Read Strings of the Heart for Free Online Page B

you as a history buff.”
    He laughed as he shoved his hands in his jean pockets. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I was more of a history nerd.”
    I couldn’t help laughing at the absurd thought of him being a nerd. Sure, it would seem from the way he had been speaking very formally and properly this afternoon that he could be a nerd, but at the same time, I’d spent lots of downtime with him, and he was the furthest thing from a nerd. That wasn’t just my crush talking either.
    “You can laugh, but seriously, I have photographic evidence of my nerdom,” Rhys argued.
    “I find it very hard to believe considering who you are now that you were ever even remotely in the category of a nerd.”
    Rhys tsked at me as he checked left and right for traffic. “I’m going to gloat pretty badly when I show you the pics and get to say ‘I told you so.’”
    “Ha, we’ll just have to see.”
    We then stepped into one of Savannah’s many squares—Wright Square, as Rhys was quick to inform me. He practically dragged me over to a giant rock sitting to the right hand side of the square. “This is the rock dedicated to Tomochichi. When English settlers arrived in Savannah in 1733, he was the Yamacraw Chief who gave them assistance. This stone was erected over a hundred and fifty years after his death…”
    As Rhys continued rattling along about Tomochichi, I tried to feign interest when I frankly could have cared less. When he eventually finished, I cocked my head at him and grinned. “Ooh, talk nerdy to me some more,” I teased.
    He laughed before playfully nudging me with his shoulder. “Twerp.” Patting the stone, he said, “What if I was to tell you that the stone had some mystical qualities?”
    “Seriously?”
    He nodded. “The legend is that if you circle the stone three times while continuously saying, ‘Tomochichi,’ whatever you wish will come true.”
    Sweeping my hand to my hip, I eyed him suspiciously. “That sounds like a load of bullshit. Like a very warped ‘wish upon a star.’”
    Rhys shrugged. “It may or may not be. But isn’t it worth trying a chance at having a wish come true?”
    I glanced between him and the rock not really believing that at twenty, I was actually going to take superstition seriously. While looking at Rhys, I could tell he was silently daring me to do it. “All right. Fine.”
    “You’re really going to do it?” he asked, a little incredulity in his voice.
    “Oh yeah, I’m doing it.”
    He chuckled. “Guess that internship is a wish heavy on your heart, huh?”
    I fought the urge to laugh in his face if he thought that I would actually waste my wish on the internship. Sure, it was important, but there was nothing more important to me than finally being with him. Without another word to Rhys, I reached out my hand and touched the stone. “Tomochichi, Tomochichi, Tomochichi…,” I began, as I started speed walking around the rock.
    When I made my first lap, I found Rhys grinning at me like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland . Ignoring him, I kept walking and reciting “Tomochichi.” Of course, while I might have been saying the dead chief’s name out loud, it was Rhys’s name I was saying inside my head.
    Once I was finished, I took my hand off the stone and turned questioningly to him. “Now what?”
    “You just wait for your wish to come true.”
    “Have you ever done it?”
    “Nope. Not even when I was a kid here on a field trip, and the tour guides told us about it.”
    “Why not?”
    He shrugged. “I guess I didn’t have anything to wish for.”
    “Well, that’s just sad. Life is all about having wants and desires, isn’t it?”
    “I suppose so. I just never gave much time and effort to thinking about them.”
    It was so strange that I had known him for seven years, spent hours and hours of time with him in different places, yet when it came down to it, I felt like I didn’t know him at all. He was a puzzle that needed to be solved, but at