Page 22 of The Dangers of Daydreaming (Love Connections #2)

Would You Rather

Finn

I kept my phone close for the next ten minutes, struggling to keep my eyes on my book

instead of straying to its dark screen. If Gram wasn’t an early-to-bed person, maybe texting her would have been a good distraction, but she’d already given me the update on Pops, and now I was left with this book I already knew the end to, and my empty phone screen.

Lucy didn’t text back.

She also didn’t move even an inch, and her breathing didn't even out, so she was definitely still awake.

I felt bad for Lily’s resurgence of food poisoning, but I’d hoped it had meant a little time to plead my case with Lucy. Or even just play cards or something. Not fake sleep when the sun had barely gone down.

Well. Two could play at that game.

I tossed my book to the other side of the bed and made a big show of turning off the lamp and getting under my covers. I waited a minute, maybe two, before I faked a tired roll to my side to face her, eyes still closed, and started talking.

“What do you mean you don’t actually like Anne of Green Gables ?” I mumbled, trying my best to make my words slurred and sleepy.

The sheets on the bed beside mine rustled.

“It’s outdated? Silly? No… You can’t mean that.”

I felt like I could feel her eyes on me. I almost peeked one of mine open.

“You me an it’s my fault? It’s because I’m so attractive? I’m so sorry I’m making you like me more than Gilbert Blythe—I know… I know that must be hard to wrap your head around.” I faked a snore. It was honestly terrible—I was surprised Lucy didn’t break into laughter at that alone.

“No… I don’t know if I can keep this secret. I think you—” A pillow hit me in the face.

I ignored it. “Okay, fine, if you’re going to beg, I’ll go out with you.”

Another pillow whizzed past my head.

I popped one eye open. “Really? I’m two feet away, and you missed?” The last word was muffled as another pillow hit me in the face. I caught it before it fell to the ground and raised it like a weapon, eyebrows lifted. “You sure you want to start something you can’t finish?”

The room was dim, yet I could still make out her features because of how close our beds were. But I couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh or yell. Her face was contorted somewhere between a smile and a scowl. I started to throw the pillow I held, but at the last second, didn’t let go.

It worked. She tried to retaliate with a throw of her own. Her fourth pillow smacked into mine.

Her last pillow.

I scooped up the two on the ground and tossed them behind me on the bed. “Thank you,” I said. “I love a few extra pillows while I sleep.”

She seemed to realize her mistake, and her mouth turned down.

“Don’t worry, I’ll share… for a price.”

“Nah, I’m good. I like a, ah, lack of neck support while I sleep. Better for your spine.”

I nodded sagely. “Awesome. Well, goodnight.” I dramatically gathered up all the pillows and lined them around me before plopping onto my back on top of them. I sighed deeply, stretching out.

“Hope you like scoliosis,” she muttered.

I turned, propping my elbow on a pillow and my chin in my hand. “Hey, Luce, I hate to tell you this, but… You aren’t sounding particularly g rateful that I’m helping your spine health. You sure you don’t want one of my pillows?”

“I think you mean my pillows.”

“Don’t see your name on them.” I peered down at the few in front of me.

“If I wasn’t so tired, I’d match your junior high humor with some of my own, but my brain can’t seem to come up with any bad jokes.”

I laughed. “Come on. One little game and you can have your pillows.”

She lay on her back and pressed her eyes closed, as if asking for divine help. “What’s the game?”

“Would you rather.”

Her eyes were on the ceiling. “So, I don’t have to move? Just answer questions?”

“Yep.”

“Deal. But only because it’s my own fault for throwing the pillows, otherwise I’d just demand them back.”

My mouth hitched up. “Fair enough. You have to answer… three questions for each pillow.”

“I only need one pillow.”

I assumed as much. “Then three questions.”

“Okay, shoot.”

I was still on my throne of pillows, turned on my side, watching her. She was more shadow than light, and I tried to keep myself from thinking about the fact that she was right there . In her bed. Right in front of me, but just out of reach.

Maybe I should have just gone to sleep.

“Would you rather…” Several options came to mind. None of them would probably deserve answers. “Do karaoke in our room or have a fashion show in the hallway.”

Her shadowy head turned toward me. “I don’t actually have to do either, right?”

“No, ma ’am. I promised you could stay in bed.”

“Then karaoke. I would turn the volume down.”

“Good loophole.”

She dipped her head gracefully. “Thank you. Next question?”

My fingers tapped against one of the pillows. “Would you rather have just one perfect night or a thousand ordinary ones?”

For a second, she was quiet. “So, like, only one left?”

“Yep. But it’s perfect. Everything you could want.”

“But then I die?”

“Yep.”

“Jeez, Finn, that took a dark turn.”

I snorted. “Sorry, I didn’t have much time to think. What’s your answer?”

She thought for a moment longer. “Ordinary days.”

“Really? I kinda thought you’d want the perfect day. The happily ever after moment.”

I thought I saw her shrug, but clouds must have drifted across the moon because even the scant window light had gone. Just her voice floated across the expanse to me. “That’s a lot of pressure for one day. Plus, there’s beauty in ordinary days, too. Not every page in a book is a quotable moment.”

We were both quiet, then she said, “Last question? I’m ready for my pillow, please.”

“Give me a sec to think.”

“Okay, but only because I don’t want another morbid question.”

I chuckled, and the room lightened a little with pearly moonlight. “Alright… Would you rather… relive your best day, or get a glimpse into the future?”

“Best day,” she said. “Pillow, please.”

I tossed her a pillow. One of the ones I hadn’t mangled with my elbow or a knee.

She immediately stuffed it under her head, shifting down until s he was burrowed in the blanket.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Something about this little conversation in the quiet and dark of our own bubble had done something.

Moved something. My chest was aching with the desire to keep talking, keep watching each of her small movements, and hear her laugh.

“What was your best day?” I asked.

I saw her blanket rise and fall with a breath. Had she already fallen asleep?

“I don’t know,” she said, her words soft.

“But you answered so quickly.”

She shifted onto her side, her eyes on mine. “I imagine my best day is worth reliving, whatever it was.”

“Better than seeing into the future?”

“What if… what if there aren’t any better days to come? What if the future just depresses me?”

The air in my lungs froze as she put words to feelings I’d had for years. What if the future just depressed me? What if it was bleak and disappointing? But I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t just let her be as pessimistic as I was.

“There has to be good—lots of it. You’ve only been alive twenty-four years, and already you’ve had highs and lows. The future will probably have more lows… but lots more highs too.”

She nodded, tucking her arm under her head.

“Need another pillow?” I asked.

“I don’t think I have it in me to answer three more philosophical would-you-rathers,” she said, her voice smiling.

I tossed a pillow to her, making sure it wouldn’t hit her in the face. “This one’s on the house.”

She grabbed it, bunching it up beside her other one. “Thanks.”

“They are your pillows after all.”

A yawn to ok over her mouth for a moment before she said, “Weird, I don’t see my name on it.”

I chuckled, forcing myself to turn and stop looking at her.

Her bed shifted too, and I guessed she’d turned as well. “What was your best day, Finn?”

I had to think about it. I could call up a ton of bad days—why was it that the crap stuff stuck with you more than the good? But the best day?

“Sixteenth birthday. All my friends came, Pops hooked up the trailer, and we listened to music on a hayride, then played night games.”

“Sounds like a fun birthday.” There was a smile in her voice.

It was, but that wasn’t why it was my best day. And for some reason, I wanted to tell Lucy about it. All of it. “I think the real reason it was the best was because it… I… That was the first time I remember feeling like this was home.”

She was quiet, but I didn’t give in to the pull to turn back toward her bed.

“I’d been there for a couple of years by then, but two months before it had been decided that I was staying permanently. Dad was out of jail… and he didn’t want me back.”

She made a sound that was pure disgust. “I don’t like your dad much.”

“Me neither.” My chest swelled with the appreciation of her disdain on my behalf. “But until that day, I didn’t ever feel like I could settle down. That day… on my birthday… something changed. I showed my friends around like it was my home, not my grandparents’.”

“I’m so glad you had people there for you… But I’m sorry it was so hard for so long.”

I shrugged, then remembered she couldn’t see me. “It’s okay. Life happens. You’ve talked about your mom a bit… but what about your dad? What happened there?”

She made a noncommittal noise, then yawned again. I let myself turn back and watch her shadowy figure.

“I don ’t really know, to be honest. I remember they fought more before it happened—the divorce.

But I’m not sure what the deciding factor was, if there was one.

Too often, I think people just stop seeing the good in the other person and the stuff they could improve in themselves.

Relationships don’t work after that. But my parents did a good job shielding me from it, at least. Mom, because she let me be a kid and didn’t rag on my dad; and Dad, because he just stopped talking to me. ”

“Ouch. That’s terrible.”

“Yeah. I could defend him and say it was new territory for him too, and he married a woman who wanted to build her own family… but at the end of the day, he was my dad, and he should have tried harder.”

“Yeah, he should have. I’m sorry, Luce.”

She yawned, and it was contagious. “Enough questions from you, we need sleep.”

“Would you rather sleep now or give that karaoke plan a go?”

Lucy laughed, but it was cut off by another yawn.

“Okay, okay,” I said, making myself roll over and face the wall. “Goodnight. We can do karaoke tomorrow.”

Another small laugh, this time slower, more sleepy. “’Night, Finn.”