Page 147 of The Moment You Know

He texted her back almost immediately.

DAVID: I wouldn’t say it sounds odd, but my birthday isn’t until February …

DAVID: And I’m a little hurt you don’t remember that. It’s Groundhog Day, after all.

PAIGE: Very funny. And it’s not a birthday gift.

DAVID: Well if it’s a Christmas gift, then I can wait until Christmas morning to open it. Unless it’s time sensitive, like a ticket to the sold out Foo Fighters concert next week.

PAIGE: Oh, boy. If a ticket to the Foo Fighters is what you’re hoping for, then what I actually have for you is going to be really disappointing.

PAIGE: Let’s start over.

PAIGE: This might sound odd, but I have a gift for you.

DAVID: I wouldn’t say it sounds odd, but my birthday isn’t until February …

PAIGE: Oh, my God …

Her phone almost immediately chimed with an incoming FaceTime request from David. She stared at it for a moment before accepting the request.

“What am I doing wrong?” David asked with raised eyebrows when she answered. “You said to start over.”

Paige sighed, embarrassed. “God, I’m sorry. I got this gift for you and now I feel weird about giving it to you.”

“Well, the sooner you give it to me, the sooner you can quit feeling weird about it. So, maybe you should give it to me as soon as possible.”

“Okay. How about—”

“Today would be good.”

“Today?”

She looked so comically shocked that he almost laughed; it also made him wonder what the gift was that had her in such a twist. “Sure, why not? Unless you’re busy?”

“I’m not, but—”

“Today it is, then,” he said, then added pointedly, “Jacob won’t be home until 5 p.m., so my afternoon is wide open.”

“All right.”

When she got to his place, David opened the door wearing a pair of gray sweatpants that she recognized from before they got married and noted they had more holes than they used to. Yet despite the rattiness, the sweats fit him very well and made her think of all the gray sweatpants memes she’d seen … and now totally understood.

He was also wearing a shirt with a ‘Scoops Ahoy’ logo on it and Paige smiled at seeing his homage to the show Stranger Things. “Nice shirt,” she commented, as he let her inside.

“You can buy anything on Amazon. I almost got the shirt with the Hawkins Middle School logo on it, but in the end, I had to go with this one. Because … Steve Harrington.”

“Is Steve your favorite character?”

“Of course. He has that great hair,” he told her, closing the door behind her.

Paige laughed, looking over David’s hair, which was down (and in her opinion, put Steve Harrington’s hair to shame). “My favorite character is Eleven, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I have a shirt that says, ‘In a world full of tens, be an Eleven’.”

“Nice.”

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