Page 101 of Sucker For You

She breathed brine and exhaled. She’d be all right.

Yes, I will.

A passenger bicycle ambled by on the road above them now, music playing from a boombox, flashing glowsticks twisted through the spokes of its wheels. Crystal chimes hanging in a kiosk caught the falling sun, sprinkling kaleidoscopic colors over the sand. . . and over a nearby rack of bright, familiar clothes, too.

The tie-dye surf shack.

Then somehow—somehow,she was standing barefoot before the festival spirals and saturated explosions of pigment. Somehow she was reaching for her wallet, blinking against the gems and the speed of her own impulsive rush to the tent—searching.

Because the vibrant, confident dress she’d seen here last time? The one that demanded notice?

It demanded courage, too. Maybe it would make her brave.

She swept aside a row of flounces, wire hangers clacking, rails shuddering.

Swish, swish.

“Buttercup?” Wes parted the tribal curtain behind her, then joined her at the rack. He scanned shirts and sarongs. The elbow of his sweatshirt brushed hers. No static, but her skin sparked. “Looking for something special?”

“Yes.”

She flipped with mounting eagerness through the final few tie-dyed choices, and anticipation flowered in her stomach as his breath stirred strands of her ponytail against her nape—

But it wasn’t there.

Her dress wasn’t there. Not on the rack. Not hanging on the wall or swaying from the tented ceiling, either.

It was gone.

“Excuse me.” She crossed to a man with a septum piercing and a bored expression behind the register. “There was a dress for sale here just under two weeks ago. It had a coral and lavender base, with blue sunbursts and tangerine trim. The neckline was high but the back was open, with eight straps radiating out from a wooden ring. Where is it?”

“Yeah? Someone bought it, my dude.” He nodded past her shoulder. “That guy.”

Wes.

She spun to meet a shrug and a smile. “Guilty.”

No.

As abruptly as she’d found herself by the tie-dyed dresses, her body now braced itself. Her knees locked. She breathed once, frozen where she stood in this stupid tent with her stupid hopes. Then she forced her legs to bend, her feet to move. She left the kiosk. She dropped her sandals on the ground and stepped into them again. Her eyelids prickled.

No—

“Isabel? What’s. . .”

“Is that true?” She knew it was; and maybe it wasn’t a rational response, but it was also true that her ragged nails dug into her palms beneath his smile, that she couldn’t unclench her fists. The pain was hot, radiating over—under—her skin, despite the cold sea air racing off the breakers. She couldn’t stop, though. She couldn’t help turning back to him, either—his grin faltering under her frown—when she asked, “Did you buy the dress?”

“Yes. The last time we came to Old Fisherman’s Wharf.” A frown contracted the notch in Wes’s eyebrow as he scanned her white knuckles and the tight tremble in her mouth. “It’s in Baby’s back seat. I thought. . . I’d noticed you admiring it. I figured I’d surprise you, that you’d like—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. We have an octopus to feed. Fresh seafood is expensive. We have legal fees, too. The payment for your boat. So no, you shouldn’t have. . . youshouldn’t—” She set off along the coastal trail, away from the kiosks and the wharves. Every slap of her sandals should have been a smack against the hard-packed dirt. The sand drifting across her path irritated her with its softness.She forged on faster, chin down against the wind and the sunset, past the fishermen with their lines and beers, past the wakeboarders and the gulls. She broke off the thoroughfare, down to the beach. “You shouldn’t, because I. . .Iwanted to buy it.”

“Buttercup—”

“No.” She swung around, stopping so fast that he collided with her.