sure whether it was because of something he wore or washed his hair with, or because he spent so much time on baseball fields, or because she was imagining it, the way she always expected a lobsterman to smell like the ocean, whether or not he actually did. But she could not inhale enough of it, and when she’d find a spot, a hollow under his jaw or a span along his side, where she especially noticed it, she’d linger there trying to memorize it for when it was inevitably gone.
There was something about fooling around with clothes on that—no, it was not better than the sex, but the voluntary frustration of it thrilled her. It was like they were sneaking around in her own house, collapsing on her bed and tugging at each other, letting snaps and buckles slow them down. But finally, she cracked: she sat up and pulled her shirt over her head, and his fingers threw shadows on her skin in the sun through the bedroom window.
Later, as they were dozing between acknowledgments that they should go downstairs and eat something, she said in a shared waking moment, “I’m excited. Do you want me to come to Connecticut with you?”
“No, you can’t,” he said. “It’s a work thing. They’re going to test me out, try things, put me in situations and see what happens.”
“I’ll give you a lock of my hair for luck,” she said, pulling a strand away from her head with her fingers.
“I’ll settle for knowing you’ll be here when I get back,” he said, gathering her up with his arm and curling up against her.
DEAN AND EVVIE DECIDED ONE night while they were a little bourbon-drunk that before Dean went to Connecticut, they ought to have Andy and Monica—going strong after six months—over for dinner. Evvie and Monica had texted a few more times back and forth after the Great Lingerie Advisory: a conversation about what to get Rose for her birthday; a story Monica shared about Mama Kell calling her Eveleth and then, while apologizing, calling her Lori; and their discovery that someone had written some very elaborate fanfic where Dean fell in love with Jennifer Lopez. (They agreed that it wasn’t bad.)
So Dean texted Andy with the invitation for a Saturday, and Andy texted back that they’d be “stoked” to come—a word, Evvie noted, that he had to have picked up from Monica, as she’d never heard it from him before. When the day came, it was warm and dry, so Dean took a steel brush to the gas grill in the yard, which had been dormant for two years, and picked up a bottle of propane. Evvie spent more than she usually would have on steaks and fat sausages from the butcher, and she loaded a basket with bright green, unblemished farmers’ market lettuce she could build salads on. She fell to the temptation of some wild local mussels—much tougher to find than they’d once been—and bought a bag of those as well. In the afternoon, she baked brownies from scratch and let them cool while Dean made a run for beer and wine. Red with steaks, she figured, but white for summer, so she told him to grab some of both, and some beer, and she threw in a bottle of vodka, because, hey, you never know.
Just after he got back, while he was in the backyard starting the grill, her phone vibrated in her pocket, and when she took it out, it said, “Unknown.” Probably a wrong number or a marketing thing, or possibly the people doing the survey about Maine’s public lands, which she’d gotten two or three times already. She slid her finger over to “Ignore.” But when it vibrated again a minute later, she realized whoever it was had left a message. She poked the button to listen.
“Hello, Eveleth!” Oh, God. “It’s your mom. I’m going to be in Portland in September, and I was hoping we could get together. I haven’t seen you in ages, and I hope you’re doing well. By the way, my friend Foster saw your name in the paper in a story about your friend who’s a baseball player. It sounds very exciting and I can’t wait to hear all about it. Bye-bye, honey, call me back.”
Evvie put her phone back into her pocket. Perfect. A headache started to kick in almost immediately. Eileen Ashton was coming to Portland. Eileen, who had seen Evvie maybe five or six