Today Tonight Tomorrow(45)
This close, I can tell his freckles aren’t just one color, but a whole spectrum of reddish brown. Long lashes brush the lenses of his glasses. They’re a shade lighter than his hair, and I’m mesmerized by them for a moment—how delicate they are, a hundred tiny crescent moons.
When his eyes flick open to meet mine, I immediately drop my hand from his shoulder, as though I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t be. Something my fourteen-year-old self with “destroy Neil McNair” as her ultimate goal would be very, very disappointed by.
Besides, an average amount of shoulder-comforting time has passed.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and we’ve been quiet for so long that his words jolt me. He has nothing to apologize for. I should stand up. It’s strange sitting on his bed like this, but even though I’m no longer touching him, I can’t seem to make myself move. “I didn’t know I was still so messed up about this. My parents, they got divorced a couple years ago,” he continues, swiping at the tear tracks on his face. “We’ve all been in therapy, which has helped a lot. And my mom’s started dating again. Christopher, that’s her boyfriend. It’s extremely weird that my mom has a boyfriend, but I’m happy for her. And I’m not ashamed of not having money,” he adds. “I’m ashamed of what he did to us.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I say again. Softly. “Truly.”
“It’s the last day,” he says. “It’s not anything you can use against me now.” He gives what sounds like a forced laugh. “Or the crying.”
“Never,” I say emphatically. I want him to know it is okay to cry around me, that it’s not a sign of weakness. “I swear. I wouldn’t have. Even if we were going to school on Monday.” I wait for him to meet my eyes again. “Neil. You have to believe I’d never have done something like that.”
Slowly, he nods. “No, you’re right.”
“We can change the subject,” I say, and he lets out an audible exhale.
“Please.”
I spring to my feet, unable to handle the reality of being on Neil McNair’s bed any longer. It feels warm in here, despite the low thermostat setting. The bookshelves feel like a much safer part of the room.
“When you said you were a fan… wow. You might have more copies than my parents.”
He kneels next to me, examining the books. “Don’t laugh, but—they were like this adventure I felt like I’d never get to have,” he says. “We’ve gone on every car trip imaginable in the Pacific Northwest, but I’ve never been on a plane. The Excavated books were a way for me to experience it all. It used to make me sad that I didn’t have that… but I knew I would someday.”
“Next year,” I say softly. “I hear college is something of an adventure.”
He spends a lot of time assessing the bookshelves, pulling a few books out, glancing at the covers, chuckling. If it weren’t Neil McNair, it would be adorable. Maybe it still kind of is.
Everything that happened to me in elementary school and middle school made it into a book somehow. The book where Riley gets her first period, the one that got some pushback from parents because apparently basic functions of the human body are taboo, is based on my own experience. I got mine on a sixth-grade field trip to a museum, and I told a teacher I thought I must have injured myself because I was bleeding—which in hindsight is strange because I knew what periods were. When she asked where I was bleeding, I pointed in between my legs, and she quickly found me a pad. I spent the rest of the day hoping no one would notice the bulge in my pants, which I was positive everyone could see.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I hope Neil doesn’t bring that one. As much as this kind of thing doesn’t usually faze me, I would really like to not discuss my period or Riley’s in Neil McNair’s bedroom.
“There’s this word in Japanese: tsundoku,” Neil says suddenly. “It’s my favorite word in any language.”
“What does it mean?”
He grins. “It means acquiring more books than you could ever realistically read. There’s no direct translation.”
“I love that,” I say. “Wait. What’s that in the back?”
“Nothing,” Neil says quickly, but I’m reaching for the familiar cover, the woman in a wedding dress. Vision in White by Nora Roberts. The romance novel I wrote about freshman year.
“Huh. Isn’t this interesting.” My grin cannot be contained.
He fists a hand in his hair. “I—uh—got it used. Later in freshman year. I thought maybe I’d been… a bit of a dick about it? I figured, maybe you were onto something, maybe I should read it if I was going to pass such harsh judgment on it. It’s the way so many people talk about romance novels, right? I was young, and I guess I thought it was cool to make fun of things I didn’t really understand? I wanted to give it a chance.”
“And what did you think?”
“I… liked it,” he admits. “It was well written, and it was funny. It was easy to get invested in the characters. I could see why you loved it.”
He is surprising me in so many ways.
“I’ll take it off my list of potential book reports. There are three more books in the series, though,” I say. “Wow. My head is just reeling. From everything.” I open it up, freezing when I land on the copyright page. “Wait. This is a first edition? Are you serious?”