Page 16 of Taking Denver

Denver continues swiping through her photos when I spot something familiar. “Wait, go back.”

She does, and I stare at the photograph of a sunset, an orange sky broken up by silhouetted buildings.

“You live in San Francisco.”

She nods. “Yeah. It’s the view from my rooftop. Why?”

Placing my drink on the low coffee table, I search through my phone for the photo I know I still have. It’s a different angle, lower because I’d been out running when I took it, but it’s undoubtedly the same view.

Denver holds her phone beside mine, the colors in the photo almost identical, and she taps each screen to bring up the photo information.

“The dates are the same,” she says. Goosebumps warm my neck. She’s right. The dates are the same, the timing only minutes apart. Not only do we live in the same city, but we’re barely ten minutes away from each other. When Denver was standing on a rooftop and taking this photo, I had paused a jog and done the same. “That’s a little freaky,” she adds, grinning.

It is a little freaky. It feels like Denver careened into my life without warning, a tornado whipping up things I’d thought were nailed down, but she’d been close. Maybe we’d even walked by each other before.

She clears her throat. “Hungry?”

I nod quickly, taking in a breath as if being around her is akin to being submerged. “Sure.”

Thirty minutes later, Denver is trying to throw M&Ms into my mouth. “Would you rather…” She pops a blue chocolate into her mouth as she thinks. “…have to enter every room doing cartwheels, backflips, or dancing?”

“That’s tough,” I say, sitting up. “I give bad news sometimes. I can’t backflip into a room and tell someone their dog’s leg is broken.”

“Well, you can’t dance into a room and do it, either.”

I think for a minute. “I think cartwheels.”

“Cartwheels!” She shoves my shoulder. “You’re giving up the chance to be the amazing backflipping vet?”

I laugh, almost choking on the chocolate, and Denver grins.

“If you had to eat a color?” I ask, holding out an M&M. She sucks it out of my palm like a vacuum.

“Purple. You?”

“Red, every time. Biggest regret?”

She looks at me pointedly. “That’s too serious. Biggest ick?”

I hum thoughtfully. It’s been a long time since I’ve dated anyone long enough to have discovered an ick.

“Oh.” I click my fingers. “She held her fork in her right hand.”

Denver chokes on her laugh. “You’re not serious!”

“It was weird!” I say. “It made me think I’d been living my life backward. I stared at her the entire date, wondering what the hell was wrong with the picture, and then I realized.” Denver continues laughing, and the sound does something wonderful and fizzy in my chest. “How about you?”

She sighs contentedly. “He made me rate our sex out of ten every time we did it.”

I laugh loudly. “He didn’t.”

“He did. I’d barely have caught my breath from all the faking,” she says, and I laugh harder, “and he’d be like, ‘Denver, that was an eight, right?’” She wrinkles her nose. “It was never an eight.”

“That’s rough. Why didn’t you just break up with him?”

She shrugs, a small smile tugging on her lips, but her eyes portray something different. Longing. Maybe even guilt. “Because he used to text me goodnight.” My smile fades slightly. “Every night. Without fail. And we only dated for three months, but that’s nearly a hundred texts.” She plays with her fingers. “That’s a hundred times he thought of me.”

The armor around Denver Luxe is well-worn but sturdy, held together with witty remarks and her ability to silence people with a look. I’ve been in her presence very little, but I can see how she hides herself, how the easy questions matter more than the ones that tell her true character. But a crack forms from a seemingly innocent story, small enough to miss if I hadn’t been looking. But I am looking. And I see her through the metal and memories, and I’m starting to think I like what she’s hiding.

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