Page 46 of Free Fall

“Why don’t you then?”

“Here.” I dig my phone out of my back pocket and pull up Sejin’s profile on the hookup app. I enlarge the photo and hold it out for Peggy Jo to see.

She takes the phone, holds it out from her face, and squints a little before her eyes adjust. Then she smiles. “Oh, it’s Sejin.”

“You know him?”

“Of course. Everyone knows Sejin.”

“I didn’t know him.”

She says nothing else, but hands me back the phone. Suddenly, I need to know. “Do you like him?”

“There’s not a soul alive who wouldn’t like Sejin.”

“Well, that smile? The one in the photo? Ireallylike it.”

“He’s adorable.”

“Yeah, he’s always good-looking, but there’s something about that smile…” I frown. “I think this probably sounds creepy. When I told him about it, he looked a little weirded out.”

“Enough for you to notice? Oh, lordy. What exactly did you say?”

“I told him that I want him to smile atmelike that, and he hasn’t yet. I told him I want to hang out with him and be around him a lot until I earn that kind of smile.”

“He’s never smiled at you? I can’t imagine that. The boy’s a smiling machine.”

“No, he’s smiled at me a few times, but never…” I bring up the photo again and thrust it at her. “Never like that.”

She studies the photo. “Never like he’s looking at someone he loves?”

It’s a kick to the chest. I sit back in my chair. Cold. A little stunned. Holy shit, isthatwhat the expression on his face is? Love?

I don’t want that, do I?

Being loved is…

I don’t know what it is. I haven’t experienced it much. The closest thing I have to a person who loves me is Peggy Jo. I’ve always said I don’t need love, I don’t want it, and all it does is hold people down, keep them back, tether them.

A cloud shifts over the sun and a corresponding shadow passes over the cats. Coolness falls on the front porch, and a strange despair drops on me. I’ll never make Sejin love me, and so I’ll never see that smile directed at me. I’ve wanted to see it in person from the beginning, and then I wanted it all for myself, and if Peggy Jo is right about what that smile means, then I can’t ever have it.

I hate not having what I want because I’m always so careful to make sure what I want is something I can accomplish all on my own. I’ve made a huge blunder with Sejin and his smile. I’ve made the mistake of coveting something I can’t give myself.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “You look like I shot your dog.”

“I don’t know what to do now,” I say. “I thought if I could just get this smile from him, it’d be enough. But…”

Peggy Jo stares at me. “It’s okay to want to be loved, Dan. You deserve to be loved.”

I don’t reply. Love’s a foreign thing. A mystery I’ll never solve.

I still want to see Sejin’s most beautiful smile directed at me. No matter what the cost, it’s worth trying for. I know it is. I want it almost as much as I want to free solo Heart Route. And that makes no sense at all.

Not a lick of it, as Peggy Jo says.

No, not even alickof a lick of sense.

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