Chapter 6
“Hey.” Simone tugged on Anya’s sleeve at the end of dinner. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Anya looked concerned. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s just—Kira and I were kind of hoping we could drive by ourselves over to the kayaking thing. Would you be okay to ride with Jill and Laurel?”
“Oh duh, of course!” Anya laughed. “Why would that be a big deal?”
It wasn’t until Anya climbed into the back of Jill and Laurel’s car that she realized if she wasn’t riding with Simone and Kira, it meant Gabe wasn’t either.
“Hey.” His voice was low and kind of uneven. He looked at her and then quickly away as she slid onto the seat next to him.
“Everyone good to go?” Jill asked.
“Aye aye!” Laurel replied as she hit the ceiling two times; this had become their bit over the course of the week. Laurel turned to Anya and Gabe. “So where are you heading after this? Gabe, are you gonna work inauguration?”
“Nah. I’ll go for the parties, but I think I’m gonna stay with Kira until then.”
“Oh yeah? Up in Seattle?” Jill asked.
“Yeah, her aunt has a place out on Orcas Island, so we’re gonna hang there for a while. Plus her family’s Buddhist, so it’s no big deal if I’m there over Christmas.”
Anya turned to him, which was hard since they were already pretty close together, and the car ride was fairly bumpy. “You’re not spending the holidays with your family?”
“Holidays were more of a status symbol than a family thing where I grew up.” Gabe’s voice had a note of disdain. “My parents go to their country club for Thanksgiving and St. Barth’s for Christmas.”
“Pity the poor little orphan boy!” Jill said in an exaggerated British accent, and they all laughed good-naturedly.
“You’re going home, though?” Gabe asked Anya. “To Chicago?”
“Yeah.” Anya nodded. “Wait—how do you know I’m from Chicago?”
“Wow, for someone who once accused me of having a bad memory, you don’t seem to remember much of our conversation in New Hampshire.”
“You guys knew each other in New Hampshire?” Jill interjected.
“Gabe and I met for like twenty minutes one day during the primary,” Anya explained.
“Yeah, and she liked me so much she immediately decided to move across the state to work in another office.” Gabe laughed, but the sound of it wasn’t funny.
In the front seat, Jill and Laurel exchanged a pointed look. What was that about?
“Hold up.” Laurel looked down at her phone. “Weren’t you supposed to turn left there?”
“No, I’m taking the coast road,” Jill said. “Doesn’t this run into that up ahead?”
“I don’t think so?” Laurel looked confused. “My service sucks here.”
“Let’s stay on this road.” Jill sounded confident. “I’m sure it’s right.”
As it turned out, it was not right. By the time they made it to the kayaking tour, they were the last to arrive at the makeshift parking lot alongside the small river. Everyone else was already in life jackets and standing beside a big rack of kayaks, all paired off and ready to go.
“Sorry, sorry,” Jill apologized as she and Laurel rushed to get their jackets, then turned to Anya and Gabe. “You guys are good to share a boat, right?”
So this was why Simone and Kira “needed to drive alone”: They were plotting some scheme for Anya and Gabe to be stuck in a boat together. Anya shot Simone a faux-annoyed look, and Simone waved and blew her a kiss.
“Sure,” Anya sighed. “Gabe and I can share.”
“Oh, there are four of you?” the guide asked. “Bummer, I only have one kayak left.”
“What?!” Jill look stricken. “We have reservations!”
“You definitely do.” The guide looked like a stoned college student with long shaggy hair and a pleasant expression. “But another group messed up one of my boats this afternoon.”
“Oh.” Anya was disappointed; she’d been looking forward to seeing the bioluminescent bay all week. “It’s okay, I can hang back.”
“What about that?” Gabe pointed at a beat-up old wooden canoe that looked twice as big as the kayaks.
“Oh yeah!” The guide looked amazed, as if just remembering that canoes existed and were also made for water. “But you gotta be a stronger rower for that.”
“Shouldn’t you take that one then?” Anya asked him.
“I totally would,” the guide agreed, “but I’m in the solo kayak.”
“I can take Anya in the canoe,” Gabe offered. “It’s no problem.”
A few minutes later, Anya was sitting in a canoe, facing Gabe as he sat backward, rowing them behind the little pack of kayaks.
He was wearing soft khaki shorts, a thin white linen button-down, and flip-flops.
Anya could see the muscles in his shoulders flex each time he pulled the oars, and a little sweat was beading at his hairline.
“I really can take an oar,” Anya insisted.
“Sure, because our arms are such similar lengths. We could boat around in little circles. Great plan.”
“I was offering to help,” Anya snapped. “You don’t need to be a dick about it.”
“No, you can’t stand the fact that I’m in complete control,” Gabe retorted. “But you’re right, I don’t need to be a dick about it.”
He looked at her again, the same way he had at dinner—that look like he was trying to tell her something, but she still didn’t know what it was.
“Well, why are you, then?” she asked. “I mean, why were you? In Ohio.”
He met her eye with an adorably sheepish look, like he was a kid who’d been caught stealing. She had to imagine he’d never gotten in trouble once in his entire childhood, with a look like that in his arsenal.
“You are so intimidating.”
“What?!” Anya laughed. “Shut up, I am not.”
“I’m serious,” he said, his smile fading.
She folded her arms. “How could you possibly be intimidated by me?”
“You never take me at my word, for one thing.”
“Because you’re an obvious bullshitter, and people let you get away with it because you’re hot.”
Gabe knocked one of his big wooden oars directly into Kyle’s kayak.
“Hey!” Kyle shouted.
“Sorry, man!” Gabe used the oar to push off. He let the kayaks get a little ways ahead before he started rowing again, then turned back to Anya. “You were saying?”
“That you’re a bullshitter?” Anya raised her eyebrows.
“That wasn’t the interesting part.” He flashed her his ridiculously handsome smile, and she let out a frustrated noise.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” she huffed. “I ask you a real question, and you give me this fake flattery and flirting—”
“You think me saying I’m intimidated by you is flattery?”
“I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s not true,” Anya emphasized.
“Why isn’t it?” Gabe looked down, pulling at the oars. “Ever since I met you, I’ve felt like, I don’t know, like everything I have to offer, you’re not interested in.”
“What does that mean?” Anya frowned.
“You don’t like me,” Gabe sighed. “And I hate it. I hate when anyone doesn’t like me. Kira said that to me and she’s totally right, because she’s always right.”
“Everyone likes you, Gabe,” Anya said softly. “What do you care what I think?”
Gabe bit his lower lip. She wished he wouldn’t do that when she was trying to focus on their conversation.
“I was trying really hard to impress you in New Hampshire,” he said. “And in Ohio, I thought I was running this great program—I thought I was killing it, my first time on senior staff. Then you show up and immediately tell the team everything I didn’t think of.”
“So that’s why you were so nasty to me?” Anya asked. “Because I embarrassed you in a meeting?”
“No, Anya.” Gabe sighed. “It just, I don’t know. It got under my skin that you thought so little of me. It still does.”
“I didn’t.” Anya shook her head. “I mean, I don’t.”
Gabe looked up at her. “Now who’s the bullshitter?”
They were nearing the entrance to the bay. There was a full moon, and the water’s surface was shimmering in the moonlight, but Anya couldn’t see any bioluminescence.
“Then at Char Bar you were totally right about why I’d taken the job,” Gabe went on. “It made me feel small. And I messed up. I said those awful things to you—things I didn’t even believe, to be clear. I was lashing out, and I was out of line. I’m really sorry.”
The apology hung in silence for a moment. It was the most sincere Anya had ever heard him be, and it made her feel like she owed him the same in return.
“I think, um—” She swallowed. “The thing with guys like you…”
“What kind of guys?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Guys who were popular in high school and played baseball for fancy colleges and are beloved by everyone?”
“Monsters.” Gabe nodded. “Continue.”
“Historically, guys like you are interested in me as, like, a person they could use to do their homework.”
“Like your old boss?” Gabe asked.
“Jesus, you really remember everything.” Anya felt flustered.
“Says the girl who knows what sport I played in college,” Gabe countered.
Anya hoped it was dark enough that Gabe couldn’t see her blush. “I don’t know how I— Kira must have mentioned it.”
“Did you…” Gabe looked down, like he was trying to figure out how to word something. “Did you want me to be interested in you in a…different way?”
Oh, god, Anya thought. Now my humiliation is complete.
“Not at all.” Anya gathered herself, sitting up as straight as she could while wearing an absurdly long life jacket (the only one that had been big enough to fit over her chest—and not completely). “All I mean is, I may have judged you a little. And I’m sorry if I didn’t give you a fair shake.”
“Okay.” Gabe nodded slowly, looking at her. “So do we, like, forgive each other? I mean, you didn’t really need to apologize to me, but—”
“I forgive you, Gabe,” she said, and she saw his whole posture relax.
“Yeah?” He smiled.
“Yeah.” She smiled too.
“Um, excuse me?” Jill called out from her kayak twenty feet away. “Are we going to see any bioluminescence on the bioluminescent bay?”
“The full moon is actually the worst night to be out here,” their guide responded. “The lighter it is, the harder it is to see.”
“So why did we come?!” Jill shouted, sounding on the brink of losing it.
“Because you had a reservation!” The guide looked really happy he had the right answer—and that’s when the air pressure dropped and clouds started rolling in.