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“Me, kind of,” I admit. “Yolan mentioned it to me.”
“Yolan?” Under her broad black straw hat tied with a red ribbon, Wynona’s pale forehead creases in thought. “Wasn’t that...”
“Nolan’s friend?” I nod. “We talked at the wedding after he introduced us. That was when he first mentioned the tour, although I didn’t take him seriously at the time. People make big plans when they’re drunk.”
“And don’t keep them,” Wynona agrees.
There’s something in the way she eyes me that makes me say, “What?”
A frown. “It’s just, about the tour...”
“Don’t,” I say.
“Fine,” she says on a sigh.
Her blue eyes scan down the line of pale yellow, green, and blue storefronts we haven’t checked out yet, and her gaze lights up when she stops at one.
Its storefront is crowded with pinup-style dresses, just Wynona’s thing.
I take a final bite of crunchy cone and cold ice cream, then rise. “Want to check it out?”
She grins, already rising too.
It takes us one hour, seven dresses, three maybes to decide from, and two bargaining sessions with the pasty gorilla-faced shopkeeper to walk out of there with a label-less plastic bag filled with a not-so-unfamiliar dress.
Wynona gives the bag a rueful little shake. “I can’t believe you convinced me to get this.”
I catch her hand and guide us along toward the beach. “You looked great in it.”
“But one with the exact same teal cartoon cherry print as my bathing suit?” Wynona laughs a little, shaking her glossy dark hair. “Josie is not going to let me live this down.”
“You look good in that too,” I say neutrally.
But Wynona’s already turned eyes with a devilish gleam on me. “Now, if we could just find you a nice matching teal cartoon-cherry tie...”
“Not happening.”
Wynona giggles. “C’mon.”
I shake my head. “Not going to happen.”
She swings my hand up and back. “There’s nothing I could do to convince you? Nothing at all?”
I pause, turning an appraising look her way.
“I take it back,” she says with a quick giggle.
I shrug, then keep going.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
I pause again just as my stomach rumbles. “You up for some dinner? That ice cream wasn’t enough for me.”
“Sounds good to me,” Wynona says with a smile.
Backtracking our steps isn’t hard. There’s only one street in this town and only one way we’ve walked. Locating the coral-colored building with the cool gecko graffiti and delectable burger aromas is easy enough too, although it takes a wait to get the actual burgers and fries.
But when we do get them, just one look—a burger as thick as a cucumber and a carton of fries the size of a laptop—makes ‘worth it’ more than obvious.
“Guess this is mealtime rush hour,” Wynona says ruefully as we pause a few minutes later amid our where-to-sit hunt, seeking out a free bench in vain.
Whether with suntanned teens or laughing locals or bird poo, every new pastel-colored bench we find is full.
I gesture to the further-off beach. “What do you think?”
Wynona’s squeezing of my hand is all the answer I need. So we make the transition from hard, slippery cobblestones the size of donuts to smooth bluffs of sand as far as you can crane your neck in either direction.
The breeze has picked up here too, tossing sea smells and cinnamon smells alike like a juggler deciding which ball he likes best.
“We’re sitting here?” Wynona has an uncertain note in her voice.
One that’s proven right when her sandal-clad foot upturns a rock that was apparently home to several hermit crabs.
At the sight of their advancing clasping claws, I grab Wynona in my arms as she exclaims in fright and hurry us away.
“That would be a no,” I say once she’s calmed down and I’ve set her back on her own feet.
Although my arms are still around her.
Most of her bright fuchsia lipstick is still on. I’d like to kiss the rest of it off her.
I’d like to kiss way more than that off her.
Shit, but the food...
I crane my neck one way, then the other. Then I see it, what might work.
“C’mon,” I say, taking her hand.
“Do I have much choice?”
Pure Wynona. Sassy. Ironic. A bit pessimistic, but full of humor.
“No,” I say, grinning at her and tugging her along.
And she glares at me like she doesn’t like it when I take charge.
We trudge over more and more sandy bluffs until we get to it. Hard grey swaths of rock, pocked with the odd hole or dent. Not exactly luxury seating, but...
I scan around the nooks and crannies and dips and swells of the grey hardness until I find it. “Over here.”
I stop by the two rocks and gesture to them.
Wynona’s already smiling as she sits down on one, her back leaning on the other. “Wow. They’re actually really comfortable.”
“Good,” I say, sitting beside her. “Because this is our seat.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
