Page 87 of Scoring Lessons

“See?” She waved her hand around. “It’s not so bad, right?”

String lights ran the length of the pier, while the booths and the crowds reduced to something small and manageable from up here. Beyond the edge of the pier, the Pacific stretched out wide and black, broken only by the way the lights from the shore bled color across the surface of the water. The city sat behind all of it, lit up and sprawling, and from up here, you could almost forget how loud it was down there.

It was, objectively, a great view.

I looked at it for approximately four seconds before my gaze settled on Olivia.

She was leaning backward, her arms hugging the teddy bear I’d gotten for her, her hair moving with the wind. She was watching the park below with an expression I’d caught a few times tonight—openly and unapologetically happy. The lights from the Ferris wheel moved across her face in slow rotation. She was smiling at nothing in particular, and she had no idea I was looking at her, and God, she was so⁠—

She turned to face me. “Well? What do you think?”

“Beautiful,” I said quietly. My gaze was fixed on her as I admired the ghost of a smile. Her freckled cheeks. The glitter in her irises.

Absolutely, breathtakingly, fucking beautiful.

It was almost closing time, and after a few more games and one too many funnel cakes, we took one last walk around the pier without really deciding to. Most people had cleared out by then. The music was still going, and the wind had picked up, but it was still bearable.

I took off my jacket and draped it over Olivia’s shoulders. “Here. You must be cold in that sundress.”

She hugged it tightly, and I swore I saw her sniff it with a quiet sigh. For some reason, it gave me some sick satisfaction to witness that.

“Thank you.” She craned her neck to look at me. “This is probably one of the best dates I’ve ever been on. Fake or not.”

“It wasn’t fake,” I said with enough bravado to make clear there was no room for discussion.

She rolled her eyes but didn’t dare to argue with me.

She must have felt it, too. How things were shifting. How gray this territory we both stood in was becoming. But I cared very little, and I thought she did, too.

As we continued walking, I caught sight of a photo booth tucked near the far end of the pier, half-hidden between a closed game stall and a popcorn cart that had already shut down for the night. Its striped curtains were faded, with a hand-lettered sign above it that had seen better days. A string of lights ran along the top of it, a few bulbs blown out, the rest casting a warm, slightly uneven glow onto the wooden planks beneath it. Someone had stuck so many stickers along the frame over the years that the original color underneath was anyone’s guess. It was small and a little worn and completely out of place next to everything else, and somehow that made it the most charming thing on the pier.

I wrapped her hand around mine. Electricity shot up my arm, all the way to the rest of my body, but I ignored it. “I have an idea.”

Olivia followed my line of sight. “No,” she said immediately.

“You didn’t even let me say anything.”

“You were going to suggest we go in.”

I shot her a knowing grin.

“I hate taking pictures. My smile is awkward, the lighting is always bad.”

“Impossible. Your smile is beautiful,” I said, my throat turning tight as I spoke the words out loud.

Her eyes found mine, surprise shifting between them.

“Besides, wouldn’t you like to remember this night?” I studied her intently as I asked the question.

I braced myself for impact, because the truth was, I wasn’t sure of her answer. All I knew was, deep in my gut, I wanted to remember this for the rest of my life. The way she laughed without a care in the world. The way she let me be a part of her experiences. The way we could coexist with each other like it was meant to be.

I desperately wanted to remember it all.

She was already walking toward it with a resigned sigh. “Let’s do it.”

The inside was cramped, with a cracked pleather bench, a screen with a countdown timer, and a backdrop that I couldn’t tell what color it was supposed to be. It smelled faintly of stale popcorn and cotton candy.

Olivia went in first. I sat beside her, and the curtain fell shut behind us, and suddenly the pier and the music and all that open air were on the other side of a thin piece of fabric.