“To answer your question, babe, no, I am not okay.”

She was silent for a moment, then with a quiet voice asked, “You’d care if something happened to me?”

I stared at the wall.

What the fuck?

“You serious, Wild?”

“You give a shit about me.”

She stated this. It wasn’t offered up as a question.

I rubbed at my face.

How the fuck could she think I didn’t?

“Yeah. I do, Syd. I give a shit about you.”

Exposing that about myself should’ve felt strange and maybe a little wrong, but it didn’t. I wanted her to know. I wanted Sydney to understand why I was reacting this way and why I would always react this way.

If she was expecting feelings to be left out of this, whatever this was between us, it was too fucking late for that.

I heard her soft breathing in my ear as I moved to the leather chair facing the desk and collapsed into it.

“My mom sent me pamphlets on marriage counseling in the mail today,” she began, this time without a hint of amusement in her voice.

I knew she was no longer smiling. In fact, I pictured her sitting on her bed and twisting a lock of hair around her finger, an admitted habit of hers, and doing this while her eyes remained downcast and her shoulders slouched.

Her mom always took the fire out of her when they spoke. I fucking hated it.

She sighed, then continued.

“Like I’d even consider counseling with Marcus at this point. So Tori suggested we put them in a pot and set them on fire, which I thought was a great idea because it would destroy all evidence of those stupid pamphlets.” She took a deep breath. “We did. It got a little out of control when bits of flaming paper started floating out of the pot and onto her carpet, but Tori has a fire extinguisher so we were able to put it out.”

“You didn’t get hurt?” I asked.

“No. Not at all …” Her voice trailed off. “Are you mad at me?”

Now it was my turn to smile.

I dropped my head back and stared at the ceiling.

“A little. But it helps you’re alive, so I’m sure when we talk later tonight, I’ll be over it.”

“Mm. And you give a shit about me.”

She was teasing now. Doing it smiling again, I was sure of.

But I knew Sydney. I knew even though she was teasing and making me eat my confession from minutes ago, she still liked knowing how I felt. And she let me know just how much she liked knowing it with the next words out of her mouth.

“I give a shit about you too, Brian,” she admitted softly. “A really big shit.”

“Glad we’re on the same page, babe,” I chuckled.

“The giving a shit page? I’ve been on it. Glad you caught up, babe.”

This time when I laughed, I didn’t hold it in for the sake of being quiet. I gave it to her.

And I took what she gave me—her own admitted feelings and her sweet as fuck giggle. I took them.

With no intention of giving them back.

* * *

Famous person (dead or alive) you’d want to have dinner with. Go.

Easy. Bill Fucking Murray.

Venkman? Really?

Hell yeah. He’s a legend.

I think out of all the Ghostbusters, I’d want to have dinner with Janine.

Janine wasn’t a Ghostbuster, babe.

She was, sort of.

No.

She had a major role in the films.

No.

And the coolest hair in 2.

Didn’t make her a Ghostbuster.

She worked with them! Guilty by association.

She have a proton pack? Flight suit?

She had the coolest hair on the show, Brian!

I laughed and dropped my head back against the Adirondack chair I was lounging in, my bare feet braced on the railing that wrapped around the deck and my eyes skyward, watching an airplane’s lights blink against dark blue night.

Two and a half weeks of Wild and I was hooked on our conversations, every single type of conversation with her.

Talking. Texting. Random thoughts she’d share with me. Invading questions I avoided and ones like this that were simple and pointless and I knew, deep in my marrow and veins and ventricles, persuaded answers from me she’d never forget, because that’s the kind of girl Sydney was.

A forever girl. A note-taker. A memorizer.

If it was important or insignificant, she held on to it. It didn’t matter.

She held on.

She’d remember fifty years from now what movie role I would want to star in or what my last meal on earth would be. Even if we didn’t still have this, she’d remember and think back, smiling with those dimples she told me she inherited from her mother, the ones she liked instead to say she inherited from her brother.

He was the coolest person she’d ever met.

We shared and laughed. Fuck, she made me laugh a lot. Talked real shit, too. Personal shit that walked the line of too personal, and if it faltered, I’d cut it down and divert her, because I couldn’t …I couldn’t.

She asked me if I lived at the beach, saying she knew I was in North Carolina because of my area code and that it was okay, I could tell her and maybe, Trouble, oh, my God, wouldn’t it be amazing if we both lived in the same town?

She asked me what type of business I owned, because I gave vague job information to pacify her and she wanted more, she wanted everything, what and where and how long.

She wanted what I spent my days doing, because she had my nights.

Just tell me, Brian. What’s the big deal?

She asked my age and what I looked like. If my hair was dark or long or soft if she touched it, if it curled fresh out of the shower or if it fell annoyingly in my eyes.

What color are they, Brian? Brown and green and gold like mine? Tell me.

She asked me what detergent I used so she could use it, too, and imagine she never had to ask these questions, because she knew me and my smell. My habits and hates. She knew my nose was poker straight and my jaw was square and clean shaven. She knew I was tall enough that her ear could rest against my heart, and my hands were bigger than hers and I liked to hold tighter, just a little tighter than she did.

I gave what I could, and only what I could, my fingers itching to type more, just tell her, fuck it, and my tongue pressing against my palate to prevent speech.

She couldn’t know too much. She could never know.

Never.

I gave her enough so I could still have her, but I took everything.

Every fucking thing. It was mine and she wanted me to have it. She gave it up. She was perfect that way. She was perfect in every way.

Red hair. Hazel eyes. Moles she hated, two on her face and two on her neck. The scar that ran in the bend in her elbow from a bicycle accident when she was eight and the piercing on her belly she got on a dare when she was sixteen, lying and saying she was eighteen to get it.

How she loved to cook but couldn’t do it well enough, leaving her with four recipes she held dear and perfected.

How she drank Godiva Milk Chocolate Hot Cocoa every night with whole milk, nothing less, adding her own mini marshmallows so she could control the sweetness and liking it that way, and drinking it no matter what the temperature was outside.

How she loved a winter sky and the first signs of spring, and how she donated blood every year because it was important and everyone should do it.