“In that case, let’s talk about me,” I said. Ruby snickered. “I’m kidding.”
“No, let’s,” she said. “Tell me everything. Who is Quinn Ryan?”
I laughed, if only to hide the fact that hearing her say my full name made my chest whirl and flutter. “Well,” I started grandly. “It began with the forging of the Great Rings.”
Ruby raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry. Um. That’s from The Fellowship of the Ring.” Jamie would have laughed, I thought. As if that had anything to do with anything.
She nodded. “Cool, so we know you’re a nerd.” But she wasn’t making fun of me. Or if she was, there was affection behind it. I could see it in her eyes.
“I don’t know,” I said. “My parents are divorced. My mom works for the Union-Tribune. My dad is an accountant in North Carolina.”
“That’s your parents, not you.”
“Well, my dad is moving back, supposedly. That’s kind of about me.”
“Kind of,” she agreed.
Now that I had the spotlight I felt uncomfortable, unsure what was interesting enough to tell her, unsure what she wanted to hear. My solution was to eat the last bite of my burrito. And then I had a better idea.
“Want to go to Balboa Park?”
* * *
—
Second only to the ocean and any of its beaches, Balboa Park was my favorite place in California. Any time of year, any time of day or night, there was always something worth watching going on. Sometimes it was the foreign tourists posing in front of the parts of the park you least expected someone to want a picture with. Sometimes it was a couple making out or breaking up. Once I saw a woman in her twenties puke right off the carousel while her friends laughed and took pictures. Another time I watched a little boy wearing a tutu circle the pond, holding his mom’s hand and touching a plastic wand to every flower they passed, as if he were the one responsible for making them grow. When I came alone I liked to loop in and out of the buildings’ covered archways, vaguely imagining I was the handsome, bored duke who lived there. Then I’d make my way to the rose garden and find the prettiest, fullest flower there, ostensibly for my duchess. Or at least that was what I’d pretended I was doing when I was younger. Now finding the single best flower in the garden was just a habit.
I parked near the art museum, which, along with the rest of the indoor attractions, had been closed for hours. Daytime Balboa was for families and tourists, but nighttime was for locals and young people like us. The energy changed when the sun set, and I could feel it as soon as I stepped out of my truck: a boozeless buzz, relieved and anxious all at once. It felt like it had dropped ten degrees on the drive over, so I pulled an old team sweatshirt from my duffel bag and offered it to Ruby.
She hesitated. “You don’t want it?”
“I’m still hot from the game,” I lied. She considered, so I added, “It’s clean.”
“I wasn’t worried about cooties,” she smirked, pulling the sweatshirt over her head.
Even at the invocation of a word tangentially and childishly associated with kissing, I felt goose bumps form on my arms. That, and seeing her in my clothing. I shivered.
“See?!”
“No, no, I’m fine. That was an isolated incident.”
“Good, because this is really comfy,” she said.
“Other people’s stuff always is.”
“No. This is special,” she said. She looked at me, and I got that tense, rubber-band-pulled-tight feeling in my chest, and I wondered if she felt it too. I used to assume that I could sense when something like that was shared, that I could tell when a moment loomed as large for someone else as it did for me. But I didn’t trust my instincts so much anymore. And it really was an exceptionally soft sweatshirt.