“You know what,” he says. “We could be inside eating food or reading books or…” He trails off, cheeks red.

I grin. “Kissing?”

He glares as his face reddens further, but his voice is even when he says, “Yes, if you’d like.”

My heart stumbles a little at the way his eyes are eating me whole, but I try to make my voice as normal as his and say, “But if we help Alex today, we can have all day tomorrow to ourselves.”

“Or…” Nolan darts his eyes around the clearing before raising his hand to touch my still-blushing cheek. “We could say screw it and have both.”

I’m about to agree, to squash down my need to please Alex and prove to him that I am a friend, not a fan, when Alex’s arrival is trumpeted by a squeaky dolly. Nolan drops his hand from my face, but not quickly enough.

Alex makes his eyes comically wide. “Canoodling on the bazaar grounds, are we?”

Nolan rolls his eyes. “Mosquito,” he says, and, as if to demonstrate, lightly slaps my cheek with the tips of his fingers. “There was a mosquito on her face. No canoodling here.”

It’s my turn to say something funny and witty, but I can’t think of an appropriate response. My head is still swimming with thoughts of Nolan’s sisters, of Jenna, of the distant haze that is my pinky-promised future. Instead, I wind my arm around Nolan’s, pulling myself to his side.

“It’s only temporary,” I tell Alex. “I still have to go back to Texas.”

“Temporary.” Alex makes a sound like he doesn’t believe me, but his eyes leap worriedly to Nolan’s face.

“She pinky promised,” Nolan says, and I’m proud of the steadiness in his voice. His fingers interlace through mine.

I look up at Nolan, he looks down at me, and for another split second I imagine staying. I allow the whales to swim tight circles around us as I play this game of pretend.

This alternate future unspools before me like a ribbon, and I marvel at its countless photographs, the sheer number of books waiting to be read, the new landscapes waiting to be discovered behind Nolan’s eyes.

I ignore the consequences of staying—the disappointment of the Williamses, the weight of Jenna’s expectations never easing, the sheer terror of deviating from a set path—and instead imagine long nights of Nolan reading me to sleep, afternoons of one-shot photography, and mornings of being rudely awakened by an ill-behaved mongrel.

“Are you okay with this?”

At first I think Alex is asking if I’m okay with my daydreams, if I’m willing to pay the price to have them spun into reality. But the whales swim away when he clasps Nolan’s shoulder in that distinctly boy way as they lock eyes.