Objectively, the worst possible reason to want anything.
By the time we escape the bonfire, it’s past eleven and I’m exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with performing.
Rex helps me load the platform back into his truck while I gather my guitar. “You heading back?” he asks.
“Yeah. You?”
“I’ll drive around. See you at home.”
I nod and head for my water taxi, still tied at the Snack Hut dock. The lake is dark and quiet as I push off, the bonfire lights fading behind me as I glide across the water toward our house on the other side. My personal dock comes into view, the porch light I left on casting a warm glow across the water.
I tie the boat off and head up to the house.
I do not think about Muir Callaghan or about the fact that he’s somewhere in this town, breathing the same air, walking the same streets, seeing the same stars.
By seven o’clockin the morning, I’m on the porch with coffee, wrapped in my blanket as I watch the mist come off the lake.
Rex’s truck is already in the driveway where he parked it last night, but I know he’s been up for hours. He left the house before dawn to get his laps in, swimming as a shark in the pre-dawn darkness the way he does most mornings. I was awake at six-thirty and the house was already quiet, his bedroom door open, his running shoes by the door undisturbed.
He appears now, walking up from our personal dock, hair still damp, carrying two paper bags that smell like heaven and Liana’s kitchen. She’d texted him last night asking if he wanted pandesal for the morning, because the Harmony Glen gossip network operates at speeds that would make telecommunications companies weep with envy.
“You’re out and about early,” I say by way of greeting.
Rex takes the other porch chair, sets one of the bags on my knee, and opens his own. A were-shark intent on circling its prey for hours. He knows the inevitable.
“Fresh baked bread calls for early. Besides, I wanted to get some laps in before the day gets too full.”
Of course. Training before carbs. Should’ve known.
I take a piece of pandesal without ceremony. Liana put pandan in this batch, and I will need to deliver my thanks to her when my brain has sufficiently defogged.
“So,” Rex says, after a moment.
“So,” I agree.
Somewhere in the shallows, something splashes. A fish, probably, or Phineas on his rounds, checking the water the way he does, quiet and green and cheerfully minding everyone’s business without seeming to mean it.
“We should probably talk about last night,” Rex says.
“I was going to suggest we never speak of it again.”
“That would be the other option.” He turns his head to look at me. “But the Bennett sisters called me this morning at seven.”
I put my coffee down carefully. “Both of them?”
“Together, on speaker. They wanted to know if we’d thought about couple’s kayaking for the summer. As a date activity. That we could offer tourists.” A beat. “As inspiration.”
I close my eyes. “How long do you think before the whole town knows?”
“Cora, the whole town already knows. That’s what happens when you tell the Bennett sisters anything.” He sounds more amused than anything else. Somehow both comforting and deeply irritating.
“It’s seven in the morning.”
“And the day is just getting started.”
I open my eyes and look at the pewter water and think, with great seriousness, about getting in it and not coming back out until August. Hell, maybe I can swim and keep swimming.
Like someone else I know.