Page 54 of Fish Out of Water

“Wow, you’re really whittling them down. Good job. And how about Robbie? Is he going to miss your help?”

Jake hesitated. He hadn’t thought about what Robbie would think once he was finished with his mandatory communityservice hours. He hadn’t even thought about howhewould feel when they were over—not since he and Robbie had started getting along a little toowell.

“I’m sure the workload will increase for him again,” Isabel continued on blithely. “He’ll probably miss you for that reason, if nothing else.”

“Yeah, he’ll miss me,” Jake said quietly. “And I’ll kind of miss the work too.”

Isabel smiled. “I told you Mier would get through to you eventually. Are you ready for breakfast, dear?”

Jake shook his head. He should have been ravenous, considering he’d skipped a proper dinner the previous night, but he just couldn’t bring himself to eat right now. To Isabel, he blamed a lack of sleep, but deep down, he knew the real culprit, and he was standing behind a counter ringing up books at this very moment.

“What else do you plan on doing today?” Isabel asked.

“Anything you need me to,” Jake said.

“Oh, I’m actually going out to dinner with a few friends later, so you can do whatever you want. You should go to Grayland again if you’re feeling up to it. There are some fun places if you go during the day when everything’s open.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You could even ask Robbie to tag along with you.”

Jake nearly choked on his coffee. “We’ll see about that.”

Instead of running out of town as soon as he could, Jake did some yard work for Isabel and checked her car over one last time before she headed out for the afternoon. The once tantalizing idea of spending the night carousing with strangers was losing its luster by the day.

He closed the hood of Isabel’s car and nodded to her. He still wasn’t the greatest mechanic, but his crash course in dealingwith the car the first time had been enough to get him feeling comfortable with her driving it around now.

“Marcus was the mechanic of the family,” Isabel said as she got into the driver’s seat. “I’m afraid that was never my forte.”

“It’s not mine either,” Jake said. “I’m just doing my best and praying it all works out.”

“Well, that method seems to be working so far.” Isabel laughed and shut the car door, leaving Jake standing in the driveway.

He had planned to go out, he really had, but he procrastinated long enough that when he was finally ready to leave the house, he checked his phone one last time to see that he had a missed call.

He tried to convince himself that he was annoyed at his sister’s timing, but as he flopped down onto the couch and dialed Alex’s number, he couldn’t help feeling relieved that he had an excuse to stay home for at least a little while longer.

Alex picked up after one ring. “Hey, Jake!”

Jake smiled slightly. “Hi, Alex. What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing much. I just haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything going okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. I should’ve called you before now, sorry.”

“Hey, I get it. I’ve been busy too, otherwise I would’ve called sooner. You get yourself into any trouble lately?”

Jake propped his feet up on the coffee table. “Oh, y’know, the usual: bar fights and hookups with the locals.”

“Oh God, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Jake held back a laugh. “I actually got community service for that damn bar fight, if you can believe it.”

“Doing what?”

“Volunteering at the beach. It’s mostly picking up trash and helping the park rangers there with simple tasks, but it’s nothalf-bad. There’s a guy there too who’s, well, he’s not half-bad either.”

“Really?”