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“YOU MUST BE TIA CRUZ”
I glanced up at the guy who’d sat next to me and said this quietly in my ear, in an accent frohts off, but beyond the porch ceiling, the sulow frons at the tourist-trap beaches a few miles south
The diffuse light made everybody look better: smoothed out acne, canceled a bad hair day And I definitely had ononI’d seen all summer He was taller than me by quite a bit—which didn’t happen too often—with dark hair long enough to cling to his T-shirt collar, a long straight nose, and lips that quirked sideways in a sht of day, he probably ranked right up there with the eighty-year-old men ore Speedos to the beach
What drew s was the dia to say with this fashion statement Unfortunately forflashedbeacon under a banner that said THIS WAY TO PIRATE
I told hiht be Tia” What Ifor “Who wants to know?”
“Will Matthews I justtoo close for a proper handshake, but he bent his arm, elbow close to his side, and held out his hand
“Really!” I exclaiotten northwest corner of Pinellas County, on the very edge of the Taem because of the artsy don, the harbor, and our unspoiled beaches, but the thing about a hidden geh here A fecoain, elderly men in banana hammocks The families who serviced the snowbirds and tourists had lived here forever My friend Sawyer had shown up only a couple of years before, but even his dad had grown up here New kids at school were rare Girls were going to be all over this guy: fresh meat
Will pointed toward the house “I introduced myself to your friends inside They told me I would find you by the beer”
“My friends are a riot” My best friends, Harper and Kaye, didn’t drink That was cool with me I did drink, which was not cool with theuments and Kaye’s hysterical pleas hadand snarky jokes
This time their witty line wasn’t even correct I was not by the beer Along with six or seven other people fro on a bench built into the porch railing, and the cooler was underneathon Brody Larson’s back porch was standard operating procedure Most of the houses near doere lined up along a grid, backyards touching When parents unexpectedly carab the cooler as we escaped through the palm trees to another daredevil’s house to start over If this was the first thing Will learned about our town, he wasthe porch floor I fished out a can for myself and handed him the beer he’d come for
“Oh” He took the can and looked at it for a ,it, he swiped it across his forehead “Are you even sweating? Perspiring, I mean”
“Why do you want to knohether I’, Mr Matthews?” I uffaw out of him
“Because you look” He glanced down my body, and I enjoyed that very much “cool,” he finished “It’s hot as an ahffen out here”
I popped open my beer “A what?”
“What,” he repeated
“You said ‘ahffen’ What’s an ahffen?”
“An ahh” He waited for me to nod at this syllable “Fen” Suddenly he lost patience with me Before I could slide away—actually I would have had nowhere to slide, because Brody and his girlfriend Grace were ht my hand to his lips “Letacross ertips
“Oh, an oven!” I giggled “You’re kidding, right? It’s ten o’clock at night”
He let o, which was not what I’d wanted at all “I’ve been here one whole day, and I’ve already gottenfun of the way I talk, thanks” He sounded halfway serious
“Poor baby! I wasn’t ure out what an ahffen was” I elbowed hiently in the ribs
He still didn’t s pirates I asked him, “Who made fun of you?”
“Soht We can’t cook at home yet Most of the furniture showed up, but apparently the refrigerator got off-loaded in Ohio”
“Uh-oh Was that all you lost, or did thecompany also misplace your microwave in Wisconsin and your coffeemaker in the Mississippi River?”
“Funny” Noas grinning at me
Warh Making a hot guy laugh was my nirvana
He went on, “I’ e need it Anyway, the waiter at the restaurant seemed cool at first I think both my little sisters fell in love with him He told me I should come to this party and meet some people Then he started in on o” Will pronounced it “Minnesoooda,” which cried out for imitation Plenty of people around here talked like that, but they were retirees from Canada I decided I’d better let it drop
“Was this grill the Crab Lab don?” I pointed in the direction of the town square, which boasted said restaurant where I’d worked until yesterday, the antiques store where I still worked (or tried not to), the salon where my sister Izzy cut hair, and Harper’s mom’s bed and breakfast The business district was rounded out by enough retro cafés and kitschy gift shops that visitors were fooled into thinking our toas like soy burlesque club
“Yeah,” Will said “We had s about a place called the Crab Lab, like there would be formaldehyde involved If there e couldn’t taste it”
“The Crab Lab , but it’s an unwritten rule that names of stores in a tourist town have to alliterate or rhy to call a seafood joint? Lobster Mobster? Hey, that’s actually pretty good” I doubled over, cracking up at s’ Get it? Because you crack open lobster legs? No, wait, that’s crab”
He watchedfor me to pull a prescription bottle out of my purse and announce that I’d missed my meds
I tried again “CalamariCash and Carry? I set myself up badly there Okay, so Crab Lab is a stupid nah”
“Do you eat there a lot?”
“You could say that I just quit serving there Did this jerk asfun of you happen to have white-blond hair?”
“That’s him”