Chapter 7
The drywall was what finally scared me.
Not Piper kissing me in the equipment bay. Not Piper kissing Gray beside the pantry. Not Cole coming back from the boat looking like a man who had been struck by lightning and was trying to determine whether lightning required a permit.
Drywall.
Gray stood in the cottage doorway at eight fifteen Thursday morning with a sheet balanced against one shoulder while the remediation technician packed up his meter.
Piper sat on the porch step with her laptop open and coffee between her knees, pretending the return of her private housing was ordinary good news.
It was not convincing.
I knew because I had spent years convincing people that things were fine while standing directly inside the evidence that they were not.
“Wall goes back today,” Gray said. “Mud needs to dry. Flooring starts tomorrow if humidity stays where it is.”
Piper looked at the open studs. “So by the weekend?”
“Possibly.”
Gray never said yes when reality had not signed a contract.
Piper nodded and looked at her screen.
I leaned against the porch post. “You know, some people celebrate housing restoration. Balloons. Cake. Ceremonial burning of the dehumidifier.”
“Do not burn rental equipment,” Gray said.
“See? This is why nobody invites you to ceremonies.”
Piper smiled, but only with her mouth.
Gray noticed too. His eyes met mine over her head.
That was new.
Not noticing Piper. We all did that constantly now, with varying degrees of dignity. The new part was the silent exchange that followed it.
Don’t push.
I hated that Gray could communicate complete sentences with one eyebrow.
Piper closed the laptop. “I have the noon surf shoot. I want a wider set of beginner-instruction images, then some clean gear shots before the afternoon crowd gets stupid.”
“The crowd was born stupid,” I said.
“Then before it reaches full maturity.”
There she was.
I grinned. “I’ll meet you at the south access at eleven forty-five.”
“Eleven thirty-five. I want setup.”
“I was testing whether you respect punctuality.”
Gray made a sound from inside the cottage.
Piper looked past me toward him. “Was that contempt?”
“Yes,” Gray said.
“Good. I like reliable data.”
She gathered her laptop and coffee, then paused beside me.
For half a second I thought she might kiss me.
My entire body became available for the possibility.
Instead she reached up and brushed a streak of white dust off my shoulder.
“You have drywall on you.”
“I was helping.”
“You carried one sheet from the truck.”
“Heroically.”
Her fingers stayed against my shirt a fraction longer than necessary.
“Eleven thirty-five,” she said.
Then she walked toward the main house.
I watched her go.
Gray stepped into the doorway behind me. “Subtle.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You nearly followed her like a dog.”
“We specifically don’t have a dog in this house.”
“Good. One of you is enough.”
I turned. “You kissed her against the pantry.”
He did not even blink. “Yes.”
“And somehow you’re still smug about drywall.”
“I am not smug.”
“Your face is smug.”
“My face is neutral.”
“Your neutral face is an asshole.”
Gray picked up the drill.
I should have left it there.
Instead I said, “You okay?”
He looked at me.
Twenty-four years of friendship meant I knew exactly when I had surprised him.
“With what?” he asked.
“Me. Her. Cole. Whatever the hell this is.”
He glanced toward the house.
“No.”
I laughed once. “Excellent. Me neither.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Neither am I.”
“I don’t like not knowing what happens next.”
“You don’t like not knowing what happens after lunch.”
“Correct.”
I rubbed the back of my neck.
The joke I wanted was already loaded and ready. Something about calendars. Something about scheduling romantic collapse between three and four-thirty.
I let it die.
“I was jealous when I figured out you kissed her,” I said.
Gray set the drill on the sawhorse.
“I know.”
“Still am, a little.”
“Same.”
There. Ugly, simple, survivable.
I exhaled.
“Cole?”
“You’d have to ask Cole.”
“I enjoy having teeth.”
Gray’s mouth moved.
“He kissed her too,” he said.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Boat cabin. This morning.”
A fast hot thing hit me in the chest.
Jealousy was such a stupid emotion. It arrived like a fire alarm and then refused to identify which room was burning.
I looked toward the house again.
“How do you know?”
“Her mouth. His face. Rafe, you are not subtle. Neither are they.”
I absorbed that.
Cole.
Piper.
Boat cabin.
My imagination, disloyal employee that it was, immediately produced several images I had not requested.
Gray watched me.
“You okay?”
I laughed because apparently emotional growth had limits before breakfast.
“No.”
He nodded. “Same.”
That helped more than I wanted it to.
At eleven thirty-four, Piper parked at the south access with two camera bags, a waterproof housing, and a cooler full of bottled water she had absolutely not been asked to bring.
I checked the time on my phone.
She caught me.
“Don’t.”
“I said nothing.”
“Your face said it.”
“My face is neutral.”
She stared at me.
“Oh God. Gray is contagious.”
The beach was bright, hot, and crowded enough that every third family had constructed a shade structure capable of surviving artillery.
Our four beginner clients were already there, all adults, all signed releases, all wearing the expression people wore immediately before discovering that the ocean did not care how athletic they were on land.
I loved beginner lessons.
Experts wanted proof they were experts. Beginners just wanted not to die publicly.
Piper worked while I taught.
That should not have been sexy.
Unfortunately, everything she did with a camera had started to feel like foreplay.
She moved constantly but never randomly. Low for the board angle. Sideways for hands. Backward three steps, then still. She watched faces before they changed and somehow arrived where the expression was going to happen.
I kept forgetting about the lens.
That was probably the point.
One of the clients, a broad-shouldered accountant named Marcus, fell off the board during the sand drill without ever reaching the water.
Piper lowered her camera.
“Do you need medical attention?”
He sat up. “For my dignity.”
“Not covered by the release.”
I laughed so hard I had to turn away.
“Instructor,” Piper called. “Professionalism.”
“I have never claimed that service.”
We got them into the water twenty minutes later.
Conditions were easy. Small whitewater, clean interval, lifeguards up, nothing I would have hesitated to put Nico into with the right board and my full attention.
Still, easy water was not harmless water.
I kept count.
Four clients.
Four boards.
Four heads.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Piper waded to her preferred angle in thigh-deep water with the camera sealed inside the housing.
A larger piece of broken whitewater rolled toward her.
I saw it before she did.
“Piper.”
She looked up.
Too late.
The wave hit her at the hip and sat her down in three feet of water.
The camera stayed above the surface.
Of course it did.
I was already moving when she came up laughing.
“Camera’s fine!”
“I did not ask about the camera.”
“You were going to.”
I reached her and caught her by the elbow as another wash went past.
“You okay?”
“Yes. My shorts have approximately nine pounds of Atlantic Ocean in them.”
She pushed wet hair out of her face.
My brain stopped contributing anything useful.
Her white Tide & Timber tank had gone transparent enough to reveal the dark swimsuit underneath. Water ran down her throat. Her shorts clung to every curve I had been trying not to think about while four customers stood nearby holding foam surfboards.
I looked directly at her face.
Piper noticed.
Naturally.
Her mouth twitched.
“Professionalism,” she said.
“I am performing at a heroic level.”
“Your definition of heroism remains concerning.”
Behind us, Marcus yelled, “Do we get to fall now?”
I looked over my shoulder. “You have been falling for forty minutes. Now you get to do it moving.”
Piper laughed.
We finished the lesson without further photographer submersion.
At one twenty, every client had returned a board, nobody was injured, and Marcus had stood up long enough for Piper to catch photographic evidence that he would probably use as his profile picture until retirement.
I loaded the boards onto the trailer while Piper backed up cards under the shade canopy.
She had changed nothing about her wet clothes.
This was hostile behavior.
“Your towel is in the front seat,” I told her.
She looked up from the laptop. “My towel?”
“Blue one.”
“I didn’t bring a towel.”
“Correct.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“You brought me a towel?”
I shrugged. “You stand in the ocean with electronics for a living now.”
“Today. I stood in the ocean with electronics today.”
“And got knocked over. My risk assessment was excellent.”
She looked at me for a second too long.
That felt better than any joke I could have made.
“Thank you,” she said.
I almost ruined it by saying something stupid.
Instead I said, “You’re welcome.”
Growth.
Disgusting.
Back at the house, the driveway was empty except for Piper’s SUV and Gray’s truck, which was there because he had taken the work van back to the marina. Cole was on a second charter. Gray was in the repair bay. All three kids were at school until after two-thirty.
The house was quiet.
Unnaturally quiet.
Even Mango was outside in his shaded porch enclosure, muttering to himself like an elderly man banned from a casino.
Piper carried her camera bags through the kitchen and set them on the dining table.
“I am dripping on the floor.”
“Outdoor shower.”
She looked at me.
I immediately became aware of every pornographic possibility contained in two ordinary words.
“For rinsing sand,” I added.
“Obviously.”
“Completely normal shower.”
“Rafe.”
“Yes?”
“Stop helping.”
I shut my mouth.