Page 58 of Not Catching Love

I don’t call him on the obvious brush-off because if I do, I might start thinking about sex. “It’s an actual thing. They’re my pets. All very contained in my formicarium, and my place is not at all a hovel.”

“Noted. Your place, it is.”

“I got a queen ant before I left for Ghana, and my friend looked after them while I was gone. They’re thriving.”

Xander wrinkles his cute nose. “You’re … actually excited about them. You like ants.”

“I like bugs.”

“Oh my god.” Xander holds on to the chains and hangs himself right back. “I’m going to marry a freaky little bug man. Why, cruel world,why?”

I drag myself to a stop as well. “You’d be fucking lucky to marry me.”

“Derry, are you proposing? In apark? The same place I was ruthlessly stolen from my parents? I never knew you were so romantic.”

It’s an effort not to roll my eyes. At one point, I might have worried about offending him, but Xander wasn’t lying when he said he gives zero fucks about what anyone says to him. Though, it’s more than that. He’s completely desensitized to what happened in his life, but if Seven, Molly, or one of his roommates upset him, he’d feel it more than the average person would.

Across the park, the mom and her kids leave.

“Come on, that slide has your name on it.”

Xander goes down a few times before peer pressuring me into trying it too. Unfortunately, I’m a lot bigger than he is, and my hips are so lodged in there it takes a painfully long time to reach the bottom, which makes him laugh like an idiot. I spin him on the thing that goes around too quickly until I’m worried it’s going to end up in a head injury, and then he drags me back to the swings.

We watch the sun go down before he stops again, and I slow as well.

Xander turns to look at me, and I have another one of those moments where I’m stunned stupid for a whole second, just by the sight of him.

“Come here.” He loops his arms around both of his swing’s chains and holds them out to me.

I take his hands. “What are we doing?”

“Twist our swings together, then when we let go, we’ll go flying.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Okay, Grandpa.”

Fuck it. I’d wanted to be more fun and remember that ageis only a number, and here’s Xander helping me find that side of myself again. “Let’s go.”

We twist our swings together around and around and around until the tension on the old chains gets so tight I’m sure they’re going to snap. My feet barely reach the ground, and Xander’s definitely don’t. Our knees are crushed between each other’s. Xander’s so close he could lean in and bump our noses together.

“I’m ninety percent sure one of us is going to hurt ourselves,” I say.

He lifts a slight shoulder. “I’m not scared. I don’t think I’ve stopped hurting a day in my life.”

“That’s …Xander…”

His eyes are purple again. I haven’t seen the gray since the day I got home, and he watches me for a long moment. “It’s always so weird seeing people react to the things I say.”

“Why?”

“Because it means nothing to me. I don’t feel it. I don’t connect with it. But you do. That’s …so weird.”

“It’s called empathy.”

“I don’t know if I have that,” he whispers. “I know I’m supposed to.”

There he goes, underestimating himself again. “How would you feel if Molly was sad?”

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