Training wheels lying in the grass.
“A bicycle.”
Grandpa closed his eyes briefly.
“A red one.”
My heart began racing.
“There was a boy.”
The memory sharpened.
Dark hair.
A child laughing behind me.
A hand gripping the back of my bicycle seat.
“He used to help me ride it.”
Grandpa nodded.
“That was Julian.”
The porch seemed to tilt beneath me.
The bookstore where Julian and I supposedly met two years earlier flashed through my mind.
The way he had stared at me that first afternoon.
The strange softness in his expression.
