They walked down the street, side by side, his hands in his pockets, hers holding her suede jacket together since the otherwise immaculate garage sale find was missing some essential buttons. His phone beeped from somewhere inside his coat. Then beeped again with a bit more oomph.
“Are you going to check that?” she asked.
“No, I know what it says.”
“Is that your wife?” she teased. It could not have flopped harder if it were a goldfish escaping from a tank.
“What?” Elliot seemed affronted by her perceived accusation. “Of course not. You thought I was married?”
“No, I was joking. It was—”
“It’s my friend,” he explained. “He thinks this whole moving-to-Wisconsin-and-running-a-lakeside-motel thing is a cry for help. Or like a mental breakdown. He’s been trying me all day.”
She nodded, her eyes facing forward as they walked. “Your friend sounds smart. Maybe you should listen to him.”
“I think Sebastian would agree with you,” he replied, his shoes clicking against the sidewalk.
“Ooh, Sebastian. That’s a hard name to pull off. Is he wildly attractive? He has to be. It would be cruel to name a regular-looking kid Sebastian.”
He grabbed at the back of his neck for dear life. “It’s a normal name. And can you stop trying to hit on my friendthroughme? Who is happily married and living across the country, mind you.”
“We’ve established you don’t have any friends I can hit on around here.”
They walked up to the white-domed shack with the wordsThe Dairy Cavepainted above the service window in faded sans serif.
Elliot looked at the building like it’d done something to him. “The Dairy Cave doesn’t open until Memorial Day weekend.”
“So the sign says,” she replied. Her gaze roamed the street for witnesses. “Can you be the lookout?”
He narrowed his eyes. A challenge. A game. A fuse lit in herstomach. “Lainey Davis,” he said, fuming with mock outrage. “Are you planning to knock over an offseason ice-cream stand right in front of me?”
“It’s not like that—the owner and I have asystem.” Peering over her shoulder, she slid open the service window. “But that system involves entering the stand by way of the front window, and to the untrained eye, it can look a bit…crime adjacent.”
He nodded. “It can have theappearanceof a B and E.”
“Exactly. But it isn’t,” she agreed.
“Of course.”
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to be funny—”
“I’ll be your lookout, Lainey. Just make it quick.”
Lainey let her eyes wander up and down Elliot, taking the measure of him before deciding to hoist herself up on the counter and dive into the ice-cream stand.
“Good evening, officer,” Elliot called out.
Lainey cursed and smacked her head in her mad dash beneath the cash register. She held her breath until a pair of spectacled eyes and floppy dark hair peeked over the counter. “Gotcha,” he said, his eyes smiling.
Lainey unclenched. “That was mean.” She stood up from behind the counter and watched his head pop up, much too pleased with himself. Tucked under the cash register was an envelope. “Aha.” She ripped it out from under the weight of the cashbox. “See. It says, right here, ‘Lainey’s Honor System.’ ” She revealed the blue inked letters to Elliot with a triumphant flourish.
He tipped up his chin. “Okay, that’s fairly persuasive evidence for the existence of a system. I believe you about twenty percent more than I did before.”
“And how much was that?”
“Zero.”
She frowned. “Thirty, please. Cash only.”
