Serious Moonlight(37)

“She graded you?”

“It wasn’t hobo school. There were grades, like I said. And tests, which I passed. But I don’t have a diploma, so I never officially graduated. Which makes things complicated for college applications.”

“Whoa. That’s wild. I’ve never met anyone who was homeschooled. I have a million more questions.”

I smiled. “I thought we only got three. And that was your second question for me. By the way, I should get a point for catching you in the clown school lie. And let the record show that I believed you were telling the truth about wood school.”

“And I think you were telling the truth about hobo school—or homeschooling, as you claim.”

“I mean, I can hop a train and heat a can of beans over an open fire like no one’s business.”

“Is that right?” he said, teeth flashing at me in the dark as he grinned. “If I went to wood school, I could probably make you a stick for your hobo sack.”

“A bindle?”

“They have a name for that?”

“You’d know this if you’d gone to hobo school.”

He laughed loudly. The photographer on the other side of the park turned to look at us while I shushed Daniel. And for a moment I became paranoid. Someone was walking around the sculpture in the middle of the park—was it Raymond Darke?

It wasn’t. But it sobered us up.

We were quiet for a long stretch of time, each buried in our own thoughts. My mind went back to when he said he’d done a stupid thing. I desperately wanted to know what that was, but I didn’t want to press him if he wasn’t ready to share it. He was so open about everything; maybe that was off-limits for a good reason. So my mind drifted to other answers I wanted from him. One answer in particular.

I cleared my throat and said, “You agreed with me when I said that what happened the first time we met was a mistake. So why did you post that Missed Connections ad?”

Every casual line on his body straightened at once. “You saw the ad?”

“Only after you told me about it. Before you took it down.”

“Well, I’d found you, so there was no reason to keep it up.”

Oh. “I just assumed you’d changed your mind. About us. You said all that stuff about fate, and then you said maybe you didn’t believe in fate.” And maybe after he spent more time around me at the hotel, he realized I wasn’t his one true destiny. Not that I thought I was. I still barely knew him, and he barely knew me.

He started to answer, changed his mind, and started over again.

“I told myself if you answered the ad, it was a signpost.”

“A . . . ?”

“Signpost. Do you ever feel like the universe is trying to communicate with you? If you just listen hard enough and pay attention to things around you? I know that sounds a little wacky, but it happens to me. Streetlights blink when I walk under them, or I see things I’ve dreamed about . . . It’s hard to explain, but I think sometimes they’re signs. And if I follow them, they lead me to important things. Or important people. And I think I was supposed to meet you for a reason.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I tried to keep the conversation light. “This sounds a lot like fate.”

“Fate will find a way, Birdie.”

“Are you trying to quote Jeff Goldblum? It’s ‘life.’ Life finds a way. Jurassic dinosaur apocalypse, not destiny.”

“Can’t we have both?” he said with a smile. “Look, I’m not trying to get heavy here. I’m just saying, maybe I was supposed to meet you because of Raymond Darke. Or maybe it was for something bigger.” He tugged his ear several times. “As for the other thing, I agreed that us having sex was a mistake because it was. Clearly. It was . . . pretty awful.”

Ah, there it was. My old friend humiliation and its accompanying red face.

“No, no, no,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean . . . I meant, yes, it was awkward at the end, but it started out good. Right? It’s just . . . Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?”

Ugh. He knew? I didn’t want to think about how, but I definitely never told him. Why did I even ask about this? Rewind! Cancel!

After a strained moment, I reconsidered what he’d just asked me and got a little angry.

“Are you blaming me?”

He held up both hands. “Not at all. It just . . . can be different the first time.”

“I’m not an idiot. I’m aware of women’s bodies. I have one.” I was most definitely aware of the pain and the smear of blood that haunted me until I got home, until I cried in the shower and later threw away my underwear—making sure it was well hidden, as if it were a piece of murder evidence. I think I halfway expected Grandma Eleanor to rise from the grave and tell me I was just like my mother. As much as I loved my mom, sometimes I felt I’d never be free of her mistakes . . . or free of Grandma judging me for them, because my mother wasn’t alive to carry the guilt anymore.

Daniel sighed. “This is coming out all wrong.”

“What are you trying to say, then?”

“That . . .” He drew in a fast breath and said, “We were racing like the world was burning down. Like we might get caught. It should have been somewhere else—somewhere private. In a bed, with candles. Or after a date at the top of the Space Needle,” he said, gesturing loosely toward the lit-up white tower in the distance.