beautiful people,” Andre’s distinctive accent rang out behind us. We both turned to look at him as he threw a long leg over the fence and climbed over it, sitting down on our side. “You need to check your phone,” he said to Wes.
Wes passed me the ice cream while he licked his fingers clean again, wiping them on his shorts like a toddler before extracting his phone from one of the pockets.
“Ah ha,” Wes said, looking down at his phone. “Seth wants us to come to the beach for the midnight fireworks. He’s promising a bonfire, beer, and marshmallows. Are we in?” Wes asked, looking at me.
“If you’ve got nothing better to do, sure,” I said, determined not to ruin today by thinking about feelings. Company and fireworks sounded good.
Especially since I was turning thirty at midnight.
Well, technically at about fifteen minutes past, but that seemed like splitting hairs.
“I have nothing better to do,” Wes said, tapping out a response to Seth.
I licked his ice cream once more before handing it back to him, electric sparks bouncing between us as his fingers brushed against mine.
“Shame that place is selling up,” Wes nodded to the ice cream parlor.
“Selling up?” I asked, surprised. The line outside told me they couldn’t exactly be struggling. Ice cream wasn’t the cheapest possible thing to make, but the overheads couldn’t have been that bad out here.
“Yeah,” Andre spoke up. “The couple who runs it are retiring to Costa Rica,” he said. “As soon as someone buys it, anyway. They’ll probably turn it into a Starbucks.”
“Nice for some,” Wes mumbled. “Retirement to Costa Rica, I mean. Not Starbucks.”
“You wouldn’t move out of Otter Bay if you were offered a million dollars and a pony,” Andre said. “You love it here. This is your Costa Rica.”
“In fairness, a million dollars wouldn’t get me very far these days. And I don’t even like horses,” Wes said. “I do like it here, though, that’s true.”
“Me too,” I said, fingers digging into the crumbling mortar between the bricks of the fence under me, toes itching to curl into the warm sand ahead. “I’d forgotten, but it really is a nice place.”
“Well,” Andre said, throwing his legs back over the fence. “I love you two, but I have a hot date. See you at the bonfire?”
“See you,” Wes said, and I smiled at Andre saying he loved both of us.
It was nice to be liked. To fit in, to have friends my own age—which made me sound like a precocious kid, but maybe that wasn’t all that far from the truth.
We sat in silence as Wes finished his ice cream, and I jumped when he wrapped his fingers around mine.
“Come on,” he said, tugging me away from the fence. “We’ve got so much more to do.”
19
Wes
“It’s your stuffed otter,” Hayden said, holding the little stuffed toy out to me as the sand crunched under our feet, the sun setting on the horizon as we looked for the bonfire Seth promised he was already setting up. “You won it.”
“Yeah, for you,” I insisted, gripping his hand a little tighter.
I couldn’t believe he was letting me hold his hand. He’d been letting me hold his hand all day.
I felt like I’d won something a lot better and rarer than a cheap stuffed otter with a little firework in one hand.
“You know they sleep holding hands?” I asked, squeezing Hayden’s fingers, not inclined to let go of him before I absolutely had to.
I knew that time was coming—I’d have to let go eventually—but not tonight. Not yet.
“Otters, I mean,” I went on. “So they don’t lose each other.”
“I vaguely recall reading that once. It sounded sweet,” Hayden said. “Are you sure? I think he likes you.”
I laughed.
Hayden was a different man today than when I’d first met him. Ten years had fallen off, and he was my age again, fun and playful and not quite ready to retire, to Costa Rica or anywhere else. He was so alive that all I wanted to do was touch him so I could feel it.
“Then you should definitely keep him,” I said. “He can be my wingman.”
“I remember you promising to be my wingman,” Hayden said, smiling wryly.
I wanted to kiss him again.
I wanted to kiss him all the goddamn time.
“I got you laid.” I shrugged, the bag of snacks and beer in my free hand clinking with the movement. “I’m clearly an excellent wingman.”
“I’m not sure that counts,” Hayden said, but he was cuddling the otter