5
Now
Felix hasn’t seen us yet. He’s absorbed in his book. There’s almost always a paperback tucked into the back of his jeans. He goes through them quickly.
“I thought your family was on their way to Toronto,” I say to Bridget, casually, as we walk toward him.
“Mom and Dad are,” Bridget says. “I couldn’t get the Mustang to start, so I called Wolf.” And Felix is nothing if not dependable.
From head to foot, I devour him. The deep midsummer tan. The breadth of his shoulders. His solid arms. The fitted white T-shirt and the dark jeans.
Same as when I met him. But the clothes are new, a little more stylish. He’s clean-shaven—no facial hair hiding the right angles of his profile or the cleft in his chin. It’s been years since I’ve seen Felix without a beard, not since we first met. His hair is a sexy disaster. It’s grown since I last saw him. I could hold it in my fists now.
He flips a page. It’s a thick thriller with a black cover and neon title, a stark departure from his usual reading material. Modern classics, classic classics.
I don’t know if he can sense my gaze, but he glances up from the book and his eyes land on mine in an instant, as though we are magnetized.
It’s too much—how handsome he is.
Felix’s focus stays secured on me as we approach. He’s as still as a mountain. But even across the parking lot, I can feel the heat rippling beneath.
I raise my hand, willing it to stop shaking. I didn’t expect to see him until the wedding. I’m not prepared. But I can do this. Of course I can.
When I reach him, I paste on a smile. “Wolf, what a nice surprise.”
His eyes flash at the nickname, and his dark brows crunch together.
Wolf.
I’ve never been able to use it comfortably, to make it fit the man I’ve come to know. Wolf is Bridget’s little brother, a character in her stories. Felix is a different person entirely.
I step closer, arms outstretched, and give him a neighborly hug, doing my best not to breathe him in. But it’s no good. Pine, salt, wind—a breeze through a coastal forest. Felix is the best thing I’ve ever inhaled, and it’s been a full year since I’ve had a hit.
“Hi, Lucy.” His voice smooths along my spine like a hand down a cat’s back.
I pull away and make the mistake of meeting his eyes. They always get me—those two pools of unlikely blue, the smudge of brown that forms a miniature island beneath his right iris. But his expression is guarded. Felix usually sparkles like fireworks.
I don’t realize I’m staring until he frowns, a pair of parallel grooves running atop his nose. Those lines weren’t always there, but then again, Felix is twenty-eight now. Five years have passed since we first met. Every time I see him, he’s changed. Just a little. Just enough that I find myself cataloging all the subtle differences, paying him more attention than I should. Liking
him more than I should.
“How have you been?” I ask.
“Can’t complain.” Felix’s smile isn’t his usual open grin. It’s a fortress, revealing nothing of what lies behind, which is a shame because I’m desperate to know what he’s thinking.
Felix takes the handle of my suitcase and hoists it into the bed of the truck. I watch his biceps and forearm muscles tense and struggle not to think about how they felt under my palms.
“Can you believe he got rid of the beard?” Bridget squeezes her brother’s cheek, though there’s not much flesh there to get between her fingers. “Wolf
wanted to be pretty for the wedding.”
Felix ignores that. A part of me thrills at the idea that it might have had something to do with me.
“It looks good,” I finally say. It’s a lie. Felix looks like every ill-advised sexual fantasy I’ve had. “Thanks for picking me up.”
He nods. “It’s not a problem.”
If you were to judge Felix’s mood by tone of voice, you’d often find yourself guessing. He delivers almost everything in the same deep deadpan.
It’s his eyes that say more than the words from his lips. They whisper, they tease, they laugh. I’ve seen them dance in the starlight. But there’s no trace of that Felix right now. The worry that’s followed me since last summer—that I’ve ruined things between us—resurfaces.
He turns to Bridget. “I’ll take a look at the Mustang when I drop you two off. See if I can get it running.”
“You should sit up front, Bee,” Bridget says, but I decline.
I’m prone to car sickness, but I know myself, and I should not be allowed to sit beside Felix. If history has taught me anything, it’s that I need to put as much literal distance between my body and his body as possible. Felix and I are combustible in small spaces. Or we were once.
As he navigates out of the parking lot, Bridget exhales a satisfied sigh.
“It’s been forever since we were all here together.”
I glance at Felix in the rearview mirror. His eyes meet mine for one brief moment. It’s a drop of liquid turquoise, but I want the whole ocean. No, I tell myself. Not one sip.
“It’ll be just like old times,” Bridget says.
Felix’s jaw ticks.
A steam-filled bathroom. Skin lit by the moon. A small bedroom on the eastern edge of the island. It won’t be like old times. It can’t be.
• • •
IT’S ALWAYS THE ROADS THAT GIVE ME THE FIRST FEELING OF BEING AWAY. THE streetlights are different here—hung horizontally, red beside orange beside
green—and there are roundabouts everywhere. The first time I drove on the island, I squealed as I steered around them.
Fields roll past. Vibrant green rows of potato plants and blinding yellow canola crops. White churches, orange barns, dappled ponies, and grazing cattle. Quaint country communities. Hunter River, Hazel Grove, Pleasant Valley, Kensington. Some are little more than signs on the highway.
I focus on the scenery because I’m getting woozy. My motion sickness is always worse when I’m low on sleep, and between fretting about Bridget and fretting about the flower shop, it wasn’t a restful night. I should have taken
the front seat when she offered.
“Have you eaten anything?”
I look up to find Felix studying me in the mirror.
“A yogurt, before I left for the airport,” I tell him. I’ve been existing on a diet of Uber Eats and coconut Activia, staying at the shop later and going in earlier than I used to. I haven’t been to the grocery store in over a week.
More than two, maybe. I’ve adopted the belief that yogurt expiration dates are merely a suggestion.
Felix opens the center console. “Here,” he says, passing back a snack bar that’s mostly nuts, the kind I like best.
I meet his eyes in the mirror. “Thank you.”
“You just happened to have that in there?” Bridget gawks at her brother.
“No,” he says. “I bought it when I stopped for gas. Just in case.”
“Just in case,” she repeats.
“Lucy gets carsick if she has an empty stomach.”
“I know that,” Bridget says, suspicious. “But I’m surprised that you know that.”
I feel like a teenager whose parents have returned home early in the middle of an unsanctioned house party. Chairs knocked over. Red Solo cups in the potted plants. Wobbly-legged sixteen-year-olds staring at the adults in
horror.
We’re about to be busted.
But then Felix lifts a wry brow at her and says, “She almost puked in my truck last summer.”
Blue shimmers in the distance, and Bridget opens her window, filling the vehicle with ocean air. She casts me a sympathetic look as I take a bite. I chew slowly, and it does help a little.
After I’ve balled up the wrapper and tucked it into the pocket of my striped cotton dress, I close my eyes and press my temple to the glass.
A few minutes later, I hear Bridget say quietly, “It’s nice that you two are friends.”
There’s a long pause before Felix replies.
“Friends,” he says. “Sure.”
