15. Lance
Chapter fifteen
Lance
It’s Sunday evening, and this is Shelley Bishop’s fault.
I’ve been trying to ease myself back into the swing of things in Fairhaven, and it’s been hard.
So far, my first month back has been hard to get a grip on.
I’m not sure which part is the dream and which part’s real life.
Fairhaven is the same as it’s always been, and also different in small, jarring ways.
But I stood in a doorway this afternoon and told a woman not to let anybody talk her out of the hush puppies, and I haven’t been able to think about anything else since.
So I’m opting for the one place I know for sure hasn’t changed in forever: Captain Eddie’s Fish Camp.
I’m not disappointed. Captain Eddie’s will never change.
When there was a public push toward more greens in their food, they breaded and deep-fried it just out of sheer rebellion.
The waxwork pirate captain is still in place, hook hand and all.
This is a place for family gatherings and children’s birthdays on the back patio, where the staff dresses up like pirates to deliver your catfish.
It’s hokey, it’s cheesy, and it feels like home.
There’s a small waiting area for pick-up orders, with two benches facing each other that were salvaged out of a church somewhere. A harpoon over one, a disembodied ship’s wheel over the other. I push open the door and stop.
There’s a man sitting on the harpoon bench.
He’s looking down at his phone, thumbs moving fast, and doesn’t see me come in.
He’s wearing jeans and a blue Henley. Wooden beads at his throat and a bracelet peeking from under his cuff.
He’s close enough now that I can study him properly, and the resemblance to Parker is so specific it makes my teeth ache.
The set of his jaw. The shape of his face.
The way his head cocks slightly when the kids in the dining room start singing Happy Birthday off-key—the ghost of a smile.
I sit down on the wheel bench, as far from him as the small space allows. He still hasn’t looked up.
His phone goes off in his hand. He frowns at it, and then he answers it.
“Yes, this is Jonny.”
Three words, and every hair on my arms stands up. Because I have heard a lot of men say hello in my life and not one of them has ever sounded like that—torn open and put back together wrong, a voice with smoke still in it.
He says something else and it isn’t in English. It’s quick and easy and completely at home in his mouth and I don’t understand a syllable of it.
Shelley Bishop sat across a table from me four hours ago and told me Parker went to India.
Jonny. India.
My hands aren’t steady. I type Jonny Bishop India into the search bar. It takes me three attempts.
The search results are almost immediate. Videos. Hundreds of them. I put earphones in and select the first one offered. He’s standing in front of a church with a half-timbered building beside it.
“Hi! Today it might look like we’re in England, but we’re not. Welcome to Shimla, once the summer capital of British India. Welcome to Jonny—” a slight pause, “on the Spot.”
I stare at the screen. I stare at the man across from me. Same face. Same voice—deeper than I remember, with a huskiness that turns every sentence into something private. The smoke damage is still there underneath, but he’s made it his own. I put a hand on the bench beside me.
“Jonny Bishop!” the woman at the front desk calls out.
He walks to the counter without glancing my way. The woman looks back and forth between the name in Sharpie on the order and his face, and I see the moment she puts it together.
“Parker?” she says. “Oh my God, Parker Bishop!”
He flinches. “I go by Jonny now, if it’s all the same to you.” His accent is strange—a lilt to it I can’t place. Not quite British, not quite Indian. Something in between.
“Oh my God,” she repeats. “Don’t you remember me? We graduated together! Krista Chambers. Well, Krista Stadtler now.” She shows off her ring.
“Congratulations,” he says. “I’m sorry, I don’t really remember you that well. How much do I owe?”
“I was a cheerleader,” she continues, undeterred. “Super involved in everything. Go Lady Vixens!” She does a little pose, as if she’s still got her pom-poms at the ready.
A vixen is a female fox. So the girls’ teams were the Lady Female Foxes. I open my mouth. Then I don’t.
“Oh, I transferred out after the—”
“Are you here for the ten-year memorial? Of course you are.”
“No, I’m out of town that day. How much?”
She nods. “Are you a flight attendant? I always knew you were gay. You were so adorable back in high school.”
I have to take a step back, because even I’m starting to lose my cool now.
“Why would I be a—oh. No, I’m not a flight attendant,” he says.
“Well, we absolutely have to get together. Girls night. I’ll call Deedee and Tamara.”
His back straightens. “I don’t know these people. I’m sorry, but I won’t have time to catch up. I really have to go now, so—can I pay, please?” That last word has an edge to it that could cut glass.
As she runs his card, she notices me hovering behind him.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh, I get it. You’ll be busy.” She winks at him.
“Excuse me?”
“No, nothing. Just, you know. Reunion with your old flame.”
“With who? With Lance Broussard?” His voice is incredulous. “Are you kidding me? Why would you think that?”
She looks over his shoulder at me and gives him a look so smug and condescending I catch myself eyeing the harpoon on the wall. And she isn’t even leering at me. “Well,” she says, and arches her eyebrow, like she’s caught him out.
“I haven’t heard from, talked to, or thought of that clown in almost a decade.”
I absorb that. Nine years, and I’m “that clown.”
“Mmhmm,” she says. It’s a single, condescending sound, and even though a second ago I was bleeding from being “that clown,” her certainty that Jonny Bishop has spent the past ten years scribbling my name in his diary makes me furious on his behalf.
“Krista, I just want my food.”
“I’m sure you’ll be eating well tonight.”
His self-control snaps. Not loudly. His voice barely rises.
But frustration radiates from every line of his back.
“What is wrong with you? I didn’t even graduate from Farley.
I don’t go by Parker. And I don’t want to reminisce about the good old days when my family were incinerated in their fucking car.
I just want to get my food and eat in peace. Is that so much to ask?”
Oh hell. Krista’s exactly the sort to make a tearful scene and then sit on the sidelines while strangers tear apart her victim. I watched her do it in high school. Even now, I can see her eyes narrowing, calculating the angle that will make her the wronged party.
I put my hand on Jonny’s shoulder. It sends a ripple of electricity from my fingers straight up my arm.
He rounds on me. For a fraction of a second his face opens—not shock, not anger. Humiliation. Raw and total, and it shatters and re-forms so fast I almost miss it.
“Is it the catfish that brought you back home or the coleslaw?” I say. “For me, it’s always been the hush puppies.”
He stares at me. Then he grabs his bag of food and walks out.
“Jonny!” I push through the front door into the parking lot, where he’s already unlocking a gray Mazda. The food is sitting on the roof. He’s got the door open and one foot in the car.
“What the fuck?” he says.
“I wanted to see if you’re okay.”
He peers at me like I’ve said something in a language he doesn’t speak. “I’m fine,” he says, in a voice that could rip me apart.
He goes to get in and I push the door closed. “You don’t sound fine.”
He grabs the food off the roof and glares at me.
“Since I have come back to this place, I’ve been stared at like a zoo animal, cross-examined like a witness for the prosecution, and invited to walk, traipse, skip, and stroll down memory lane.
I didn’t need you to handle that for me. I can handle it myself.”
“I know you can. I just didn’t want you to have to.”
He snorts. “I’ve been on my own, taking care of myself for a decade. I can manage some passive-aggressive twat-waffle without you jumping in to save the day. As always.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Please just fuck off, Broussard.” He wrenches open his door and slides himself and his food into the seat.
The door slams. The engine revs. I stand in the parking space he’s just left behind as the truth hits me, and it guts me like one of the catfish waiting to be fried up in Captain Eddie’s.
Parker Bishop—Jonny Bishop—hates me.