“Come sit over here, Dahlia,” Rory called, patting the chair he’d set up next to him. “Those two need some space.” He rolled his eyes and Dahlia laughed.
The two of them were already chatting like old friends by the time she sat down, and, after a moment, Dahlia stage-whispered to Maggie, “I guess prickliness doesn’t run in the family. Maybe you picked the wrong brother.”
“Thanks, Dahlia,” Arthur grumbled, stretching out on the blanket next to Maggie.
Maggie was still sitting, looking out toward the ocean with her elbows on her knees. “Where’s Simon?” she asked.
“My dad took him out fishing,” Arthur explained. “He was too anxious to sit around and wait for the game. Poor guy. We’ll meet them at the field.”
Maggie lay down beside him on the blanket, rolling over onto her stomach. Arthur had to practically sit on his hands to stop from running his fingers over the generous curve of her ass, right at the line her bathing suit cut. Maggie reached into her bag and pulled out two books—the romance and the fantasy novel they had been reading in her office. “You didn’t get to finish,” she explained, and soon she was lost in her book, distractedly playing with her bottom lip as she read.
Though Arthur opened the book, he couldn’t make himself focus on the words. Beside them with their chairs turned to look out at the horizon, Rory and Dahlia were swapping stories,each one more and more outlandish. Dahlia had just finished telling Rory about how she’d once crashed an ambassador’s dinner party after going on a date with her daughter, and Rory was telling a truly horrifying story about a run-in he’d had with a siren at work. Arthur recognized something in Rory’s wry grin, in the way he couldn’t stop tapping his finger on his beach chair as they talked, in the way he was spinning his stories so they were brighter, funnier than other times Arthur had heard them. He didn’t know Dahlia well, but she was leaning in, tossing her head back to laugh as his brother spoke.Interesting.
The sound of the ocean waves reminded him of Beltane, constant and sure, like a heartbeat. Maggie’s hand that had been playing with her lip was now in his hair, her nails swirling against his scalp in small circles, sending shivers down his neck. He leaned into her touch, and she smiled down at him from where she was propped up on her elbows, all without looking away from her book. This far from the pall, from Hawthorn, it was easier to glimpse the life he had agreed to give up at summer’s end. The quiet contentment and easy affection. He knew he shouldn’t want it, not after Maggie had made herself so clear, but he did. Gods below, he did.
—
Even as hercheeks turned pink and her hair started curling from the sweat, Maggie wasn’t sick of the heat. Her hand was out the window so the breeze could flow through her fingers as she and Arthur drove toward Simon’s favorite restaurant after his baseball game. She felt an almost dizzying contentment as Arthur sang along, badly, to a song on the radio, and she laughed more than she had in months.
The baseball game had been even more fun than she expected. When they arrived, Arthur had introduced her and Dahlia to Barry and Lane as colleagues and friends, and Maggie had felt the tension in her shoulders unwind. They ate buttery popcorn and hot dogs slathered in mustard, cheered loudly when Simon walked onto first base and then scored after his teammate hit a home run, and it was over before she knew it.
Maggie had originally planned to leave with Dahlia after the game, since her friend needed to get back to finish her summer course prep. It had been the perfect excuse to avoid an awkward dinner, but, at the last minute, she changed her mind and decided to go to dinner with Arthur and his family, even without the buffer of her best friend. Arthur’s face lit up when she suggested it, and she felt a thrill twisted with guilt, but she buried it as they drove to the restaurant.
Oyster Bay was down a long, winding road that came to a dead end at the marshy entrance to the water. It was an old restaurant, half on stilts over the marshland, and it had flooded in more than one big storm over the decades. The walls were wood paneled, the floors were uneven, and the ceilings were low. It was a little bit like stepping back in time, and Maggie thought it was such an interesting choice for a five-year-old’s favorite restaurant.
“My dad’s been coming here since he was a kid,” Arthur explained. “He’s been running an excellent PR campaign for the place since Simon was a baby.”
After Arthur parked the truck and they walked over the crushed oystershell gravel to the entrance, Maggie’s instinct wasto close the gap between them and lace her fingers with Arthur’s. But when she thought about Barry or Lane or, worse, Simon, seeing them, she came to her senses. Even if there was a part of her that wanted to walk into that restaurant on his arm so there was no doubt who he was to her, the rational side of her won over and she kept her hands by her sides, tangled in the gauzy fabric of her sundress.
Inside, Arthur jogged over to the table that Rory and Simon had already commandeered as they waited for the rest of the family to arrive. Arthur picked up his nephew, swinging him around, and then squatted to talk to him about the baseball game since there hadn’t been time to debrief at the field. Maggie walked over slowly, unsure where she should sit, until Rory waved her over.
Even though she hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to Rory on her own, since Dahlia had seemed to occupy all of his time at the beach and he’d been on the sidelines during the baseball game, she had learned quickly that everything Arthur had told her about Rory was true. He somehow made her feel less awkward and more at ease just by inviting her over. “That was a great game,” she said as she sat down.
“Well, we certainly did finish the season. Nothing like watching twenty five-year-olds try to accomplish something together on the hottest day of the year.”
Maggie watched Arthur with Simon at the other end of the table. Somehow, their conversation about the baseball game had devolved completely into one about robots that both uncle and nephew were participating in enthusiastically. Suddenly, Rorystood up, waving toward the front of the restaurant as Barry and Lane walked over, positively beaming when they saw Arthur and Simon hunched together.
“Baseball star!” shouted Barry, doing a goofy little walk over to his grandson as he pretended to swing a bat. “Artie, wasn’t that game incredible? I couldn’t believe it when he hit that ball over the back fence.”
“Pop, we were all at the game. Don’t fib,” Rory admonished.
“Fine, he hit it straighttowardthe back fence, but it could have gone over. It definitely could have,” he finished, tousling Simon’s hair as the boy beamed up at his grandfather.
As everyone chose seats around the table, Simon plopped down in the chair next to her. Rory leaned over to him and said, “Hey, bud, let Uncle Artie sit there.”
Maggie waved him off. “Oh, no, it’s okay. I want to talk to him about the game.” She turned to Simon. “I saw you score!” He preened and she smiled as she asked, “What was your favorite part of the day?”
Simon considered this, his cute button nose a little red from the sun. “It was definitely the ice cream I got after.”
Maggie laughed. “You know, snacks aremyfavorite part of any baseball game, too.”
“Uncle Artie said if I’m good at dinner, he’ll get me another bowl.”
“Oh, well then, we’d better sit up straight and put our napkins on our laps. Do you think your uncle Artie will let me have some ice cream, too?”
Simon nodded seriously. “ ’Course he would.” They shook out their napkins, laying them primly on their laps.
When Maggie looked up, she saw Arthur at the other end of the table, watching her with Simon. “Thank you,” he said, and she shrugged, helping Simon set up a tic-tac-toe game on his menu.
