Page 99 of Rhodes

"I slept with Rhodes, Jo. And we kept hooking up basically the whole week."

Her eyebrows climb. "You had sex with Rhodes?!"

"Keep your voice down!" I look around to make sure no one turned around.

"Sorry," she whispers. "I just didn't have that on my bingo card. Are y'all like a thing now? I can't believe it. I mean, I can. He is delicious. But I just⁠—"

"It was the best week I've had in I can't tell you how long, Jo. It was easy and fun." I turn my cup a slow half-circle on the table. "But no, we aren't a thing. We were just having fun in Italy. We're home now, and real life is back. Sex is done."

I think about last night, when the sex clearly wasn't done. But I leave that part out.

She studies me for a second, and I wait for the pivot, the careful voice, the are-you-sure. It doesn't come.

"I'm trying to understand why you're telling me this like you're reporting a successful exchange program. You freaking had a love affair in Italy. That's a Lifetime romance movie in the making."

I kick her under the table. She laughs and catches my shoe between hers. "It wasn't a love affair. It was sex. And it was fun, but it had an expiration date."

"Fine. You had a fun week. You had great sex, and nobody is making it anything more than that. Now you're home, so why does the fun have to end?"

"Are you seriously asking me that?"

I think about his shirt on my bedroom floor, and eggs sliding across the kitchen counter. Next time, say something before you go. None of that answers the question.

"We're back to normal, that’s it. I'm sure we will still have fun together, just like always, just not in the biblical way."

"That's so boring."

"It's real life. I can’t date Rhodes Stone. That’s ridiculous.”

Jo sits back and raises her hands as if in surrender. “Okay. But for the record, I wasn’t saying date him.”

I narrow my eyes at her. "You're being annoying."

"I'm sitting here."

"Annoyingly."

She grins and reaches for her coffee. "All I'm saying is, you already crossed the giant forbidden line. You live together, Cooper's in Spain, and you're moving out in a few months. If you both know this isn't going anywhere, I don't see why you have to stop having fun just because your passport got stamped."

I bite the inside of my cheek and look away for a moment, then back to her. She lifts one shoulder. "Seems arbitrary."

"When you put it like that," I say.

"I'm always right. It's exhausting." She checks her phone and swears. "I have a shift. This conversation isn't over, but I have to go.”

She hugs me on the sidewalk and jogs toward her car. I walk up toward St. Charles, lighter than I've been in weeks, in the sun, with a good problem and a plan and a Thursday to get to.

The house is blissfully quiet, so I can finally dive into this Oak Moss stuff. Italy was a break, but the clock is ticking. I need to make sure we're doing what we need to do before my grace period ends. I don't know where Rhodes is, but out of the house is best.

I've got the whole thing spread out in front of me. There's the legal pad I started the morning after poker night, my handwriting getting messier down the page, and the erosion surveys I photographed off the county site. The Oak Moss folder has gotten fat with everything I've pulled in the last month.

I work through it for an hour. The eastern bank has lost maybe twelve feet since the last aerial, which sounds like a death sentence and isn't one. Sediment's still there, just moving, and moving sediment you can work with.

The good part is handled, and I did it myself. Three weeks of calls got me Rockville Coastal out of Johns Island, fifteen minutes from the property, and they take nonprofit work at a rate I can cover without asking a soul for a dime. They'll walk the property, shoot an elevation profile, and put in writing whether a living shoreline holds on that bank. And, more importantly, if we can add some of it back.

The fact that Banksie agreed has to be a good omen. It was grudging and salty, and it came after five solid minutes about trespassers, but it was a yes, and they can get on the land Thursday.

That's the first thing he's given me since the fight started.