“It’s like natural Neosporin,” he explained. When I gave him a doubtful look, he added, “Marla swears by it.”
“Oh, well. Then by all means.” He gestured for me to stick out my hand. When I did, he squeezed some on, then began to rub it in, carefully. It burned a bit at first, then turned cold, but not in a bad way. Again, with us so close to each other, my first instinct was to pull back, like I had before. But instead, I made myself stay where I was and relax as his hand moved over mine.
“Done,” he said after a moment, when it was all rubbed in. “You’ll be healed by tomorrow.”
“That’s optimistic.”
“Well, you can expect your hand to fall off, if you want,” he said. “But personally, I just can’t subscribe to that way of thinking.”
I smiled despite myself. Looking up at his face, the sun just behind him, I thought of that first night, when he’d leaned over the fence. Then it had been impossible to make out his features, but here, all was clear, in the bright light of day. He wasn’t really at all what I’d assumed or expected, and I wondered if I’d surprised him, too.
Later, after he dropped me off, I came in to find Cora at the stove, peering down into a big pot as she stirred something. “Hey,” she called out as Roscoe ran to greet me, jumping up. “I didn’t think you were working today.”
“I wasn’t,” I said.
“Then where were you?”
“Everywhere,” I said, yawning. She looked up at me, quizzical, and I wondered why I didn’t just tell her the truth. But there was something about that day that I wanted to keep to myself, if just for a little while longer. “Do you need help with dinner?”
“Nah, I’m good. We’ll be eating in about a half hour, though, okay?”
I nodded, then headed up to my room. After dropping my bag onto the floor, I went out onto my balcony, looking across the yard and the pond to Nate’s house. Sure enough, a minute later I saw him carrying some things into the pool house, still working.
Back inside, I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed, stretching out and closing my eyes. I was just about to drift off when I heard a jingle of tags and looked over to see Roscoe in the doorway to my room. Cora must have turned on the oven, I thought, waiting for him to move past me to my closet, where he normally huddled until the danger had passed. Instead, he came to the side of the bed, then sat down, peering up at me.
I looked at him for a second, then sighed. “All right,” I said, patting the bed. “Come on.”
He didn’t hesitate, instantly leaping up, then doing a couple of quick spins before settling down beside me, his head resting on my stomach. As I began to pet him, I looked down at the scratches Lyle had given me, smoothing my fingers across them and feeling the slight rises there as I remembered Nate doing the same. I kept doing this, in fact, for the rest of the night—during dinner, before bed—tracing them the way I once had the key around my neck, as if I needed to memorize them. And maybe I did, because Nate was right: By the next morning, they were gone.
Chapter Eleven
“All I’m saying,” Olivia said, picking up her smoothie and taking a sip, “is that to the casual observer, it looks like something is going on.”
“Well, the casual observer is mistaken,” I said. “And even if there was, it wouldn’t be anyone’s business, anyway.”
“Oh, right. Because so many people are interested. All one of me.”
“You’re asking, aren’t you?”
She made a face at me, then picked up her phone, opening it and hitting a few buttons. The truth was, Olivia and I had never officially become friends. But clearly, somewhere between that ride and the day in the box office, it had happened. There was no other explanation for why she now felt so completely comfortable getting into my personal life.
“Nothing is going on with me and Nate,” I said to her, for the second time since we’d sat down for lunch. This was something else I never would have expected, us eating together—much less being so used to it that I barely noticed as she reached over, pinching a chip out of my bag. “We’re just friends.”
“A little while ago,” she said, popping the chip into her mouth, “you weren’t even willing to admit to that.”
“So? ”
“So,” she said as the phone suddenly rang, “who knows what you’ll be copping to a week or two from now? You might be engaged before you’re willing to admit it.”
“We are not,” I said firmly, “going to be engaged. Jesus.”
“Never say never,” she said with a shrug. Her phone rang again. “Anything’s possible.”
“Do you even see him here?”
“No,” she said. “But I do see him over at the sculpture, looking over here.”
I turned my head. Sure enough, Nate was behind us, talking to Jake Bristol. When he saw us watching him, he waved. I did the same, then turned back to Olivia, who was regarding me expressionlessly, her phone still ringing.
“Are you going to answer that?” I asked.
“Am I allowed to?”
“Are you saying I make the rules now?”
“No,” she said flatly. “But I certainly don’t want to be rude and inconsiderate, carrying on two conversations at once.” This was, in fact, exactly what I’d said, when I got sick of her constantly interrupting me to take calls. Which, now that I thought of it, was very friend-like as well, in its own way. “Unless, of course, you feel differently now?”