Page 115 of Just One More Thing
It’s intentional.
I put the phone down.
Pick it up again.
In the water on the water or by the water?
Is there a difference?
Oh you silly man
Granny appears in the doorway with the expression of someone who has read every word over my shoulder from ten feet away. “I didn’t read it,” she says immediately.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I could feel you thinking it.”
She wheels toward the oven and peeks inside. “Bagels?”
“Sea salt and lavender.”
She breaks off a piece from the first batch cooling on the rack. “What are you and Jake doing tonight?”
“What makes you think Jake and I are doing anything?”
“Because your eyes are smiling.” She takes a bite. “And your voice is squeaking.”
“My voice does not squeak.”
I roll the dough again and say nothing because she’s right and I refuse to give her the satisfaction.
“The bagel is perfect, Emory,” she calls as she rolls back into the shop. “Good holes run in our family.”
“Granny!”
“Don’t Granny me. Your mind is the one that went there.”
Seventy-nine steps later, I’m at the end of Jake’s dock beside The Pinch of Tides.
Hank is already aboard, sitting in the bow like a very wrinkled sea captain, wearing a bandana printed with bulldogs floating in inner tubes. His life jacket handle sticks up like a suitcase grip. I want to grab it and carry him around like emotional luggage.
Jake is on the dock coiling a line when he looks up.
And just... looks.
There’s something in his face lately. Like he’s surprised and not surprised at all. Like some part of him still can’t believe I’m here, and another part never stopped believing I would be.
He smiles and walks toward me. “Hi,” he says softly.
“Hi.”
He kisses me. A full, hands-in-hair, foot-pop kiss.
The scrape of his stubble against my skin makes my knees consider early retirement.
Behind us someone claps. Jake pulls back slowly and glances over my shoulder. “Don’t you have fires to put out or something?”
“Just making sure you two don’t start one again,” Charlie calls from farther up the dock.
