Southern Seducer (North Carolina Highlands 1)

I cut him a look. “And you wonder why you’re still single with lines like that.”

“Feisty this morning. I like it.” He pokes my hip with his rod, flashing me a wide, white smile.

“I thought we agreed, no poking.”

He laughs, and the fact that we can joke about this now—this silent agreement that we’re at least going to pretend we’re back to normal—is a relief.

“Unfortunately, or, no, fortunately, poking is an essential part of fly-fishing.”

“No, it’s not,” our guide, an older gentleman named Larry who I swear to God looks like Robert Redford circa 1995, says.

“You must be doing a different kind of fishing then,” Beau replies. “Because I’ve really honed my poking skills over the years on this river, and I’d like to show them off to my friend Annabel here.”

I poke him back, feeling the tickle of childish laughter—real belly laughter—up and down my sides.

Inside my chest, my heart makes a quarter turn. Just a nudge, really, against my breastbone. A flutter of something pleasant I haven’t felt in forever.

I want to explore it, take a beat, but Beau is leaning into the tip of my pole. He’s leaning into me. The ultimate distraction. “Don’t listen to Larry. Poke me all you want.”

He’s wearing the same ridiculous waders and boots I am, but he makes the whole getup look insanely good. Baseball hat, sunglasses with blue mirrored lenses. The sleeves of his sweater are pushed up to his elbows, revealing those thick, tan forearms.

He’s equal parts hot country boy and gentleman fly fisher.

I dig it.

“You know,” I say, “out of all the things we could’ve done, fly-fishing was not at the top of my list. But it was the first thing you mentioned when I called you to work out what we wanted to do. Dare I ask why?”

Beau shoots me a smirk. Cocky ass.

“I wanted to do something fun. And what’s more fun than being thigh-deep in ice-cold water on a Tuesday morning?”

Rolling my eyes, I reply, “Think our moms will be okay with Maisie?”

“Please. They’re in heaven. Hey, at least it’s a beautiful day.”

He’s right. The air isn’t warm, but the sun is high up in a sky so vibrantly blue it almost hurts your eyes to look at it. The light glints off the surface of the water. It makes you squint, even with sunglasses on, but the water is clear and clean enough to see straight to the bottom.

And the smell of it—it’s like fresh air, but better. Could be the trees around us that are in bloom with bright green buds.

Everything is light and new, including this feeling inside me.

I’m on day twelve of my medication. I don’t know why I’m hesitant to attribute my feeling slightly better to taking it. Maybe because I just can’t fathom how something so simple as taking a pill every morning could change my mood. I don’t quite get the physiological mechanism.

But whatever it is, I think it’s starting to work.

Larry has us stand in a slow-moving spot in the middle of the creek. He patiently explains how the whole thing works. The tools we’ve got, a simple rod and net, are more primitive than I imagined. I thought I’d be waving this, like, fancy twelve-foot rod in the air, casting long lines left and right.

“Like Brad Pitt in that movie,” I say.

Larry laughs. “You know, every woman I bring out here mentions that guy and that movie. We’ll do our best to get you there.”

But really, I have a short rod that’s pretty much just a stick with some fishing line attached to the end of it. The net is wide and shallow.

Soon we start to see fish—trout, according to Beau—dart around our legs. Larry shows us how to cast the line in the right spot. How to be still as you wait for a fish to take the bait and your line to go taut. Quickly but calmly, he dips the net into the water and scoops up the fish.

“I’d say that looks simple enough.” I eye my own rod. “But I’m pretty terrible at this kind of thing.”

Larry grins. “I’ve got you covered. We’ll cheat a bit and give you minnows as bait. That should help.”

“Larry, I kind of already love you.”

We get to work.

In less than an hour, Beau nets what Larry calls “the triple crown”: brown, rainbow, and brook trout. Meanwhile, I catch one measly brook trout that’s small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

Of course Beau does look like Brad Pitt with his fancy casts and elegant body language. It’s like watching a dance: line swirling over his head, muscles in his forearms roping against the skin as he gently lifts his rod, then sets it back down. Serene concentration written all over his face.

He looks happy. The happiest I’ve seen him in a while.