Chapter 7
Jake Brennan had very good teeth, perfect posture, and absolutely nothing interesting to say.
Liza sat across from him at a table outside the seafood restaurant, a basket of fried shrimp between them and a glass of white wine she was drinking faster than she probably should have.
This date had been Dixie’s idea.
Of course, she had introduced them at the bookstore that morning, appearing from behind the romance shelf like she was some sort of fairy godmother wearing reading glasses.
“Liza, now this is Jake. Jake, this is Liza, the daughter of a very dear friend. Jake’s a firefighter, and Liza’s from Charleston. You’ll have so much in common.”
They did not, as far as Liza could tell, have literally anything in common.
Jake was nice.
That was the problem.
He was so aggressively, thoroughly, relentlessly nice that he held open doors and pulled out chairs and asked her about her hobbies and then nodded so earnestly at her answers that she felt like she was being interviewed for a position she hadn’t applied for.
And then there was the truck.
“So I got the lift kit installed last month,” Jake was saying. “Four-inch suspension, has a custom bumper. There’s an LED light bar across the top. And I’m meaning to go get that brush guard replaced, too, but the guy I usually go to, well, he moved to Myrtle Beach, so I’m kind of stuck right now.”
Liza nodded.
She’d been nodding for almost twenty minutes. Her neck was starting to hurt.
She would need to make an appointment with the chiropractor or possibly a massage therapist.
“Do you know much about trucks?” Jake asked.
“I drive a Honda Civic.”
“Oh.”
He looked genuinely disappointed, like she told him she didn’t believe in Christmas or hated puppies.
By the time the check came, Liza had learned about diesel engines, brush guards, tire pressure monitoring systems, and the difference between a crew cab and a double cab.
But she had not learned a single other thing about Jake Brennan as a human being.
And she did not want to.
He walked her to the bookstore, which was closed for the evening.
They stood on the sidewalk as the evening turned into night.
He smiled at her, and it was a perfectly nice smile from a perfectly nice man, but she felt absolutely nothing.
No tingling, no goosebumps, nothing at all.
“I had a really good time,” he said.
“Oh, me too,” she lied. “Thanks for dinner, Jake.”
He left. Liza stood there for a moment looking at the fairy lights and the darkened window of the bookstore and wondered if this was what dating was going to be from now on.
Nice people talking about things that did not matter a bit while she wished she was somewhere else.
The light in The Puzzle Post was on.
She could see the edge of Grant’s workbench through the window and the glow of his desk lamp.
He was working late again.
She wondered what he was building this time, what grid was taking shape under his pencil, what words he was putting together in the quiet of his shop.
Meanwhile, she had been stuck listening to a stranger talk about brake calipers.
She went upstairs and didn’t look back.
But she thought about the light in his window for longer than she should have.
Liza was opening the bookstore the next morning when Grant walked out onto his porch with a coffee.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
He took a sip of his coffee and looked at the sky, then looked at the street.
Then with the nonchalance of someone who had definitely been thinking about this, he said, “How was dinner?”
Liza leaned against the bookstore doorframe and crossed her arms.
“And how did you know I had dinner?”
“It’s a small island.”
“Dixie told you.”
“Dixie told me.”
She sighed.
“It was fine, I guess. He was nice, I mean. But he talked about his truck for forty-five minutes.”
Grant almost smiled, but he didn’t. It was just the faintest loosening of his jaw and a flicker in his eyes.
It almost looked like relief, which it wasn’t. Definitely wasn’t.
“Forty-five minutes,” he repeated.
“I now know more about diesel engines than any human being should.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate.”
“Yeah, it really was.”
He took another sip of his coffee.
“Well, better luck next time.”
“Oh, please don’t say next time. You know, Dixie has a list.”
“A list?”
“Three names. The firefighter was number one. Number two runs some kayak rental place, and Dixie says he has arms like a lumberjack.”
Grant’s expression went very still.
“Arms like a lumberjack.”
“Hey, her words, not mine.”
He nodded tightly and then turned around toward his shop door.
“Well, I hope he’s more conversational than the truck enthusiast.”
He went inside, and the door closed with a little more force than usual.
Liza stood there looking at the door and bit her lip to keep from smiling because she knew what that meant.
The tight nod. The clipped tone. The door that closed half a second too fast.
That was the closest thing she’d ever seen to jealousy from Grant Whitmore.
And she shouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as she did.
Dixie’s second attempt arrived on Thursday evening in the form of Kyle, the kayak rental operator.
He showed up at puzzle night with the confused energy of a man who had been told this was a date but wasn’t entirely sure what the event was.
To be fair, Dixie had created the whole thing.
She’d invited Kyle as Liza’s, quote, guest, end quote, and then positioned herself at the puzzle table directly across from them so that she could observe like some sort of nature documentary narrator.
Kyle was broad-shouldered and tanned with the easy smile of someone who spent his days on the water.
Dixie was right about his arms.
She had not, however, mentioned that Kyle had the attention span of a golden retriever.
He picked up the tangram set, studied it for thirty seconds, and put it down.
He tried the logic grid, got through two clues, and then pushed it aside.
He even picked up a puzzle box, shook it like a maraca, and set it back on the table.
“These are cool,” he said, “but I’m more of an outdoorsy type guy. You know, I like doing things. Physical things.”
“Well, puzzles are things,” Liza said.
“Yeah, but like inside things.”
He said inside things the way somebody might say tax audit.
From across the table, Dixie leaned toward Liza and whispered loud enough for half the porch to hear, “Doesn’t he have good arms, though?”
Liza closed her eyes and wished to be anywhere else.
Grant was behind the counter, reorganizing a display that didn’t need reorganizing.
He had not said one word since Kyle arrived, which Liza had initially thought was his usual quietness.
But then she caught him watching twice with an expression that was somewhere between blank and thunderous.
Like Grant was on the verge of a volcanic eruption.
Kyle left after an hour, having not completed a single puzzle.
He shook Liza’s hand, which felt more like a job interview than the conclusion of a date, and then jogged off toward the marina like a man who had just been released from captivity.
Dixie watched him go.
“Well, I guess he wasn’t the one either.”
“You think?” Liza said.
“Now don’t get smart with me. I’ve still got the pharmacist.”
“Dixie, please. No more. No more pharmacists. No more firefighters. No more kayak operators. I am begging you.”
Dixie crossed her arms.
“Fine. But don’t come crying to me when you’re fifty and alone.”
“I’m only thirty-two.”
“Honey, fifty comes a lot faster than you think.”
The square was quiet as the crowd cleared out and Dixie went home.
Liza found herself sitting outside between the two shops on the top step with her chin in her hands, watching the lightning bugs blink in the grass across the street.
Grant walked out a few minutes later and sat down on the step beside her. He didn’t sit close, but he wasn’t too far away either. He was the exact distance of a man who was pretending he had accidentally sat there.
“So,” he said, “the kayak guy?”
“Oh, please don’t.”
“He shook the puzzle box like a maraca.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You know, that’s not how puzzle boxes work.”
“I know, Grant.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“The firefighter talked about trucks, and the kayak guy can’t sit still for three minutes. Dixie does not have a great track record with this.”
She looked at him. He was staring straight ahead, jaw set and his hands clasped between his knees, like he was holding back on giving her a speech.
“Are you jealous?” she asked.
The question hung in the air.
“Of the man who can’t solve a four-piece tangram?” Grant said. “Hardly.”
But he didn’t say no.
She noticed that.
He always deflected.
The tension between them sat heavy in her arms and her chest, in the space between their shoulders. Something had been building since the storm, but she didn’t push it.
She was learning that pushing Grant was like pushing a puzzle box.
You had to let it open on its own.
The square was empty, and the fairy lights swayed in the breeze.
From somewhere down the block, she heard a screen door bang shut and a dog bark once, and then it was quiet.
It felt like the entire island had gone to bed all at once.
Grant leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“For the record, I don’t think Dixie’s wrong in wanting you to find somebody.”
“Oh?”
“I just think she’s probably looking in the wrong places.”
He said it to the street, not directly to her.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I’m done with Dixie’s list.”
He turned his head.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Something passed between them, not a touch, not even words, but just a look that lasted a little longer than it should have.
He stood up.
“Good night, Liza.”
“Good night, Grant.”
He walked inside, and she stayed on the step for a little while longer, watching the lightning bugs.
She thought about Dixie’s list and the two perfectly nice men who had made her feel absolutely nothing, and the one difficult, quiet man who made her feel everything just by sitting next to her on a porch step.