about. It’s all subdivisions now.”
“Skippin’ rocks and playin’ in the old waterin’ hole,” he teases with a terrible hillbilly accent.
I give his shoulder a nudge and reach for the bag again. “You’re not that far off. I remember someone had a rope swing that hung over the river. It was plenty deep in most places, but some years the water level would be lower, and really shallow along the shore. Some of the more protective parents would cut down that rope every year, but before long someone else would have another one up. I still don’t know how nobody managed to kill themselves on it.”
“That sounds pretty great, actually. The diving part, not the dying.”
“It was. I miss those days. So much room to explore, so much time outside. It was still mostly pre-internet, even though it doesn’t feel that long ago.” I take another sip, washing a tight band of nostalgia down with it. “What about you?”
“I never had any skinny-dipping, I’ll tell you that right now.”
“A travesty.”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
I turn to look right at him. “Come on. You couldn’t always have been this buttoned up. Am I supposed to believe you just sprang up somewhere, fully Tom Forded and preloaded with a degree from MIT?”
“My sister can confirm.”
I study his profile and notice that he isn’t wearing his glasses. Because the universe is never fair about these things, his lashes are long, and dark, and curled. I am immediately envious. He takes a sip of the beer and then swipes a long finger across his upper lip.
James pats my back when I cough, and hands me the beer, careful to make sure I’ve got it before he lets it go.
Like he knows my grip is sometimes weak.
My stomach swoops low.
“You all right?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say, recovering with a sip. “Something didn’t go down right.” Composed again, I urge him to continue. “She’s older than you, right? Your sister?”
He looks surprised that I remembered, or maybe that I’m engaging in real conversation. “By four years. Old enough that I was more of a nuisance than a buddy.”
“My brothers are five and six years older, Rand and Kurt. Protective when needed, but if friends were around they were like, ‘That kid? Never seen her before.’”
He laughs, and it’s this scratchy, honeyed sound. Has he always laughed like that? Have I been in a Melly-induced stress haze this entire time, not noticing laughs and forearms, unaware of lashes, lips, and fingers?
“Jenn could be like that, too,” he says. “We’d go to this amusement park in Albuquerque—”
“Wait. You’re from New Mexico?” When he nods, I joke, “No one is actually from New Mexico.”
He laughs this off. “I am, I promise. We moved there when I was three, from Wisconsin. My mom grew up in New Mexico, and after she finished her residency in Madison, she set up her family practice in Albuquerque.”
“Sounds like a witness protection cover,” I tease.
“I wish my life was that exciting.” James’s grin is my new addiction. “Listen: My dad is in finance. I was the drum major in high school, and president of the chess club—I’m sure you have no problem believing that. We had a house and a dog and everything.”
I squint at him. “Sounds believable. I’ll allow it. You may continue to tell me about this amusement park.”
“It’s a big deal in our family,” he says, with adorable gravity. “My mom went there when she was growing up, so it’s like a rite of passage. It was my favorite place. There were rides and a water park and games—they even did a Food on a Stick Festival every year. I’d beg my parents to take us, and then when my sister was old enough to go with her friends, they’d make her take me with them.”
I remember my brothers’ whining whenever my mom sent them to drag me home or made them pick me up from school. They were never afraid to remind me how much I cramped their style. “I’m sure she loved that.”
“Yeah, I was a pain because I always wanted to go but I was terrified of the roller coasters.”
“Then what did you do there?”
“Watch everything, mostly,” he says. “Get as close as I could to the rides so I could try to figure out how they worked. I was fascinated by the idea that you could be flying down this track at sixty, seventy, maybe a hundred miles an hour in some cases, and there was no engine powering