Victoria arranged the meeting with Laurence when I was seventeen. My mother buried what happened afterward. And now my mother has signed me up to walk right back into his orbit—casually, cheerfully, without so much as a flicker of hesitation.
But can I really fire my own mother?
The back door bangs open before I can spiral any further.
Dom fills the doorway, hair still damp, leather jacket slung over one shoulder. He seems surprised to see both Mabie and me in the kitchen, but recovers quickly. The demeanor of a guy who is perpetually unbothered quickly settles back over him.
“Morning,” he says, sweeping a casual hand through his hair.
Mabie grabs his arm. “Phoenix needs cheering up.”
Dom’s dark eyes settle on my face. Some of the typical dourness in his face softens.
He glances at Mabie. And back at me.
Then he says the last thing I expect.
“You want to go to the lobster festival?”
THIRTY-SIX
PHOENIX
I definitely did not havea group date to the Harmony Harbor Lobster Festival on my bingo card for this week.
Also, I’m now realizing just how much I was missing out by pretending to have a shellfish allergy for all these years.
“Oh my God,” I groan around a mouthful of lobster roll, butter dripping down my chin. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
The lobster is sweet and tender, dressed in just enough warm butter to make everything glisten without drowning the delicate flavor. The roll itself is toasted to golden perfection, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle.
I hold the roll out to Atticus, who’s walking beside me with his hands in his pockets. “Try this. You have to try this right now.”
He raises an eyebrow at the butter-smeared offering but leans in to take a bite. His eyes widen as he chews.
“Well,” he says after swallowing, “turns out our rideshare driver actually knew what he was talking about.”
“I know! I owe that man an apology for mentally tuning out his entire lobster monologue.” I snatch the roll back andtake another bite, barely pausing to breathe. “I’m going to eat seventeen more of these before we leave.”
Dom nods in the direction of the food trucks. “There should be a lobster pizza on offer somewhere around here. It’s surprisingly awesome.”
The Lobster Festival spreads out around us in all its small-town Americana glory. Red, white, and blue bunting hangs from every lamppost and vendor booth. The smell of fried dough and melted butter saturates the air.
There are carnival games lining the main thoroughfare—ring toss, dart throwing, a strongman hammer thing that I’m absolutely going to make someone try later. Food vendors hawk everything from clam chowder to lobster tacos to something called a “sea dog” that appears to be a hot dog but somehow involves crab meat. Kids run past with cotton candy clouds bigger than their heads. Couples stroll hand in hand, pointing at craft booths selling handmade jewelry and driftwood art.
It’s aggressively wholesome in a way that has me smiling hard enough to make my cheeks hurt.
Mabie broke off to join some friends almost as soon as we got here, leaving with a group that should feel awkward together. Except, it really doesn’t.
I glance behind me, automatically checking on Mason.
He walks a few paces back, close to Judah but not quite touching. The baseball cap is gone, though he still has the sunglasses. He surveys the crowd with an uncomfortable alertness, as if he can’t quite believe how well this is going.
I’m a little surprised, myself.
I’ve been braced for what inevitable comes when I’m recognized since we arrived. The selfie requests. The whispered pointing. The phone cameras held up at angles that pretend to be casual but aren’t. It’s the background radiation of myexistence, so constant I’ve stopped noticing until it’s suddenly absent.
But no one here seems to care all that much. We’ve had a few double-takes, sure, and a teenage girl casually asked Atticus to sign her t-shirt, but otherwise we’ve been left alone.
