I help her onto Dawson’s boat. My hand on her arm, steadying her. She doesn’t need steadying—she’s been climbing on and off boats for eight months and she’s better at it than she thinks. But she takes my hand anyway. And holds it for a second longer than balance requires.
“Follow me back?” she asks.
“I was going to whether you asked or not.”
“I know.” She starts the engine. Checks her gauges. Looks at me across the water between our boats. “Paul?”
“Yeah?”
“The running light. The goldfish crackers. Coming after me today.” She pauses. “You’re not out of practice. You never were. You were just scared.”
She pulls away from the dock before I can answer. Which is probably for the best, because she’s right and I don’t have the words for what that feels like—being known. Being seen by someone whose entire life is about seeing.
I follow her back.
The water is glass. The storm washed everything clean and left the surface so flat it reflects the sky like a mirror. Two boats, running side by side, cutting parallel lines through water that looks like it was painted.
We clear the channel markers. The marina appears—the dock, the boats, the office, the houseboat with its fairy lights. Home.
And there it is. Her houseboat in its slip, the running light housing visible on the bow. Clean. New bulb. Heat-shrink connector. The small, quiet repair that started everything.
She pulls Dawson’s Whaler into its slip.I dock mine beside it. We tie off and walk down the dock together—not holding hands, not touching, just walking side by side toward our boats the way we’ve done a hundred times, except everything about it is different now.
We stop at the place where the dock splits—her slip to the left, mine to the right. Ten feet apart, the way it’s been since she got here.
But the ten feet feels different now.
She steps onto her houseboat. I step onto mine. We stand on our respective decks and look at each other across the water, and she smiles, and I almost smile, and the afternoon sun turns everything gold.
“Dinner?” she calls across.
“What are we having?”
“Whatever Aidan hasn’t already eaten.”
“I’ll bring a side.”
“You cook?”
“I grill. Spencer men grill. It’s genetic. We can’t articulate feelings but we can sear a steak.”
She laughs. The sound carries across the water, across the ten feet, across the whole marina.
I go inside to change my shirt. I catch my reflection in the galley window—my face, my hair still damp from the lighthouse, a man who just kissed awoman for the first time in ten years and is standing in his kitchen trying to figure out what side dish goes with a second chance.
This is the question nobody prepares you for. There’s no manual. There’s no chapter in any book that sayswhen you finally kiss the woman you’ve been pretending not to love, and she invites you to dinner, and you say you’ll bring a side, what do you bring?Potato salad? Coleslaw? A decade of suppressed emotions and a bag of chips?
Holly would know. Holly always knew what to bring.
I open the cabinet. Find a jar of something Harold left here—homemade pickled okra from Mrs. Rodriguez at the retirement community. It’s not a side dish. It’s an old man’s condiment collection.
I bring it anyway.
Emma opens the okra, looks at it, looks at me, and says, “This is the most romantic thing anyone has ever brought to my houseboat.”
“It’s pickled okra.”
“It’syourpickled okra. That you’re sharing. On purpose.” She puts it on the table like it’s a centerpiece. “Sit down, Paul. Dinner’s almost ready.”
