“No, you first. Please,” he said.

“I did go first. That was my answer. You. No one knows that I’ve met you.” If only she could explain what she meant by that. What it meant. No one knows that I can’t feel anything from you. Nothing.

“Touché.” He laughed. A lovely low chuckle that rumbled in his chest. “I meant tell me something about you that’s about you.”

She couldn’t not join in his laughter. You have no idea. “You should have specified that before. Now it’s your turn.” He was about to answer but she stopped him. “And you can’t use the same answer I did. That’s cheating.”

His smile told her he’d been about to do just that. Having guessed it made her ecstatic. I had to guess! she wanted to scream, but already he had to think she was strange. She didn’t want to make it worse.

“Fine,” he said, tone sulky, but she was almost sure he was pretending it. Fine, not almost. She was sure he wasn’t feeling sulky. He was feeling what she was feeling, excited that a stranger saw things he was thinking.

Only in Esha’s case, it was a first. She was seeing—processing—his thoughts like other people did, like a normal person.

“I don’t know my birthday.” As soon as the words left him, he blinked in shock. A dark pain widened his irises.

Turning away from her, he leaned his elbows on the railing. There was something about the way he was breathing that was different.

“Sid? Are you okay?” She’d never had to ask anyone that question before and the words felt alien in her mouth, but the worry that something had just happened inside him that caused him pain, that was worse. Usually she had to push other people’s pain away. Compartmentalize it and tuck it someplace where it was bearable.

Now she felt an urge to reach into the hurt that had tightened his body, pull it into herself and away from him.

Elbows still on the railing, he turned to her as though seeing her for the first time. “I’ve never told that to anyone before. I don’t know why I told you.”

“You’ve never told anyone?” It seemed like a very big thing for no one to know about a person. Especially a person who had a family she knew doted on him.