Chapter Nine #3
“Ah.” He climbed to his feet. “I’m gonna grab a water. Do you want one?”
“Yes please.”
I watched him go, breathing in the stench of buttery popcorn. He returned with three waters, casting the Zenobia line a quick glance, realizing Phoebe had only moved forward two paces. I thanked him, ignoring the strange fizzle in my chest over the third bottle, presumably for my sister.
“I guess I understand why third grade,” he said. I didn’t realize we were picking up where we left off. “It’s the elementary thing that stumps me.”
I grinned. “You’re not a kid person? But you’re so good with them.”
His thumb scraped at the label of his water. “I like kids. I work with kids. But I have no interest in taking a major role in molding their minds.”
“I get it. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart,” I said, to which he widened his eyes as if to say No shit.
“I didn’t know I wanted to teach until Phoebe.
I helped raise her. I helped teach her how to read.
I witnessed her milestones and I got to feel the same pride my dad felt…
It was magical. I realized how much I loved guiding her and watching her learn and it snowballed from there. ”
“That’s touching,” he said. “How often do you get sick?”
“Not that often.”
“I need numbers.”
“Oh, sorry. I left the graph at home.”
“Is it constant? I went out with a children’s librarian once and she said she was perpetually congested. She sounded like a cartoon mouse.”
My laugh surprised us both; I’d been previously unaware Dex was capable of pleasant conversation, let alone humor, and his eyes sparked as if he liked the sound of it before he blinked away, taking a pull from his water.
Life had been a bit too touch and go for my three things to carry weight lately, and now a new list took up the empty space: Three Things I Like About Dex.
He bought Phoebe a water bottle without prompting.
He researched pit stops even if he didn’t want to take them.
He showed remote interest in my job and, vaguely, me.
Maybe it wasn’t much, but it calmed the storm inside me. If I could keep adding to the list, this trip might not be a catastrophic mistake.
“Sounds like a her problem,” I said with a smile. “I get one or two colds throughout the school year.”
“That’s one or two too many.”
“You’re full of it.”
“Haven’t had a cold in four years.”
“Full. Of. It.”
“I got food poisoning last year. No colds, though.”
“Like, we need to get the Guinness Book people on the phone. No one has ever been so full of it before.”
An ache pinched at my cheek—I was still smiling. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d carried on a conversation with a steady smile, but the amusement lighting up Dex’s neutral expression was so much more interesting than sadness.
“Weak reference,” he said. “No one talks about the Guinness Book anymore.”
“Third graders do,” I pointed out. The corners of his mouth twitched into something dangerously close to a real smile. “There are few things third graders care about more than the Guinness Book of World Records.”
“You need to spend more time with people your own age.”
“You probably do too. How else would you get conned by a fourteen-year-old?”
He scratched at his cheek and the audible scrape sent a little zip down my spine. “Fair enough,” he conceded. I cast Phoebe a quick glance—she’d moved forward another pace, now three people away from the ride—and then shifted on the bench to face Dex.
“So, why Sequest?” I asked. I hadn’t realized how relaxed he’d become until it was sapped out of him, every muscle in his body seeming to tighten at once. “You were asking me about work. I figured it was fair game.”
He wouldn’t even look at me, his gaze fixed on Zenobia as its riders’ screams filled the air.
I’d ruined this somehow. We were vibing, maybe even bonding, and a simple question about work burned down what little progress I’d made.
It took a second for my brain to remind me what exactly Sequest did (assuming it wasn’t a front for anything illegal), and my stomach dropped.
“Wait, shit.” I winced. “You don’t have to answer that if it has to do with, like, your identity.” He looked at me, his expression flat. “Or sexuality. I mean, I’m bisexual, so, you know. Safe space. But it’s none of my business.”
He tipped his head back, letting the sun kiss his skin. “Nice save.”
“I am nothing if not a wreck. You know this about me,” I replied. Across the way, Phoebe stepped up to the attendant with a bright smile. “Ugh. Tell me again that she’ll be okay.”
“She’ll be okay,” he said. “Physically. Mentally, I don’t see how she could ever recover.”
I laughed again and bumped his elbow with mine. “Look at you making a joke.”
“Wasn’t joking.”
I turned back to Phoebe, weighing Dad’s camera in my hands. Before stepping up to the ride entrance, she glanced over and waved, reminding me of the excitable little girl who used to cling to my leg for an hour when I returned home from college.
“Nah,” I said, lifting the camera to my eye to capture the moment. “She’ll be fine.”