As Tank explains this next part of the journey, Bear sidles up to her again.
“You’re not from Texas, are you?” he asks.
“No,” Greta says as, beside her, Conrad folds his arms over his chest, staring straight ahead. She can almost feel the irritation radiating off him.
Once, when her parents were visiting New York, they went out for dinner at an old-fashioned steak house in Brooklyn and the waitress went wide-eyed when she spotted Greta. It was still early days for that sort of thing; her first album hadn’t even come out yet, so the only people who recognized her were hard-core fans who’d listened to her EP or seen her play with other bands over the years.
“Holy shit,” the girl said, nearly dropping a water glass. She was in her early twenties, with a nose ring and at least a dozen tattoos. Not someone who seemed like she’d be easily flustered. “You’re Greta James.”
Helen let out a surprised laugh as she looked over at Greta, but Conrad—who had been eyeing the rib eye at the next table—began to examine his menu.
“I saw you play that indie showcase at the Knitting Factory last summer,” the girl said. “You’re a total badass on the guitar.”
Greta smiled. “Thanks. You play?”
“A little,” she said. “Mostly I sing.”
“That’s awesome.”
It being New York—where people are either far too cool to fawn or else want to seem like they are—that was the extent of it. But Greta had glowed through the rest of dinner, privately elated by the interaction.
As they left the restaurant, her mother had hooked an arm through hers. “My star,” she said, beaming.
“Mom,” Greta groaned. But they were both grinning like crazy.
“Wasn’t that something, Con?” Helen asked, and for a second, Conrad’s face went soft. That was the thing about him: every so often, the pride would shine through.
“It’s always nice to be recognized for your work,” he admitted stiffly. But he couldn’t help adding, with a note of disapproval, “Though applause shouldn’t be the point.”
“Well, in my line of work,” Greta said, “it quite literally is.”
This made Helen laugh that unexpectedly big laugh of hers. “She’s got you there,” she said to Conrad, untangling her arm from Greta’s to walk over to him. “If you ever need a standing ovation, honey,” she said, giving him a kiss, “you let us know.”
Now, as Tank finishes up his demonstration on how to get into the canoe, Bear is still frowning at her from beneath the brim of his hat. “Are you an actress?”
“No.”
He looks disappointed. “A model?”
Greta laughs. “Definitely not.”
“Come on. I know I know you from somewhere.”
She gives a noncommittal shake of her head as Tank claps his enormous hands. “Okay, you six come with me,” he says, pointing to a family standing off to the side, “you six with McKee, and you six with Bear.”
Bear grins at Greta, now part of his designated group. Conrad grunts as he moves toward the first of the large canoes. When they’ve all clambered in—the narrow vessel tipping from side to side—Bear shows them how to hold their paddles, and then Tank shoves them off, the bottom scraping over the rocks. They’re the first to float out into the calm waters, spinning in a leisurely circle before Bear gives the command and they all start to row.
Greta is the smallest, so Bear placed her up at the bow. Behind her, Conrad sits on the next bench, followed by two couples: a pair of athletic gay men in their fifties and an older-looking husband and wife with a ridiculous amount of fancy outdoor gear, including a compass the size of a golf ball that the woman is wearing like a necklace.
The day is perfect, all blue sky and crisp air, and as they get farther from shore, the other voices fade; there’s only the slap and dip of the paddles and the ripple of the water as they push through it, moving toward the giant glacier a few yards at a time. Above, a bird makes a slow loop, and Greta tips her head back, letting the calm wash over her, allowing the peace to—
“I’ve got it,” Bear cries from the other end of the canoe, and she snaps back again. “I knew it. I knew you were someone.”
Behind her, she can hear Conrad let out a sigh, and there’s a rustling of coats as the others turn to look at each other, confused.
“You,” Bear says, his voice ringing triumphantly across the quiet water, “are Greta James.”
There’s a beat of silence.
And then another.
And then the woman with the compass says, “Who?”
Chapter Twenty
Theirs is the first canoe to reach the opposite shore, a barren stretch of windswept silt that leads right up to the base of the glacier. The minute they bump up against the sand, Conrad jumps out.
“Wait up,” Greta says, but he’s already charging across the beach, clumsy in the awkward life jacket and the stiff rain boots, his head down against the racing wind.
“It’s okay,” Bear says, hopping out to hold the canoe steady as the others step carefully over the side. “He probably wants to be first. It’s a thing. Being alone with the glacier.”
Greta suspects it has less to do with getting to the glacier than with getting away from her, but she doesn’t say so. Bear is still looking at her with slightly starry eyes.
“So are you playing one of the ships?” he asks as he drags the canoe up onto the firm ground. “I wouldn’t have thought—”
“No, I’m just…on a cruise.” She points. “With my dad.”
He straightens again, wiping his hands on his waterproof pants. “Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, one of my roommates is obsessed with you.” He takes out his phone and grins at her. “Would you mind if we…?”
With a sigh, she glances over at the receding figure of her father, then nods and brings her face close to Bear’s, flashing a quick, perfunctory smile. In her baseball cap, she looks less like someone famous than someone’s kid sister, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“So,” he says, slipping the phone back into one of his many pockets. “Are you, like, seeing anyone?”
“Yes,” she says flatly, her eyes once again on her dad, who is getting smaller in the distance, dwarfed by the huge wall of bluish ice.
Bear looks disappointed. “That producer guy?”
Greta’s surprised he even knows that, though just before they got together, Luke had dated a high-profile reality-TV star—famous more for her Instagram account than anything else—and between that and Greta’s own dramatic ascent while they were dating, they’d become frequent targets of party photographers and the occasional paparazzo.