Page 76 of Just One More Thing

She considers that. “Okay.” Another pause. “Does she know?”

“No.”

A small smile pulls at her mouth.

“Good. Don’t tell her until she gets here.”

Then she’s gone.

Hank’s eyes follow me from his bed by the prep station with the kind of bulldog judgment that feels unearned from a creature who licks windows.

“We’ve never had a first date,” I tell him. Not when we were kids, splitting hot dogs and racing barefoot down the dock. Not during college visits, when everything between us felt both inevitable and unspoken right up until the second it wasn’t.

We’ve had almosts. We’ve had history. We’ve had a lighthouse and a kiss that felt like something finally clicking into place. But we’ve never had this.

Something chosen.

By six o’clock, The Knuckle is empty in a way it almost never is. No clatter from the bar. No voices drifting in from the patio. No music. Just the low lights and the view of the bay and beyond to the ocean.

I set one table.

The one by the window.

Mom always called it the best seat in the house. She was right. On clear evenings you can see the lights in Oyster Bay, the next town over, come up one at a time, like the whole shoreline’s settling in for the evening.

I fold the napkins and place the silverware just so, with a small bunch of flowers in the center. Then I dig a candle out of the hurricane box in the back office because it seems I own emergency preparedness but not romance supplies.

I step back and look.

It looks like a date.

Good.

Hank waddles over, inspects the table, then sits and looks up at me smiling with his bottom teeth sticking out. “Sorry, buddy. This one’s for two.” He flops down with a dramatic sigh.

The peaches are on the counter where I lined them up after the farm stand this morning. I’d stood there squeezing every single one like my grandmother taught me until the woman running the stand kindly said that if I bruised one more peach, I was buying the whole basket.

I bought the whole basket.

The recipe is taped above the prep station.

Peach Crisp

Emory Donovan

I’ve read it enough to know it by heart, but I keep looking up anyway. My hands quit rushing when I see her name there.

She made this. Tested it. Adjusted it. Stood in some test kitchen figuring out the exact ratio of sugar to flour, oats to brown sugar, until it came out right.

I want to make it for her.

Hank watches from the corner while I peel peaches, his eyes following every move. “I know what I’m doing,” I tell him.

He’s unconvinced.

The peaches get sliced. Sugar. Cinnamon. A little vanilla. Butter worked into the topping until it turns crumbly under my fingers.

“If this goes wrong, I’m blaming the peaches.” I slide the pan into the oven.