I had been a nerd in high school, though, so it was nice to learn my image was somewhat improving. “The jock thi
ng kind of screwed it up, huh?”
With a laugh, she kept pace with me across the campus. “Maybe that’s it. You’re a unique hybrid mix.”
Hybrid. Hybrid was so much better than freak. I liked the word hybrid. Almost as much as I liked her laugh.
“Is biology your major?” She moved closer to me to allow a bigger group to pass by, and her scent wafted up to my nostrils. My body instantly tensed. I’d managed not to get close enough to smell her throughout our entire study session, and now...now I just wanted to bury my face in the crook of her neck and inhale as deeply as my lungs would let me.
I shook my head and let out a breath when the group passed because she moved back out of my space.
“Uh...” Crap, what had we been talking about? She looked up at me, her green eyes so big and innocent and questioning.
Major! Somehow, my brain ignited the memory.
“Pre-med,” I blurted, then rolled my shoulders to relax myself. “I’m a pre-med major.”
“No way. Really?” She seemed pleasantly surprised. “You’re going to be a doctor?”
I nodded. “I’d like to be a heart surgeon.”
Her eyebrows crinkled. “Okay, that sounds really specific. What made you go with heart surgeon?”
“My grandma.” It was those eyes, I swear. So curious, and interested, and green. I started spilling everything. “She, uh, she d-died when I was nineteen. Car accident.”
Zoey’s lips parted and her face filled with sympathy. She wasn’t even aware how much my grandmother had meant to me, but she knew... somehow sensed how hard I’d taken her death.
“I’m so sorry.” She sat her hand on my arm before letting it fall away. I instantly missed it the moment her touch was gone, wanting her fingers to return, to comfort me some more. “You don’t usually see... I mean, grandparents are supposed to go from natural causes, not—”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “Gran was so full of life too. She had plenty of years left in her. A strong heart. Yeah... That’s why they took it. She was an organ donor, and they used her heart to put into someone else who needed it.”
Zoey’s green eyes widened. “Wow.”
I nodded in agreement and glanced across the campus at all the people milling by, and the trees sprouting flowers and leaves...at life abounding. “I love knowing her heart is still out there, beating. Giving someone else a second chance.”
Zoey bobbed her head too, and then quickly dashed a tear off her cheek. “It is pretty amazing.”
“That’s when I knew I wanted to be a part of that process. I wanted to put hearts into people who needed them.”
It took me a second to realize she was no longer next to me. But when I glanced over for her reaction, she was gone. “Zo—?” I turned back to realize she’d stopped in her shoes and was staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. “What’s wrong?” I immediately backtracked to her and took her elbow. “Are you okay?”
She moved her head up and down in a robotic kind of way but continued to stare at me with slightly parted lips and wide eyes. Finally, she said, “You want to transplant organs.”
“Yeah.” I furrowed my brow, wondering what was wrong with that.
Then her entire face bloomed into a sudden smile, telling me there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. “I think that’s amazing.” She began walking again before she bumped her elbow into mine. “And you say you’re in awe of my dream to be a writer. You want to save lives, Quinn. That’s impressive.”
She hadn’t said becoming a writer was her dream earlier. She’d said it was just a hobby she dabbled in, but I’m glad she let it slip now. I liked learning more about her.
I let her words settle in my head a bit before I said, “I may want to save lives, but art, like the stories you want to write...that’s the kind of stuff that makes life worth living.”
When Zoey looked at me this time, something powerful fisted into a knot at the base of my stomach. “What?” I asked softly, needing to know what she was thinking more than I needed my next breath.
She shook her head as if she wasn’t going to tell me, and then she murmured, “I was always scared to tell people about my writing. Everyone would say it’s silly and stupid and tell me to get a real dream, but…when you say things like that, it makes it feel…” She shrugged and glanced away with a far-off look. “Almost important.”
“But you are.” I wanted to touch her, shift the hair out of her face, slide my fingers up her cheek, and press my forehead to hers. My guts actually ached because I held myself back. But I was even too afraid to hold her hand, so I shoved my fists into my pockets. “We all have paranoid moments where we think everything we do is silly and stupid, or completely inconsequential. But stories are a way to connect with others and realize we’re not alone in our crazy, mixed-up thoughts. I think what you do is important. It keeps introverted people like me from going insane.”
Tears glistened in her eyes as she smiled up at me. But I didn’t hug her. No, I did not. And I didn’t kiss her. I didn’t grab her hand, yank her around the corner of the nearest building, or take her against the first wall we came across. No matter how insistent some of my urges were, I managed to hold back.