“It’s the best combination of sweet and sour. Just trust me.”
It doesn’t sound appetizing, but I’m having fun. Being spontaneous. I take it from him and dip it in my milkshake. Reed analyzes my expression as I bring it to my tongue and feel it explode with a salty, bitter tang.
“It’s not bad,” I admit.
“Ah yes, pickles and raspberry milkshakes. The perfect combination on a hot summer’s day.” He says it like he’s quoting Cheryl from Rhode Island inMiss Congeniality, and I almost spray the next sip of milkshake all over the front of his shirt before choking it down.
“Make her laugh, check.”
I bob my straw up and down, staring at my cup. “You still haven’t told me what else is on this checklist of yours?”
He bats his eyelashes at me. “You’ll have to stick around long enough to find out,” he says.
I swallow. That’s just it, I won’t be sticking around. Therein lies the hang-up with this little thing we have going. Reed Morgan has one more month of showing me a good time, and then I’ll be gone, and I’ve yet to tell him.
I find myself avoiding Reed during our shift the same way I’m avoiding the end-of-summer conversation I need to have with my parents. I’m not sure he’d understand any more than they would. I think the only person in the whole world who mightunderstand me right now is Miles. Which is confusing as hell. He’s avoiding me. When I opened up to him the other night, I could tell he related to my feeling lost. Maybe that’s the gravitational pull that keeps drawing us back together.
As if the universe conjured him up in the exact moment I needed him, I find him shirtless and fishing off the end of the dock after my shift. My spirit feels more grounded the closer I get to him. Then I smile so wide my cheeks split in two when I see the tip of a hunter-green pole dipping at the end.
“You’re fishing!”
As his pole straightens, he reels in the empty line, a half-eaten worm dangling from the end. “Wasfishing.”
I grit my teeth. “Oops, sorry. I scared it away, didn’t I?”
“It’ll come back.” He chuckles. “I guess you could say I was feeling inspired.”
By me?
“Want to try?” he offers.
“I thought you’d never ask!” I squeal, and he hands the pole off to me. He reaches for a baby-food jar filled with neon-colored marshmallows and unscrews the lid. He pulls out a fuchsia one, slipping it on the end of the hook next to the mangled worm. A gamey, smokey smell wafts from the jar before he fastens the lid, and it takes me back to… something. It’s gone before I can decipher the sensation.
“That smells awful,” I choke.
The corner of Miles’s mouth twitches. “Fish like it.”
“I’m going to need all the help I can get,” I warn him, staring at a host of intimidating parts and a spool of fishing line that knots just by me looking at it. Without a word, Miles tucks me in close between his arms, reaching around to grip my left hand on the rod and moving my right pointer finger in an arc, pulling back on a little metal bar. His left bicep wraps around my chest as he extends both our arms over my right shoulder. I forgetevery single step the moment I make it because I feel his hands everywhere.
“When I say let go, release your finger from the bail, okay?” he breathes into my hair.
A strangled “Mm-hmm” slips out as I try to focus on his instructions.Wait, what’s a bail?
It all happens in three seconds. On one, he’s flinging our arms forward in a tangled heap. Two, he’s telling me to let go. On three, I do, and my heart leaps out of my chest with the hook that falls into the water, leaving a ripple effect I feel clear to my toes.
Miles’s arms are tethered around me, and I stand there feeling the rise and fall of our synchronized breaths. It takes everything I have to step away from the warmth of his arms, but I do. I want to spend more time with him.
I blink up at him. “I was wondering if you would meet me at Bloomington Lake tomorrow morning. I can’t promise I won’t make you jump in, but I’ll go for a run with you, sit on the shore in silence, whatever it is you like to do there.”
Miles clears his throat. “I have to work tomorrow.”
“At five a.m.?” I scoff. “Miles, I’m not sure there’s a single store in the entire city of Boise—which, according to my dad, has like half a million people in it—that would open that early, let alone a sleepy little lake town. Come on, just one hour. I won’t make you rope swing.”
I realize how desperate I sound, but I don’t know how else to penetrate this iron-clad wall he has up but to screw my own pride.
“Okay,” he agrees, and it catches me off guard. He casts his line back in the water.
“Okay?” I ask again, just to be sure.
