She left the kitchen, returning the kiss he had given her that morning, the imprint of her lips on his forehead burning like a benediction.

As he unfolded his blankets that night and stretched out on the couch—squished and prodded and jumped on by every Gardner-Daugherty—he thought about wishing, and regretting, and he thought that he should be...something else. More sad. More angry, at least at himself. And he did feel sadness, and he felt so much shame, but...

He also felt...hope.

He pulled the crocheted afghan tightly around him, and he closed his eyes, and all he could think about was ice, and juniper, and an unbuttoned collar revealing the hollow of a pale throat, long frost-pale hair and the smell of smoke.

Whiskey, cigarettes, records skipping as they reached their end.

A wild-eyed boy.

Everybody called the hill at the entrance to campus “the beach,” and they treated it accordingly.

It was the day after all their final exams had finished, and the weather was Baltimore at its finest, the hot kiss of sunshine and a cool breeze like laughter running through them, ruffling his hair, caressing Meg’s coppery skin as she lay out on a picnic blanket. Most of the students were down here, uniforms rumpled or totally abandoned, and there was a sense of freedom like a leash that had been loosened, at least for the moment.

Meg was in an embroidered crop top, loose jeans, and her abdomen was tight and toned; he’d stripped off his shirt, too hot in the sun, maybe enjoying, a little, the muscle he’d put on through hard work and good meals. As the wind blew, he smelled her—that Meg smell, the smell that meant home.

He had brought out one of his favorite novels, a book which had kept him company since he was nine years old, already reading far beyond grade level, the spine cracked in multiple places and a few pages coming unglued. As a little boy he had lost himself in fantasy—dragons and swords and magic, a life he wished he could have—and this book had been dropped in the bath and rained on and spilled on, and it smelled like aged paper, coffee, a world he yearned to leave behind. But today—the day was too good, even for this book. He couldn’t get into it; he suddenly felt like his life, maybe, surpassed that childish longing he had felt for years.

There was a deep relief and disbelief in him that he had gotten this far, the end of freshman year, and he’d made it, and the exams he’d feared went so easily after all that studying, and he was at the top of the class.

It seemed unreal. Like it couldn’t be happening to him. Like even though he worked so hard, he didn’t deserve it. Meg beside him, so pretty in the sun, and her smile and laugh and the little sounds she made, settling into the grass.