“Errands,” he said. “You can help me carry stuff.”
Not exactly the most fun activity to celebrate turning thirty, but Lucy was pretty sure Nick had forgotten. That was fine, since she was putting off cake until Gran got home, and when you reached a certain age, cake was really the only thing worth celebrating. Gran had sent her a text message early that morning, wishing her a happy birthday, and she’d gotten a funny video from Sydney, singing the song to her with the Miami skyline in the background.
She hadn’t heard from Iris, but she rarely did on her birthdays.
Lucy was confused when he drove by the hardware store, and then the market. She wondered briefly if he was going to surprise her with the boat trip she’d put on their shenanigans list, but she trusted he would have warned her to dress warmer and to secure her hair a little better. It was always windy on the water, according to Billy.
“No, really, where are we going?” she asked when she couldn’t stand it anymore. “It’s not outside, like yesterday, is it?”
“You’re the one who wanted to play football on the beach.”
She sighed. “I really thought that would be more fun.”
“Itcanbe more fun, if you have actual teams and play actual football, with hitting each other and everything. What we played was a glorified game of catch until you tripped and threw my football in the water and wouldn’t go get it.”
“You still crossed it off the list,” she pointed out. “And I thought the waves would wash the ball back to shore.”
“Eventually, but you’ve got a pretty good arm on you when you’re in the process of falling on your face.”
Lucy laughed. “You had a good time and you know it.”
He smiled, and she knew he was thinking about that kiss. “I did.”
“So did I, but where are we going now?”
“We just have to run by the scone shop really quick.”
“It’s more fun if you call it the Scuttlebutt. Also, Willow closes at two, Nick.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “She hid a check under the mat for me. A deposit for some work she needs done.”
“She could have given it to me when I was here earliertoday.” It made no sense to her that it hadn’t even come up in conversation, considering Willow knew she lived with the man. “And leaving a check under a mat is weird.”
“Small towns are like that,” Nick muttered. “We can grab it easy enough.”
“We? It’s going to take both of us to get a check from under a mat?”
“It’s a nice night. Actually, I’m just going to park here and we can walk. It’s easier.”
Lucy wasn’t sure why it was easier to park down and across the street and walk rather than parking right across from the building, but she didn’t care enough to push. And then, when she was climbing down out of the truck, she almost fell on her face when Nick accidentally laid on the horn with his elbow while getting out his side.
“Are you okay?” she asked when she reached him at the curb. “You’re acting odd tonight.”
“Sure.”
“Sure you’re okay or sure you’re acting odd?”
He shrugged. “Two things can be true at the same time.”
They were almost to the Scuttlebutt when the inside of the bakery lit up and she saw Willow and Mattie grinning in the window, holding up a sign that said Lucy’s the Big 3-0! Happy Birthday!in huge letters.
Lucy laughed and shoved at Nick’s arm. “What did you do?”
“I’m just an accomplice whose only job was to get you here without giving away the surprise. If they’d known how bad I am at lying, though, they might have fired me.”
“Or at least given you a script,” she teased. “A check under the mat?”
“Hey, I got you here,” he reminded her as he pushed open the door.