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“You wouldn’t happen to know where to get a good cheeseburger, would you?”
I watched her saunter around the coffee table, and the day we’d spent together came back in a rush—the kayak excursion, the sun in her hair, the feel of her lips at the picnic table, the sight of her eyes closing as she sang. When I stood from the couch, my legs felt curiously unsteady. I’m falling for her, I suddenly realized.
Or maybe, just maybe, I already had.
I cleared my throat, almost in disbelief. “I know just the place.”
Leaving the condo, we moseyed in the direction of the beach, waiting to cross at the ever-busy Gulf Boulevard.
The sky was continually changing colors, and there were still hundreds of people out and about, wading in the surf at the water’s edge and slowly gathering up their belongings. I walked beside Morgan, studying the way the rays of the sun brought out red-gold highlights in her dark, lustrous hair. I couldn’t help feeling that something in my world had shifted in the short time I’d known her. I’d more or less thought I had my life figured out; spending time with Morgan had changed all of that. I couldn’t say why or when it happened, but I felt undeniably different.
“You’re thinking about something,” Morgan offered.
“It’s been known to happen.”
She nudged my shoulder, like she had at the hotel the other night.
“Tell me,” she urged.
“I’m thinking about the song,” I hedged.
“Me, too,” she agreed before turning to study me. “Do you want to work on more songs together? I’ve worked with other songwriters before, but it’s never been like it was today.”
I watched her pick her way forward, the breeze flattening her clothes against her willowy figure. “Sure,” I said. “I’d like that. But I think I’d like doing almost anything if it meant spending time with you.”
My words seemed to catch her off guard. Staring out over the water, she took a few steps in silence and I realized I had no idea what she was thinking. “So,” she said brightly, as if to cover her unease. “Where’s this place with the cheeseburgers?”
I pointed a little way up the beach where a thatch-covered roof behind the dunes was barely visible. “Right there.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to find a seat?” She wrinkled her brow. “Since it’s sunset hour, I mean? Or will it be too crowded?”
“You do know you tend to ask me questions that I have no idea how to answer, right?”
She threw her head back and laughed, baring the brown expanse of her neck. My mind flashed to the feel of her lips on my own.
“Okay, then let’s go with something you do know. Do you have any funny farm stories?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Like…there was this chicken once, and his owner chopped off his head because he was going to eat the chicken. But the chicken lived for over a year afterward. I guess the brain stem wasn’t affected? But, anyway, the farmer fed it with an eyedropper since it had no head.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“It is! I saw the video once when I was in New York City. It was at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Times Square.”
“And you believed it, obviously.”
“You can google it. The farmer even did a traveling show with the chicken, which was named Mike, by the way. I’ll show you when we’re eating, okay?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have any headless-chicken stories. I could tell you about tobacco worms, but they’re not funny.”
“Gross.”
“They definitely are,” I said. “So why don’t you tell me something I don’t know. Like…I know you used to come here with your family, and you went to the lake house in Minnesota, but did you take vacations to other places?”
“Why does that matter?”
“It doesn’t. Since this is my first vacation, I’m trying to live vicariously through your childhood. So I know what I missed.”
