This Summer Will Be Different(54)

Bridget studies me, her head tilted. “I thought you might think it was a bad idea,” she says. “That’s sort of why I didn’t tell you we’d been texting.”

Bridget has completely misjudged my reaction. “I think it would be good for you to patch things up. It’s not too late.”

“Maybe.” She sighs and leans into me. “No guy is worth losing a friend over.”

I glance at Felix at the side of the stage, and then at Zach. He gives me a pointed look.

“No,” I tell Bridget. “They’re not.”



* * *



? ? ?

Felix’s name isn’t called until the eighth and final heat of shuckers. Only a few finish with times around one minute thirty, which is what Felix is aiming for. A restaurateur from Vancouver is the fastest so far, at one minute and twenty-seven seconds.

When Felix walks across the stage, my stomach knots. Joy stands behind him, slightly to the right. She’s his timer.

Felix sorts through his box of oysters before they start, hands steady. There’s no trace of nerves now. Zach and Bridget are already hollering, but I’m not sure he hears them. Once he’s arranged the bivalves into tidy rows, he flips his hat backward.

Something about the movement, the boyishness of the gesture, the familiarity of his fingers, tugs at me. He leans over his workstation, hands raised over his head, eyes down.

When the emcee calls out, “Timers, are you ready?” Felix lifts his gaze. He finds me in an instant, and I’m right back in the restaurant where we met five years ago, with Felix looking at me from across the room, a shock of electric blue beneath black lashes.

“Shuckers, are you ready?”

We stare at each other, and I’m hit with a feeling so powerful, I put my hand to my chest. My heart is screaming at me. Him, it says. More.

“Tyne Valley, are you reeaaaaady?”

Felix lowers his eyes as the audience shouts the countdown.

Felix pries open an oyster, then another and another, faster than I’ve ever seen. Bridget is yelling at the top of her lungs, but then falls quiet. I hear her say, “Holy shit,” and I know he’s moving quicker than she’s ever seen, too.

I peel my gaze from him only for a moment to watch Joy. Her eyes are narrowed on Felix’s hands, cheeks flushed. Her lips are moving.

“Go, go, go,” she’s saying.

At the one-minute mark, Felix has shucked more than half his batch.

He sets his final oyster on the tray of salt and slams the handle of his knife against the table once. Joy lets out a yelp and shows her stopwatch to the emcee.

“Felix Clark taps out at one minute and thirty-three seconds,” the emcee calls, and Felix’s eyes expand.

We’re out of our seats, clapping and cheering as Felix raises his hands above his head. He looks skyward, turning with a breathtaking smile across his face, and then Joy launches herself at him, circling her legs and arms around his waist like a redheaded monkey. Felix spins them in a slow circle, his hands gripping her thighs. They’re both laughing.

My heart falters. Mine, it says.

I think my lips may have said it, too, but I can’t hear over the whoops from the audience.

Joy slides down Felix’s front, then drags him off the stage. He’s greeted by her parents and some of the other competitors. He stumbles as he moves, stunned. Bridget leads our group toward them.

“You did it, Wolf. You fucking did it,” she says.

I stand back as everyone has their moment with Felix, and when it’s my turn, I give him what I intend to be a loose hug, but he draws me against his body, so we’re lined up, chest to chest and hip to hip. I glance at Joy over his shoulder. Her brows rise up in surprise.

“Let’s find drinks,” Joy says, tugging Bridget along with her. I watch them go, former best friends, snaking their way through the crowd hand in hand, then I turn back to Felix.

“Congratulations! You were incredible,” I tell him, pulling away. “You should be slurping oysters out of a mermaid’s bellybutton and doing backflips into a pool of champagne.”

Felix’s mouth inches up at one edge. “I haven’t won, Lucy.”

“Incorrect. You set your best time. If that’s not worth celebrating, I don’t know what is.” I nod toward the bar. “Come on.”

Felix downs three cans of beer as though they’re thimbles of water and he’s been lost in the desert with nothing to drink. At one point, I watch the brunette from earlier whisper something in Felix’s ear that makes him laugh, then shake his head.

Zach catches me glowering. He follows my gaze to Felix and the brunette, who is now biting her bottom lip. “Interesting,” he says.

By the time the judges have finished scoring, Felix has one arm around Zach and another around a guy they went to high school with. His eyes are at half-mast, but he straightens as the top ten are announced. When the sixth place shucker walks onstage, it’s obvious that unless Felix racked up some serious penalty time, he’s earned a spot in the top five.

Fifth place is called, and a chef from Vancouver hops on the stage to receive her plaque.

Fourth place is called, and we all freeze, except for Felix, who creeps closer so we’re standing side by side.

His hand brushes mine, and then he laces our fingers together. I take a shaky breath. I hate how good it feels to have his palm against mine. I hate that I never want his hand to touch a woman who isn’t me. More than anything, I hate that Felix’s hookups never bothered me as much as realizing that it doesn’t matter whether I fit into his world—I’m only a temporary guest. I can’t belong here.