“That’s a sign,” he said softly.
“That’sthesign,” I corrected. “Everyone takes a picture under it. It’s a rule.”
“I thought you hated rules that don’t make sense.”
“This one makes sense,” I said, already grinning. “Smile, Benedict.”
He rolled his eyes but stepped beside me, and I did the awkward tourist dance—backing up two steps into the street, craning to get the neon and the clock and our faces and at least one stray seagull, then darting forward when a car wanted its turn. Click. Proof. Him in my city. Me in my city with him.
“You’re terrifying with a camera,” he murmured, but he took the phone from my hands and checked the shot, his grin going soft around the edges. “Send me that.”
“Already did,” I said, and it was true; muscle memory had texted it before my brain caught up. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at me like I’d just fed him.
The market was humming—holiday-busy but not unbearable. Wreaths hung over the arcade, thick as forests, and someone had wrapped the old green pillars with red ribbon likecandy canes. People moved like schools of fish, stop, swirl, drift, pause, drawn by dried flowers, teas, and fish, and the kind of warm food that only exists in places with old floors and ghosts in the walls.
“Ready?” I asked, very proud that I managed not to clap like the teacher that I was.
He squeezed my hand. “You tell me.”
We crossed under the sign into the arcade, and it hit him the way it always hits people—the kaleidoscope.
The fish guys chanted at the next stall, flinging salmon through the air to applause. Steam from chowder joints and coffee places and somewhere, blessedly, mini-donuts sugaring themselves alive.
“Okay,” he said, stopping dead as a salmon flew, yelling and laughing and landing in a gloved pair of hands like a well-practiced magic trick.
“Welcome to the show,” I said, delighted. “Don’t stand too close. Tourists get splashed. Ask me how I know.”
“First time here?” a fishmonger boomed at Drew, clocking him with a pro’s eyes.
“Yes. First time being emotionally assaulted by seafood,” Drew shot back.
The guy cackled. “You want to catch one? Show your girl you’ve got muscles?”
Drew looked at me, and I saw it—pure, uncut boyish challenge.
“Say the word,” he murmured.
“Do it,” I said, already lifting my phone.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned, but he stepped forward anyway, a grin splitting his face. The fishmonger lobbed a smaller guy—silver, slick—and for a split half-second Drew fumbled, then got hands under it like he’d been born behind a bar catching bottles and bad ideas. Everyone cheered. I did, too. It is not my fault if pride scalded all the way up my throat.
Drew decided to buy the fish and handed over his card.
“Not bad for a landlocked bartender,” I teased.
“River-locked,” Drew corrected, wiping his hands on a towel he didn’t technically have. “And I wash up better than you think.” He took his card back, and I tugged him onward.
“Come on. Shop.”
In December, the flower vendors were heavy with evergreens and berries. He reached out, touched a sprig of cedar like it was an animal you had to greet gently.
“It smells like your town,” he said.
“It smells like a thousand wreaths,” I said. “Pick one.”
“For what?”
“For my apartment. Besides, these ones don’t come with deranged squirrels.”
