Chapter 10
Now
Bea
“I could blame Fisher, I guess.” As far as conversation starters, it’s not my best work, but I’m hoping it’ll shake the dust of Silas’s attack off him.
He’s freshly showered and changed into a crisp gray shirt and jeans, a flannel tucked under one arm.
The ends of his hair are still damp, and he smells like soap and some kind of minty lotion.
He absentmindedly massages a scar near his elbow while he walks at my side.
It’s a stark contrast to the frantic, grabby, and scantily clad man of thirty minutes ago. Almost too calm, in comparison.
But he visibly reorients himself at the mention of Sage’s pirate-esque, earring-sporting, chef fiancé, and grins down at me.
“For the way Walter yells corner every five minutes at the diner as of late or how he’s suddenly changed his entire wardrobe to white shirts with dark jeans and Crocs?
” he asks. “For me not having green bean casserole for the last two Thanksgivings? For the uptick in men sporting jewelry around town? Or all of the above? Because, same.”
Mission accomplished.
“I remember when you wore jewelry, Silas,” I tell him. “A necklace, if I recall correctly.”
“Let’s refer to it as a chain,” he says dryly. “Good memory, by the way.”
I need to have an expressly less good memory when it comes to the last time I saw him wearing that chain and should be a great deal more careful about bringing up anything surrounding that night. That was a clumsy slipup, my second in the last hour.
“What else are we blaming him for? I’m sure I’ll get on board,” he adds.
“For the influx of tourism and therefore my inability to find a rental,” I say. “So I guess I blame him—and Starhopper.” Where we are currently headed.
Similar to mine but on an opposing corner of town, Silas’s house sits above and behind the main strip of Spunes at a walkable distance.
It’s a two-story craftsman with warm wood floors and a sprawling, modern kitchen that still feels cozy.
There’s a vaulted covered patio, a built-in fireplace, and a fenced-in backyard, which also boasts a gate that opens to a trail leading into town, a shimmering estuary bordering it on one side.
It is all exceedingly nice, and he isn’t charging me nearly enough to stay there.
We continue side by side down the crushed granite trail, the evening so lovely it’s obscene. Spunes has chosen to be perfectly sunny and dry for the last two weeks, and between working and moving, this is the first time I’ve been out long enough to enjoy it.
I realize he’s been quiet too long and turn to search him.
“Why are you still looking?” he asks me with a long-suffering expression.
“I just turned to look at you, Silas.”
“Not at me,” he says, sliding his hands into his jeans. “I mean why are you still looking for rentals? I thought we covered this.”
I growl out a sound at the unnervingly blue sky. “Because,” I say, feeling stupid.
When he recognizes that this is the entirety of my response, he stops and folds his arms across his chest—stern and patient and casually intense.
“I already told you, I work twenty-fours all season. I’m gone a lot.
Days at a time, in fact. It’s not a big deal for you to stay for the whole damn year.
I’ve got four bedrooms. There’s plenty of room.
” He schools his face into something pitiful.
Quivers his lower lip. “I guess that explains why everything is still boxed up. You know, you’re starting to hurt my feelings. ”
I ignore the theatrics, and he drops them expeditiously. “I’m worried it’s too much, Silas. I mean, Jesus, aren’t you a little worried? Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?”
A snorty laugh leaps out of him, but he covers it with a cough when I don’t join in. “Okay, we need food before we get into this. At least I do.” Then, lower, “I always need my strength around you.”
We sit out on Starhopper’s upper deck, right up against the railing, first-row seats to watch the setting sun blaze neon ribbons across the sky. I down an IPA and split four appetizers with him instead of picking out a meal, and each thing is so delicious they fortify me on a spiritual level.
“All right then,” Silas starts. He’s let me get away with a whole lot of silent stretches and small talk since the walk over here, and I surmise that this is about to end. “Let’s have it out. Walk me through what you’re worried about.”
All right then, indeed. I can do blunt. “I’m worried that continuing to live together on top of spending more time together is going to push the boundaries of our newfound friendship, given that we are friends who have previously . . .” I gesticulate with my hands.
“Ah,” he says. “Given that we are friends who have previously—kissed?”
Kissed? Forbidden crushes and a million tangled stares across the same town, one magical, hazy, seemingly endless night full of a bit more than kissing, which turned into carefully distant longing with a side helping of shame, that only settled back into some mild (if slightly antagonistic) flirting and a sort-of friendship after years? But okay. Sure.
“Friends who kissed” is fine, too.
I’m certainly not going to claim it meant more if it didn’t to him.
“Maybe it was a little more than that,” he adds. “Friends who’ve done some stuff and . . . kinda-sorta seen each other naked.”
“Silas.” I wince, but the food and beer have loosened me up, and it trips right into a weak chuckle.
“What? It was dark. I hardly remember the nipple rings. Definitely never thought about them again.”
I sigh tiredly but my ears are ablaze. “Well, I don’t have those anymore.”
“See? All that not-remembering I did didn’t matter, anyway.”
I give him a considering look. He cocks his head to match my angle and smirks, but this one isn’t smug.
It’s a kind, patient curve. See, we’re adults and we can laugh about this, it says.
We can be friends even if I know what you taste like.
Even if you know how demanding I get and the way my grip gets deliciously rough.
“How about this? We lay out a bunch of rules to help you feel better, because I know you like your lists,” he says, the breeze playing with a lock of his hair.
“How do you know I like lists?”
“Every box you brought to my house has an itemized list of everything inside it taped to the top in the exact same spot, you lit up at the idea of doing Merritt’s list, and . . .” He scratches the back of his neck stiffly. “And you’re just generally very organized and efficient?”
Merritt used to lovingly call it things like militant, anal, relentless. A worker bee, then Bumblebee, she called me, which got abbreviated to BB later. Because I do love my lists and tasks and figuring out how to accomplish things best.
But for as well as he’s read me, I now see Silas a little more clearly, too.
I think of the way his truck is always tidy and how clean his house is.
I get the briefest flashback of a made bed before I shut that memory down.
The punctuation in his texts and his rapid-fire mouth.
Observant and sharp and efficient himself. Like recognizing like.
There’s control in his chaos. A predictability to it.
“Okay,” I say.
He clears his throat and leans over the table, a different sort of smile drifting up his face. Not something full of hidden messages or anything meant to charm or coax. It’s a naked smile, boyish and sweet.
“All right. Now that that’s settled. Let’s get into some rules.”
Most of the rules we discuss are basic and straightforward. Generally picking up after ourselves, respecting each other’s food. Not walking around naked—though Silas gallantly states that if this is how I am most comfortable, he will allow it.
When I ask him to give me a heads-up if he is bringing someone home, his jaw goes taut before he blows out a long sigh and says, “I’m not in the headspace for any of that right now, but . . . sure, I’ll let you know if that changes.”
“You don’t need to be ready for a relationship to want to bring someone home,” I remind him.
He polishes off his beer, something hardening in his expression. “True. And I’m not in the headspace for any of it. Not a relationship or a situationship or a fuckbuddy or whatever it is that people are calling it currently.”
“A one-night stand?” I offer, patently ignoring the way my belly dips at the word fuckbuddy.
He levels a measured look at me and lets the moment stretch. Brings his hands into his lap. “I’m no good for any of it right now, Bea.”
Again, this brand of blatant self-deprecation doesn’t quite go with the picture of him that I’ve had built up.
I vow to myself not to make any more assumptions.
“For the record,” I tell him, “neither am I.” The sun has fully set by now, and I fix my eyes on the moon reflecting off the ocean in the distance.
Like the thumbnail of some god reaching out from the depths.
“I can’t chance it right now. Not when I know I want to bring a kid into my life.
It wouldn’t be fair to expect someone to sign up for a relationship where they’d automatically default to number two right away.
Plus, I think, in order to prioritize a baby .
. . I think I have to prioritize myself for a little bit first.”
Before Mom married Kurt, for the first five years of my life, my biological father wandered in and out of it.
I think I was too young to be too confused, but I do remember the way it hurt my mom every time it inevitably fell apart.
Thankfully, at age six, I caused some sort of plumbing-related disaster with a few toys and a ball of Play-Doh, and Kurt was who showed up to do repairs.
Still, I wouldn’t want to stretch myself thin like Mom had in those earlier years, trying to accommodate a relationship for my child’s sake. It’d be better not to count on someone at all, I think.
Silas sits up straighter in his seat and watches me in that laxly concentrated way of his. “So let’s write out your list, then,” he says. “I know you want to do the stuff in Merritt’s letter. But what about adding your own spin on things?”
I study him for a few long, steady seconds, while his eyes dance between mine and my mouth. “Okay,” I agree. “But I want you to add something, too. For you. Something I can do with you.”
His smile falters briefly, but in true Silas fashion, he’s quick to step up. He cracks his knuckles against a denim-clad thigh and nods. “Okay. I can do that.”
When our waiter comes by a moment later, Silas asks him to send Fisher out, and when Fisher obliges, Silas asks him to bring us a pen.
For one half second, I honestly think Fisher might throttle him.
“I have actual work to be doing, Silas,” Fisher bites out.
“I know what that’s like,” he replies, trilling his lips. “Have I ever told you about the time some guy called us to rescue him from his vacuum?”
Fisher pulls a pen out of his pocket and drops it on the table with a tense smile for me.
“I think he might actually hate you,” I say to Silas as we watch him march back toward the kitchen.
“He just hates how much he loves me.”