smiled, not taking his eyes off me. I loved his dimple—how even when he wasn’t smiling, he still had a very prominent indent just beside his lip. It made his eyes look kinder and gave him a very sweet kind of demeanor, as if he’d grown up in a home with a lot of love. And the way he stared at me now didn’t feel so invasive as it usually did. I felt pretty under that stare, and it was his eyes that made me feel that way.

“I know it bothers you,” he said, looking down for just a moment long enough to make me jealous of his eyelashes. “And I’m sorry. I really don’t mean to. But…”

I waited, but no but followed. “But?”

“But it amazes me sometimes that anyone can be as pretty as you.”

I scoffed in the back of my throat, rolling my eyes.

“No, really.” He stepped in and took my hand. “If you were a girl in a magazine, I’d put your picture on my wall so I could stare at you all day—”

I laughed again.

“I’m not doing it to be creepy, Ara.”

“Which is what makes it creepy,” I stated, my voice high as it came through my smile. “People don’t normally stare at people.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He laughed. “I dunno. Maybe it’s just an artist’s eye appreciating you.”

“You’re an artist?” That surprised me.

“Not the kind Cal is,” he said, taking the flask for another swig.

“What kind then?”

“Maybe I’ll show you,” he offered, saying nothing more about it. And that one act—offering me a deeper part of himself and then pulling it away—left me more curious about him than if he’d just outright told me what his medium is. We walked down the street for a while then, shoulder to shoulder, bumping into each other every now and then when one of us stumbled, and I was stuck in an endless circle of thought the entire time, all of it surrounding him.

Well, him and my sudden inability to walk a straight line. I had thought my metabolism would stop me from getting drunk, but it turned out I was wrong. It wore off quickly though, taking me from a giggling mess to a more sober and serious me by the time we stopped in the middle of the footpath, with a double-story house just across the road from us and a grassy parkland at our backs. I was pretty sure that Lake Richmond sat right beyond the trees, if I had my bearings straight, which meant I was still at least five minutes’ walk from home, so I wasn’t really sure why we’d stopped or why David was dragging me across the road.

The house he led me to stood proudly on its slope, a large white one with many windows and a very welcoming appeal, sort of growing taller the closer we got, as though the view from across the road just couldn’t do its size justice. Stone steps carved a track through a lush flowery garden, ending on a flatter path that seamlessly offered the way up the wooden porch steps. I’d never been to David’s house before, but it looked so familiar to me that I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was just that kind of house, I guess—the kind you feel at home in from the second you arrive.

“Why are we here?” I asked.

“This is home.” He swung his arm out wide to present the house.

“But you were supposed to walk me to my house.” I smiled, trying not to laugh.

He looked confused for a moment, taking a slight stumble forward. “Oh, right.”

“It’s okay. I’ll just walk from here.” I grabbed his shoulders and steered him toward the front door. “I’m just around the corner anyway.”

“I’m not letting you walk home… a… a…” He looked lost for the right word.

“Alone?”

“Yeah.” He pointed to the air. “That.”

“I’m in better condition than you are.”

He looked at the finger he had aimed to the sky for a long moment, frowning then as though he didn’t recognize it. I laughed.

“Come on, you drunkard.” I gave him a soft push. “Let’s get you inside.”

“Okay but…” He stumbled forward and his hands shot out, catching him a second before he would’ve hit the ground. We both laughed hard as he stood tall again, dusting off his knees. “You have to stay for a bit,” he finished.

“It’s late.” I looked at my watch. It wasn’t that late, but I just wanted to go home.

“Please?” He pouted, giving me puppy eyes.

I looked at the dark house behind him—all the lights out inside—and thought about how he said no one ever hugs him. Then I felt bad.

“Okay. But only if you act sober for a moment while we get you upstairs.”

“Sober, I can do.” He stood straight with a very serious look on his face, until he tipped sideways as if the earth moved and he hadn’t realized.

I laughed, rushing in to steady him. He was pretty heavy, and as my hands caught his chest, I felt the muscles there that I’d never noticed before. He wasn’t as nicely built as Shaun or even Cal, but it made me wonder if every guy my age worked out at the gym, or just the ones I hung out with.

When David’s hand cupped mine against his chest, I looked up into the dark shade of green staring back down at me. He did have very lovely eyes and they warmed so much when he smiled like that. When he smiled at me.

“Were you admiring my chest, Ara-Rose?”

“Admittedly, yes,” I said, making him walk forward. “Before now, I thought you were all skin and bones.”

“And now?” he said.

Now? Well, now I was certain I liked everything out of and under his clothes, but there’s no way I’d ever admit that. “Let’s just get you inside.”

When we reached the top of his porch steps, he stopped for a moment and leaned on the post, digging in his pocket, but he couldn’t seem to find what I assumed were his keys. I checked the pockets of the jacket he’d put on me and didn’t find them either.

“Have you lost them?” I asked.

“Probably.” As he turned toward the door again, I noticed the key-like bulge in his front left pocket.

“Did you check your other pocket?” I suggested.

“Other pocket?”

I stopped him by the rim of his jeans, spinning him around to get the keys. His jeans weren’t that tight, but it was tricky trying to reach into a pocket from this angle. He stumbled back and forth for a bit, giving me a very nice waft of his musky deodorant as he lifted his arms a little. Eventually the keys came free, tangled in a silver necklace he had in there. I tucked it back in and when I looked up at him, rather proud of myself for managing to dig these out, he was standing dead still, all drunkenness seeming to have vanished.

There was a kind of energy pulsing around us then that felt familiar, like when he knelt beside me at school. I’d watched enough TV to know this was a kiss moment, and with any other guy I might have taken the opportunity. But David was drunk, and I wasn’t interested in him that way. These feelings and reactions I got from all the releases of hormones couldn’t be trusted—they made me want things I didn’t want any other time and they made me do things I felt silly for later. I liked David a lot—even more now after tonight—but I wasn’t sure what kind of ‘like’ that was. So I pulled away and searched his keychain for one that looked like a house key.

“I got it,” he said in that lovely deep voice, reaching over my shoulder to pluck them delicately from my hand. “Come on in,” he said, unlocking the door.

I followed him into the dark entrance, my eyes going up the stairs and then to the dining room on our left—a square room with a very big square dining table that could seat about twelve people. There was a matching oak buffet tucked neatly by the wall closest to us, and heavy curtains over the window that made the room look very warm and inviting. It even smelled like fresh bread and cantaloupe.

David closed the door, sheathing us in complete darkness, and motioned for me to follow him to the right, down a short corridor with dark-painted walls and lots of photos. A pair of glass doors opened at the end to reveal a cozy but large den, with a big white fireplace set between high bookshelves, and a baby grand piano in the left corner overlooking a courtyard or something.

“Do you play?” I asked.

“A little,” he said, shutting the doors behind us. He walked around the room and switched on a few lamps, splashing warmth over the furniture and the hardwood floors. It was an incredibly pleasant space, and I imagined his mom must have decorated it with her obvious love for literature. I could smell so many familiar things here, yet didn’t recognize any of them. But my nose told me this was a room where a large family gathered, often.

“So you have brothers and sisters?”

“Yes. A brother. But he doesn’t live here.” He sat down at the piano. “Why?”

“Do a lot of others live here?”

“Just my uncle, aunt, mom, and my s… my little cousin Harry.”

I sat down on the couch facing the piano. “That’s a pretty big family.”

“It used to be bigger,” he said offhandedly, lifting the piano cover.

“What do you mean by that—it used to?”

He paused a moment, as if thinking about it. Then his eyes wandered to the mantle and widened suddenly in panic. He leaped up, jumped over the coffee table and ran toward it, quickly laying a photo frame face-down.

I chuckled. “What was that all about?”

“Uh…” He slid the photo off the mantle and buried it in the armchair by the fireplace. “Tragic school photo.”

I laughed again. “Aw, come on, let me see.”

“No way.” He grabbed my hand and stood me up, leading me to the piano stool to sit beside him. “You wanna play a song with me?”

“I don’t play,” I said.

He seemed a bit shocked by that. I figured maybe everyone in his family played and it was weird for him that someone didn’t.

“Well,” he said, relaxing at the shoulders, “you were only born a few months ago, right?”

“Right,” I said with a smile, but I still felt like he thought I was useless.

“Here.” His long, smooth fingertips picked up mine and he placed them against the white keys, spreading them here and there to fit where he wanted them. “This is an A minor—see?” He told me the notes in the chord as he pushed the top of my hand to make me play it. The sound rang warmly through my entire body—connecting with something inside me from long ago. I knew I used to play, but until now I’d never come this close to a piano, never touched one. Brett offered to buy me one, but my heart felt tight when I thought about playing—a bad kind of tight.

I drew my hand back and leaned away slightly from the keys, my whole body rigid.

“What’s wrong?” David asked, very serious and very sober.

I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t want to play.”

“Okay.” He wrapped his arm about my shoulders and gave a friendly squeeze, removing his arm immediately after. “Can I play for you?”

With a timid nod, I shuffled sideways and hopped up off the stool, moving back to the couch again. As I slumped down and cuddled a cushion to my lap, David closed his eyes and angled his head to one side a little, as though he was listening to the rhythm of the evening. It occurred to me then that this was his medium. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I was certain of it. My friend Cal expressed his love for beauty in the things he painted, but David obviously expressed it through music. I didn’t expect to be all that impressed or awed by a person playing the piano, so when he hit that first chord—the one he just showed me—I was completely taken by surprise.

I held my breath, afraid of this new feeling because, although the music wasn’t a physical thing that could touch me, it reached right inside of me and twisted something up that I hadn’t felt twist before, or maybe not for a very long time.

When he opened his mouth and started singing, a hard lump formed in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. Those tricky emotions rose to the surface again to make me feel things I didn’t want to feel for David. It was like some instinct or some long-ago promise, but everything about the way his voice made me feel felt natural. He played the song slow and with a kind of odd rhythm that reminded me of a clock ticking, counting down the seconds to the most heartbreaking moment of your life. He’d felt so much pain in his past, a fact made blatantly obvious in each rise and fall of his voice. A beautiful voice. I wanted to wrap myself up in it and exist as only a pair of ears. And at the same time, I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hug away all of his pain.

He rolled back and forth with the tide of the music, shaking his head as the words poured from his soul, his whole body a part of the tune, like he’d played here, alone, so many times before. Like he was playing alone now—calling to the angels, to the universe, to see him here on his knees and have mercy on him. Forgive him. Free him.

On the last note of the song he switched the tempo, slowed it down and rolled it into another one. A song I knew—had heard on an old CD of Brett’s—but the way David sung it changed the meaning for me. I actually started to like the song and made a mental note to put it in a playlist when I got home tonight. A David playlist.

The music stopped short of the end of the song then, and David looked up as the door swung slowly open across the room.

“Harry.” He jumped up. I noticed him wipe his cheek as he stood. “What are you doing up?”

I spun around to see the little boy there—dark hair, big blue eyes—about seven or eight years old.

“What are you doing up so late?” the boy countered, rubbing his eyes.

“I was playing a song for my friend Ara.” David inclined his head toward me as he bent to lift the kid off the ground. He looked tiny in David’s arms, and it completely changed the way I looked at David. The dorky, overbearing friend became a simple, loving guy.

Harry covered his mouth then and whispered something in David’s ear, which I heard a mile off.

David laughed. “Not everyone likes hugs as much as you do, Harry.”

Harry looked at me. I smiled awkwardly, not sure what to say.

“He uh…” David pressed his forehead to Harry’s, taking a very long and seemingly sad breath before looking at me again. “He wants to give you a hug.”

I opened my arms as I stood up. “I like hugs.”

Harry hopped down from David’s arms and threw himself into mine, wrapping them all the way around my waist. I’d never hugged a child before, never really seen one up close, but he was really warm and sort of floppy, or maybe not floppy, but just not as strong as a bigger person. His hair smelled like strawberry shampoo—an oddly-familiar smell—and as I hugged him back, I felt kind of warm in my heart.

Harry turned his head to look at David. “She’s skinny, Daddy.”

My eyes met David’s, both round with surprise. “Daddy?”

“Uh…” He went blank. “Um…”

“Uh oh.” Harry released me and stepped back.

“He’s your son?” I said, squatting down to study his face a bit closer. He had the shape of David’s eyes, but the color was brighter than any blue I’d ever seen, except mine, and even in the dim lighting of late night, I could see that he was way too old to be David’s son. Unless he got busy at a very young age.

“It’s a long story,” he said, taking Harry’s hand.

I stood up, frozen with shock, until David closed the door again, insisting Harry go straight back to bed. Another person, who I couldn’t make out from this angle, took the boy as David closed the door.

He turned around then, sober as a man in church, and dropped his shoulders with a heavy sigh.

“Multifaceted,” I said.

“Huh?”

“You have so many angles to you that just when I think I’ve figured you out, you throw a spanner into the works.”

He smiled, but he looked worried.

“So you had him when you were, what, eleven?”

“No.”

“Then how can he be your son?”

“Can I ask you not to ask that?” he said apologetically. “It’s a long, painful story, and I don’t want to…”

“Say no more.” I put both hands up, but I knew it would bother me deeply later on. I figured maybe David was sexually abused by someone and ended up caring for the child that resulted. That would be bad enough for someone not to want to talk about.

I looked at the door for a long moment, remembering Harry’s little face and sweet smile. “He looks like you.”

David looked back at the door too. “Yeah.”

“Is he like his mother?” I prompted.

David tensed, and it wasn’t the kind of tension I expected, which led me to think maybe he wasn’t molested. “Yes. He is.”

“Is she still around?”

He hesitated, but eventually answered with, “Yes.”

“Are you… still together?” I asked, and oddly found myself hoping they weren’t. I wasn’t sure why though. It wasn’t like I wanted David. Especially not if he had a kid. That was way too much responsibility for the life I had planned.

“No. We’re… not together.”

“But you obviously love her.”

The breath that left him seemed to make his legs weak. He sat down on the armchair where he’d stuffed the picture frame, and put his head in his hands. A part of me wanted to comfort him, but it also felt a bit weird since I didn’t really know him that well. I had to ask myself if I would’ve rushed over to comfort Cal had this been him. And when I realized the answer was yes, I not only moved over to sit on the arm of the chair beside David, but also asked myself why it was easier to be friendly with Cal than it was with him. What was it between us that made me keep my distance?

“If you ever need to talk, David,” I said, rubbing his back in a gentle circle, “I’m a good listener.”

He turned his head from the cup of his palms and smiled sweetly at me. “I appreciate that.”

“Was it about her?” I jerked my head to the piano. “Is that who you were singing about?”

He buried his face again. “Yeah.”

My heart warmed, sinking down into a very comfortable spot in my chest, and all I could think was wow. “I hope someone loves me like that someday.”

He laughed and sat back, pinning my hand between his shoulder blade and the couch, resting his own hand on my knee. “I can promise you that they will.”

It was a sweet thing to say, but it all just made me feel ten years older than I actually was, and that just made me want to get out of here.

I drew my hand back and pushed his off my knee before standing. “I better get home.”

“I’ll walk you,” he said, standing up.