Page 108 of The Lost Book of First Loves

“Do you see yourself doing this forever?”

“Who knows what the future brings? For now, I’m okay focusing on today.” He gave a quick smile. “I mean that in the all-encompassingtoday, not this particular moment. Although this one is pretty great.”

During the hour, she had stretched out on his sleeping bag and he had taken the cushion next to her. As he bent over his laptop, she could see his long eyelashes and the half-inch scar he had earned in high school during his first, and as far as she knew, hisonly, fistfight. He would never tell her any details, but she had been horrified by his scrapes and bruises. The cut on his mouth had required two stitches, and he had been suspended for a week, which had cost him his valedictorian status.

“Why did you fight with Austin Burrell?”

He looked up from his laptop, his expression startled. “That’s a bit of a non sequitur, isn’t it?”

She sat up. “I was looking at the little scar by your mouth and it reminded me. You would never say what happened.”

He busied himself on his laptop, but she could see colorflood back to the tips of his ears. “It was a long time ago. Does it matter?”

“Not really, I guess. So why not tell me?”

He gazed at the top of the tent, where raindrops continued to plop, though not as heavily as before. Finally, he closed his laptop and turned to her. “Fine. I’ll tell you. We fought about you.”

She stared, wholly nonplussed. “Me?”

Looking as if he regretted saying anything, he sighed. “After you two went to the homecoming dance together, Austin was saying some... ungentlemanly things about you to the other guys in our weightlifting class. I knew you hadn’t done anything but kiss him, which you had told me about in some detail after the date, if you’ll remember.”

Had she? Shedidn’tremember, though she supposed it wouldn’t have surprised her. She and Xander often used to talk about anything and everything, including the post-game analysis of their respective dates.

Oh, she missed those heart-to-heart talks.

“I called him on it and told him to shut up and stop spreading lies about you. He was pissed and called me a liar. I said I heard straight from you every detail about the kiss, including how he was all tongue and grabby hands.”

Had she really said that? How could Xander remember their conversation word-for-word like that? She could only guess the fight had crystallized those memories into his brain.

“He then called me some derogatory names for a homosexual, which pissed me off. Not at being called names. I didn’t care about that at all. But my friend Gary was also there in the locker room, and at that time I was one of the few he had come out to. I could tell the pejoratives upset him. So I again told Austin to shut the hell up and that’s when he decked me.”

Why hadn’t he told her any of this? She knew about Gary, as he had been her friend as well, and she knew how sensitivehe had been at the time about coming out only to friends he trusted in their small Wyoming town.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Why? None of it was your fault.”

“Except I’m the one who agreed to go out with Austin in the first place and then told you about it, which I shouldn’t have.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he closed his mouth and looked at the tent’s roof again.

“Rain seems to be easing,” he said.

She could tell he was eager to change the subject, but something about the intimacy of the afternoon, enclosed in a small space alone together during a mountain rain shower, gave her courage to ask the question that had been bothering her for days.

“Why did you have all those pictures of me in your room?”

He stared at her, eyes wide with shock. “What?”

“The day I helped you clean out your bedroom, I found an album filled with photographs of me. Some I remember posing for when you had those photography class projects. But there were plenty more I had no idea you had taken.”

Now his entire ears were red, she noticed, and color rose along his neck.

“You were my best friend.”

“You were my best friend, too. But I don’t have an album full of pictures of you.”

“You probably have plenty on your phone.”

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