Page 86 of What We Burn

And something in my chest does a thing I don’t have a filing system for.

I look away. Pick a bowl up. Put it down. It isn’t even my turn.

It’s just—they look good together. That’s all. Micah’s hand on the back of Eli’s neck, Eli’s hands out of his pockets for the first time all day. It’s nice. It’s a nice thing to look at. I look at nice things. I’m a connoisseur of nice things.

Finally it is my turn again, and I bowl my next shot four feet wide and have absolutely no idea why.

“You all right?” Micah asks me, because Micah notices everything, which is the single most inconvenient thing about him.

“Peak performance,” I say. “Never better.”

He gives me a look that lasts a half-second too long, then lets it go.

We lose 32–6. It’s not close. It’s the lawn bowls equivalent of a sinking ship being struck by a second, angrier ship.

The Perimeno-Bowls celebrate with a coordinated little shimmy and a chant I can’t fully make out but which definitely contains the word “ovaries.” Beverley fans herself and announces a hot flush. Pat raises one fist, then lowers it. The most emotion she’s shown all day.

We buy the drinks.

And the onion rings.

By the time we move inside, Sage has had two beers and a concoction Lori made her that’s described as “mostly juice” and smells like it could strip paint. Her cheeks are flushed, her scarf’s gone crooked, and she’s perched on a barstool between me and Beverley, hanging on every word.

“—and the sweat helps your grip, see,” Beverley’s saying, deadly serious. “My average went up after the change. I’m dominating out there.”

“I love that for you,” Sage breathes.

She’s radiant. She makes my chest hurt in a completely different and much more familiar place than it did out on the green, and I lean into the familiar one because it doesn’t ask me questions.

When we finally leave, Sage hugs every single Perimeno-Bowl goodbye. Connie holds on the longest and murmurs something that makes Sage’s eyes go round and her whole face flush. Beverley tells her to drink water. Pat nods at her. From Pat, I suspect that’s a marriage proposal.

She and Knox should hang out.

Outside, the afternoon’s gone soft and gold, sea mist rolling in off the water and haloing the streetlights. Sage walks between me and Eli, arm hooked through mine, listing gently to one side. Knox and Holden are ahead—Knox unlocking the car, Holden carrying the pink bag.

“That was fun,” she says, tipping her face up to the sky.

“Yeah?”

“I want to come every week. I want to beat the Perimeno-Bowls.”

“Kitten, we’re never beating the Perimeno-Bowls. They’re a different order of being.”

“Not with that attitude.” She turns her head to Eli. “You had fun. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

Eli startles, like being addressed directly still surprises him. “Yeah. I did.”

“Your bowls got better.”

“They did.”

She’s looking at him head-on now—the loose, fearless stare of a woman two beers and a paint-stripper past her filter. She’s still carrying hurt where he’s concerned. But she’s been setting it down, piece by piece lately, and I’ve watched her do it, and I love her stupidly for the effort it costs.

“I want to trust you again,” she says suddenly, without any buildup or careful framing. She just tosses it out across the parking lot like a bowl she didn’t bother to aim.

Eli stops walking. We all do.

“I want that too,” he says. “More than anything.”