Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,210

thought of her now sent pink heating the tips of his ears, and that was not a good thing.

He followed her movement all the way over to the chair where she stopped.

“Okay. Do you mind if I sit out here?”

What was he going to do? Say no to that? “Uh, yeah, sure. That’s fine. Whatever.”

Looking incredibly beautiful in that casual way she had about her, she sat sideways in the chair with her legs dangling over the side, plopped her laptop on her lap, and tapped in her earbuds. Greg glanced over to her screen and he puzzled. She was watching Hamilton again. By his calculations, she had to have seen the thing at least twice since they’d watched it in class. He wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to upset her. Going back to his political science with considerable effort, he wished he had paid more attention to the parts in the movie about the Constitution. It might have helped him understand some of this. Anything had to be better than the way he was trying to learn it.

It was when they were eating lunch that Taylor started to think that one of the guys might say something about her moving and Greg would be hurt that she hadn’t told him. However, she was still trying to figure out how to say it without him thinking she was saying it to get him to jump in and help her with the move. He would, she knew. The second she told him, he would start rearranging his schedule and his life to help her. She didn’t want that.

“It’s all important,” he was saying of political science and history and science. “I’m not saying it’s not important, but how many details like that can one person reliably hold? Somehow I’m supposed to know chemical balancing and the entire periodic table, every detail of the Constitution—every clause and intention of all of the articles, all of it, and the hero’s journey, whatever that is…”

“Oh,” Taylor said, jolting out of her own thoughts at that. She jumped to her feet and headed down the hallway. “Okay, don’t shoot me.”

“Why would I…?”

Coming back in, she laid the little book on the table next to him. He puzzled over it for a brief second before picking it up.

“What? I’m…? When?”

She smiled. “I figured that would save you a trip,” she said of the copy of ‘Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey’ she had picked up at the bookstore on Friday after Clara had dropped her off. “You needed it, right?” Sitting down, she went back to her meal.

“I… Yeah.” The chair caught him as he fell back against it. His eyes were filled with surprise and confusion. “But you didn’t have to…”

Taylor shrugged. “I know, but you’ve been so great helping me out, I figured I should do something…” Looking up, her eyes caught on his and held until she began to think he might be upset. “Is that… okay?”

“I… Yeah,” he said, looking down at the book. “But you really didn’t have to.”

“Well, you didn’t have to do any of this.” She dropped her gaze to her spaghetti and willed the right words to come. “Listen, Greg, I wanted to tell you…” When she lifted her gaze, she found his, puzzled and almost sad. “What?”

The breath he released was one small sigh. “You.” He was struggling for words. “You cook. You clean.” He picked up the little book. “You go and get me stuff so I don’t have to. You study and you make me study, which, let’s face it, is a God-given miracle.”

“I’m just trying to be the friend I think you always deserved but never got.”

Time froze as he looked at her. “What?”

Taylor knew it, and she knew he knew it too. “I guess I’m just seeing things a lot differently these days.” She put her gaze down. “I know you didn’t have to do any of this. You didn’t have to stay, but you did. You didn’t have to try to figure out my screwed up life, but you did, or at least you tried.” It took willpower to bring her gaze up to his, and even more to hold it there because his soft eyes were overflowing with confusion. “You didn’t have to do any of it, but you did. And I’m not sure how to thank you or repay you or whatever, so I cook some and clean some, and I hope maybe I give a little back of