Page 72 of Seeing Grayscale

“Yes.”

“I refuse to eat watermelon unless it’s seedless because I’m terrified of the seeds growing in my stomach.”

“What?!” I blurt through a deep laugh, lifting off him to see his face.

He’s blushing so deeply that it makes his beard look red. “There was this episode on Rugrats, okay? It scarred me for life. And did you know that evenseedlesswatermelons still have seeds? I used to sit there, picking those clear bastards out for ten minutes before ever taking a bite.”

I’mdying.

My bellowing hysterics are so loud they echo off the walls while I double over, holding my stomach. He starts giggling, covering his face with his hands.

“It is pretty funny,” he agrees through his palms, snorting a little.

“You do know that’s not a real thing, right?”

Peeking through splayed fingers, Hunter looks downright embarrassed. “Iknow,” he says, dropping his hands while I try to calm down. “But it’s like…an irrational fear. I don’t know why.”

Now that I’m thinking about it, I can confidently say mine isn’t any less ridiculous. “I’m afraid of quicksand.”

“Quicksand?”

“Yeah. Like in The Princess Bride? I remember watching that movie with my mom, having a full-on panic attack when Wesley dives into it after Buttercup.Why did he do that? WHY!”

His head tosses back as he howls. “We don’t live anywherenearquicksand.”

“Hence, I don’t have any desire to go to a desert. You never know where it is, either. You could just be walking along, minding your business, and BAM,” I slap my hands together for emphasis, “you’re now drowning in a dark, sandy hole that slowly squishes you and suffocates you.”

He shudders. “That does sound terrifying.”

“Right!” I bark, slapping his knee.

Leaning forward, our faces close, he grins. “I used to pee in the pool. Every. Time.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“My mom would tell me that there was a chemical in the water that’d turn it bright green if you peed. So I tested it out. Never happened.”

I crack up at that. “So it was spiteful urine.”

Nodding with a goofy grin, he agrees. “Sure was. And besides,” he snorts, “I felt like a badass whenever I got away with doing it.”

“You rebel.” His eyes are sparkling, and the smile on his face is so bright and gorgeous that it takes me a minute to find something else to say. “I used to wish I could be The Predator.”

“Like, the alien?”

I nod fast. “How fucking cool would it be to have cloaking abilities and see heat? The color scope alone would be so badass, but then you factor in the invisibility and the stealth. Man.” I sigh wistfully, remembering how I’d run around the backyard, pretending I was some lethal monster.

He grabs his glass from the table, polishing off the rest of its contents. I do the same; the burn is almost unrecognizablenow that my whole body is going numb. Hunter yanks me by the wrist, crushing me back into our original spots, and I go willingly.

“I used to pretend I was an airplane,” he admits shyly. It’s so cute. “Would take the boxes from my mom’s wine delivery, cut them to size, and strap them to my arms like wings.”

“You’ve always wanted to fly,” I whisper.

“Always,” he says sadly before his head drops on top of mine. “What other weird stuff did you do as a kid?”

“I didn’t eat my boogers.”

He chuckles. “Me either. But I got really good at fli—”

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