Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
I stare down at the ground.
He was too intimidated to approach me?
“I always wondered what was going on in your mind,” he says. “I mean, not to sound like a stalker, but I was always curious about you. The quiet guy in his shell. You were a shy one, Noah Reed.”
“I just liked to keep to myself.”
“It’s okay. You can be shy. You can keep to yourself. As long as you’re happy in the ways that matter, that’s all I care about.”
I can’t pull my eyes from the ground suddenly.
How did I not know Cole was paying so much attention to me all this time?
Is he this attentive with everyone in his life?
“Hey, Porridge,” calls out Cole in a singsong voice, then turns serious. “You done with your big criminal investigation? Find any evidence? Dead bodies? Narcotics? No? Good girl.” Porridge starts panting and dancing happily, though I’m not entirely convinced she understands.
Then we’re off again, strolling down the road.
And I stare ahead, still thinking about Cole noticing me back in the day. I find myself trying to recall if there’s any time back in school that I noticed Cole, too. He always seemed so far away. At the school dances, he was across the room with the cool kids, miles away. In the cafeteria, sitting with the popular kids, tables and tables away. In the hall, always crowds upon crowds between us. I’m sure even our lockers were worlds apart.
Yet Cole makes it sound like he had his eye on me the whole time. Like he was aware of me back then. For as observant as I claim to be, how could I not have noticed?
“I feel pretty foolish,” says Cole suddenly, “that I didn’t even know you worked at the newspaper. I guess I’ve been in my own head since graduation. How long have you worked there?”
The answers come automatically. “Three years this May.”
“Really? Wait. So you got hired right after graduating?”
“As an intern, yes. My grandpa used to run the paper before Burton’s dad took over. It was the place I would escape to each day when school let out. There was always work to do there.”
“Your grandpa? Really? I obviously haven’t been paying much attention to anything. My cousins have a farm I help out at from time to time. I think I spent a solid year after graduation just being their unpaid farmhand, doing this and that, fading away like a blade of grass in the field. Farm work is tough and thankless work, I’m telling you. Tough and thankless. Hey, hey, easy girl,” he calls out to Porridge, who started to get jumpy.
I imagine him out in the fields of a farm.
Working hard under the sun.
Shirt long since taken off, tucked into the back of his pants, hanging like a peacock’s tail.
Sweat glistening across his sunburnt skin as he hacks away at the land with a hoe, one swing after the other.
Stopping to wipe his brow of sweat, flicking the tiny beads off, diamonds in the sunlight. Stretching his muscles.
Then gazing my way. Spotting me.
“Tell me, Noah,” the real Cole says, invading my gloriously imaginative thoughts about him working the field, “do you enjoy your job at the paper? Y’know, I heard you are a wizard with your photography, according to Tamika last night.”
“I … I don’t know about that.” Seriously, I can’t wipe the image I gave myself of shirtless Cole sweating in the fields. Or did he give me that image on purpose? Is that why he mentioned the tough, thankless work on his cousins’ farm? “Most of the … uh … the ‘magic’ comes afterwards at the computer, really. Just me, Photoshop, and a keyboard and mouse.”
“I think you’re amazing, Noah.”
“Not really.”
Cole Harding. Shirtless and hot. Sweating in the Spruce, Texas farmlands. Gazing at me from across the gently swaying grass, having stopped to give his hoe a moment’s rest.
A glorious smile breaking across his face. Lifting a hand to wave at me. Me, hardly able to breathe.
I wonder if farmhand Cole gets charley horses, too.
I wonder what he’ll ask me to massage.
Where in the hell are these thoughts coming from?
“Is that what you’re looking for in another person?” he asks. “Someone who’s as much of a wizard at something as you are?”
I keep staring at shirtless Cole in the field. “Wizard? No. I … I don’t need a wizard for a boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend? Ah, okay, didn’t want to presume. I’m gay, too.”
“I know.” Then I snap out of it, bringing my eyes to the very real Cole in front of me. “Wait a sec. We’re supposed to be talking about you. Not me and wizards and what I want in a guy.”
“But what do you want in a guy?” he asks.
And when he asks, he turns toward me.
His presence once again demanding my full attention.