“Our salsa.”
“What?”
“You said ‘your salsa.’ It’s Rosa’s salsa. It’s yours.” Anna looked at him. “We could serve Rosa’s salsa at the Beach Shack art nights. If you wanted.”
Michael was quiet for a moment. His hand went to his pen pocket. Came back.
“She would have liked that,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“She would have liked you.”
The string lights hummed. Anna picked up another chip and didn’t say anything because some things don’t need words and this was one of them.
“You were different tonight,” Michael said.
“Different how?”
“I’ve watched you behind the counter. Running lunch. Managing the numbers with me. Wiping the counter.” He paused. “Tonight you were teaching. Moving between the easels. Showing people how to see what was in front of them.” Another pause. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“That’s what I did in Florence. Before I came back.”
“I know. But knowing it and seeing it are different things.” He looked at her. “You were extraordinary.”
Anna picked up another chip. Set it down. Picked it up again. Nobody had ever called her extraordinary. Her family called her creative, which sometimes meant creative and sometimes meant difficult. This was different. This was Michael looking at her and seeing something new and telling her about it in the most Michael way possible—directly, precisely, without decoration.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For the salsa?”
“For all of it. The salsa. The easel. Being here.” She looked at him across the table, across the chips and the string lights and the dark ocean. “For believing in me before I did.”
Michael’s hand went to his pen pocket. Stopped. Came back to the table.
“We should talk about the wine and snacks,” he said. “And the liquor license. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Thursday.”
“Thursday.”
They cleaned up the last of the patio—Anna turning off the string lights, Michael folding tablecloths. He packed the cooler and the leftover salsa and his supplies and his new easel with the price sticker still on the leg.
At the door he turned back. “Anna.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t keep the art night a secret. Tell your family. They should see what I saw tonight.”
He left. Anna locked the door and stood in the dark Shack with the smell of paint and salsa and salt air and Michael’s painting leaning against her register, warm windows glowing in uneven blue.
She pulled out her phone and called Meg. Two rings. “It’s ten o’clock, Anna.”
“I did something tonight. At the Shack.”
“What kind of something?” Meg’s voice shifted from tired to alert.
