“I don’t not like you!” Lucky blurted, stung by the obvious hurt in Scout’s voice. Oh Goddess, his rudeness reallywascoming to roost, wasn’t it?
“Sure,” Scout said shortly. “You’re so excited to talk to me you had to be publicly shamed into coming to help. Never mind. I don’t need pity.” And with that he picked up the table and was probably going to stalk away, but he’d done his job too well, and the magic shop was full of people.
He sighed and set the table down. “Well shit. I’ll ask Helen if she can hold this for me until tomorrow.” He gave Lucky a sour look. “No, I’m not going to make you introduce us. She actually eats dinner with Marcus and Kayleigh and me sometimes.” His sulk lightened a bit. “She’s really nice.”
“I know she is,” Lucky retorted, feeling possessive. “I stay in her spare room.” He sounded churlish and he knew it. “Here, let me carry the table. I know where you can stash it.”
With that he picked the thing up again and turned to lead Scout across the square.
“That was really clever,” he said as Scout drew abreast. “What you did with the table. I, uh, have never seen the trick done like that.”
“Thanks,” Scout said, but he didn’t sound pleased, and Lucky realized it was on him if he wanted to keep the conversation going.
“I, uh, used to watch Marcus do the act all the time. You’ve… well, I mean you were awful when you started. You kept staring at the crowd like you’d never seen people before. But you’ve gotten better since.”
“Thanks.”
Oh hells. Scout was really going to make him work for this, wasn’t he? “And now they can’t get enough of you. That must feel good.” He half expected another laconic “Thanks,” but apparently he’d phrased the question the right way, and Scouthadto answer.
“I’d never seen that many people before,” he said. “Certainly not paying attention tome.And never a live show. That first time I dropped every prop Marcus had—twice.”
“I know,” Lucky told him, lips twitching. “I saw you.”
He was hoping Scout would laugh with him, but instead his shoulders slumped with dejection. “Great.”
“But hey, you’re better now, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Lucky didn’t have a chance to come up with something to fix the self-recrimination in Scout’s voice before they were at the coffee-and-book shop. Helen was dealing ably with the stragglers from the lunch rush, and she nodded Lucky over to the back corner of the store with the table. She gave Scout a penetrating look and an arch of the eyebrow, indicating the table, and Scout shook his head.
“Kayleigh,” he said, and she laughed and turned her attention back to her customers.
But Lucky had seen the whole thing and held up a finger to Scout, indicating one minute, then dodged behind the glass case containing the pastries. He grabbed two chocolate croissants and threw them in a pastry bag, then took two bottles of water, which he shoved into the pockets of his cargo pants, and gave Helen a little wave. She shooed him off with a nod at Scout, and Lucky trotted out the door and grabbed Scout’s hand, dragging him into the brisk wind of the South Carolina fall.
“Where are we going?” Scout asked plaintively. “You don’t even like me!”
“Changed my mind,” Lucky dared, not sure why he was suddenly so excited about talking to Scout Quinton. Maybe it was his last name. It felt like a lie, and Lucky was pretty good at sniffing those out. But he thought it was more than that.
Maybe it was the way he’d stood, day after day for a month, trying to master something he clearly wasn’t good at while crowds of people watched him make an ass of himself. For the entire month, he’d seemed good-natured and cheerful about his learning curve, laughing and bowing and hamming it up in front of the tourists like he ate that shit up.
And maybe it was the vulnerability he’d shown Lucky about hownotokay he’d been about being a shitty magician at the beginning and his humility about how far he knew he had to go now.
Whatever it was, Scout didn’t put up much of a fight as Lucky dragged him down the sun-bleached streets of the square overlooking the harbor, pulling him to the tide wall and a hidden thruway that led to a little used spot on the beach.
“I’ve never been here before,” Scout said curiously, following Lucky across a hardpan walkway that skirted the sand and bordered the oak and beech trees that covered the untraveled parts of the island. Kudzu fought to take over the forest floor, although the business association spent lots of money beating it back several times a year, and Spanish moss fell gracefully from the trees’ outspread branches, blowing like a girl’s tulle skirt. Scout led Lucky through a little bit of underbrush to a clearing that overlooked the ocean. In the center of the clearing sat a marble bench that appeared to be kept up. Moss and grime had been removed at least twice since Lucky had arrived on the island, although he’d never seen anybody out there but himself.
“It’s a good spot for thinking,” Lucky said, pausing to look at the inscription on the back of the bench before plopping down on it.To Tom, who may someday come home.Given that the bench looked out to the ocean, Lucky thought that Tom was probablynotcoming home, and he felt bad for whatever parent or sibling or lover kept such a devoted watch over the big blue empty to see if he’d return.
“Yeah?” Scout asked, sinking down onto the opposite end of the bench. “What do you think about?”
Lucky sighed and passed him one of the croissants and, after fumbling in his shorts for a moment, one of the waters. “I think about what I’m going to do with my life once I leave this island,” he said flippantly, and he grinned at Scout, hoping he’d share the joke.
But Scout was looking at him thoughtfully. “But you’re a transplant, like me and Kayleigh. Why’d you come here if you want to leave so bad?”
Oh ouch. Now see—thiswas why Lucky didn’t want to talk to new people.
“Same reason you probably did,” Lucky snorted. “Because I didn’t have anywhere else to go!”
