“Which is what?” I ask, a bit breathless.

He pauses and points to three words on the page: And they lived.

I look at him.

His smile crinkles his nose. “Because the point isn’t that they were happy forever but that they lived. They took a chance and lived.” He pauses before shaking his head. “Sorry, I get intense sometimes.”

“No, I like it … I mean, I admire people who are passionate about stories.” I wince, quickly correcting myself so I don’t come off like I’m saying I like him, which would be the truth, but what he said is making me think about the whole point of stories in the first place; how they end, where they end, and why.

I reread the last line of “Hansel and Gretel” before placing the Brothers Grimm book back on the shelf:

My tale is done, there runs a mouse; whosoever catches it may make himself a big fur cap out of it.

What the actual fuck does that mean? My mind dwells on everything: that last line, what Jack said, and those three words—and they lived—tumble around my brain as we walk out of The Pagemaster.

“I’m not ready to go back to campus,” he says. “You wanna walk to the lake?”

I nod, and we walk in a comfortable silence out of the confines of the small town and toward the park by the water.

“What’re you thinking about?” he asks. “You look deep in thought.”

“This story I’m trying to tell in my animation seminar,” I say, not quite sure I’m ready to tell him the details. Uncooked ideas are too fragile to be shared and consumed.

“If you need a story person, I’m your guy,” Jack says, rather confidently. “I’ve always wanted to dip into script writing.”

I’m your guy.

We perch on a wooden bridge that stretches across a small inlet, lean on the ledge, and stare at the lake. There’s a soft trickle of water rushing over the rocks below, the faint tweets of birds in trees, insects buzzing, all creating a peaceful symphony around us.

“I like your presumptuousness, thinking I need help.” I wink. Or try to. When I wink, my face gets all twitchy, which is probably why he’s smirking. “Actually, help would be nice.”

“I like that word,” he says. “Presumptuousness.”

It’s luxurious and pompous, nothing at all like Jack.

“It’d be cool to write a script one day, like a great romantic tragedy,” he says. “We’d be a good team, I think.”

We’d be a good team.

“How do you know?” I ask softly.

He shrugs and goes silent, and I want more than anything to know what’s going on in his head. His left arm moves close to mine, and I can feel him even though he’s not touching me. Should I move closer? Slide my fingers across the invisible airstream between us that keeps pulling us closer together, like a vacuum? What if my pinky finger touches his? What would he do? Would he wince? Pull away? React by coiling his fingers around mine? Am I making this entire thing up in my head? Am I creating this attraction out of nothing? Maybe he’s just a smiley person? Like a celebrity with Vaseline on his teeth.