He smiled broadly. “Perfect. I’ve been wanting to see your new town.”
I cut him a look and challenged, “Don’t act like you’ve never been there before.”
He shrugged before tossing me a pair of work gloves and tugging his own on.
Damn. These would’ve been handy yesterday.
He pulled one of the bigger frames from the back of the truck as he replied. “Sure, but it wasn’t my son’s town then.”
By the grace of a manual labor task, I was able to busy myself instead of finding a response to that.
In fact, we both seemed to fall easily into quiet-work mode until the task was complete.
Nothing was settled, and no real answers were discovered.
But still, I drove home with an empty truck under a stormless sky.
20
Liem
My first sunriseback in Bay Springs was barely perceptible.
Muted, even.
I’d been at the gazebo for the better part of an hour and was glad I hadn’t brought anything but my small notebook. If it started raining, like the clouds had been threatening, between now and when I needed to go home to get ready for work, I could easily keep it sheltered under my shirt as I ran back to the cottage.
Thinking of Ireland and her many phone alarms, I quickly set one for when I’d need to head back.
My notebook lay open on my lap, and I had to squint to make out what I’d previously drawn and written, so I reached over to the gazebo’s power and switched on the lights in the rafters. The scattered, warm glow filled the space even as dawn’s natural light stayed firmly hidden behind thick, dark clouds.
With sufficient light and a clear head, I set to work on a list of classes for the Locc.
I had a vivid dream last night about painting a mural in the main hallway, so I started with that, roughly sketching a wall with a grid pattern and brainstorming ways to divide the work between several people and classes.
It wasn’t perfect, and even I could see there would be obstacles to such a big project, but I drew a star on the paper and wrote a note to my future self to ask Ari to look over the plan and mend the gaps in it.
A breeze blew my hair forward, and I closed my eyes, leaning into the feeling and inhaling deeply on instinct.
Cherries. Coconut.
My heart skipped a beat and sped up into double time as I heard his voice, but it was the language he spoke that had my heart leaping out of my body entirely.
“Laissez les bons temps rouler, Ti Bet.”
I turned in my seat, nearly knocking heads with Cody. Leaning back, I barely registered the clatter of my pencil as it hit the wooden floor. He had somehow climbed up the outside of the balcony and was leaning over the white wooden rail, mere inches from me and with a giant smile on his face.
He glistened with a layer of perspiration, his chest was rising and falling at a rapid pace, and his hazel eyes were bright.
My heart stopped leaping so it could soar.
“Happy Mardi Gras to you, too, Dezi,” I replied after a deep breath. “Are you… running from something in particular?”
He leaped over the railing and took a seat beside me, setting a thin track jacket beside him and groaning loudly as he spread his legs wide.
Pulling my notebook over my lap, I drank in all that he was as he spoke.
“Day two of hell, LL. I just finished another leg of the Race to Mordor with my dad.” He let his head fall backward, elongating and exposing his throat.
