After struggling to get her butt aligned in the center of the tube, she paddled out a way. The sun was high, and the sky was blue and cloudless. The air smelled… lakey. She laughed at the inadequacy of using the wordlakeyto describe a lake. It was musky in a good way. She didn’t have the right word. She made a note to ask Jack.
The water was cold, but a girl could not have everything. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back and let the sun warm her skin and the waves rock her. It was good to be here, not only because this was going to be the setting forGreen Light, but because she was somewhere else. Not trapped at home.
She wasn’t magically better. She was working hard. She still occasionally experienced the cyclone, or the start of it. But she put up her hurricane shutters and took her meds and called Tiffany and did all the things she was supposed to, and it usually worked.
But here, here was a respite. She wasn’t sure if that was due to the change of scenery or to the company.
A sluicing sound—different from the lapping of the waves against the rubber of her tube—had her lifting her head. Jack was approaching in a canoe. He slowed the boat and raised a hand in greeting.
“What word would you use for the smell of the air here?” she asked. “I was thinkinglakeybut realized it’s dumb to call a lakelakey.”
“The other day I thoughtearthy. Calling a lake earthy might be dumber than calling it lakey.”
“Definitely dumber.”
He chuckled.
“Out for a ride?” she asked, as if it weren’t obvious.
“I had a mission to complete.”
She thought of him saying he and Allie had canoed to visit each other. “Did you go see your father after all?” He had said he wasn’t going to, but maybe all the memories were demanding a reckoning.
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Just your garden-variety secret mission.” She was about to interrogate him, but he added, “As far as missions go, I see yours was successful.”
“Yes, I purchased the world’s ugliest bathing suit, and I learned that this town is going to be perfect. I need to request some changes to the script to make it fit, but that’s easy enough.”
For the first time, Blair wondered if maybe sheshouldtake a crack at the script herself. It was in pretty good shape, finally, but she was the one who’d been inside Bo’s Live Bait and Tackle. She was the one with the buzzy-legs feeling.
For the first time, the notion seemed… not totally impossible.
“You going to be out here awhile still? I’ll take the canoe in and change and join you.”
Blair agreed, and by the time he was back, she’d been floating long enough, and her inner tube was holding her high enough out of the water, that she was pretty much dry—and warm. Jack swam out without a float of any sort, and instead of treading water like a normal person, he slung an arm over her tube, showering her with water in the process.
“Ahh! I was dry! I was warm!”
“Only you would expect to be warm and dry whilein a lake.”
“This water is objectively cold!”
“True. In terms of lake temperature, early June is still cold.” He paused. “For most people.”
“How early in the year did you usually start swimming?”
“The vast majority of the time I spent here was over the summer. My dad used to take a dip every morning there wasn’t ice to break through, though.”
“You mean year-round?”
“I do indeed. I would go with him if I happened to be here for a random weekend during the school year. Even I will concede it’s brutal to get into the lake in the dark when the air temperature is, say, thirty degrees.”
“Why didn’t you just opt out?”
“You don’t really… opt out of stuff with my dad.”
“Not to be melodramatic, but that sounds borderline abusive.”
“Is it abusive or is it character building? You say po-tay-to; I say po-tah-to.” He paused again, his good cheer from before no longer in evidence. “You say po-tay-to; Art Branksome says po-tah-to.”
