Ace flicks a baseball card between two fingers and holds it out. “Signed it for you.”
My nephew’s face lights in a way I’ve never seen before, and his mouth curls into a wide grin as he snatches it from Ace’s hand, examining both sides.
“Thank you!” he says, pressing the card against his chest before checking it out another time. “Thank you, Ace!”
He rises, towering over Enzo. “You’re welcome. Sorry about the other night.”
“It’s okay.” Enzo’s eyes are locked on the card. He traces his fingers along Ace’s signature.
“Pretty cool, huh, buddy?” I ask, shooting Wren a look that hopefully conveys the fact that I had no idea Ace planned on doing this.
“All right, you two have fun,” Wren says. “Call me when you get there.”
We leave, and Ace lugs my suitcase to his truck, which is parked illegally in an alley beside our building. I tell him he’s a rebel, and that I like that about him, and he almost smiles.
Almost.
It’s going to be a good weekend.
I can feel it.
“You’re really quiet.” I decide to call out the giant elephant in the truck about halfway to our destination. “You’re regretting this, aren’t you? You think this is weird? I mean, we only just met, and up until recently you thought I was stalking you, and now you’ve invited me to your lake house. And part of me thinks maybe I should be the one with the concerns, you know? I mean, I’m all for adventure, but this is a little bit beyond . . .”
Ace’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, his gaze narrowed toward the stretch of highway before us.
“Am I making it worse? This awkwardness?” I ask.
“Well, now . . .”
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t do well with silence. Makes me think too much. You know those idea maps, where you draw a circle around something, and then you draw lines that connect to other ideas and you draw a circle around those and it just keeps going?”
He’s quiet for a moment, and then his brow furrows. “Yeah?”
“That’s pretty much how my mind works when there’s too much silence.” I slump against the seat. He doesn’t say much. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Which one?” he chuffs. “You threw a half a dozen at me all at once.”
“Do you regret inviting me along?” I ask the most important one.
“Not at all.” He doesn’t hesitate this time.
“Are you always this quiet?” I ask my second most important question.
“Pretty much.”
“Can I ask you some things?”
“What kind of things?”
“Random questions,” I say slowly, watching him from the corner of my eye. I’m not sure he’ll appreciate all my prodding, but at the end of the day, we’re going to know each other a whole lot better, and we might even forget how awkward this trip actually is.
“Fine,” he says. “Ask away.”
I learn several new things about Alessio Amato over the continuation of our drive to Rixton Falls.
He likes classic rock.
His favorite road trip food is Ruby Red Squirt and chocolate-covered raisins, which I find absolutely disgusting, but he didn’t judge my black licorice and ginger ale, so I kept my opinions to myself.
He’s a careful driver. Noticeably so. Turn signals. Speed limits. The whole nine yards. I’m going to assume it has something to do with his accident last year.
He’s a Scorpio. Not surprising. And he doesn’t have a middle name.
He’s highly competitive. He’s never even lost a game of Monopoly before.
In high school, he was suspended for an entire month for running some kind of gambling ring. He said people don’t realize how lucrative high school sports betting can be.
His favorite book is Great Expectations.
He’s the oldest of five boys.
* * *
Ace flicks on his turn signal, and I check the clock on the dash. We’ve been driving just shy of two hours. He veers off the interstate, getting off on an exit marked Rixton Falls/Saint Charmaine. I haven’t seen a rest stop in miles and my bladder is full of ginger ale, but I’m too excited to say anything, so I suffer in silence.
“You hungry?” he asks as we turn down a dirt road toward a little town called Blueshank. According to the sign, the population is 1,081. “There’s a little grocery store up ahead. We’ll stop there and load up for the weekend. Grab whatever you want.”
We pull into a small parking lot and climb out. My legs ache, and walking feels amazing. He gets the door for me, and the poker-faced checker up front glances up from her magazine when she hears the chime of the door.
“Hey.” Ace gives her a friendly wave, which she returns before tending to her magazine once again.
I grab a cart and scan the small shop for a restroom, exhaling with relief when I spot a sign in the back. I excuse myself, do my thing, and return in record time, marveling at the amount of stuff he’s already picked up.
I spy bread and assorted condiments, fresh fruit and vegetables, and even a box of cereal, but no meat.
“What are we missing?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I was just wondering why there’s no meat.”
Ace smirks. “We’re fishing, Aidy. We’ll eat what we catch.”
“Of course.” Just like we used to do with Dad in the Ozarks. Just like we haven’t done since. “Then we’ll need some oil and fish fry.”
I’m not sure what to expect when we turn down a gravel road fifteen minutes later. Up ahead, the horizon looks misty, and there’s an overabundance of pine trees everywhere. The closer we get to a clearing, the more I see the falls Ace told me about on the drive up here.
He slows to a stop, turning down a two-track dirt driveway that leads to a log-cabin lake house with a deep front porch, green roof, and a dock leading to a small lake out back.
Coming to a worn-in, makeshift parking spot beside a gray metal shed, he shifts into park and cuts the engine. “We’re here.”
I climb down from the truck and head toward the back to grab the groceries, and Ace grabs our bags. A canopy of green-leafed trees gives us shade and a symphony of bird songs fill the sky above.
“This place reminds me so much of our lake house back home,” I say, “in the Ozarks. At least the one we had growing up.”
I follow Ace to the front door, waiting as he lets us in, and the second I step past the threshold, I’m greeted with a burst of musty deliciousness. It’s the kind of scent the average person might find offensive, but to someone who grew up spending summers fishing and camping, it’s pure heaven.
“We even had a blanket just like this.” I drop the groceries on a farmhouse table and run to the leather sofa that sits adjacent to a wood-burning fireplace, running my hand along a blanket composed of several black, orange, and yellow knit squares that, together, remind me of my childhood.
“My mother made that,” he says. “A couple decades ago, actually.”
“This is crazy,” I say. “This place. It reminds me so much of growing up. We’d spend months at the lake each summer. Camping. Fishing. Hiking. I’d forgotten how much I missed this . . . feeling.”