“I can read on my own, thanks,” I say, the words scratchy in my throat. I do my best to play it off as a joke. “I’ve been doing it since I was five.”

He leans forward, inching his legs closer until we are almost touching.

“Please?” His breath stirs a few wispy hairs into my eye and I blink them away.

“Why?”

“To repay my debt.”

Does he mean for our lips to be this close?

“You don’t owe me anything,” I whisper. “Really.”

“Call it a gift, then.”

Nolan doesn’t wait for my answer. He stands up and shakes out his legs as he turns toward the shelves. With the darkness enfolding us like a warm blanket, and the waking world as far away as the line where the waters of Lake Michigan meet the sky, I feel infinite and safe and reckless all at once, and so I don’t flinch when Nolan asks, “Any requests?”

Alex’s warning of friends not fans hisses through my head, and I swallow down my answer, but what I want must be written across my face, because Nolan turns to pull one of his books from its snug place on the shelf.

“This one?” he asks, watching me carefully. And before I have a chance to respond, he adds, “It’s okay if this is what you want.”

“It is,” I say.

He licks his fingers—a habit I abhor but find fitting for him—and flips through as he folds back onto the floor.

He inhales to begin reading, but instead says, “At the risk of sounding cheesy, I think it’s appropriate to start in the middle, if that’s fine with you. Since that’s what we’re doing.”

“I’m okay with that,” I say. My voice is small and scared in my ears. I wonder if Nolan can hear the nerves I won’t admit to. What if the world doesn’t spread and rise around me? What if reading is dead to me forever?

The whales come, and I let them. If this doesn’t work, they can take me out to sea, where nothing—not even the lack of books—can touch me.

I can hear Nolan’s purposeful turning, the sound of a reader—a writer—delving into a mountain range of words in search of one stray sheep. He has something specific in mind, and my curiosity is burning away the anxiety.

“This is my favorite part,” he whispers, so quietly that I wonder if he meant to say it aloud. He begins to read.