“Two hundred,” I say, hand up because apparently I like escalation.
The crowd pivots. Bailey’s head whips toward me, eyes wide with startled amusement that she tries to throttle into exasperation and fails.
“Two ten,” calls a fisherman I’ve known since I was ten.
“Two fifty,” I say, because reason is on lunch break.
“Crew,” Bailey murmurs, voice low. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” It’s not smooth, and it’s not a line. It’s simply the truest sentence I have spoken in public in years.
Her throat works. The corners of her mouth soften. She looks away like the lights are too bright and then back at me like maybe they aren’t the point.
“Two seventy,” someone shouts.
“Three hundred,” I counter, because at this point I’m bidding on air and the right not to watch a stranger sit where I plan to apologize properly.
“Three fifty!”
“Four,” I say, and the murmurs go up an octave.
The mayor milks it. “Four hundred going once… going twice…”
“Sold,” I say under my breath at the same time he does out loud.
Applause like rain on a tin roof. Ivy wolf-whistles. Lila covers her mouth, eyes laughing. Mom dabs at her eyes like I just rode a bike without training wheels.
Bailey stands very straight, hands folded, cheeks pink. “Congratulations,” she says softly when the noise dips. “You just paid four hundred dollars for cookies.”
“Bargain,” I tell her. And then, because I cannot help myself, I ask, “Does the basket come with a translator for your sarcasm?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
The auction rolls on, and I don’t hear most of it. The band tunes behind the gazebo. People drift off toward cider and gossip and the dance lawn where couples start swaying out of habit. The sky goes that deep cobalt that makes the string lights look like constellations that sat down to rest.
“Walk?” I ask, when the crowd thins enough that we can slip away without three aunties drafting a marriage license.
She considers, then nods once. “One lap.”
We skirt the edge of the pier, boots thudding soft on planks gone damp with the evening. The bay lifts and lowers itself like it’s breathing. Far out, a buoy clangs, the sound as steady as the beat I can’t slow down.
“You didn’t have to bid,” she says finally, eyes on the water.
“I wanted to keep the lighthouse on our schedule,” I say. “Not the internet’s.”
She huffs something that’s almost a laugh. “You and Lila with your schedules.”
“I’m a middle child in a loud family,” I say. “Schedules are the only way to be heard.”
She glances over, amused. “You were very heard tonight.”
“Yeah,” I say, and rueful doesn’t even begin to cover it. “About that.”
We stop at the end of the pier. The town noise turns to a wash. The wind is a careful hand on the back of my neck.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words landing quieter than I planned, truer than I let myself hope. “For the hallway. For the way I didn’t stop him. For how I letsilencedo my talking and pretended that wasn’t the same as choosing a side.”
She closes her eyes, then opens them again. “You were a kid.”
