“‘Saw’ might be an overstatement.” He reached up, touched the edge of his glasses, and her lips curved softly, her eyes still stunned.
“You were trying to get squirrels away from your grandmother’s tomato plants,” he added. “Nonna, you called her. I’d never heard that word before.”
He watched her throat bob in a swallow. “Yes.” And then, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. Not until that building meeting, when you mentioned you came in the summers,” he said, but that wasn’t really true. Hadn’t he been sure, from the moment he’d heard her say Hey? From the moment she’d looked over the edge of her balcony, down to his? “And then . . .” He trailed off, an echo of Nora before. Donny, he could have said again. Me.
She shook her head, dropping her eyes to her skirt, smoothing it again. “I wish you would have said something.”
“It felt complicated, with the building.” Another half-truth. He felt complicated. From the second he saw her again, he was all complication.
“I mean back then. When you saw me the first time.”
“Oh. Well, I almost did. I almost called up to you.”
He could remember it so clearly, all of a sudden—all the things his teenaged mind had run through, trying to think of something to say to her while she rained tomatoes down on his head. Hey, did you drop something? That’s what he’d settled on, in the end.
He felt an unfamiliar tenderness for his teenaged self.
“I would’ve wanted you to,” Nora said. “I always wanted to meet kids my own age here.”
“I would’ve been a little older, I guess. Two years?”
She nodded and smiled. “That would have made it even better. I would’ve bragged when I got back to school. The cute high school guy who flirted with me over the summer.”
She took a step down, bringing herself closer to him, and it hit him almost as sharp as the moment with her phone and the fly and her laughing frustration. What he would’ve given, to see her up close that day. What he would’ve given, for one more selfish summer before everything had gone to hell.
Her smile slipped during his silence, and she paused, two steps away. “Then again,” she said, “At thirteen, I was in a pretty awkward phase, so maybe you—”
“I thought you were beautiful,” he said fiercely, because he wouldn’t let anything else stand.
She reached up, touched the edge of his glasses like he had only a moment ago. “I thought you said you couldn’t see me.”
Another out, but he didn’t take this one, either.
“I could, somehow. Your laugh, your voice. I could see you well enough.”
One step down, so now she was eye level. At some point, it seemed they’d become the last ones in the greenhouse, though he hadn’t remembered seeing anyone pass them by. He knew they were on short time, that they’d have to go soon. But Nora was looking at him like she was trying to see straight into the past, and he wanted to let her. He didn’t want to think about the words that had stopped him from calling up to her that day. He didn’t want to think about rash, reckless, selfish; he didn’t want to think about the future.
He took his hands from his pockets, reached out to link his fingers with hers. When she stepped into him again, he kissed her, like he’d wanted to do all along. Not since this date started.
Since before, since before.
And when the final announcement sounded, when they pulled apart and smiled at each other in sheepish delight, he didn’t notice the way he held on to her as she turned away, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright.
He didn’t notice that he kept holding on, right up until the second her fingers trailed away.
Chapter 15
It was possible she’d taken it too far.
In the backyard, Nora stood beside Mrs. Salas, staring down at the six boxes she’d set out this morning, all but one full up, sorted by type: kitchenware, linens, clothing, books, electronics, and decor. In thirty minutes, the time limit she and Mrs. Salas had given to their neighbors would be up, and in an hour a van from a neighborhood mutual aid organization would come by to pick up their contributions for an upcoming charity sale that Nora had read about only a week ago.
“The thing about that lamp is,” she said, and Mrs. Salas made a sympathetic noise—a tiny hum that was