“Another picnic?”
He sets out a thermos and two mugs. “Too predictable?”
“Predictable can be good.” The deepest part of me needs predictable. Needs to know that the things I rely on—the people I rely on—will be here tomorrow and then some.
“Consider this my small thanks for believing in me. No one’s ever done that before.” He pours two mugs of hot chocolate and I take a sip. Alec sets two croissants onto plastic plates. “One’s chocolate and one’s almond.”
“Chocolate, please.”
He grins, slides that plate in front of me. “I know it’s not a Thanksgiving feast on top of a mountain the way you’re used to.”
Tears creep up behind my eyes for his remembering the details of my holiday tradition with my father. “It’s perfect. No, it’s beyond perfect.”
“I wish it could be more. Next year will be even better. We’ll plan it together.”
“Next year?” I round my hands along the outside of the mug, my palms warming.
“I hope so.” His eyes send me a pleading gaze. “Is that too much pressure?”
“No.” The word, a whisper.
“So it’s cool to tell you that nothing really mattered BZ?” He winks. “Before Zephyr.”
“Catchy. And totally cool.” I bite on my growing smile, one which Alec returns. It’s the same for me. Alec stops me craning my neck to stare at the past. And he’s made me feel worthy of Boston College. The campus is no longer some shadowy nirvana that only people with perfect families can access. He makes me feel like I belong. Here. There. Wherever I journey in between.
The minutes slip away as we skate together across the lake. The sun sits low on the horizon by the time I notice how cold I am. We duck into his car and my fingers crave the heat blowing from the dash. Alec pulls me close, lays me on his lap. I stare up at him as he strokes my hair. The windows fog instantly and I catch Alec’s hand as he reaches for the defroster.
“Don’t. It’s like being in a cloud.”
Alec’s fingers fall back into my curls. “How do you always know the perfect thing to say?”
“Hah! I think the same thing about you.”
He laughs. “So we should just hang out in our cloud and say perfect things to each other?”
“That would be heaven.”
“Favorite day of the week?” he prompts.
“Sunday. It even sounds lazy.” I cherish this familiar game that has become so much more than a game. The words seem simple, but they build a trust that feels deeper and stronger than anything I’ve ever known. “Favorite flower?”
“Tulip. It’s kind of the only one I know.” He laughs. “Favorite indulgence.”
You. “My handmade back scratcher. For all those hard to reach places. Favorite time of day?”
“Midnight. The bridge between one day and the next. Favorite spice?”
“Pepper.” I bite my lip and smirk. “It’s kind of the only one I know.”
He bends to kiss my forehead. “Well, we’ll have to change that.”
He asks me for my keys then and jumps into the cold. I watch him in the rearview mirror as he starts my car. My stomach drops. Is the day over? Something like regret washes through me, but why? And then as Alec ducks his body back into his seat, I know. He raises his hands to the vent, rubs them together furiously. I study his hands and know I want them on me in all the unexpected ways he’s explored me before. I feel robbed of his touch and the loss makes me shudder.
“Cold?”
“I’m fine,” I say, because how can I tell him that I crave his physical attention, that I feel lost without it?
“Follow me to my place?”
Favorite question? That one.
• • •
On Alec’s couch, I stress about trying to appear casual as he cooks dinner, but when he returns to his living room, he looks dejected.
“It’s ruined.”
“What?”
“I made eggplant parmesan but . . .” He sits, hangs his head in his hands. “I swear I turned the oven off. I just left it in there, you know, until we got back. I was going to heat it up.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I promised you dinner out, but then I wanted you to taste one of my dishes, show you I’m not crap at cooking. Turns out, I am.”
I rub at his back. “You can’t stress over one burned dinner.”
“It’s not just one dinner. It’s your dinner.” He pulls away quickly. “And please don’t tell me what I can stress over.”
I raise my hands in surrender.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that.” His tone is softer, but a vein at his temple throbs.