Coming Home(19)

Danny reached over, taking the piece of lettuce out of her hand. He turned it over a few times as if examining it before he shoved the entire thing in his mouth.

“Totally doable,” he mumbled incoherently.

“Mmm. Not to mention extremely attractive,” Leah said, and he chewed his mouthful of food, smiling triumphantly.

“You have dimples when you smile.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” he laughed.

When Leah didn’t respond, he said, “So, was there a point to that comment, or were you just stating the obvious?”

She kept her eyes on her salad as she continued to cut. “Just stating the obvious, I guess.”

He laughed softly before he leaned on the table with his forearms. “Dimples turn you on.”

“What?” she scoffed.

“Oh, sorry. I thought we were still stating the obvious.”

“Oh my God,” she laughed, pointing at him with her fork. “You are cocky as hell.”

“Nah, not really. I just like it when you blush.”

“I’m not blushing,” she mumbled, pressing the backs of her fingers against her cheek.

He smiled before he said, “So, what’s the deal? Gram said you used to live in her house?”

Leah nodded. “We moved when I was twelve, though. It was so nice of her to let me see the inside. Up until that point, I still kind of felt like that house was mine.” She shrugged bashfully. “Silly, huh?”

“Not at all,” he said sincerely.

She took a deep breath, seeming to contemplate something before she said, “Like in the side yard. There was this block of concrete that cracked all the way through when my dad dropped his toolbox on it, so he had to remove all the broken pieces and re-pour it. And my sister and brother and I—we all put our hands in it while it was drying.” She smiled. “We were pretending we were movie stars. And so my mom came out and caught us, and we totally thought she was going to yell at us.” Leah shook her head as she said, “But instead she leaned down and put her hand in it too. And then we all wrote our initials underneath with a popsicle stick, and my mom wrote the date.”

Leah looked down at a strand of her hair as she twirled it through her fingers. “Obviously you know it’s not there anymore. When I first saw that it was gone, I got really upset, but then I realized I’ll always remember that story, even if there’s no physical proof of it in that yard. Just like everything else that happened in that house.” She released her hair and looked up at him.

It felt like his heart stopped beating.

Say something.

“If you really think about it,” she said, “most of the memories you have from when you’re small aren’t actually yours. They’re given to you by other people, either from a picture, or a story, or a video. We’re told or shown that it happened to us, and it becomes one of our memories. But that day with the cement?” She shrugged. “That was the first memory that was actually mine.”

He blinked at her, nearly choking on the words that were stuck in his throat.

“Anyway,” she said with a wave of her hand. “It was just really nice of her to invite me in. It was the highlight of my day. Everything pretty much went to hell after that.”

“Right,” he said distractedly. “You lost the bracelet.”

“Well, that, and then the flat on I-95.”

Danny ran his hand through his hair. “That’s a pretty shitty place to get a flat,” he said, trying to get his bearings. The further they got from the moment, the harder it became for him to say the words.