It’s only a ten-minute drive to the pub, situated at the edge of town and at the base of a large marina. There are people standing outside the entrance and smoking, and I immediately scan them to see if I know them. I may not have a lot of friends, but I know a lot of people, not all of them good. I exhale when I don’t recognize anyone. Probably tourists.
“You going to be okay?” Harrison asks as we trundle along the gravel lot and park.
“Sure,” I tell him.
He’s staring at me, I think, and now that the car isn’t moving and I don’t have to concentrate on driving, I’m even more aware of how crammed we are in this small space.
I reach over and place my fingers on the edges of his sunglasses and gently pull them off his face.
He blinks at me, his eyes the color of the water here when the cedar reflects off it, intense as anything.
I have to take a moment to find my breath.
“You can’t wear these inside,” I tell him. “You’ll look like a douche.”
He squints. “I guess I should be happy I don’t already look like one. I feel like one.”
I hold out his sunglasses, and he takes them from me, his fingers brushing against mine, sending sparks up my arm, to the base of my neck, and down the rest of my body.
I am in trouble.
“You look great,” I tell him, my voice small, like I’m holding back what I really want to say. “Not at all douchey.”
Just ridiculously, sinfully hot.
He seems satisfied with that, though his eyes hold mine for what seems like eternity, the tension between us growing thick and heavy. My god. Is this how he always looks at me?
I have to look away. I clear my throat and smile bashfully at my steering wheel, at nothing, at anything but him, and then I get out of the car.
Twelve
The warm summer air and the sudden distance between us lets my brain stop focusing on him so much, but unfortunately that means it starts focusing on the pub.
Harrison gets out of the car and walks around to me.
“Are you going to give me a rundown of what to expect?”
I shrug as we walk across the gravel lot. “It’s just a small-town pub.”
“I figured that,” he says. “But in regard to your ex. Isn’t that why I’m here?”
He’s right. But he’s also here because I want him to be here.
He goes on. “If you’re wanting it to look like we’re together, like a couple—”
“No, no, no,” I say quickly. “That’s not it at all.”
“Because I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he adds, and some tiny part of my heart is crushed. “People know who I am. Maybe not in that pub, but elsewhere in the world, they do. I can’t be in there, my arm around you, pretending you’re my girlfriend when the media could easily get wind of it. My credibility would be destroyed, and they would drag Eddie and Monica through the dirt. They’re always waiting for the first opportunity.”
“I totally get it,” I tell him, even though I’m reeling a bit. “So you’re never allowed to date anyone, ever?”
He gives a quick shrug with one shoulder. “I’m free to do what I want. But I have to face the consequences. And if I was seen with you in that way, when it’s likely known by now that you’re a local, and a neighbor, it wouldn’t be good. It would seem highly unprofessional to them, regardless of how I’d personally feel about it.”
My eyes widen. And . . . how do you feel about it? I want to ask. I want to shake him and yell at him and get an answer, an answer to a question I didn’t even know existed.
Instead I just nod, pausing outside the doors and out of earshot of the people smoking. “I don’t want anyone to think anything. I just want to show up because I never do. I’ve lived here for long enough, and yet I barely belong. I’ve been sheltering myself because I’ve been too afraid of getting to know people, of letting them know me. Even when I was with Joey, I had made him my world and no one else. It’s what I do when I’m in a relationship, and maybe that’s normal, but when you’re in a toxic relationship, it’s unhealthy. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a healthy one . . .” I trail off, looking down at my flip-flops, the chipped aqua nail polish on my toes. “I know this probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you. It barely makes sense to me.”
“I understand more than you think,” he says. “Come on. Let me buy you a drink.”
He opens the door for me, and I walk in.