Page 24 of Falling

“Book!” a tiny voice called from the children’s section. I turned to see Maddy waving something with a dragon on the cover.

“Book,” Miles repeated, still smiling. At me.

I’d thought I was past the stage in my life where my insides melted into a puddle of goo when a cute boy smiled at me, but apparently I wasn’t.

“I gotta…” I gestured toward the kids, who were looking at me expectantly. “But I can put up the flyers?”

“Will I ever hear the end of it if I say no?”

“Nope,” I said, grinning at him again, rocking on the balls of my feet like one of the preschoolers waiting for me.

Miles sighed the most put-upon sigh I’d ever heard in my life, but he hadn’t stopped smiling yet.

Making him smile could’ve easily become my new favorite hobby.

“Fine,” he said. “But let me… let me do something for you? There has to be something I could do.”

I considered a moment, and then thought of the perfect thing.

“Come fishing with me,” I said.

Miles blinked at me. “That’s not… the kind of favor I was expecting,” he said. “I don’t know how to fish.”

“Even better, I’ll show you. I’d like the company,” I added. “It’s no fun alone. Plus we’re at the peak of trout season right now. If you hate it, I’ll take you straight home.”

Miles’s perfect pink tongue darted out to wet his perfect bow-shaped lips.

I’d asked too much. He didn’t want to go fishing with an old man, and he’d only been offering to be polite. I’d screwed up.

“Okay,” he said. “Deal. When?”

“Uh,” I flailed, surprised and caught off guard. “Sunday morning work for you?”

Miles nodded once, seriously, like this was an important business negotiation and not a fishing trip. “Sunday morning works. Pick me up…?”

“Eight?” I suggested.

“Eight,” Miles agreed with another serious little nod.

“Book-errrr!” Maddy called out.

“Go,” Miles said, smiling a tiny smile again. “Anything could happen if you make them wait.”

9

MILES

“Fishing, really? With the little hat and everything?” Evie asked as I flopped down on the actually-pretty-good bed in the cabin.

The cabin as a whole was much nicer than it had been since most of the kinks had been worked out. The hot water functioned and the shower pressure was surprisingly great, the sink was in perfect working order and the rest of the kitchen would have been amazing if I knew how to make anything more complex than a grilled cheese. I’d gotten the fire more or less figured out and curling up with my socked feet sticking out in front of it of an evening with one of the stack of children’s books I’d checked out so I’d be able to make sensible recommendations felt like a luxury.

So while I still wasn’t sold on the middle of nowhere, I could see that there were perks to be had here as I watched a handful of leaves flutter to the ground in the last of the fading light filtering through the trees through the now-functional window.

“I don’t think the little hat is mandatory,” I said. “And yeah, why not? You always want me to come swimming or whatever. Fishing is basically that.”

“I don’t think you’re meant to end up in the river when you fish,” Evie said. “So you know this is a date, right? You know Booker was asking you on a date. And you agreed.”

“It’s not a date,” I said, glancing over at a tap on the window to see the squirrel was back. “Go away.”