Page 30 of Soft Serve

I think about a man who came into my shop alone, without a team or a pitch or anything to hide behind, and asked to understand what he was asking for before he asked.

And I hold his hand in the dark, and I let it be enough for tonight.

Because tomorrow everything will be complicated and real and full of consequences, I can't yet map. But tonight the lake is still, and the stars are out, and Charles Whitaker's thumb is moving in a slow, absent arc across my knuckles, and for the first time in two years, I am not running the numbers.

I'm just here. That, I think, is everything.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it. It buzzes again.

I pull it out with my free hand, not letting go of his, and look at the screen.

GROUP CHAT — NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY GIRLS

Millie

So.

Lucia

Did you do something irreversible?

I close my eyes briefly.

Paloma

Yes.

Millie

Was it worth it?

I look at Charles, at his profile in the dark, at the steadiness of him, at the man who stayed on the customer side of my counter without being asked and took a photograph of jam in a shop window because it made him think of me.

Paloma

I don't know yet.

I put the phone away.

He glances at me sideways, not asking.

"Millie," I say.

"Naturally," he says.

I smile, and he sees it, and something in his expression goes warm and completely unguarded in a way I haven't seen from him before.

I file it away in the place where I keep the things I'm not ready to name yet.

The water laps softly against the dock.

We stay.

Chapter 10

Charles

Iwake up in the rental, and the first thing I think about is her hands. Just the feeling of her hands in mine on the dock, the way she held on without gripping, easy and certain, like she'd decided and wasn't second-guessing the decision.