Page 117 of Just One More Thing

“You understand this sets the romantic gesture bar incredibly high.”

He steps closer. “I hope I can always exceed it.”

I don’t know what to do with that, so I do the only thing available to me. I sit down.

Hank immediately claims a pillow for his chin like he booked it in advance.

Jake brings the cooler over and pulls out a wooden board layered with sliced meats, cheeses and fruit.

“Awww. You made us Lunchables.”

He laughs, then unwraps a baguette and opens a container of sliced tomatoes with flaked salt and basil that look like they came straight out of somebody’s backyard garden.

“I didn’t know if you’d want beer or wine, so I brought both. And Cherry Coke with extra cherries.”

“Jake.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

It absolutely is. He thought about what I’d want. He remembered the cherries. He brought me to an island we used to pretend belonged to us and made it feel, for one quiet evening, like maybe it still does.

He’s good at a lot of things.

Being praised for them is not one.

“This is too pretty a setting not to have wine.”

He opens the bottle and pours me a glass. When he hands it over, his fingers brush mine.

It’s nothing.

It’s everything.

Hank sits up very straight and stares at the board with the focused intensity of an athlete visualizing competition. “He’s not getting any,” Jake says.

Hank doesn’t blink. He has decided the meat is his through the force of pure belief. “He’s manifesting,” I say.

“It never works.” Ten seconds later, Jake hands him a piece of bread. I look at him over the rim of my glass. “That was impressively fast for never.”

“He’s persuasive.”

Hank eats the bread and resumes surveillance.

We eat. We drink. We talk about a pineapple recipe I’m developing that might be genius or might get me fired, and my new love for creating bagels. He tells me about Grady, the nine-year-old who applied to cook at The Knuckle.

“Did you hire him?”

“He starts Saturday.”

“Jake Wheeler.”

“He had a resume. With a photo of himself holding a spatula.”

I laugh into a mouthful of salami. He watches me like I’ve done something remarkable by existing. I try not to think about that too hard, because when I do, I lose the thread of ordinary thought and start floating.

The sun drops lower, the breeze moves through the sea oats, and for a while, the whole island feels like it’s holding its breath with me.

“Jake.” I rotate my wine glass once. Then twice. Then stop, because if I keep giving my hands something to do, I may never actually say it. “I want to talk about the thing we haven’t talked about.”