One Good Thing by Lily Maxton

all the poets I was familiar with. “I guess they can have a tendency toward that.”
    “You like poetry?”
    “I like to read it. I don’t write it or anything.”
    “Can you recite something for me?”
    I blinked at him and gave a nervous laugh. “What?”
    “Something you like.”
    He smiled at me, and I looked away, out the window. The streets were clogged with rush hour traffic. Riding with him would probably take longer than walking, but I wouldn’t be cold, at least.
    I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the glass. And battling a surge of self-consciousness, I began to recite one of my favorite Walt Whitman poems. At first, my voice wobbled a bit, and I wished I’d picked something shorter. But partway through, I got lost in the words and the emotions, and my voice gradually steadied.
    All I could hear when I finished was the whirr of the engine . M y eyelids cracked open, and I glanced at Evan out of the corner of my eye.
    He was staring at me. The car was stopped in traffic. A little hybrid in front of us sported a “Coexist” bumper sticker.
    “That bad?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “Is it really, really unmasculine if I say it sounded beautiful?”
    My lips twitched. “I won’t tell anyone.”
    “Good,” he said, returning my grin.
    “I guess I’m as big a dork as you are for having memorized the whole thing.”
    “I won’t tell anyone,” he echoed. “I took a poetry class in college and wrote some truly horrific poems.”
    “Horrific? They couldn’t have been that bad.”
    “They were,” he continued. “I’m pretty sure I rhymed spell and bell in one poem.”
    “Okay, I take it back; that is bad.”
    “Thanks.”
    “What did you major in?” I asked. It occurred to me I didn’t know how old he was—I would place him in his mid-twenties, thirty at the most, but some people looked younger than they were. He could have graduated years ago.
    “I double majored. Computer science and math.”
    “Oh …” I cast another sidelong glance at him. “So you’re really smart?”
    He scrunched up his face. “I guess I’m smart enough.”
    I turned in my seat so I could face him, the seat belt digging into my ribs. “Are you being modest? I bet you have like a two hundred IQ and your brain is twice the size of a normal human’s.”
    “Hardly anyone has an IQ of two hundred,” he pointed out. “Einstein’s estimated IQ was a hundred and sixty.”
    “You know Einstein’s IQ?”
    “Not cool?”
    “Beyond not cool. So what exactly do you do at SLQ?”
    “My official title is data software engineer.”
    I lifted my eyebrows. “And in English that means?”
    “Basically, I develop software that analyzes data.”
    Since SLQ’s main purpose was to analyze data, Evan’s job title sounded pretty vital to the company. “That sounds important.”
    “Yeah, I guess,” he said.
    I laughed. “You’re so modest. If I had a two hundred IQ and developed complex software I would talk it up.”
    He grinned, shaking his head. “I should ask you to recite poetry more often.”
    “Why?”
    “Your mood—you seem more at ease, happier, even. Not that I don’t like you when you’re prickly too; I like all of your guises.”
    He liked all of my guises.
He said it as though I were an enigma, something both mysterious and intriguing, someone worth getting to know, someone worth knowing.
    Had Drew ever thought of me like that? No, I didn’t think so. I’d never heard that same admiring tone from him.
    I focused my attention back on the MP3 player in my hand. Keep it light. Keep it light. “Well don’t like me too much,” I said.
    “It might be too late for that,” he responded softly.
    My tongue felt thick in my mouth. So much for keeping it light.
    I selected one of the Leonard Cohen albums and the strains of a guitar and a deep, lonesome voice filled the space between us. I needed that space like a drowning person needed a lifesaver.
    I couldn’t think of another word to say,