10. Jamie
Jamie
Acheer rises from somewhere ahead of us just as a silver flash cuts through the air.
The fish travels in a perfect arc above a crowd of tourists before landing cleanly in another fishmonger’s waiting hands.
Applause breaks out immediately, and a little boy near the front of the crowd jumps high enough that his baseball cap nearly falls off.
His mother fumbles beside him for her phone, trying desperately to capture something that has probably already happened twenty times today and will happen twenty more times before closing.
Cyaire stops walking beside me. His sunglasses slide slightly down his nose as he stares at the fish market with undisguised fascination, like a man encountering something entirely outside his frame of reference for the first time.
“You’re telling me people come here specifically to watch strangers throw seafood at each other? I mean, yes, I’ve seen it referenced in films, but actually witnessing it in person.” He shakes his head slowly. “Wow.”
I glance toward the stall and shrug. “You’re the actor. You tell me. Half the crowd looks pretty entertained. These men are performers in their own right.”
A laugh escapes him as he pushes his sunglasses back into place.
The disguise is ambitious. I will give him that but come on.
The oversized hoodie, the dark baseball cap pulled low, the sunglasses catching the afternoon light.
It might have worked if he were six inches shorter and considerably less famous.
As it stands, he looks exactly like someone trying very hard not to be recognized, which is its own kind of visibility.
“You know people can still see your face, right?” I ask as we continue walking. I try and fail to bite back my laugh. I genuinely can’t help it.
Cyaire turns toward me, mouth parting in something between protest and amusement.
“They can barely see my face,” he leans in to whisper, as though volume is the variable that matters here.
“They can see enough of it.”
He gestures toward the sunglasses with the conviction of a man presenting evidence in court. “That is literally the purpose of these.”
“The purpose of those,” I say, pointing at them with open skepticism, “is convincing yourself you’re invisible.”
His mouth twitches. “I’ve made it this far without being recognized.”
“You’ve made it this far without being recognized because nobody is paying attention yet.” I point out. “That can change in an instant.” I snap my fingers for emphasis, watching his expression flicker.
“It works, at least for now,” he grumbles, and I find myself wondering if I’m not the first person to raise this point. There is something slightly resigned about the way he says it, like a man who knows the argument but has decided to lose it gracefully.
“Okay, Clark Kent.” I wink, and the corner of his mouth lifts as we weave further into the afternoon crowd.
Pike Place Market is busier than usual, it happens when the sun suddenly graces us all with its presence.
Families move shoulder to shoulder between vendor stalls overflowing with flowers and fresh produce.
Somebody walks past carrying a paper tray piled so impossibly high with fish and chips that I genuinely have no idea how they’re keeping hold of it.
The smell follows them for several feet before dissolving into the constant layered mix of salt air, freshly ground coffee, fried food, and something oceanic underneath all of it.
A gull lands on a nearby railing and immediately begins eyeing an unsuspecting tourist’s lunch with what I can only describe as criminal intent.
Cyaire watches the bird for a moment, head tilting slightly. “That’s a bird with a plan.”
“Yep,” I reply, already watching the situation develop.
A second gull lands next to the first, positioning itself with obvious purpose.
“Does Seattle have organized gang activity among seagulls?” Cyaire asks, as a third bird appears from nowhere and joins the formation. The tourist has absolutely no idea what is coming.
“We don’t talk about it publicly,” I say, leaning in to whisper.
His laugh is relaxed and easy, right up until the moment the first bird launches itself directly at the tourist. The woman shrieks in genuine alarm, both arms going up instinctively, her food launching into the air in a spectacular arc.
The gulls are on it before it even hits the ground, ascending in a chaotic flurry of wings while the woman stands completely still, staring at the space where her food used to be, appearing to be in a state of genuine shock.
Cyaire and I hurry past as her friends rush over to help her process the tragedy. The food is long gone. There is no recovering from that.
A few steps behind us, Cameron follows at an easy, unhurried pace with his hands tucked into the pockets of a dark jacket.
To anyone passing by, he probably reads as another tourist enjoying a slow afternoon in the market.
The difference is that tourists are not constantly reading sightlines, cataloguing exits, and tracking the movement of people around them.
He does all three simultaneously and makes it look like nothing at all.
His eyes meet mine briefly as we pass the mayhem, and I look away immediately, nudging Cyaire forward with my hand resting briefly against his back.
Cameron looks amused. He knows exactly what he’s looking at. Unfortunately for me, he’s not wrong, and we both know it. Yes, I am touching him. Deal with it.
“How often do you come down here?” Cyaire asks as we pass a flower stand bursting with brilliant summer color. The vendor is arranging sunflowers into tall metal buckets while a couple nearby debates over whether they need one bouquet or three.
“Whenever I get the chance.” I step aside to let a young family squeeze past us before continuing toward the waterfront overlook. “When I first got traded here, I came almost every weekend. The market felt different from New York.”
Cyaire falls into step beside me, close enough that our shoulders nearly brush. “Different how?”
I lean against the railing overlooking Elliott Bay for a moment before answering.
The water stretches out beneath a sky shifting toward gold as the afternoon deepens.
Ferries move in steady lines across the open water in the distance, and sailboats drift closer to shore, their white sails catching the light.
“New York feels like it’s always trying to get somewhere,” I say finally. “Seattle already knows where it is.”
He considers that quietly, the breeze pushing at the loose edge of his hoodie while he looks out at the water.
“That’s actually a pretty good description,” he replies, something softer in his voice now. “Genuinely.”
I glance sideways at him. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He turns to meet my eyes. “You have a way with words, Jamie.”
My name, delivered like it belongs in his vocabulary. Something warm moves through my chest before I can stop it. I laugh and push away from the railing.
“Really?” I hear myself say again, which is embarrassing.
His eyebrows lift. “There it is. That thing you do.” His expression grows pleasantly suspicious as he narrows his eyes in my direction.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.” I shove my hands into my pockets in place of the far more inconvenient impulse to reach over and pull him closer.
“The quiet philosopher routine,” he says, the corners of his mouth pulling into a smirk.
“I don’t have a quiet philosopher routine.”
“You absolutely do. It surfaces whenever you say something unexpectedly profound and then act like it was nothing.”
Behind us, Cameron makes a sound that has no business calling itself anything other than a laugh. I am sure our entire exchange is deeply satisfying to witness.
Cyaire glances back over his shoulder. “You’re not helping.”
Cameron lifts both hands in immediate surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re not supposed to be listening, Cam,” Cyaire says, lowering his voice in a way that is entirely ineffective.
“With respect,” Cameron replies evenly, “your idea of whispering is not what most people would call whispering.”
I shake my head and start walking again before either of them can pull me into whatever argument is trying to form around me. I have enough going on without becoming a referee.
Cyaire catches up a moment later, still smiling, still close.
“Are you seriously telling me nobody recognizes you out here?” he asks after a beat, something genuinely curious in it. “You won the Stanley Cup. You start for the Seattle Vipers. You are not exactly anonymous.”
I glance over and lift a brow. “Oh, so you know I start?”
The laugh that escapes him carries just a fraction too much surprise in it to be casual. “My dad is a fan.”
“Just your dad?” I ask, unable to help it.
The grin on his face widens incrementally. “Fine. My brother too.”
“That’s better,” I say, “but you can go ahead and admit you’ve been paying attention.”
He points at me without missing a step. “See?”
“What?”
“The ego. You hide it really well, but it absolutely exists, number seventeen.”
I press a hand against my chest in mock offence, even though something inside me is doing something embarrassing and undignified at the sound of my number falling from his mouth like that.
“The disrespect.”
“The accuracy,” he replies, pressing his lips together in a way that doesn’t succeed at hiding anything.
A laugh slips out of me before I can intervene.
“I get recognized,” I admit as we move with the crowd toward the lower part of the market. “The difference is that most people in Seattle leave me alone. They nod. Maybe they say something in passing. But they let me exist.”
Cyaire adjusts his sunglasses again, something almost wistful in the small gesture. “That sounds nice.”