This Is What Happy Looks Like(28)

“Okay,” she said, tossing the last of her ice-cream cone to the seagulls that were milling about nearby. “Time to pay up.”

She fished a pencil out of her bag, then grabbed a menu from the pile stacked beneath a rock in the middle of the table and flipped it over, sliding it across to Graham. He wiped his hands on his shorts and frowned.

“I never said I was good,” he told her, taking the pen. “Just that I liked doing it.”

“That’s the best kind of good.”

“Any requests?”

“One of your cities,” she said as he bent his head over the paper. He could feel her watching him as he drew, sketching out a series of boxes. He’d been telling the truth; he wasn’t good. It was really more geometry than art, what he did, but he felt himself settling into the motion, the precision of the lines and the sureness of the corners. There was something methodical about it, something cathartic; when he drew, the rest of the world fell away.

He’d filled nearly half the page before she spoke again, and her words startled him enough that his pencil ripped a tiny hole in the paper. He rubbed at it, trying to smooth it out again, then glanced up.

“Sorry,” he said. “What?”

“That woman recognized you.”

He held the pencil very still and felt his muscles go tense. “Yes.”

“That must be…”

He waited for her to say what everyone else always said: That must be cool. Or that must be weird. That must be disconcerting. That must be a dream come true. That must be interesting or awful, crazy or bizarre.

Instead, she shook her head and started again. “That must be hard.”

He raised his eyes, but said nothing.

“It would be for me, anyway. All those people recognizing you. All those cameras. All those eyes.” She lifted her shoulders. “It must be really, really hard.”

“It is,” he said, because it was. Because it was like walking around with your skin turned inside out, tender and pink and shockingly exposed.

But at the moment, the only person looking at him was Ellie, and that was different. He didn’t want to think about all the rest of it.

“You get used to it,” he said, though it wasn’t exactly true. It was just a thing to say when the truth was too hard to explain.

She nodded, and he turned back to his drawing, finishing up the last few buildings, putting in the windows and the doors, tending to the stairs and the sidewalks, adding the occasional flowerpot or fire escape. There was a world to be built right there on the page, and Graham didn’t look up again until he’d finished.

“Ta-da,” he said eventually, sliding it across the rough wood of the picnic table. Ellie propped an elbow on either side of it, and he could see only the top of her red hair as she studied it for what felt like forever.

Finally, she looked up at him. “Seems like a nice place to live.”

“Probably not as nice as Maine.”

“Except they have whoopie pies there,” she said, pointing to a squat building he’d labeled “Whoopie Pie Factory.”

“They have them here too,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find them.”

“Aren’t you gonna sign your work?” she asked, nudging the drawing back over to him, and for a second, he hesitated, all the usual alarm bells going off in his head. But this was different; he knew she wouldn’t sell it online, or let it fall into the hands of bloggers or photographers or journalists, all the many wolves that paced the perimeters of his life. He scrawled his name across the bottom of the page, then started to fold it, matching up the corners, but she reached out and grabbed his hand.

“Don’t,” she said, and he stopped. But even so, she didn’t let go. Her hand felt hot against his, and it sent a jolt straight through him. After a moment, her cheeks flushed pink and she pulled away, turning to take a small book from her bag.

“You can’t fold it,” she said, holding the page between two fingers and slipping it neatly inside the cover of the book. “You’ll ruin it.”

“Doesn’t something have to be valuable first?” he joked. “Before it can be ruined?”

“Anything can be ruined,” she said with a little shrug as she rose to her feet.

Graham stood too, and as he did, the stone heart fell out of his pocket, rolling to a stop on the grass near the foot of the bench. Ellie was already making her way back toward the road, but he paused to pick it up, examining it for a moment before slipping it back into his pocket, where he hoped it would remain safe.

From: [email protected]

Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 6:32 PM

To: [email protected]

Subject: if you get lost…

I know you said you didn’t need directions, but in case you’ve forgotten, the address is 510 E. Sunset. It’s the yellow house on the corner. (Which, coincidentally, looks a little like the whoopie pie factory in your drawing…)

Chapter 9

They parted at the top of Sunset Drive, and Ellie followed the road the rest of the way on her own. The sea air was heavy this evening, and a fog was rolling in, making everything look indistinct and slightly unreal. But she barely noticed; she was too busy thinking about the last few hours: the way Graham had looked up from his drawing, the way he’d grinned at her across the candy store, the way his hair curled slightly at the back of his neck as she followed him up the beach.