“WOOOOOOO! Eden!”
She thrust both arms in the air like a champion and took a bow in every direction.
While Gabe hauled himself back up on the platform and gave his head a shake, flicking the hair from his eyes.
“What do I win?” she asked him.
As if in answer to her question, he slowly, deliberately drew off his soaking shirt and shook his wet hair out of his eyes.
The crowd went stone silent.
And then there was a soughing sound, like a breeze through a stand of birches, which was essentially a dozen women exhaling in wonder and something close to pain.
Emily’s harried mom thrust a pink teddy bear into Eden’s hand. “Thank you for convincing me to volunteer for this booth,” she whispered fervently. “Thank you.”
“Who’s next?” Gabe called cheerfully.
When the crowd surged forward, tickets in hand, Eden hung back. Way back.
Far enough so that from up on his perch, his eyes met hers, and she could have sworn they flashed like smugglers signaling the coast. Defiance, and a dare.
Oh, anyone could go next as far as she was concerned.
But she was the only one who was going to claim a prize.
About an hour later, as the sun was lowering, the crowds were thinning, and only a few cars were left in the parking lot, she came across her parents, strolling hand in hand. Tucked under her mom’s arm was a big blue stuffed pig sporting fluffy eyelashes and a smile.
“Won it for her,” her dad said. Smugly. “Shot a clown.”
“Never let it be said romance dies,” her mom said.
Her parents had always been unabashedly, frankly in love.
She had a hunch they wouldn’t disapprove of what she was about to do.
“Hey, you guys? I promised Emily and Annelise I’d take them for ice cream, but I forgot something inside school. And then I need to swing by the all-night market and get some breakfast stuff. Do you mind taking them? Promise I’ll be home in an hour, hour and a half on the outside. In time to put them to bed.”
They both lit up as if they’d won another blue stuffed pig. “We’dloveto, honey,” her mom said.
Gabe swiped a hand through his still-damp hair and heaved a sigh that fluttered the little flag planted on his desk. He picked up his baseball, hefted its smooth, soothing weight in both hands for a second. “Communing,” he snorted.
It was, however, undeniably, a touchstone of someone he’d loved.
He liked the school at night. Silence and shadows didn’t bother him. He knew all the ambient sounds, and the quality of the light through the various windows as the sun went down. He knew where Carl the janitor was in his rounds—clear on the other side of the school. The very last thing he’d do would be to lock up. But Gabe had keys, too. They didn’t have security cameras. They were probably a fund-raiser or two in the future.
He sighed and put the ball back on its stand and pressed his palms over his eyes. When he pulled them away again, Eden was standing in the doorway.
He stopped breathing.
He didn’t dare blink.
Because this was hands down the best damn game of peekaboo he’d ever played.
She was so precisely what he wanted to see that he wasn’t confident he wasn’t hallucinating, or dreaming, and either way, he wanted it to last as long as possible.
Behind her the hall was dark, apart from the dim glow of the intermittent sconces that did more to create eerie shadows than to illuminate anything.
He held his breath when she stepped across the threshold of his office.