Page 24 of Not You Again
And Adam thought that was rather endearing, though he wouldn’t dare tell her that. So instead he said, “But did you have a movie tree house?”
“No.” Her eyes flitted down the length of him, then back up, before she said, “More like afilmcouch.”
Something about the way she’d just looked at him, and the wordcouchsent a jolt right to his dick. He readjusted his pants as her eyes blessedly caught on something other than him. Then she reached for his open high school notebook and just as quickly as he’d gotten a hard-on, he hurriedly closed the cover. He didn’t know why—it was just random observations he’d made about the Orion constellation—but these were his private thoughts. She couldn’t just come barging in and peel those things open like he was a banana.
He wasn’t her banana.
“Well, if you were trying to prove that you aren’t a serial killer, this would be evidence against you.” She crossed her arms.
“It’s just... my notebook,” he said lamely. “Of things.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“My high school notebook,” he tried again.
“Ah,” she said knowingly. “Phallic drawings of space shuttles? Notes about how weirdly hot Leela fromFuturamais? Perhaps an erotic story about the earth fucking the moon?”
“The earth cannot fuck the moon, Carly,” he said, fake outraged.
“You’re clearly lacking some imagination there.” She gave him a little grin, and he tried to hide the smile threatening to break across his face, too.
“You are impossible,” he said, but thought,You are not what I expected.
Then there was a stretch of silence, where neither of them knew exactly what to say. Not uncomfortable, just there. He’dalways liked getting to the point in a friendship when not every moment had to be filled with words. And counter to everything he knew about her, Carly didn’t attempt to speak, either.
Adam looked out the window and toward the sky. “It’s about that time,” he said. He grabbed the eclipse glasses from his pocket and handed them to Carly.
He pointed to the shadow bands, which had begun in the clearing below them. “See those? There’s this true mystery in science that only occurs during a solar eclipse—it’s called shadow bands.” He flared out his hands as if presenting the prize on a game show.
She said a very unconvincing, “Okay.”
But he wanted her to get excited about this because it was undeniably cool. “Shadow bands are these gray ripples that flit over the ground. At first, they’re barely visible, like seeing a glitch in your own shadow. But once the moon fully covers the sun, the lines become clear, impossible to ignore. And then when the sun begins to reemerge, the pattern the shadows make reverses, then grows fainter and fainter.”
“Huh. Never noticed them before. What causes them?” Carly asked.
“No one really knows, but no other astronomer in history has had the opportunity to study a total solar eclipse the number of times I have. Not that I’m an astronomer, but you know what I mean.” Adam felt self-conscious as he adjusted the telescope lens. Hewasn’tan astronomer, not even close, so why did he think he had the right to play at being one? There wasn’t much time to analyze, though. Adam gestured for Carly to look. “Let me know as soon as the sun is fully covered.”
Carly lined her eye up with the telescope and watched the sky. Adam’s gaze stayed fixed on his watch. He already knew that she’d tell him to start in three, two—
“Now,” she said.
Adam let out a breath and leaned back into the chair. They had a few minutes left. He wasn’t used to being around another person during this part. Should he... say something?
In very Carly fashion, she went ahead for him. “So, is this where you were when you saw the eclipse the first time?”
“No, I was at my house, with my dad. We watched it on the back porch.” Adam swallowed down the recollection of packing up his suitcase, which had dulled but still hurt. “Where were you?”
Carly was unusually still and stared at a spot just beyond his shoulder. Eventually, she wiped at her cheek, and he realized she’d started to cry. “Ugh, sorry, it’s so dusty up here.”
She turned away, took off the eclipse glasses and handed them back. Then she wiped the lenses of her eyeglasses with a cloth she pulled from the pocket of her dress. A sniffle, and then she said, “I should go. My allergies are acting up. Are you okay without me?”
When she looked back at him—shoulders stiff and nose twitching another sniffle away—he wondered why that question, of all questions, had made her cry. But he didn’t want to prod. The eclipse had happened after her father’s funeral. Maybe the memory was still too raw. He understood that she needed space to process everything, and he’d give her that.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay.” He put the glasses on, and by the time he checked the sky and looked back, Carly was already making her way down the steps of the tree house.
Adam focused on the moon and the sun, his thoughts spinning around what had set Carly off, but also needing to know the time of the eclipse. He waited, and then the moment came when the moon moved. When he looked down at his watch, he saw the time.
He shot up and moved to the door of the tree house. Carlywalked up the hill to where the road was, but he called out to her, “Carly!”
