25
Now
A bagpipe sounds from the back of the arena, and we turn in our seats. The musician begins a slow walk down the aisle toward the stage. He’s in his early twenties, wearing a newsboy cap and a short-sleeve plaid shirt, trailed by a group of about forty people. Directly behind the bagpiper, a man hoists an enormous wooden trophy over his head, a large oyster at its center.
“I didn’t realize there would be so many of them,” I say to Bridget as I watch Felix. He’s near the end of the procession, head tilted down so his hat covers most of his face. Ray walks alongside him, one arm slung over Felix’s shoulder.
“It’s a big deal,” Bridget says. “The shuckers come here from across the country, and the winner competes at the worlds in Galway.”
“So your brother would go to Ireland if he wins?”
“Theoretically, yes. But he won’t,” Bridget says. “Don’t give me that look —he knows he’s not going to win. That’s not what this is about. It’s tradition.
Pride.”
“Community,” I murmur as Felix passes us, lifting his chin in our direction.
Bridget cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “We love you, Wolf.”
“We shucking love you,” Zach calls out.
Bridget and Felix have no time for my shuck puns, but if we were playing a drinking game based on the ones uttered tonight, we’d be facedown on the concrete.
“What the shuck?”
“Shucks to be you.”
“Aww, shucks.”
Felix’s ears are bright pink by the time he reaches the stage. The competitors gather for a group photo, and Ray pulls out his phone to take selfies with Felix, both pointing to their McInnis Seafood swag.
The troupe is shuffled off, and the emcee goes over the rules. Each shucker gets twenty oysters and chooses eighteen to shuck as fast as they can.
Afterward, judges assess the bivalves, adding penalty time for any errors.
“There’s a thirty-second penalty for any oysters out of their shell,” he says. “If there’s blood on the oyster, that’s also a thirty-second penalty.”
“I didn’t think oysters had blood,” I say to Bridget.
“He means the shucker’s blood,” she says, and I grimace.
“All right, Tyne Valley,” the emcee calls. “Let’s! Get! Shucked!”
He calls out the first four competitors, Ray among them, and they sort through their box of Malpeques, arranging them before they begin. A timer stands behind each. Joy is assigned to a woman who has brought a small wooden platform to rest her oysters on. Two shuckers wear a glove on one hand. Ray has placed a folded tea towel at his station. I had no idea there were so many methods. Felix uses his bare hands and the tabletop.
“Timers, are you ready?” the emcee calls. The shuckers lean over the table, palms raised above their heads. The timers nod.
“Shuckers, are you ready?”
None of them look up.
“Tyne Valley, are you reeeeaaaaaaaady?”
The arena erupts in cheers.
“Then let’s count them down. Three. Two. One. Shuck!”
I watch Ray work. He sets his oyster on the tea towel and sinks his knife into the hinge of the shell, twists his wrist to open it, then runs the blade along the inside of the top shell, removing it in one swift movement.
I look for Felix beside the stage. He’s there with his arms folded across his chest, Joy’s mother beside him.
As soon as Ray sets his eighteenth oyster on a salt-filled tray, he taps the butt of his knife against the table three times. He’s the first to finish.
“Two minutes and twenty-two seconds for Ray McInnis,” the emcee calls.
“Good time.”
Ray walks off the stage and heads straight to Felix and his wife. But he doesn’t hug her first. He throws his arms around Felix, the two of them
laughing.
“They’re close, huh?”
Bridget follows my gaze. “Used to be,” she says. “I feel sorry for him.”
“Your brother?”
“Ray,” Zach and Bridget say at the same time.
“He was counting on Wolf joining the family business,” Bridget says. “I think he was as devastated as my brother was about the breakup. God, that seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?”
I dig into my memory. The October many years ago when Bridget and I first moved in together, before I met Felix. She had come back to the city after visiting her family for Thanksgiving, and I could tell she was upset. I wanted to cheer her up, so we went out.
Bridget takes her eyes off the stage and turns to me. “Remember that bar we went to? The one with the tiki drinks?”
“We drank a giant volcano bowl of punch.”
“And you told me about Thanksgiving dinner with your family. I think your aunt and mom got into a fight?”
“My mother wanted Stacy to take off her heels in the house.”
“And we were laughing so hard because your aunt—”
“Threatened to fill her shoe with gravy and put it on the table—she said it was too fabulous not to be appreciated.” I smile. “And then you suddenly started crying. It was the first time I’d seen you cry.”
Bridget told the whole story through tears and hiccups.
“That time was awful—for Wolf and for me. But I guess now that I’m older, I can appreciate that it must have been just as hard for Joy, too.”
I’ve always thought so, but I’m surprised to hear her say it. Zach, who’s sitting on Bridget’s other side, looks at me over her head, wide-eyed, and
mouths, “Ohh emm gee.”
“Joy lost her boyfriend and her best friend,” I say. “It would have been awful. But maybe you can start over.”
Bridget studies me, her head tilted. “I thought you might think it was a bad idea,” she says. “That’s sort of why I didn’t tell you we’d been texting.”
Bridget has completely misjudged my reaction. “I think it would be good for you to patch things up. It’s not too late.”
“Maybe.” She sighs and leans into me. “No guy is worth losing a friend over.”
I glance at Felix at the side of the stage, and then at Zach. He gives me a
pointed look.
“No,” I tell Bridget. “They’re not.”
• • •
FELIX’S NAME ISN’T CALLED UNTIL THE EIGHTH AND FINAL HEAT OF SHUCKERS. ONLY a few finish with times around one minute thirty, which is what Felix is aiming for. A restaurateur from Vancouver is the fastest so far, at one minute and twenty-seven seconds.
When Felix walks across the stage, my stomach knots. Joy stands behind him, slightly to the right. She’s his timer.
Felix sorts through his box of oysters before they start, hands steady.
There’s no trace of nerves now. Zach and Bridget are already hollering, but I’m not sure he hears them. Once he’s arranged the bivalves into tidy rows, he flips his hat backward.
Something about the movement, the boyishness of the gesture, the familiarity of his fingers, tugs at me. He leans over his workstation, hands raised over his head, eyes down.
When the emcee calls out, “Timers, are you ready?” Felix lifts his gaze.
He finds me in an instant, and I’m right back in the restaurant where we met five years ago, with Felix looking at me from across the room, a shock of
electric blue beneath black lashes.
“Shuckers, are you ready?”
We stare at each other, and I’m hit with a feeling so powerful, I put my hand to my chest. My heart is screaming at me. Him, it says. More.
“Tyne Valley, are you reeaaaaady?”
Felix lowers his eyes as the audience shouts the countdown.
Felix pries open an oyster, then another and another, faster than I’ve ever seen. Bridget is yelling at the top of her lungs, but then falls quiet. I hear her say, “Holy shit,” and I know he’s moving quicker than she’s ever seen, too.
I peel my gaze from him only for a moment to watch Joy. Her eyes are narrowed on Felix’s hands, cheeks flushed. Her lips are moving.
“Go, go, go,” she’s saying.
At the one-minute mark, Felix has shucked more than half his batch.
He sets his final oyster on the tray of salt and slams the handle of his knife against the table once. Joy lets out a yelp and shows her stopwatch to the emcee.
“Felix Clark taps out at one minute and thirty-three seconds,” the emcee calls, and Felix’s eyes expand.
We’re out of our seats, clapping and cheering as Felix raises his hands above his head. He looks skyward, turning with a breathtaking smile across his face, and then Joy launches herself at him, circling her legs and arms around his waist like a redheaded monkey. Felix spins them in a slow circle, his hands gripping her thighs. They’re both laughing.
My heart falters. Mine, it says.
I think my lips may have said it, too, but I can’t hear over the whoops from the audience.
Joy slides down Felix’s front, then drags him off the stage. He’s greeted by her parents and some of the other competitors. He stumbles as he moves, stunned. Bridget leads our group toward them.
“You did it, Wolf. You fucking did it,” she says.
I stand back as everyone has their moment with Felix, and when it’s my turn, I give him what I intend to be a loose hug, but he draws me against his body, so we’re lined up, chest to chest and hip to hip. I glance at Joy over his shoulder. Her brows rise up in surprise.
“Let’s find drinks,” Joy says, tugging Bridget along with her. I watch them go, former best friends, snaking their way through the crowd hand in hand, then I turn back to Felix.
“Congratulations! You were incredible,” I tell him, pulling away. “You should be slurping oysters out of a mermaid’s bellybutton and doing backflips into a pool of champagne.”
Felix’s mouth inches up at one edge. “I haven’t won, Lucy.”
“Incorrect. You set your best time. If that’s not worth celebrating, I don’t know what is.” I nod toward the bar. “Come on.”
Felix downs three cans of beer as though they’re thimbles of water and he’s been lost in the desert with nothing to drink. At one point, I watch the brunette from earlier whisper something in Felix’s ear that makes him laugh, then shake his head.
Zach catches me glowering. He follows my gaze to Felix and the brunette, who is now biting her bottom lip. “Interesting,” he says.
By the time the judges have finished scoring, Felix has one arm around Zach and another around a guy they went to high school with. His eyes are at half-mast, but he straightens as the top ten are announced. When the sixth place shucker walks onstage, it’s obvious that unless Felix racked up some serious penalty time, he’s earned a spot in the top five.
Fifth place is called, and a chef from Vancouver hops on the stage to receive her plaque.
Fourth place is called, and we all freeze, except for Felix, who creeps closer so we’re standing side by side.
His hand brushes mine, and then he laces our fingers together. I take a shaky breath. I hate how good it feels to have his palm against mine. I hate that I never want his hand to touch a woman who isn’t me. More than anything, I hate that Felix’s hookups never bothered me as much as realizing that it doesn’t matter whether I fit into his world—I’m only a temporary guest. I can’t belong here.
“In third place,” the emcee announces, “with eighteen seconds in penalties for a total time of one minute and fifty-one seconds is Felix Clark of Prince Edward Island.”
Bridget jumps up and down, and Zach claps his hands over his head, but
Felix remains still.
“Go,” I tell him. “Get up there.”
He faces me, bringing our joined hands to his mouth. With his eyes on mine, Felix presses his lips to my knuckles. Everything fades away. The cheering. Bridget’s gasp. Even my pulse, a booming drum, is silenced. My awareness is isolated to my fingers, to the sliver of skin beneath Felix’s lips.
It lasts for only a heartbeat, and then Felix leaves us.
Bridget looks at me, her eyes bulging. What her brother just did was more intimate than if he’d smacked a quick peck on my mouth.
“What was that?” she asks.
I have no idea. I stare at Felix, making his way across the stage to claim his plaque. “I think he drank too much.”
Felix is lost to revelry for the next hour. Every so often, our eyes meet through the sea of people, and he stares as openly as he smiles. The dimple is a permanent exhibit. His happiness, unbound, is intoxicating. Everyone around him basks in his warmth.
When the partying dies down, Felix climbs into the back of the truck clumsily while Bridget gets into the front. She and Zach are in the midst of a heated debate about a Trivial Pursuit game I gather took place when they were teenagers. She must have forgotten about my motion sickness.
In the darkness of the back seat, I feel Felix’s gaze on me. When I meet his eyes, he reaches across the bench, linking our fingers together. He rests his head back and falls asleep moments later. I stare at our joined hands. It would be all too easy to get caught up in the feeling of his hand in mine, to grow used to it, to miss it once I’m gone. But after last summer, I know what it’s like to feel the warmth of his attention and then go without it. Every part of himself that Felix offers up, every piece I allow myself to savor, is just another thing I’ll have to say goodbye to. Because even if Felix weren’t Bridget’s brother, I’m not part of his world, and that’s never going to change.
So I pull my hand away. I ignore my heart’s protests.
Him, it says. More.
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING, I’M AWAKE FIRST. ZACH PEELS HIMSELF OFF THE COUCH WHEN the coffee’s brewed. Felix is sprawled on the pull-out, still in last night’s clothes.
For a few hours yesterday, I had a reprieve from the constant toll of work stress. I barely checked my email. But now Felix’s confusing hand-kissing and Bridget’s looming wedding day have me wanting to tear my eyeballs out.
“Thank you?” Zach says when I pass him a mug. “You look pissed,
Lucy.”
“Just tired.”
“Uh-huh,” Zach says. “That scowl has nothing to do with Courtney?”
“Courtney?”
“The woman I saw you shooting daggers at last night,” he says. “Brown hair. Pretty.”
I’m about to tell Zach I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I change my mind. I’ve woken up cranky, and I’m running with it. “How many women did he sleep with in the past year?”
Zach blinks at me. “You mean the past year when you and Wolf were not
in a relationship?”
I grit my teeth. Good point. “Yes.”
“That’s not my information to share. But he’s not a monk, Lucy. He’s been dating, looking for someone who he could see a future with.”
My throat goes tight. I have no idea what I wanted to hear, but that wasn’t it.
Zach’s eyes soften. “Do you want to talk about it? If you want to get anything off your chest, I won’t share it with him. I’m a master of keeping secrets.”
I shake my head. “But thanks.” Zach is good people, but if there’s anyone I should talk to, it’s Bridget.
Zach shrugs. Just one shoulder. Like a Clark. “Have it your way. You two have been dicking around like a couple of assholes for years now. Who am I to stop you?”
“Again, thanks.”
Bridget tromps downstairs, ordering us to get dressed for our trip to North Cape.
“What’s with your face, Bee?” she asks before marching into the TV room to rouse Felix. She’s peppy and bossy and smiling, and her mood swings are wearing on me. I have no clue what’s going on, and despite what she says, I don’t trust that she’s getting married in five days. And I’m about to drop thousands of dollars on her flowers.
I step outside to call Farah. She’ll have to handle the auction tomorrow.
I’ve sent her my order list, including what I need for Bridget’s wedding. I hate delegating such a crucial task, but there’s no other option. I can’t go back to Toronto without setting things right and telling Bridget about Felix.
Farah answers with her signature, “This better be important.”
“I know I said I’d be on a plane today, but—”
“You’re running off with Bridget’s brother and never coming back?”
After my aunt met Felix two years ago, she explained to Farah, in extraordinary detail, how handsome he was. “That’s funny,” Farah said.
“Lucy’s never mentioned that he’s a hottie.”
“It’s not like that,” I say now.
“You don’t sound like you’ve been relaxing,” Farah says. “You sound like a sewer rat.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it was a late night. I’m tired.”
“You know you’re a walking tire fire when you don’t get enough sleep,”
Farah says.
“How’s Sylvia? I miss her.” Asking about Farah’s dog is the best way to change the subject.
“She’s a goddess,” Farah says, and then puts Sylvia on the phone so I can say hello.
After I hang up, I call Lillian. I’ve already texted to say that I need to reschedule yet again, but I want to get a read on where we stand.
“I’m sorry,” I say, freezing at the sight of a skunk waddling across the lawn and into the shrubs. “You’re probably beginning to question whether I’m reliable, but I promise you I am.”
“It’s fine, Lucy. I understand,” Lillian says, though I can hear that she doesn’t really. “We all have personal lives.”
An “urgent personal matter” was how I characterized my sudden trip.
“Yes, well, I’d be on a plane to Toronto right now if I could. This is the last place I want to be.”
“Why don’t you let me know when you are back, and we can make plans then?”
“Sure,” I tell her, stomach wrenching. When I first met Lillian, she was so enthusiastic about working together, but I can hear her confidence in me slipping. “Again, I’m so sorry, Lillian. You’ll have my undivided attention when I’m back. Work is my only priority.” But the truth of it leaves me
feeling a little hollow.
“Perfect,” she says. “We’ll talk soon.”
I hang up, and I turn around, surprised to find Felix standing in the doorway. Blue jeans. White T-shirt. Bed head. Fresh shave. What was he doing, kissing my fingers like that last night? Holding my hand? I don’t think he was purposefully trying to confuse me, but he did. I’m angry with myself,
but I’m angry with him, too.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Hi.” I look at a spot on his shoulder.
“Are you feeling okay? Hungover?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine,” he says. “You musn’t have slept well. I can tell you’re tired by the look on your face.”
“Why does everyone have a problem with my face this morning?”
“Lucy.” He tips his head. “What’s wrong?”
I meet his eyes then. Dangerous, gorgeous man. “Nothing,” I tell him.
“Come on. Something’s bothering you,” he says, stepping closer. “Want to talk about it? Maybe I can help.”
“No.” I lift my chin. “You really can’t.”
