“So you came to work on the dress?” he asks.
“It’s not a big deal.” I move toward him. “We can do it later.”
“No! You’re here. You’re never here.” He glances at Jessica. “We’ll finish tomorrow, okay?”
“Right.” She fires me a death glare before storming away.
Cricket doesn’t notice. He opens his door wide. “Come in. How did you find me?”
“St. Cla—OH.”
“What? What is it?”
Two beds. Beside one, a constellation chart, a periodic table, and a desk crowded with papers and wires and small metal objects. Beside the other, more na**d fantasy women, a gigantic television, and several gaming consoles.
“You have a roommate.”
“Yeah.” He sounds confused.
“The, um, picture on your door surprised me.”
“NO. No. I prefer my women with . . . fewer carnivorous beasts and less weaponry.” He pauses and smiles. “Naked is okay. What she needs are a golden retriever and a telescope. Maybe then it would do it for me.”
I laugh.
“A squirrel and a laboratory beaker?”
“A bunny rabbit and a flip chart,” I say.
“Only if the flip chart has mathematical equations on it.”
I fake-swoon onto his bed. “Too much, too much!” He’s laughing, but it fades as he watches me toss and turn. He looks pained. I sit up on my elbows. “What’s the matter?”
“You’re in my room,” he says quietly. “You weren’t in my room five minutes ago and now you are.”
I pull myself up the rest of the way, suddenly conscious of both the bed and its lingering scent of bar soap and sweet mechanical oil. I glance at a space close to his head but not quite at it. “I shouldn’t have barged in on you like this. I’m sorry.”
“No. I’m glad you’re here.”
I find the courage to meet his eyes, but he’s not looking at me anymore. He reaches for something on his desk. It’s overflowing with towers of graphing paper and partially completed projects, but there’s one area that’s been cleared of everything. Everything except for my binder. “I did some sketches this weekend in Pennsylvania—”
“Oh, yeah.” I looked up Skate America, and it was held in Reading this year. I ask the polite question. “How did Calliope do?”
“Good, good. First.”
“She broke her second-place streak?”
He looks up. “What? Oh. No. She always gets first in these early seasonal competitions. Not to take anything away from her,” he adds distractedly. Since he’s not bothered by the mention, I gather that he doesn’t know we spoke. Best to keep it that way. “Okay,” he says. “Here’s what I was working on.”
Cricket sits beside me on his bed. He’s in scientist inventor professional mode, so he’s forgotten his self-imposed distance rule. He pulls out a few illustrations that he’d tucked inside, and he’s rambling about materials and circumferences and other things I’m not thinking about, because all I see is how carefully he’s cradling my binder in his lap.
Like it’s fragile. Like it’s important.
“So what do you think?”
“It looks wonderful,” I say. “Thank you.”
“It’ll be big. I mean, you wanted big, right? Will you have enough fabric?”