Page 8 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“What’s your favorite season?” I decided to ask him, a whisper when he lined back up beside me.

He looked at me another long moment, his dimple making a slow, small appearance, before he whispered back, “Fall.”

And that look, that word and the way he said it anchored my instincts about him.

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Adam was a talker. He prattled on about everything we passed, throwing his hands around, and I smiled over his enthusiasm for the performance, as sardonic as it was. It seemed like he was humoring me while he’d rather have been doing anything else besides explaining where he grew up. And I was humored, watching him a few paces ahead, barely listening, my distracted brain only focusing in on what it thought was important. I wanted to be shown around. To kind of be guided through where I’d be staying for however long that would be.

I wanted to let myself just breathe in my surroundings—their voices, their laughs, their body heat when our almost distracted strolling brought each of them in closer, the occasional gravel beneath my flip flops, the stroke of the breeze—while batting away warnings of what could happen when the sun put me back in the light.

I had to live in this moment in case it was the only one, while hoping it wasn’t, and that this was the night my own story was finally being written.

But I didn’t want to live inside the pages of a book. For sure, I wanted the fairytale. Who didn’t? But I wanted toexperience. I wanted somethingreal. So real it lived inside ofme. So real I could touch it and taste it, have it consume my every breath and heartbeat.

I wanted to be…overwhelmed.

We didn’t make it to the main part of town, and we didn’t go down any neighborhood streets, but Adam pointed his out when we passed the next strip.

The light in the window on that street from earlier lit up inside my mind, and I asked him if his house had the garden out front. He said yes. And a corner of my mouth lifted the smallest bit.

Not aClara.But anAdam.

Levi pointed his street out and the name slipped into a spot in my memory.

Levi was the opposite, the opposer. He loved Rosalee Bay. That also had me smiling, because I wanted to love it, too, as he and Adam argued in a friendly way back and forth over the ordinary versus the extraordinary.

“This town isn’t all that, but it has a few things,” Adam added in at one point.

“This town is great,” Levi argued, copying the way Adam threw his arms around, but adding a spin, as if to let our past and present surroundings speak for themselves.

Then, with me wearing a beam I tried to simmer down from watching him now, he leaned in and mock-whispered, “He’s lived here his whole life and still doesn’t know where to look.”

Adam, a few paces ahead again, spun around now, but to face our snickers, his steps halting, then ours. “Wanna bet on that?”

Those words tickled my spine straighter as the angst between the boys hovered around us like a fog.

My smile wobbled as I caught Levi’s fading, a bit of a twitch in his stare on Adam, who grinned in response and started skipping backward.

“Let’s go,” he called to us, and I hurried off after him, Levi’s speed jump started by mine.

We ran like a bear had escaped the woods around us and was on the chase. Giggles held themselves inside my chest as I thought about how we must’ve looked if anybody could see us.

We stopped at some dead end, a patch of grass leading down to more trees, and stared down the hill as we calmed our breathing. We were winded, our hair having gotten the brunt, messy from being blown all over. But my adrenaline was rushing too much for me to care about how I looked now.

“Ready for this?” Adam asked me with his grin back in place.

“Adam,” Levi said, a tension in his tone, and I discovered his dimple also made a small appearance when he scowled.

The fog thickened as Adam scoffed him a laugh. “What? You know it’ll be fine.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

That word again. But Levi wasn’t imitating somebody else. He wasn’t leaving anything to smile about.

“What’s dangerous about it if I’m still here? It’s fine,” Adam repeated. “She wants adventure,” he added with some emphasis, gesturing to she—me.

“What is it?” I interjected, pressing for what was going on so I could actually make a decision.

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