“I was beingefficient.” I hang the last vest with perhaps more force than strictly necessary. “And I thanked it before I released it.”
He gives methe look. The one that means he sees straight through me, always has, and finds the whole business deeply charming. “That why you were out there for five minutes?”
I throw a towel at his face. “Respect is respect in any language, shark boy.”
We lock up the shed and walk toward the cabin I use as an office. A cheerful little cedar-sided thing twenty meters from the waterline, with a porch that catches the evening light and a sign out front that reads SNACK HUT in letters I painted myself, slanting slightly to the left because I did it freehand and refused Rex’s ruler on principle.
There’s a dry-erase board in the window with tomorrow’s tour schedule, fully booked, and seeing it still gives me a small secret thrill.
A year ago I’d have considered one fully booked day a minor miracle. These days, all of July is solid.
Rex drops into the battered Adirondack chair outside the door with the easy authority of someone who has sat in it so often it has taken on the shape of him. “Three tours today, full book tomorrow, perfect weather for the weekend moonlight paddle.” He tilts his head back against the wood. “We are absolutely killing it, Cor.”
I lean on the porch railing and let the last warmth of the day soak into my shoulders. The sun is dropping toward the tree line on the far side of the lake, turning the water gold and rose and the deep copper color that I have never seen anywhere else. Harmony Glen light.
My grandmother would have called itsinag ng kaluluwa. Light of the soul.
“Don’t jinx it,” I say. But I’m grinning.
“I don’t believe in jinxes.”
“We are surrounded by magic and living myths. How in the world can you possibly believe that?”
“Which is exactly how I know jinxes aren’t real.” He pauses. “I believe in the reality of krakens. Not theimprobabilityof jinxes.”
“There are no krakens in Harmony Glen.”
“Yet.”
I shake my head, push off the railing, and disappear into the cabin. When I come back out I’m carrying two cold beers from the mini fridge, and I hand him one and sit beside him on the top porch step, close enough that our shoulders nearly touch.
“To summer,” I say, and clink my bottle to his.
“To summer.” He drinks, then gives me the side-eye. “And to you finally letting me update your website so people can actually book tours online instead of calling your answering machine, which is from the previous century.”
“It’s from 2003.”
“Which is the previous century.”
“The 2000s?—”
“Previous. Century.” He says it the way someone reads a verdict.
I drink. “I like talking to people when they call. Hearing someone’s voice helps me figure out which tour is right for them.”
He opens his mouth, probably to point out that this is a completely insane business practice in the digital age. Then he closes it again. After a year he has learned which hills are notworth dying on. “Fine. At minimum, let me set up a card reader so you’re not taking cash and checks like a traveling carnival.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I won’t. But the offer will come back around in August, as it always does, and we’ll have this same conversation again, and he’ll sigh, and I’ll deflect, and then I’ll quietly look into card readers at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night and not tell him. This is our system and it works.
“Speaking of which,” Rex says, “we really need to talk about hiring someone. July’s completely booked and August is filling up fast. We can’t run three tours a day with just the two of us.”
“We’ve managed fine so far.”
“We’ve managed because you’re a superhuman work machine and I don’t sleep.” He tilts his head back against the porch post. “But we’re leaving money on the table, Cor. People are asking about September tours. We could expand if we had another pair of hands.”
“I know.” I pick at my beer label. “I just...I don’t know. It’s been us for three years.”