"I can't remember what happened that night. I'm not talking slippery details or fuzzy-edged visions; I mean a complete and utter blackout. Like I wasn't even there. Except... I know I was."
Since the death of her boyfriend six months ago, Morgan Cai...
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Loading the books inside, we mostly worked in silence. We exchanged the occasional smile on the journey between the truck and storage unit, but other than that, the manual effort of hauling dozens of books kept us busy. In a way, I was glad. The silence was weighted by possibilities—none of which involved me embarrassing myself by babbling and saying the wrong thing. I was more than content with the underlying buzz of anticipation.
But when I retrieved the final box from the truck, the loaded silence wouldn't serve us any longer. Josh was looking at me like he wanted to dig so much deeper.
"That was fast," he said. "I'm impressed."
"I'm a hard worker." I held eye contact. "That's why you wanted to be paired with me on the schedule, right?"
I watched a flicker of surprise cross his eyes, though he didn't let it show anywhere else. "Maybe," he said slowly. "And maybe there were other reasons."
"Hmm?"
"Well, for starters... I'm a sucker for an accent."
I felt myself flush. "I don't have an accent."
"Not true," he countered. "It might pass as American, but there's something else in there, too. I can hear it. A hint of British?"
"Scottish," I corrected him. "Very important distinction."
"Still, I was close." He slung one arm over a particularly tall stack of boxes, smiling amusedly at me. "So you've lived in Scotland before?"
"Only when I was really young. My mom's originally from Massachusetts, and she met my dad while she was in Edinburgh for work. It was only supposed to be a temporary stay, but it ended up a lot longer than planned. I'm pretty sure she overstayed her visa. Don't tell the UK government."
This made him laugh. "I won't."
"They moved back here when I was two," I went on. "Too young to really remember anything, but old enough to pick up a weird tinge to my accent."
"Interesting."
"It's really not," I said. "It's the most boring backstory to an accent ever. I can't tell you anything about the place, because I don't even remember living there."
"Okay, okay." Josh was still smiling; I wasn't intending to crack jokes, but he was looking at me like he couldn't get enough of my sense of humor. "I'll take your word for it. But if that's not interesting... why don't you tell me something about yourself that is?"
I paused. "What?"
"Go on," he said. "Now's your chance. You know, through all those training sessions, we never once did the embarrassing 'introduce yourself and tell the group one interesting fact.'"
"And you do not realize how happy that made me. Let's not take away that happiness now."
He laughed then, and it was the first time I really heard it: loud and hearty, like thunder, the type of exhilarating that made me want to dance in the storm. If only I knew how much time I'd spend chasing it from then on.
