He gives me the sad eyes. Those are the worst. They make my stomach feel like Hell’s Kitchen.

“Not better. I only mean . . . it doesn’t make it any less surprising. Or less impressive. It’s—wow. You are smart, huh?”

He swoonshes, and I’ll bet if I scooted closer, I could watch that blush spread across his cheekbones.

“At math,” he says.

“Well, you must be in hog heaven now, at your job. Surrounded by math people!”

The swoonsh fades, his face closing off again. T-E-N-S-E.

“Money people. It’s different.”

For a second he looks so drawn and hollow that all I can think about is making him feel better. Some blister pack of something to take that look away.

And then I realize: Maybe I do have something in my metaphorical jacket pocket. Sitting here in this park, beside Reid, learning more about him, letting some of my own lowest feelings out into the open air—I don’t even have to pretend to feel cheerful and light. I can actually . . . be cheerful and light.

My mouth curves into a smile, and I nudge him gently, teasingly, with my foot. I try to ignore the way touching him, even in this completely platonic way, doesn’t feel all that much like teasing to me.

“Would you say . . . would you say that money is the . . . common denominator for your colleagues?”

For a second, he says absolutely nothing, and I think, Nice job, Meg. It wasn’t the time to be light and cheerful. With a math joke.

But then he looks over at me, blinks once, and he . . . he laughs. A real, full laugh. An in-person laugh.

And it is the most gorgeous combination of sounds, the same sounds I heard him make when we walked together on the phone the other night: that groan, but this time at how utterly terrible my joke was. That warm, tight chuckle, a bit louder this time, then quieting and giving way to a sigh, a small exhalation of air. A sigh of relief.

It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard. Nothing I could ever put in letters. I frolic right past another warning clutch in my heart.

“Thank God you laughed! That’s one of maybe ten math terms I know. Want to hear the others?”

He smiles, breathing out only the chuckle now.

Let’s walk for blocks and blocks, I’m thinking. Let me make bad math jokes to you all day. Wait until you hear the one about stochastic calculus, which is basically me trying to pronounce it.

“You feel better?” he asks.

“I do.” I look over at the signs that have kept us company through this, our new not-game. “Anyway, these don’t have the colors we need.”

I swing my legs off the bench, stand up, and smooth my shirt down before grabbing my purse, telling him with my body that I’m ready to keep going.