Free At First Sight by Catherine Hapka Page A

that he liked to go crabbing in the Chesapeake and mountain biking, and that he had a weakness for cheesy vampire movies; he coaxed me into admitting that I was afraid of the dark but loved snakes and other reptiles and had been begging my ophidiophobic dad to let me get a pet ball python for most of my life.
    I even told him about my dreams to become a fashion designer. That was kind of a big deal, actually. I didn’t talk to a whole lot of people about that, mostly because I was afraid they’d make fun of me. But Riley seemed perfectly willing to believe that I could do it.
    I also learned that Riley had spent much of his childhood moving around the world with his parents, who both worked for the State Department. The family had lived in Germany, Brazil, Switzerland, and Lebanon before finally settling in the D.C. metro area when he was twelve.
    â€œLuckily, I think this is it,” he said. “The ’rents tell me we probably won’t have to move again—their jobs now are both stateside.”
    I scraped a piece of crystallized ginger off the bottom of my bowl. “Wow, that’s hard-core. I can’t imagine moving around that much.” I tried to picture what it would be like moving away from my hometown, my school, and the friends I’d had since kindergarten. “I’ve lived in the same place my entire life. Well, almost—we did move once, when I was seven, but only to a bigger house like three blocks away from the oldone. It must be tough starting new schools all the time.”
    â€œSort of.” He shrugged. “But most of them were English-speaking schools for diplomats’ kids and stuff, so we were all in the same boat. We pretty much knew how to get along with each other.”
    I gazed at him with new respect. “So did you have to learn all those different languages?”
    â€œTechnically, I probably didn’t have to, since we usually lived in expat communities, and like I said, the schools were all in English. But I liked to at least give it a try.” He chuckled. “It was a lot easier to pick things up when I was younger. So my Arabic still sucks, but my German and Portuguese are both pretty good.”
    â€œReally? Say something.”
    He grinned and let loose with a torrent of foreign words. It sounded totally cool and exotic.
    â€œWhat’s that mean?” I asked.
    â€œIt means I’m glad I ran into you tonight,” he said, licking the last of his sorbet off his spoon. “This is fun. You’re really easy to talk to.”
    â€œThanks. So are you.” I smiled at him,feeling little pings of happiness going off in my brain. So was this what Britt felt every time she met a new guy? I kind of hoped not. Because this feeling was too special to waste on every other guy coming down the pike. I wanted her to find that one perfect guy … her own Riley.
    Part of me couldn’t believe I was falling so hard and fast for this guy. What had come over me? It was like I wasn’t even the regular Lauren anymore, the cautious, reserved Lauren who preferred to test the waters, take it slow, get to know a guy as friends first… .
    But the larger part of me was just glad I’d dredged up the guts to go over to Riley in the planetarium that day. Otherwise we might never have encountered each other, even though we only lived a few miles apart. And all of a sudden I couldn’t stand the thought of never having met him.
    Although I still hadn’t come clean with him. Not really. I mean, sure, I’d told him I was Planetarium Girl in that first Facebook message. But ever since then I’d let him go on believing the conclusion he’d jumped to—that I’d just used that message as an excuse to contact him because of our shared interest in MTIAB.
    And that didn’t seem good enough. I wanted him to know that I really was The One.
    Not that the truth was going to be easy. I’d seen how he