Page 68 of Famous for a Living

“On my street the buildings were so tall I didn’t see the sun until noon. Two hours later, it was gone. No skyline like your fancy apartment. No room to breathe. Every morning my mom would open the kitchen window and I’d look out as I ate my cereal, staring at the graffiti on the back side of another building. And the smell.”

I give a short nod. That was fair. There are always spots in the city where the pungency of a freshly urinated alleyway gets you. “It’s not like living in a snow globe like it is here. I’ll grant that.”

“I spent eight hours a day strapped to a chair in school and the next eight hours before bed told to stay inside. My mom was too busy working to take me places, and where we lived wasn’t safe enough for me to roam alone. And even if I did, I had no money. I was a latchkey kid, just like all my friends.”

“So you came out here.” I shrug. “I get it.”

And I did. It made sense for him. Zaiah Smith was made for the mountains. He was made to roam. His job, quite literally, is roaming.

“When did you realize you wanted to leave?” I ask.

“In sixth grade we read Hatchet. I was the only kid in class who was sorry for the ending.”

Vaguely I remember reading that one around the same time, but the ending is lost on me. “Which was?”

“He got rescued from the woods. Went back to civilization.”

“Of course you were.” I laugh. “When did you move out here?”

“Eighteen.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

I nod. “Impressive. Granted, I beat you by a year. But impressive.”

He raises a brow. “You moved to the city at seventeen?”

“Yep.”

“Take a bus?”

“Yep.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Zaiah clicks his tongue. “Maybe we were ships passing in the night.”

I grin. Something about that idea feels cozy.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mina has spotted us. As she begins to wave us over, I can’t help noticing Zaiah leaning into the boulder beside us, blocking her from view.

“What was your first bottom-of-the-ladder job?” he says.

“Ah.” I shake my head. “Our common ground ends here, I’m afraid. I went straight into full-time content creating.”

“You’ve never had another job?”

“Not in the city. I had a short spell hostessing at fifteen at a restaurant so bad it got shut down for spreading hepatitis.”

His brow rises again.

My fingers skim the water. “I know. My résumé is incredibly intimidating. What about you?”

“I took the first job I could find. Became a busboy. Did it for about two years, until your uncle finally dragged me out.”

I grin, completely unsurprised. “How’d he do it?”

“He used to come in all the time—”