25. Vivienne #2
There’s a small war of rearrangement as they converge on our table.
Beckett steals a chair from a neighboring table.
Hayes pulls up another from who knows where.
Wesley claims the end. Roman lands next to Iris and immediately starts telling her something with the hand that isn’t bandaged.
Frannie slides closer to Cora to make room.
Callum slides into the booth next to me.
It’s not a big booth. His shoulder finds mine before he’s even settled, and then he reaches up and drops his arm along the back and starts talking to Beckett across the table like it’s nothing.
I lean back slightly into the space his arm makes, slightly buzzed and high on the smell of him.
It feels so unremarkable that I almost miss how remarkable it really is.
I’ve been in this town for months, yet I’ve been holding myself at a slight distance from everything.
From the restaurant and the staff and the cottage on the water.
I’ve been keeping one foot pointed toward the door without quite meaning to.
And now I’m sitting in a bar with my back against Callum Reid’s arm and the storm coming in off the harbor, and I’m not thinking about the door at all.
Huh.
Frannie looks up and sees Callum, and her eyes go wide. “You never come out,” she cries, pointing at him with her drink like he’s been caught.
“Frannie.”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re doing a face.”
“This is just my face!” She exclaims, grinning, clearly delighted.
Beckett leans across the table toward me, completely oblivious to all of it, that easy grin already in place. “Iris says you two had dinner in Crescent Bay again last week.”
“We did. We’ve been going weekly.”
“She said you ordered the whole left side of the menu.”
“It was for research,” I huff, shooting Iris a look.
“She ordered the whole right side of the menu,” Iris confirms, not looking up from whatever Roman is showing her on his phone.
“I like to be thorough.”
Beckett laughs. He has Callum’s laugh, I notice. The same cadence of it. But where Callum holds his back, Beckett just lets it go. Callum used to laugh like that. Before.
The table is suddenly very loud. Everyone talking at once, conversations crossing and weaving together.
Beckett steals Roman’s drink, and Roman doesn’t notice because he’s mid-story.
Cora is chuckling at something Frannie said.
Wesley is quiet at the end but not absent.
He’s just watching his brothers with a smile, the way you look at something you’ve looked at your whole life and still like.
The warm air coming in off the water is charged with the approaching storm. The candles on the bartops flutter all at once. The conversations around us dip for just a second and then pick back up again.
Callum’s arm drops from the back of the booth and crosses loosely over my shoulders, his hand coming to rest on my collarbone. His thumb moves in small circles against the bone.
I look out at the water with Callum’s arm warm across my chest, letting myself sink into it, and everything in me goes very quiet.
I think about every city I’ve driven into alone.
Every Airbnb key in a lockbox. Every restaurant where I knew no one and had to introduce myself over and over.
Every Sunday call home from a different area code.
Countless jobs and not one piece of furniture.
Not one place I could point to and say “that’s home. ”
This doesn’t feel like any of that.
I think about the cottage bed and the twenty minutes I sat there not knowing if my legs worked.
And again, I’m really glad I put my shoes back on.
The door opens, and a rush of warm wet air comes through it. I’m still looking toward the water when I catch Wesley, who has been quietly nursing his beer for the last twenty minutes, going completely still in my peripheral vision.
I follow his eyeline to the door.
Sloane Castellano is coming through it with her sister, laughing loudly at something she said, shaking rain out of her black hair.
I’ve had coffee with her twice now, spreadsheets open on the table between us, talking through the operational mess her father left behind.
She’s hilarious and sassy and a little guarded but takes notes on everything, which I respect.
She scans the bar quickly, and her face opens into a surprised smile when she sees me. She raises a hand. I wave back.
Her eyes don’t move to the rest of the table. Or if they do, it’s for less than a second before she and her sister move toward the bar.
“She’s everywhere,” Wesley growls, almost to himself in the tone one would use to file a complaint with the universe. “Every. Single. Time. Why is she everywhere!”
He’s up before anyone can say anything and crosses the bar toward her.
We all watch in silence.
Sloane turns when he gets close, like she sensed him coming, and she doesn’t look surprised.
They’re too far away to hear what they’re saying.
But the shape of it is clear enough. Her shoulders squaring, his jaw clenching, both of them angled slightly away from the room like they know they’re being looked at and have decided to keep their conversation private.
Wesley says something and Sloane says something back, then they move together toward the far side of the room with the energy of two people who are definitely arguing, and then they’re gone, the bar swallowing them up.
The table is quiet.
The jukebox fills the silence, something twangy with a steel guitar.
Then Frannie says, “Okay so does anyone want another round?” and everyone looks at their glasses and finds reasons to say yes, and that’s that. Subject closed.
Callum leans slightly toward me, his mouth brushing my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. “Who was that?” he asks, low enough that it doesn’t carry. “I think I saw her at the event tonight.”
“That’s Sloane,” I answer. “Sloane Castellano. I’ve been helping her with her dad’s fishing operation.”
He looks toward the bar where Wes disappeared and then back to his drink.
He hums, and there’s a world of understanding in that single sound.
I wait for more, but there isn’t any.
The next hour goes soft at the edges the way late nights do when everyone is warm and full and slightly past their second wind.
Beckett starts a sentence twice and doesn’t finish either one, losing his train of thought mid-word.
Iris has her head tipped back against the booth, eyes half closed, still smiling at whatever the last thing was that made her laugh.
Frannie and Cora have moved into the quiet comfortable register of people who have run out of new things to say and are fine with that, content just to be.
Even Roman has slowed down, his bandaged hand resting on the table, his stories getting shorter and less animated.
Roman stands up around midnight with the energy of a man who has just remembered somewhere he urgently needs to be. “I should go,” he announces. “My hand.” He holds up the bandaged hand. “Doctor said to rest it.”
“The doctor said that four hours ago,” Frannie points out.
“It’s cumulative, I think.” He’s already pulling on his jacket, looking at Frannie with exaggerated concern. “You need a ride?”
Frannie looks between me and Callum, his arm still across my shoulders, my body leaning into his, and then back to Roman.
“Sure,” she says, in a tone that has absolutely nothing to do with needing a ride.
She gathers her jacket, trying very hard to look casual.
She leans down and hugs me, her mouth near my ear.
“Text me,” she whispers. And then they’re gone, the door slamming shut behind them.
Beckett stretches both arms above his head until his back cracks audibly. “I’m out,” he says. “Early paddle tomorrow.” He stands and ruffles Callum’s hair on the way past like they’re twelve before pointing at me. “Good to see you, Viv.” Then he looks at Iris. “Come on, bookworm.”
Iris looks at her drink, looks at Beckett, then looks at her drink again.
“There’s still ice in it,” she says.
“Iris.”
She sighs like she’s being asked to do something unreasonable, finishes the drink in two neat sips, and slides out of the booth. She hugs me properly on the way out, both arms, cheek against my hair. “See you soon,” she says quietly. Then she’s following Beckett out the door, her jacket half on.
Hayes stands and folds his jacket over his arm. “Good night,” he says to the table. Then, to me specifically, with that understated Hayes delivery, he says, “Nice work tonight.”
That leaves Cora, who has been sitting in the corner with her cider and the stillness of someone who has clocked everything and is waiting to see how long it takes everyone else to notice she’s still here.
Callum looks at her.
She looks back, unbothered.
“Cora,” he says.
“Callum,” she says pleasantly.
A pause.
“Don’t you have an early morning?” he says.
She considers this. “I have an early morning every morning.”
“Cora.”
She sighs like she’s doing him a tremendous favor, finishes the last of her cider standing up, and collects her jacket. She squeezes my shoulder on the way past but says nothing, and then she’s gone too.
The bar keeps going around us. The pool table with its sharp crack of balls. The jukebox shifting to something slower. The wind outside picking up, rattling the windows.
It’s just us.
Callum turns his head and presses his face briefly into my hair, breathing in. “I thought we’d never be alone,” he says, quiet enough that it’s just for me, his breath warm against my temple.
I look around the bar. The guys playing pool. The bartender wiping down glasses. The marlin with its eternal stare.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.