“She’s not even going to know,” Colby said immediately. Then, seeming to sense that wasn’t the best way to win Meg over, he plowed ahead. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “We could go out and get something to eat, if you want.”
Meg stood up so fast she startled the dog, she was so excited about the idea of an activity. “Sure!” she said, swinging her backpack over her shoulder again. “Let’s go.”
Colby refilled Tris’s water bowl and got his sneakers on, then led Meg outside to the driveway. “Um,” she said, hesitating a moment. “I can just follow you in my car.” She was reasonably sure he wasn’t a murderer at this point, but it felt like the more responsible thing to do, as if she could somehow negate the recklessness of the rest of this whole trip by providing her own transportation.
“Sure,” Colby said, looking at her a little oddly. She had no idea whether or not he was glad she was here. For all the times she’d thought about it, asking to come here had been more impulsive than she usually was, the weirdness of everything about her regular life crushing down on her all at once; still, he’d sounded excited about the idea at the time. At least, she’d thought he had. “Whatever you want.”
They went to a Subway not far from the Dollar General, Meg ordering the veggie sandwich even though she knew it was probably exactly what he expected her to do. She glanced around the shop. “Do you want to eat outside, maybe?” she asked.
Colby frowned. “There aren’t any tables or anything,” he pointed out.
“We could go somewhere, though, couldn’t we?” she asked. “A park or something?”
“Sure, I guess.” He filled his giant cup with Dr Pepper at the soda machine, thinking a minute. “There is one place we could go, actually.”
They got back in their respective cars and pulled out into traffic, heading back in the direction they’d come. Meg watched through the windshield as the stores and businesses got farther apart, then almost disappeared altogether, giving way to long stretches of field and the occasional farmhouse, an old-fashioned water tower hulking off in the distance. Finally, Colby pulled off down a narrow, gravel-covered road that twisted and turned before leading to nothing, just an overgrown lot full of weeds and wildflowers. Tall trees made a canopy overhead. The air was thick with pollen, wasps humming noisily. Planted in the ground was a faded, listing wooden sign:
THE PARADISE HOMES
SINGLE-FAMILY ARTISAN RESIDENCES, COMING SOON
“What is this place?” Meg called as she climbed out of the Prius. The grass was already tall even though it was only April, tickling her ankles in the gap between her pants and her sneakers.
“It’s mine,” Colby said.
Meg’s eyes widened. “Really?”
He nodded. “My dad left it to me,” he explained. “He bought it when he and my mom were first married, and we always used to come out here for, like, family picnics when me and Matt were real little—the two of us used to run around like wild animals out here, roll down the hill and stuff. We were nuts.” He smiled at the memory, his face softening for a moment; Meg could picture exactly what he’d looked like as a little kid. “Anyway, my dad and my uncle Rick used to be in business together—they built houses, you know? And my dad had this idea for putting, like, six of them on this land, all of them totally different styles, and then up there”—he motioned to the hill in the distance—“he always said he was going to build my mom’s dream house.” He stopped then, like he’d suddenly realized he’d said more than he’d meant to, dropping his sandwich on the hood of the car with a quiet thunk. “He . . . didn’t do that, obviously.”
“Why don’t you do it?” Meg asked immediately.
“What, build my mom’s dream house?”
“Build your own dream house.”
Colby laughed. “Yeah, Meg, I’m going to just go ahead and build a house by myself with no money. This is real life, not The Notebook.”
Meg raised her eyebrows, momentarily distracted by the shape of her name in his mouth. “Have you seen The Notebook?”
“Maybe,” Colby said, with something close to a smile. “My dad liked corny movies.”
Meg nodded. She wanted to ask more about his dad—they hadn’t talked about him at all since that very first night on the phone—but she could never figure out exactly how to bring it up. “What did he leave to your brother?” she finally asked.
“Nothing,” Colby replied, so deadpan that it took her a moment to realize he was serious.
Meg blinked. “Wow.”
“Yep,” Colby said, in a voice that made it pretty clear that was the end of that.
They climbed up onto the warm hood of his car to eat their sandwiches, sunlight lacing through the trees and a butterfly hovering not far from Colby’s elbow. The back of his hand brushed hers as they traded their bags of chips back and forth. “What would you build here, hypothetically?” she asked, pulling her feet up onto the bumper. “If you could build anything?”
“I dunno,” Colby said, but she could tell he was lying. “I’ve never thought about it, really.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Tell me,” she said, nudging him with her ankle. “What, do you think I’m going to make fun of you? I don’t know how to build anything.”
Colby shrugged. “Just a regular house. I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she pressed—it felt important, all of a sudden, to get him to tell her. “It’s just me, remember?”
“Oh, right, it’s just you, like you’re—” Colby broke off, made a face. “Fine,” he said, taking a sip of his giant soda. “Something with a big porch, I guess. And a bunch of fireplaces.” He thought. “And a game room.”
“See?” Meg said, her skin warming slightly. “There you go. You do have an imagination.”
Colby snorted. “Oh, I’ve got an imagination,” he said, almost under his breath. This time when she kicked him he grabbed her ankle and held it, his fingers curling around the jut of bone in a way that set off a string of tiny explosions she felt all over her body. Meg didn’t breathe until he finally let it go.
He gazed at her for another long moment, an inscrutable expression in his hazel-brown eyes. “What?” she finally asked.
Colby shrugged, finishing the last of his sandwich in one giant bite. “You look different than I thought you’d look” was all he said.
Meg laughed. “You seriously never Googled me?”
“No,” he said once he’d swallowed.
“Really?”
“Why?” He raised his eyebrows. “Did you Google me?”
“Of course I did,” Meg admitted immediately, unembarrassed. “Like, the very first night we talked, even. But you’re basically impossible to find.”
Colby smirked. “That’s the idea.”
“Well,” Meg said, tugging a bit of cucumber out of her sandwich with her thumb and forefinger, “I’m infinitely searchable.”
“That is . . . not surprising to me.”