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Paul thinks about it, then says, “I care that it might make you feel smaller.”

I keep my eyes on the water.

“Yeah,” I say. “Well.”

His knee brushes mine.

“It made me feel small at times. Being so much younger. That’s why I think about it.”

“What do we look like to you?” I ask.

Paul looks away, eyes squinting into the sun.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Sure you do.”

His fingers tighten around his ice cream cup.

“A first date?”

I set my ice cream cup on the bench beside me and look toward the pier, giving myself a second to not say something stupid.

A first date. After all we’ve been through. Lawyers. Bentley. The hallway. My bed.

I scoop ice cream into my mouth, roll it around until it melts.

“Let’s try it on.”

I reach over and take his hand.

Paul’s fingers tighten around mine.

“What’s next?” I ask.

His smile comes slowly, maybe a little stunned.

“Ice cream before noon was my whole plan.”

Chapter thirty-six

Wanting

Paul

From the pier, I take Clint toward Isla Río Cuale because I’m determined to behave like a man on a first date. Definitely not a widower punishing himself with unsustainable feelings for a guy who should be his rival.

The market helps. It’s too busy to leave room for much else.

We cross into shade under trees so thick they turn the afternoon green. The river moves below us, brown and quick after so much rain, carrying leaves and whatever else the storm shook loose from the hills. The air smells like incense and the sweet rot of fruit left too long in heat.

Clint slows when we enter the first line of booths. His hand brushes a rack of embroidered shirts, then a row of leather belts hanging from a beam. He doesn’t pick things up carelessly. He touches like he is testing weight, seams, grain. Like every object has to prove it deserves to be wanted.

A vendor calls to us from behind a table stacked with painted skulls and tiny ceramic dogs.

“Amigos, good price.”

Clint gives him a look. “You say that to everybody?”