Page 24 of Soft Serve

"I'm going," I agree, mostly because arguing with Millie in front of him is a losing proposition, and she knows it. "Because someone has to make sure the lights go up straight."

"Sure," Millie says. "That's why."

She disappears before I can respond.

The lake sits twenty minutes outside town, and by the time we arrive, the setup is already underway, string lights being threaded through low branches, the smell of the bonfire building on the warm evening air, and the town assembling itself with the easy efficiency of people who have done this together for years.

I move through it the way I always do, greeting people, redirecting volunteers who have ambitious ideas about extension cords, accepting the beer that Theo presses into my hand with the solemn authority of a man who considers himself the evening's official host.

Charles stays close without hovering. It's a distinction I'm learning he's very good at.

He talks to people when they approach him, which they do with increasing ease now, the town's wariness shifting into something more like cautious acceptance. I catch Mrs. Calder watching him help an older man with a folding table; she’s not rushed and, without being asked, her expression does something that isn't quite approval but is moving in that direction.

The fire catches properly as the light fades, the warmth of it spreading across the gathering in a way that loosens everyone, voices rising, music starting from somewhere I can't identify.

I'm watching the lights go up over the water, checking that the spacing is even, when he appears beside me.

Just beside me, quiet, and close enough to speak privately in a crowd.

"Walk with me," he says, low enough that only I hear it. Not the crowd around us, not Millie, who I can feel watching from approximately fifteen feet away, not Theo, not Mrs. Calder.

Just me.

I look at him.

He's giving me the choice completely. I feel it, the full weight of what saying yes means, the line it crosses, the thing it admits. There's no version of walking away from this fire with him that is casual or easily explained or filed under professional necessity.

This is a choice.

The fire crackles behind us, laughter rising with it, the whole town warm and alive and entirely unaware of the thing that is happening in the space between two people standing at the edge of the light.

I turn away from the water.

"Okay," I say. And we walk.

The path curves along the lake, the noise of the gathering softening behind us with each step, the water dark and steady beside us, and the evening air sits warm on my skin and smells like woodsmoke and summer and something that hasn't happened yet.

We don't speak for a long moment. We don't need to.

The dock appears ahead of us, empty, the string lights not quite reaching this far, just the water and the dark and the distant warm glow of everything we've stepped away from.

I stop at the railing. He stops beside me. He’s close enough that I'm aware of the heat of him, the quiet steadiness he carries, the way he's been looking at me all evening like he's made a decision and is waiting to see if I've made mine.

I look out at the water. My heart is doing something I've stopped trying to classify.

"This is a mistake," I say.

"Yes," he says.

I turn to look at him, and his eyes are already on me, dark and certain and stripped of every layer of control he's been maintaining since he walked into my shop and rearranged something I'm not sure I can put back.

The water laps softly against the dock. The town glows in the distance. And Charles Whitaker looks at me like he has nowhere else in the world he's supposed to be.

His hand lifts toward me.

My breath catches.

Chapter 8