“The real reason? Okay. The real reason is, if I believe in fate, then I have to accept that, well … that it was part of someone’s great design that I lost my father, lost my grandparents all before I was old enough to even know what they looked like. Now I have to add my best friend to the list. And, oh yeah, my mom’s having some sordid affair and lying to me. I want to believe there’s more to life than just what I see. But how can I believe, how can I embrace something, someone who thinks that this is what’s best for me? How can something I’m supposed to trust implicitly, to have faith in, treat me like this?”

His silence made me grimace. I’d said too much.

After a few moments, he said, “I guess you’ve just got to trust.”

His words took me back to the dam, the last time I’d been there with Kori.

“You’re scared to do. You’re scared to be. You’re scared to live. You’re always scared, so you must like it, and you love the cozy, safe feeling of escaping reality even more.”

“And doing a cartwheel on the dam will prove what?”

“It will prove you trust.”

At the time I thought she meant it would prove I trusted her, but maybe she meant trusting fate.

If she only knew the crappy deal fate had dealt her, how short her time was, she wouldn’t have said that, or maybe she would’ve just been thankful she’d never held back.

I thought about Kori’s list. Maybe she did hold some things back. But somehow, that list had ended up in my hands. And somehow, I’d ended up here. When Shay’s eyes met with mine, I smiled. “Yeah, maybe I will.”

He leaned over, giving me an awkward half smile as he tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. And even though I trembled at the small touch and moistened my lips, he only grimaced, blinked one extra blink, and returned to the entertainment of the bears.

He didn’t kiss me.

He whipped the car in gear and took me home.

Who went to the landfill to actually watch the bears? It was a ploy … a gimmick … a grunion run, for crissakes.

I should’ve taken Shay to the dam to watch the submarine races. No guy would be thick enough to believe we were going there for that. He wouldn’t have spent the evening laughing at the cub’s awkward attempts at getting his snout into a soup can, because his teeth would’ve be nipping at my lower lip, my tongue would’ve be tracing his. But instead, I found myself thanking him for the pizza and giving him a clumsy smile as I let myself out.