Page 90 of Falling

I realized I’d paused without meaning to, and Angela was waiting for a response. “Too small,” I shrugged, clutching my coffee mug. “You can’t keep ’em if they’re less than eight inches.”

I managed not to add as Joel would say, but I did have the thought. Booker would’ve liked that joke. Seth would’ve liked it even more.

“Huh,” Angela said, nodding. “Well, I’ve learned something about trout fishing today.”

“Don’t?” I suggested.

Angela laughed, but even as she did, a wave of something like nostalgia but not quite that washed over me. For a moment, I could smell the pine on the air and hear the river lapping at the banks. Feel the sun falling on my face.

Booker was at my shoulder, out of sight but near enough that his warmth seeped into me.

“Well,” Angela responded, pulling me out of the moment again. “Maybe do it with floaties on.”

I smiled at that, sipping my coffee.

“I’ve kept you in suspense long enough,” Angela continued.

Every muscle in my body, including some I hadn’t known about until now, tensed. This was it.

“The fact is,” she went on. Blood pounded in my ears so hard I could barely hear her, the sounds of the coffee shop drowned out entirely. “We’d be thrilled to have you.”

I swallowed, fingers tightening around my coffee. I had to make a choice. Right now. Forever.

“The job’s yours, if you want it,” Angela said. “Can I email you the offer?”

32

BOOKER

“Seth, I’m not in the mood,” I said as the door to the bar swung open without looking up from the glasses I was rearranging for the third time.

“Not Seth.”

The voice hit me like a brick to the back of the head.

Miles.

I glanced at the clock before I looked at him. Two o’clock.

So he’d had his meeting, then.

As subtly as I could, I took a deep breath. My fingers curled around the edge of the bar until my knuckles turned white.

I had to congratulate him, obviously. I had to. That was what friends were for.

I could go in the back and cry about it later.

“Miles,” I said, forcing myself to smile. I wanted to offer him a drink, or say I take it congratulations are in order, but I couldn’t trust my voice and I didn’t want it to break.

Miles picked his way over to the bar. I’d been so busy worrying about my own feelings that I hadn’t noticed when he came in that he wasn’t grinning at me.

Had they turned him down?

I hated the way my heart flipped at the thought. I didn’t want to keep him by default. I didn’t want staying in Otter Bay to feel like a disappointment.

“How, umm…” I forced myself to speak as he approached, pausing to clear my throat as he stopped in front of the bar, one hand on the back of a stool. “How’d it go?”

Miles’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “They, umm. Angela offered me the job.”