Page 226

I should tell him. That’s the new rule, isn’t it? No lies. No hiding.

I lock the phone and slide it back into my pocket.

“Everything okay?” Clint asks without turning.

“Yeah.”

The lie is small. Quiet. Almost nothing.

Still a lie.

I catch up to him at a table of silver rings.

“How long do you think you’ll stay here?” I ask.

Clint looks at me, then back at the rings. “In this aisle? Maybe another minute.”

I swat his arm. “In Mexico.”

His hand stills over a tray.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“Yeah, well, I left my five-year plan in my g-string.”

I wait, because I’m learning that Clint often gives the joke first and the answer after, as long as you don’t rush him.

He picks up a ring, turns it once, sets it down. “I’m not sure I want to go back.”

“Ever?”

“Right.” His voice is casual in the way a wire fence looks casual when you hang flowers on it. “Everybody knows me a certain way there. Which means they don’t really know me at all.”

The market noise moves around us. Vendors, tourists. A child laughing somewhere behind a wall of hanging bags.

“And here?”

He shrugs. “Here I can be a whole new me.”

My chest tightens. I know too much about that fantasy to insult it.

“Or maybe not new,” he adds. “Maybe just the right me.”

The house rises between us, invisible and enormous. If there’s news, if I own it—he’ll never have to leave. I’d never do that. But if he stays here and I have to go back, what are we? A mistake with a coastal view. A first date that didn’t make it through customs.

Clint looks over. “What?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

His eyebrow lifts.

“I was thinking I understand wanting a different life.”

He studies me for a second, then nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Wanting and making—that’s kind of the problem, isn’t it?”