Chapter 27 The Green Light
The Green Light
Riding a bike, it turned out, was like riding a bike.
Blair snickered to herself as she built up speed on the loaner Allie had said she could use.
Blair hadn’t ridden a bike since middle school, transporting oneself by bicycle being not the thing for proper Southern young ladies, but she hadn’t forgotten how.
She’d left Jack at the cabin staring out at the water, rather morosely if she wasn’t mistaken.
Was he having more memories of childhood?
Was he thinking about what had happened last night?
She’d desperately wanted to know what was going on in his head, but, sensing that he wanted to be alone, she’d declared her intention to head into the nearby town.
He had offered his car, but she’d wanted to ride to get a sense of what Sunny, the protagonist of Green Light, who was not a proper Southern young lady and therefore a cyclist, would have experienced.
She was also on a mission.
Her first stop was, on Jack’s advice, Bo’s Live Bait and Tackle, which, contrary to the name, was more of a general store.
Her mind whirred as she entered the cluttered, unflatteringly lit store and was greeted by a portly, gray-haired man wearing a Minnesota Vikings T-shirt who, clocking her as being from out of town, introduced himself as the one and only Bo.
“I’m a friend of Allie Jensen’s, and I’m staying at her place.
” She was pretty sure Bo’s Live Bait and Tackle would make an ideal alternative to the convenience store in Green Light, but she didn’t want to tip her hand just yet.
Bo hadn’t recognized her, and she hoped to stay on the down-low.
“Of course, on my trip to the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, I managed to forget to pack a bathing suit. I heard you might have some.”
Blair was directed to a section of the store that had floaties, beach toys, and a few bathing suits, though the pickings were slim.
She grabbed the only one that looked like it would fit—there were no changing rooms at Bo’s—which was a one-piece covered in mermaid scales, except they were blurry and pixelated as if the image printed on the suit had been enlarged too much.
She drifted up and down other aisles on her way to check out, marveling over worms, minnows, and some larger fish.
She examined elaborate multicolored lures, fishing poles, and other equipment that seemed vaguely fishing related.
Bo also had a small grocery section, gardening tools, hardware, boating supplies, and, it seemed, a little coffee shop in one corner.
“Can you make a latte?” she asked, nodding at the espresso machine behind the counter.
“Sure can. Well, the machine makes it. All I do is press a button.”
Soon Blair was on her way down the short main street with a comically ugly bathing suit and a surprisingly good latte.
She poked her head into an antique shop that was really more of a junk store, stopped to peruse the menu posted outside a diner called Lake View even though the town was not, in fact, on the lake.
She took note of a few spots Jack had mentioned: the laundromat, which was called Super Suds, and the library, though it was closed because it was Monday.
She got back on the bike with a strange feeling. Not a bad feeling—nothing like the bone tingling that used to presage the cyclone. It was a calm, confident knowing. This town was perfect, and it was going to be the setting for Green Light.
Jack didn’t seem to be around when Blair got back to the cabin, though the car was still in the drive.
Blair donned the ugly suit and retrieved an inner tube from the stash Allie had shown them.
She waded out from the shore, trying not to squeal when her feet touched something slimy that she told herself was just seaweed.
After struggling to get her butt aligned in the center of the tube, she paddled out a way.
The sun was high, and the sky was blue and cloudless.
The air smelled… lakey. She laughed at the inadequacy of using the word lakey to describe a lake.
It was musky in a good way. She didn’t have the right word. She made a note to ask Jack.
The water was cold, but a girl could not have everything.
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back and let the sun warm her skin and the waves rock her.
It was good to be here, not only because this was going to be the setting for Green Light, but because she was somewhere else. Not trapped at home.
She wasn’t magically better. She was working hard. She still occasionally experienced the cyclone, or the start of it. But she put up her hurricane shutters and took her meds and called Tiffany and did all the things she was supposed to, and it usually worked.
But here, here was a respite. She wasn’t sure if that was due to the change of scenery or to the company.
A sluicing sound—different from the lapping of the waves against the rubber of her tube—had her lifting her head. Jack was approaching in a canoe. He slowed the boat and raised a hand in greeting.
“What word would you use for the smell of the air here?” she asked. “I was thinking lakey but realized it’s dumb to call a lake lakey.”
“The other day I thought earthy. Calling a lake earthy might be dumber than calling it lakey.”
“Definitely dumber.”
He chuckled.
“Out for a ride?” she asked, as if it weren’t obvious.
“I had a mission to complete.”
She thought of him saying he and Allie had canoed to visit each other. “Did you go see your father after all?” He had said he wasn’t going to, but maybe all the memories were demanding a reckoning.
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Just your garden-variety secret mission.” She was about to interrogate him, but he added, “As far as missions go, I see yours was successful.”
“Yes, I purchased the world’s ugliest bathing suit, and I learned that this town is going to be perfect. I need to request some changes to the script to make it fit, but that’s easy enough.”
For the first time, Blair wondered if maybe she should take a crack at the script herself. It was in pretty good shape, finally, but she was the one who’d been inside Bo’s Live Bait and Tackle. She was the one with the buzzy-legs feeling.
For the first time, the notion seemed… not totally impossible.
“You going to be out here awhile still? I’ll take the canoe in and change and join you.”
Blair agreed, and by the time he was back, she’d been floating long enough, and her inner tube was holding her high enough out of the water, that she was pretty much dry—and warm.
Jack swam out without a float of any sort, and instead of treading water like a normal person, he slung an arm over her tube, showering her with water in the process.
“Ahh! I was dry! I was warm!”
“Only you would expect to be warm and dry while in a lake.”
“This water is objectively cold!”
“True. In terms of lake temperature, early June is still cold.” He paused. “For most people.”
“How early in the year did you usually start swimming?”
“The vast majority of the time I spent here was over the summer. My dad used to take a dip every morning there wasn’t ice to break through, though.”
“You mean year-round?”
“I do indeed. I would go with him if I happened to be here for a random weekend during the school year. Even I will concede it’s brutal to get into the lake in the dark when the air temperature is, say, thirty degrees.”
“Why didn’t you just opt out?”
“You don’t really… opt out of stuff with my dad.”
“Not to be melodramatic, but that sounds borderline abusive.”
“Is it abusive or is it character building? You say po-tay-to; I say po-tah-to.” He paused again, his good cheer from before no longer in evidence. “You say po-tay-to; Art Branksome says po-tah-to.”
Not only was the good cheer gone, Jack was suddenly looking so serious that Blair felt the need to do something about it. So she took the mature route and reached her hand over the edge of the tube and splashed him.
He sputtered, but he was laughing.
She sent another scoop of water at him.
“Now you’re in trouble,” he said.
“Oh no, what? Are you going to splash me back?” She pretended to cower.
Laughing, he started doing just that. “I should tip you over, but apparently I’m not that much of an asshole.”
She squealed as the water hit her face, and soon they were splashing and laughing.
Deciding she was too much of a sitting duck on the tube, she scooched herself off it.
A tussle ensued. It didn’t last long. A few more splashes, and she found herself being pulled toward Jack, who was holding on to the inner tube with one arm.
He reeled her in and arranged her so she mimicked his position, looping one of her arms over the tube.
They floated, facing each other, smiling and breathing hard.
The sun was making the droplets of water on his face and in his stubble look like diamonds.
Who was this man? This steady, solid man who had written something as gossamer and gorgeous as In Time? And who, despite his self-professed misanthropy, was floating in a lake with her and smiling like she wasn’t the personification of all things hollow and Hollywood?
His free hand floated up out of the water and pushed a wet hank of hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. From there, it settled on her cheek. She leaned into it.
They stayed like that for a long moment, just looking at each other. It should have been awkward. Instead, Blair just felt… tenderness.
She wanted to object when he broke with her gaze, but when she realized it was because he was towing them in, she went silent. She knew what was happening next.
“You’re freezing,” he said, as he extended a hand to hoist her up once they’d reached the shallows.
“This surprises you?” she said, trying to quell her shivering.
“No. Lots of things about you surprise me, but that isn’t one of them.”