Stacy missed the bus by a few minutes—as he hurried down the street from the high school to the stop, the city bus lumbered past him like an overworked racehorse, kicking up dust and hot wind in its wake. Stacy started to jog but he still had another block to go, and by the time he reached the sign on the corner, the bus was already gone. He had to wait for the next one, twenty long minutes that dragged by in the bright summer sun, with nothing to distract his thoughts from drifting to Darian.
In his mind he went over the past half-hour, remembering every little detail—the tiny wrinkles around Darian’s eyes when he laughed, his knuckles bumping against Stacy’s back as he untied the apron, the way his smile seemed to start with his mouth and work its way up to color his cheeks and finally
