“I’m not a consultant,” I tell him.
He squints at my hands. “Is that a shark?”
“No.”
“It is literally a shark.”
“It’s a fish,” I say, because I’m committed to nonsense now.
Hank laughs and leans in. “You’re buying her a shark.”
“I am not buying her anything.”
“You are. I can see it in your face.”
“You cannot see anything in my face,” I reply.
“You can’t act like you’re above it,” Hank says, dropping his voice dramatically. “You have been charmed by Lucy. Welcome to the club.”
I don’t answer, because that’s how you lose.
I turn the shark over, examining the tag like it contains legal fine print. Then I spot a different sea creature, an axolotl. It’s far more unique and would open doors to learning.
Then, without looking at Hank, I pay for it.
Hank’s grin turns feral. “Oh, this is huge.”
“It is a small stuffed animal,” I correct.
“It’s huge emotionally,” Hank insists.
I slip it into the bag, and the moment should end there. It does not.
Because the next stall over has books.
Not new ones. Old ones. Used, sun-warmed, with spines cracked and pages that smell like dust and paper history. The vendor has them stacked in uneven piles, and I pause despite myself, eyes scanning titles the way they always do. Reflex. Habit. Compulsion.
My fingers brush a familiar kind of cover, academic, understated, the title stamped cleanly.
For half a second, my brain does something stupid. It imagines buying a book for Hildy. Something practical. Something useful. Something that says, without saying, I am not making this awkward.
Then I catch myself so fast it’s almost violent. No. Absolutely not. That is how things become awkward. That is how people start attaching meaning to objects that were never meant to carry it. That is how you go from adults handling something like adults to adults allowing logic to be overtaken. I don’t need that. I don’t want that. I step back like the books might burn.
Aleks drifts up beside me, empty-handed, miserable. “If I buy Sofie a stuffed animal, do you think she’ll think it’s pathetic?”
Hank snaps his head toward him. “Yes. But she’ll love it.”
Aleks sighs. “She’s the only person I would willingly suffer this humidity for.”
“Write that on a postcard,” Hank says. “Send it. Commit.”
Aleks looks genuinely tempted, which is embarrassing for him.
Deacon reappears with a bottle of water and offers it to me without comment. I take it, because he’s the only one here with survival instincts.
Koa checks his phone again. “She says to stop buying random things for other people’s kids.”
“Please inform your wife that she and the girls set the precedent.”
