Christopher put aside the comic book he’d been reading. It was a classic issue of Flash, which happened to be a show that I loved, though I’d never read the comics. Maybe I should start, and then we could compare the show to the original stories. Or would that be doing something for Christopher? Gah! I was losing my mind.
“Come on. There are worse things,” Christopher told me. “Loretta’s a cool lady.”
I dropped my hands dramatically and leveled him with a disbelieving stare. “Literally no one ever has called her a cool lady.”
He grinned. “Well then I’m proud to be the first.” There was a carafe and four mugs on the table between us, and Christopher reached over to pour steaming hot chocolate into two of the cups. “Have some,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”
“Do you have people bringing you treats twenty-four seven or what?” I asked.
“The staff has taken pity on me,” he explained, adding marshmallows to both cups. “And I am milking that pity for all it’s worth.”
I was about to tell him I was too anxious for chocolate when my stomach rumbled, and I realized that I’d barely eaten anything at lunch. Loretta had insisted on a random French restaurant that had nothing recognizable on the menu. I took the cup Christopher offered and sipped. The liquid scalded my tongue, but then warmed my throat and insides. I sighed. He was right. I did feel a little better. But only a little. I took a deep breath. Then I grabbed a dozen more mini marshmallows and dumped them into the cup.
“I like your style,” Christopher said, and quickly added more of the sugary blobs to his own cup.
“The thing is,” I said, trying for a calmer voice, “I’m never going to get those few hours of my life back. I could have been doing something that was actually fun. Something new. Something I’d remember forever. Instead I’ve got something to think about to bore me to sleep when I have insomnia.”
“Well, that’s not nothing. If it works, you could market that.” He blew on his cup.
“You’re missing the point,” I said.
“And what point is that?”
I clicked the back of my tongue. “The point is I’m mad as heck and I’m not gonna take it anymore.”
There was a flash of excitement across Christopher’s face. “What’re you saying?”
I took another sip of my hot chocolate. “I’m saying, I have an idea. And it was inspired by you, really,” I told him, and then blushed. Because was that the dorkiest thing ever? But Christopher just seemed intrigued.
“Go on.”
“I am going to start doing more for myself,” I said. “But it can’t just be that. It can’t be so general. I need to make a list. A list of things I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t done because I’ve been too shy or too scared or just too…too…Tess.”
“Interesting,” Christopher said with a small frown. “A list?”
“Yeah, I’m a list-maker,” I said, lifting my shoulders. “Totally type A and proud of it. If I make a list, I know I’ll actually do the stuff on it.”
“All right, then.” Christopher put his cup down on the table and pulled his laptop from between the couch cushions and onto his lap. Her fired it up, stretched his fingers, cracked his knuckles, and then hovered his fingertips over the keyboard, looking at me expectantly. The mischievous glint in his eyes did melty things to my insides. “How many tasks are we putting on this list?” he asked.
“I’m thinking ten.”
“Ten? For an entire year?”
“No, it’s not going to be a new year’s resolution,” I said, scooching back in my chair and pulling my knees up under the still-warm mug in my hands. “That’s the best part. It’s going to be ten things I resolve to do now. Before New Year’s. That way I’ll have a solid deadline. That way I’ll prove to myself I can do it—that I really can change. And I’ll take that feeling into the new year.”
I hadn’t even really thought it through that far until I was saying it out loud, but as I heard the words coming out of my mouth, my heart swelled, and all the anxiety and anger I’d been feeling morphed into excitement. I felt like I really needed this. After everything that had gone on with my parents over the past few months, all the fighting and negativity and heartache, I needed something positive to take me into the new year. I needed a little bit of hope.
“Wow,” Christopher said. “A list-maker who likes deadlines. You’re hard-core type A.”
I laughed mid-sip and spurted a little hot chocolate over my knees.
“That was classy,” I said, grabbing a napkin to wipe up the mess. My cheeks felt flushed.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he assured me. He dabbed up a few droplets that had hit the table and then crumpled the napkin and tossed it at his open backpack on the floor. It landed perfectly. “Two points!”
I smiled. “And the crowd goes wild!”
Christopher grinned at me. “Okay, so. What’s going to be on this list?”
He put his fingers on the keyboard again and looked me over expectantly. My shoulders slumped, and, just like that, my adrenaline oozed away.
“I have no idea.”
* * *
• • •
“What about skydiving? You could go skydiving,” Christopher suggested. He was sitting with both his casted leg and his healthy leg propped up on the table in front of him with pillows under his ankles and his computer on his lap, and had been taking notes diligently as we brainstormed, like my own personal assistant.
I didn’t hate it, not gonna lie.
I groaned and tipped my head back over the arm of my chair, my legs dangling over the other side. “It’s, like, negative ten degrees outside. No one’s going skydiving,” I pointed out, staring at one of the chandeliers overhead. Negative ten was kind of an exaggeration, but still. “Besides, that’s not really something I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“Afraid of heights?” he asked.
“More like afraid of death by splat,” I replied, and he laughed. I picked my head up, the blood rushing back to my temples. It made me feel good, making him laugh.
“What about surfing?” he suggested.
“In the snow?”
“Snowboarding?”
“Done that,” I told him.
“Skateboarding!” He snapped his fingers.