This had been happening more and more, each time he stopped by. Mae greeting him with a smile instead of a glare. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the switch happened, but it made him uneasier with every single occurrence. He thought, maybe, Mae was simply lonely. He’d learned by now that her parents lived down in Newport, which had intrigued him, but still, Mae had moved to Greyfin Bay on her own. And while she was apparently friendly with Liv, Liv was a busier person than Dell. It was clear Mae was bursting with things to say about this old building, and Dell—somehow—seemed to most often be the person around to hear them.
“Gemma’s starting work on the murals.”
“Howdy.” Gemma, a wiry person with a mullet and an enormous amount of hardware in their ears, stepped forward to shake Dell’s hand.
They had a good grip. And they were definitely not from Greyfin Bay. Dell attempted to not scowl at them.
“Murals?” He pointed the question back to Mae.
“Of course. The main one will be back here.” Mae turned and spread her arms toward the back wall behind the counter, where Gemma had returned to rolling a layer of primer over Cara’s old hideous paint. “And then a small one over in the children’s section.” Mae pointed to an alcove near the bathroom. “It’s going to be a whale reading a book.” She grinned up at him.
“Obviously.”
“Obviously.” All Mae’s gesturing couldn’t help but bring Dell’s attention to her arms, which were fully exposed today, as she wore an old Myrtle Beach T-shirt whose sleeves had been cut off along with its collar. Mae, Dell had learned, hated collars. And her dislike of sleeves today proved that the tattoos wrapping around her left arm did, indeed, stretch all the way to her shoulder. While her right arm remained bare of anything but the occasional freckle.
“Why not a single one on that arm?” Dell blurted the question before he could stop himself. The question had been in his brain for weeks now; it was inevitable it’d escape at some point.
“Huh?” Mae looked up from where she’d been examining some sketches spread across the counter.
Annoyed with himself, he gestured toward her bare arm. “Your tattoos.”
“Oh.” Mae’s mouth slid into a grin again. “I like being incongruous. Come on, look at the back porch.”
And she turned, as if the statement—I like being incongruous—was nothing.
Dell swallowed a curse and followed her through the office to the back door.
And damn if the porch wasn’t a thing of beauty now. A somewhat private beauty back here, which was always Dell’s favorite kind. It felt particularly special, somehow, that it was hidden just steps from Main Street. And?—
“How in the hell did you have time to findmoreplants? The stain must have hardly dried yet.”
“Jonny said it’d be good after twenty-four hours! Which…” Mae crossed her arms and squinted into the distance. “It almost was, when I came back from the nursery this morning.”
Dell rubbed his forehead, staring at the raised beds set in the gravel just beneath them, the planters that lined the railing. “You know we’re heading into winter, right? That half of this shit will die by spring?”
Mae turned without answering.
“I’m going to go see if Gemma needs help.”
“Hey.” Dell stopped her retreat with a hand on her shoulder. Her bare, tattooed shoulder.
A shoulder that was soft, and smooth, and a jolt to Dell’s calloused hand. He dropped it immediately.
“Where’d you find Gemma?”
Mae breathed slowly in and out of her nose, a sign that Dell was truly pissing her off. Dell had learned this well by now, too.
“They live in Yachats. I’ve been following their work for a long time. I tapped them for these murals over a month ago, before I even signed your paperwork. These kinds of decisions are all mine, you know. We’re starting to move past the repairs now.”
Dell held up his hands.
“Fine. You’re right.”
And she was. Dell had never stipulated having any say over how she decorated or ran the shop itself. And maybe hehadassumed too quickly that Gemma must have been a friend from Portland. Maybe he was relieved Mae had found an artist from the coast, even if they weren’t from Greyfin Bay. Not that he would ever say it.
But Mae paused before going inside, as if waiting for him to extrapolate anyway.
“Andy’s going to start work on the water damage upstairs tomorrow,” she said eventually, all shades of her smiles of ten minutes ago firmly gone. “Said the roof overall looks good for now, but I might need to replace it in a few years.”
