Page 66 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
She deflected his question with a tease: “You Americans think all Caribbean islands are the same.”
“No—” he started, but then confessed. “You’re right. We kind of do.”
She shoved at his shoulder and he caught her hand briefly under his before letting it go. Their eyes met and held. She could tell he’d liked holding her hand as much as she’d liked having it held.
“Tell me how Jamaica is different,” he said.
“For one thing, it’s a lot smaller. More manageable. And I really like that there are a lot of different ethnicities here.”
He leaned back on his elbows and dug his toes into the sand. He asked her a million questions and listened like he wanted her to talk forever.
By now the little girls had unburied their father and were unsuccessfully trying to build a sandcastle while their dad tried to read.
“This is killing me,” Sterling said, and pointed his chin at the girls. “They’re doing it wrong. Their sand is too wet.”
Danica laughed. “Spoken like a know-it-all big brother.”
A second later he was on his feet. He held a hand out for her. “Come on. We’re helping them,” he said.
They spent the next hour with the girls. Sterling had not been bragging about his sandcastle-building skills. By the time they were finished, other beachgoers were taking pictures. The girls’ dad thanked them three times for giving him some time to read. They said their goodbyes and packed up the picnic. The older couple from before strolled by going the other direction. They were still holding hands.
“How long do you think they’ve been together?” Danica asked Sterling.
He stepped closer to her. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I know they started off like this.”
Danica closed the rest of the distance between them and tilted her face up to his. “Second dates are definitely better than firsts,” she said, and then she kissed him.
PHL 007: Classical Conundrums: Determining Whether or Not You Are in Love
Course Overview
This daylong course consists of a series of multiple-choice tests designed to help students determine the status of their heart.
Example questions include:
Can you find the end of your desire to know him? Or does one question lead to countless others, a river with too many tributaries to map and still a desire to map them all?
Does he evoke in you a sense both of calm and of anticipation, as if something unexpected but delightful is just on the horizon?
Do you have a newfound awareness of your skin and the way it shivers—electrified—under his touch?
Course Outcomes
The successful student will begin to understand that the answers to certain types of questions are in your body, not in your mind. Further, she’ll realize that by the time she has enrolled in this course, it’s already too late. She’s already in love.
HRT 005: How to Break a Heart, Your Own and Someone Else’s
