“Rex,” I say. “I am genuinely sorry. You did not sign up for this.”
He shrugs, pulling a piece of bread apart with his big hands. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I put you in an absurd position. You were very quick to back me up and I’m grateful but you are in no way obligated to keep this charade up.”
“Cora.” His voice is quiet and completely certain. “It’s fine. I backed you up because you looked like you needed it, and I’d do it again. The question is just what we do now.” He pauses. “The town is already telling the story. So we can either correct it immediately and explain the whole thing and have everyone asking about Muir?—”
I make a sound.
“Right,” he says. “Or we hold the line for the summer. Keep things vague. He’s back, he’s here for a season, and by the time autumn comes he’ll be gone again and the whole thing quietly dissolves.” He looks at me sidelong. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. We already work together half the day anyway, and we live together. Not much would change except that people will stop trying to set you up with the merman from the township.”
“Dermot is very nice,” I say weakly.
“Dermot asked you out four times and you told him you were too busy with inventory.”
“My inventory was?—”
“Cora.”
I exhale. I pull at my pandesal and wet the end of it in my coffee before popping the piece in my mouth.
While I chew, I mull over the reasons this plan is slightly unhinged and about how the only alternative is walking into town today and telling people never mind, the whole thing was a five-second panic response to news about my ex, who is now in Harmony Glen. I will spend the rest of the summer being on the receiving end of concerned community attention that I have zero appetite for.
“Fine,” I say.
Rex nods, unhurried.
“But we need rules,” I add, because if I am going to do something unhinged I am going to do it with structure. “Nothing too complicated. No public displays that feel weird. No buying me things or pretending to remember anniversaries or whatever, that’s insane, we just need to be plausible.”
“We spend most of our time together already,” Rex repeats as if I didn’t hear the first time.
“Right. So it’s basically the same. Just with?—”
“Occasional hand-holding when the Bennett sisters are nearby.”
“Exactly. We can do that.”
“And the whole ‘my partner’ framing instead of ‘my friend.’”
“Fine.”
“At the bonfire sets, when tourists ask who you’re with.”
I pause. “Okay.”
“And maybe,” he says, very casually, “when Muir is around.”
The word lands like a pebble in a still pond. I feel the ripple go out from it.
“Yeah,” I say, after a moment. “Especially then.”
Rex doesn’t say anything smug about this. He doesn’t say anything at all. One of the reasons he is my best friend.
He just takes a sip of his coffee, and another bite of his bread, and we sit together in the early morning on the porch with the lake going gradually from silver to blue.
“Oh,” Rex says, like he’s just remembered something. “Speaking of work. We got an inquiry about the job last night. For the dive position. I think he filled out the online application yesterday.”
I look at him. “An applicant already?”