“Nothing.”
“You were going to say something.”
He shook his head. I waited him out.
“Okay.” He tugged at his hair. “I feel... a little sorry. For hurting your feelings back then.”
I reared back. Pity.
Hepitiedme.
My stomach folded in on itself while my voice frosted over. “Got it.”
“I shouldn’t have laughed when you told me you liked me. I was just surprised.”
“Surprised?” My voice hardened, though I wasn’t sure if it was because of his years-old action or his current pity. “Because, what, fourteen-year-old me did such a good job at hiding my emotions?”
“I had no idea you’d make amove.I thought you’d lust silently from afar.”
I gave him a brittle smile, wishing I could be as laissez-faire as him. “Thank god I didn’t. Think how big your ego would be if it had gone on even longer.”
He raised his brows. “What, you think your disdain didn’t feed my ego, too?”
I gaped at him. “What?”
“Come on.” He grinned. “It meant you still cared, how mad you stayed at me.”
“Are you kidding? Are you saying you’ve thought I wasstillobsessed with you for the past three years?”
“Am I wrong?”
“Wow,” I said, aiming to puncture his swollen ego. “It must sting to realize the lengths I’m willing to go to to get Isaac Lehrer’s attention.”
His eyes widened, and he flinched.
“And I didn’t still like you,” I said. “I realized we’re nothing alike. I want a relationship, and you want hookups.”
His expression hardened. “I’ve always been honest about what I’m looking for. I’ve always laid my cards on the table.”
“Great. Good for you.” I shrugged. “But I also know what I’m looking for. I want a relationship. A person to hang out with all the time. A best friend I get to kiss. I wouldn’t have to worry about making plans or being lonely.” I winced as the last word slipped out. Admitting I was lonely felt stupid and silly and like something I should get over. And, I realized, shoulders slumping, Tyler probably couldn’t relate, since he had a million friends.
“Huh,” he said. “I guess... I don’t look for that kind ofconnection in romantic relationships. That level of friendship.”
“Why not? Because you get enough of it elsewhere?” I could almost see, actually, how if I had more friends I might not care quite as much about having a boyfriend.
He shifted uncomfortably. “I guess.”
The silence stretched too long; Tyler stared at his empty mug, then out the window, and I stared at him, until he looked back at me and our gazes clashed. He cleared his throat. “Uh, so did you ever find out more about the box?”
Thank god. I’d had about as much of talking about emotions as I could handle for one day. “Yeah. I got the names of the Barbanels around before photography became popular. But there’s a ton of them.”
“I actually had an idea,” Tyler said, straightening. “You know the piece of wood? I thought it might be part of a quarterboard.”
My brows shot up. Quarterboards were common decorations on the Cape and islands: long, narrow planks of wood bearing the name of pretty much anything these days, from houses to restaurants to shops, tacked up as nautical decoration. Back in the day, they’d been nailed to ships. “You think it’s from an actual ship? Not decoration?”
“If the box is from the 1800s. People used quarterboards a lot then, right?”
“Yeah, actually.” I’d taken pictures of all the objects in the chest, and now I pulled up the photo of the plank. “If we thinkit’s real... it’s broken. Didn’t quarterboards wash ashore after wrecks? And people could use them to figure out what ship went down?”
