When she uncovers his plan to lead an entirely uneventful life, Mia Evian is determined to teach Preston Maddox how to stop living like a ghost, but Mia and Preston have history, tension, and a lot of complicated feelings.
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'I bet your room's the attic one.'
I don't know why the hell that's the first thing I say to him when we step into the house's small back garden, but it is.
Preston responds with a tiny smile that gives nothing away. 'I'm dying to know the implication behind that statement.'
We're standing in the corner closest to the patio doors, and I'm looking–no, staring–at his side profile as he gazes towards the back of the small garden. It's near-empty outside, bar a few groups of people and some lone smokers. I briefly anticipate Preston joining them, but he's not smoked for well over two years.
'Not so clever now, eh?' I goad.
His nothing smile reappears, but he still doesn't look at me.
'Am I right? About your bedroom?'
'Yes.'
Ha. I knew it. I don't know what it means or why I want to feign the idea that it means anything in the first place, but I play along with the charade.
'Can't believe you bloody pulled the STD gag with Margot. It took you literal seconds. That has to be a record.'
Finally, Preston cranes his neck to look down at me. The nothing smile is replaced by the lopsided smirk I've not seen for a year. A fucking year.
He shrugs. 'You should surely expect no less from the occupant of an attic bedroom.'
Damn it. He's playing me at my own game. I'm about to scoff a response, but as my eyes meet his, I lose myself, let alone my train of thought. The night's shadows are failing to diminish the curiosity in his bright eyes, and his hair is messier than I remember it, his posture straighter, or maybe he just fills out his clothes better now.
I break my trance with a, 'I'm convinced I'm hallucinating.'
'Perhaps you are.'
'Not helping,' I grumble with an eye roll, then turn away from him with crossed arms. 'You're less lanky than you used to be.'
'Was I ever lanky?'
'No. You're just less lanky now.'
'In the kindest way possible, Euphemia, what the fuck are you talking about?'
At that, we both start laughing. Whatever game we'd been playing melts away, as if we've communicated some kind of telepathic truce, and God, I want to hug him again.
We talk. I'd say how long for, but I don't keep track. None of what we say is new information. While I've not seen Preston for a year, I've spoken to him every day. In hostels with shit signal, hotels Aiden and I definitely couldn't afford, via letters when there were no other means of communication, through brief text messages hastily typed at the back of night buses, from the comfort of Mum's living room before and after my trip to the Southern Hemisphere, and the depths of my bedroom at Dad's place in an attempt to zone out his drunken ramblings from the floor below.
