Everything around him faded away until all that remained was Lucy in his arms. The warmth of her body. The red curls tickling the side of his face. Her fingers clutching his arms.
When she started shaking, he got scared for a second, but then he realized she was laughing. She pulled away enough so he could see her face, though she was still clutching his sweatshirt. Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling with humor, and she’d never looked more beautiful to him.
“I told you it would be embarrassing,” she said breathlessly.
He couldn’t say any of the things he wanted to say to her in that moment, so he just shook his head. “Why are you wearing heels?”
“These? They’re not even high heels.” After a few test stomps of her feet, she backed away, and every muscle in his body mourned the loss of contact. “And I wanted to look nice today.”
“Where did you park? I’ll walk you back to your car.”
“I’m parked over by Cricket, but I’ll be fine. You probably have to go back to work.”
He shrugged. “It’s a nice day.”
“It’s actually pretty cold.”
“Come on. I’d hate for you to fall down again and get hyperthermia. People might leave you there because you’ve established a reputation for randomly plopping down on the sidewalks.”
“A reputation?” She laughed and slapped his arm. “It was one time.”
“That’s all it takes sometimes.”
They walked in comfortable silence for a few minutes before she glanced over at him. “Speaking of reputations, you know all the stories in Wayward Harbor, right?”
“I don’t know a fraction of the stories in Wayward Harbor, but I do know a few, yes.”
“Do you know why some old guy I saw at the Uneven Keel would be called Bones?”
“Yup.” He nodded. “But first off, if you want to blend in at all, the locals just call it the Keel.”
“So noted, though I don’t think it’s possible for me to blend in. But back to Bones—did he find a skeleton in a cave? Pull up a skull on his fishing line? Does he have a weird hobby building things out of fish bones?”
“He choked on a chicken bone in third grade.”
“Oh.”
“Also, he’s only, like, fifty-five.”
“Oh.No. Really?”
“Yeah. He went to school with my dad—same class—so he’s roughly the same age my dad would have been today.”
“I’m sorry. Does it bother you to talk about him?”
“Not really. It used to, in the beginning. But now, I guess it hurts less to remember him than it would to forget him.” It was true, but he didn’t want to gotoodeep into it. “What about your dad?”
She shrugged. “Unknown.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
“I don’t even knowwhohe is.” Her easy smile and shrug let him know it was something that didn’t bother her. “His name isunknownon my birth certificate.”
Old rumors about Iris ran through his mind, but he wasnotgoing there, so his brain circled back in the conversation, and he glanced at her again. “Why were you at the Keel?”
“Oh, I got a job there.”
“Of course you did. Tell me, did you actuallymeetBilly?”