First Time Caller

He keeps looking at me. The same steady, studying look he always seems to be giving me. Like I’m an equation he can’t figure out. Or a particularly interesting constellation that he’s trying to orient himself with.

it’s like looking in a mirror that only reflects good things back.

“I think books are sexy,” she says very seriously. “No one at school has quite lived up to Aragorn yet.”

That’s why it’s a secret, Lucie. It’s supposed to be weird.

My chest feels uncomfortably tight, my breath too short. It’s not a new feeling, just one I haven’t felt in a while.

And it somehow makes me like her even more.

“He’s . . .”
Hot, my brain supplies. Also, kind of a disaster. I’m not entirely confident he knows how to talk to people when he’s outside the booth. He hosts a radio show about love, but he doesn’t believe in it himself and he wants me to help him remember how. I think. I keep sharing

He has a face for those cologne ads that come on during the afternoon soap opera run.

Aiden looks like a brooding Disney prince in a Carhartt hoodie.

He could absolutely be a cult leader.