Page 69 of Sounds Like Love

“No world travel. No hiking. No skiing. Just LA and here.”

“Mom said you come back every summer?”

I nodded. “Every summer.”

“Bet your parents love that.”

“They do.”

He finished off his ice cream, but kept tapping his spoon into the bottom, as if he was trying to dig for the right way to say something. Finally he settled on, “I heard about your mom. I’m sorry. Wyn was—is—one of the coolest people I know.”

“She is,” I agreed.

“If there’s anything I can do …”

I began to nibble at the edge of my cone, and then stopped. “I think I just don’t want to talk about it. If that’s okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, no, I get it. That’s okay. I can …” And he racked his brain. “Oh! I can tell you about my first apartment in Boston and all my roommates.” Wordlessly, he held out his hand to take my ice cream, sensing that I was done—and I was—so I gave it to him to throw in the next trash can that we passed.

“Oh no, how many roommates?”

“Over a hundred”—he replied with an expectant pause, his eyes glimmering in that boyish way they always did when he had a secret—“rats.”

For the next thirty minutes, Van and I chatted about his life in Boston and my life in LA, picking things up again like we hadn’t been separated by nine years, and that old and withered spark deep in my heart flickered to life like a long-lost friend. It didn’t make me want to create, but it made me feel lighter all the same.

I liked the feeling of being in someone’s eye.

We walked to the end of the pier and back again, and by the time we were nearing the beach, I had gotten up enough courage to ask what he was doing the rest of the night, but just as I started to, he said, “Next time, we’ll have to do dinner.”

And the courage evaporated in my chest. “I—yes.” Was I too fast to reply? Did I sound too hopeful?

He smiled. “Great. Next week? Say, Wednesday night? The Rev is still closed on Wednesdays, right?”

“It is.”

“Cool. I’ll text you the details,” he said. Then he bent to me and pressed a kiss on my cheek. He smelled new—it was a cologne I didn’t recognize. “Until next week, Joni,” he murmured against my ear.

“See you,” I echoed, wondering if he was going to kiss me, if he’d taste like bacon ice cream, but he simply took off in a jog again, and I watched him dodge tourists down the boardwalk, running out of sight.

“And look at that,”Sasha said, his voice neutral and cool,“you got yourself a date. You look happy.”

I do?

“You’re smiling, at least.”

I was? I touched my mouth—Iwas.I hadn’t even realized. Wait, if Sebastian could see me, then did that mean—

I looked around the boardwalk, seeing only tourists and a magician setting up in front of a magic-themed bar, until my eyes settled on a man in a garish Hawaiian shirt with sunglasses sitting on a bench facing the beach, two empty Italian ice cups at his side. I moved them to sit down beside him. “You’ve been busy.”

He shrugged. “You were right about the shirt.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied smartly.

“And it’s comfortable, too. Maybe this is my new style. What do you think—could I land Sexiest Man Alive with it?” And he struck a hammed-up pose, cheeks sucked in, shoulders angled.

I laughed, and then tried to school my face into a serious nod. “Oh yes, absolutely.”

He snorted and relaxed back onto the bench. “I think we should take tomorrow off, bird.”

---