“Definitely. I already have something in mind.”
While Maisie and Leo run in and out through the swinging staff door into the brewery, Mason unwraps the blankets from around the chandelier.
“Damn,” Daniel whispers, then takes his wallet from his pocket, fishes out a dollar, and hands it to Avery.
“Swear jar,” she explains. “We’ve been trying to watch our mouths around Leo, especially now that he’s starting to ask what those words mean.”
“I give thanks daily for the substitutes gifted to us by The Good Place.”
“Can we hang it?” Daniel asks Mason.
“The wiring’s ready.”
“Do you have a ladder that tall?”
“Yep.”
Daniel rubs his hands together. “Let’s do it.”
Avery and I take the kids to the house, where we clean the blue stained-glass lamps while the kids color at the dining room table. Yōkai slinks out from wherever she’s been hiding and curls protectively around the legs of Maisie’s chair. I share my idea to turn the sunroom into a cat habitat.
“Do it,” Avery says.
“The problem is that Mason sleeps in there.”
“Wait. What?” she says. “I thought that was his home office and the futon was just … junk.”
I explain how he meant to make the second floor into an apartment, and how he’s been sleeping on the futon so Maisie and I would have privacy. “If that were an issue for me, I wouldn’t have agreed to move into a stranger’s house, but he’s been very … proper about it.”
“We need to do what he did to you while you were in Florida,” Avery says. “Move his stuff upstairs and build a cat habitat. Daniel could mount shelves on the walls for Yōkai to sit at different levels. I saw that on Pinterest.”
“The difference is that this is Mason’s house. I can’t make decisions for him.”
“You’re just not bossy enough.”
“My younger sister would like a word.”
Avery laughs. “Oh, did I tell you about the fart?”
“I think I would have remembered,” I say.
“Earlier this week, one of the ladies in my yoga class let out a massive fart,” she says. “Which is … whatever. Our bodies make noises and I usually pretend it didn’t happen, because no one should feel embarrassed by calling attention to it. But this time it smelled too terrible to ignore. I had to stop class and open the windows.”
“Was it anyone I know?”
“Maybe.”
“Pat?”
She laughs. “I’ll never tell.”
I’m scratching the side of my nose with my middle finger at her when my phone dings with an incoming text message from Mason. Light is hung. Come see.
* * *
The chandelier dominates the airspace above our heads, the elk horns adding visual texture and the glass bulbs throwing off a warm light. It fits the eclectic motif we’ve got going on. I glance over at Mason with a smile. “It’s perfect. Worth every penny.”
He nudges my elbow with his. “You should trust me more.”
“I do.”
“Was that a moment?” Avery eyes us with suspicion. “Because it looked like one.”
“Not a moment.” Mason’s head pivots in a resolute no, but I’m not completely certain she’s wrong.
“Babe,” Daniel says, “you watch too many Hallmark movies.”
“I know. Which is how I’ve learned to recognize a moment when I see one.”
Mason clears his throat. “How about we all grab some dinner? Let’s put this ridiculous conversation out of its misery.”
But as we’re gathered around a table at the Village Pump, eating walleye tacos and drinking beer, we don’t look like a group of friends having dinner together. We look like two couples with kids. Some of the locals are eyeing us with curiosity—especially since many of them haven’t seen Mason in months—and I wonder if the satellites will be rattling with gossip tonight.
“How long have you guys known each other?” I ask, pointing a french fry from Daniel to Mason.
“I must have been about eight when the Browns started coming to the island for the summer,” Daniel says. “Mason was older than me, but when most of the other kids were teenagers or babies, two years wasn’t much of a gap.”
“Owen and Laurel ditched me immediately the first summer,” Mason adds. “My dad gave me an old fishing pole and told me to go try my luck at the state park. When I got there, Daniel was mucking around in the water.”
“I was trying to catch crawfish for bait.”
“So I offered to help, and we used our bait to catch a few bluegills—”
“And then nearly burned down the woods behind the winery ruins when we built a fire to roast our fish,” Daniel says, laughing.
The two of them take turns telling tales of growing up on the island, making Avery and me laugh with their childhood antics, until Maisie’s eyelids begin to droop, and Leo falls asleep with his head on Daniel’s shoulder.
“We should probably get these kids to bed,” Avery says.
Mason settles the bill, then lifts Maisie out of her booster seat. She goes boneless in his arms, and he carries her outside the restaurant. He and Daniel do a complicated handshake as they say good night. Avery gives me a hug and I thank her again for watching Maisie.
Mason carefully buckles Maisie into her car seat, and she wakes for only the briefest moment before nodding off and sleeping all the way back to the hotel. He carries her into the house, up the stairs to her room, and deposits her gently on the bed.
“Thanks for, you know … everything,” he says as we stand in the hallway. Maybe hallways are our thing. “I’m sorry I made it weird last night.”
“I did that.”
He laughs quietly. “Yeah, maybe you did.”
As we stand there on the brink of something we both feel but neither of us is ready to identify, I slip my arms around his waist and hold on until I feel his arms encircle me. I don’t kiss him. He doesn’t kiss me. We simply hold each other for a few long moments, and when I let go, he does the same.
“Good night,” I say, opening my bedroom door.
The little half grin he shoots me is nearly as devastating as his full-blown smile, and I wonder if not kissing him was a mistake. “Night, Rachel.”
CHAPTER 17
Kilig
Filipino
“the feeling of blushing and getting butterflies in your stomach when you see someone you love”
The next two weeks give me no time to think about hugs or sexy smiles or anything other than opening the taproom in time for the Fourth of July—and book club. We’re flooded with deliveries: a pair of leather sofas for the taproom lounge area, a kilim-style indoor/outdoor rug, a large old-fashioned map of Kelleys Island in an ornate gilt frame, a beer menu board for behind the bar, kegs of beer from other breweries, an outdoor movie screen and projector, and twenty-four teal Adirondack chairs—twenty for the cabin verandahs and the rest for the front porch of the house. We also get a box filled with cat accessories.
A paving company comes from Oak Harbor to lay cement for the parking lot and pave the gravel driveway. A sign company out of Sandusky builds a beautiful wooden sign marking the entrance to the Limestone. The stone patio behind the brewhouse is completed, along with a firepit and walking paths to the cabins.