“We missed you at the bar tonight.”
Oh, shit. It was Friday. He’d completely forgotten.
Well, he hadn’t forgotten. He’d known it was Friday—or he’d started the day knowing it was Friday, anyway. He’d finished installing some built-in shelves in Bayshore and had gone to Nora’s place intending to finish the fence and head downtown to Law’s.
But then Nora’s family happened. She happened. And apparently, all his plans just evaporated from his brain.
“Yeah, I didn’t feel like it tonight.”
Which wasn’t really a lie. What he had felt like doing tonight was sitting on Nora’s deck, the deck he’d built for her, and listening to her say, “Fuck those people.” They’d spent the whole evening out there, talking as they watched the stars come out.
“A bunch of us are going out on Law’s boat tomorrow. We thought we’d introduce Nora Walsh to some people beyond the usual Friday-night crew. Make her feel welcome. I know you never want to come to this kind of stuff, but you know I’m going to persist in inviting you.”
“What time?”
Sawyer raised his eyebrows. “Four. At the marina.”
Eve splashed up. “Are you coming?” She and Sawyer shared a look Jake couldn’t decode.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I don’t have anything better to do.”
By the next weekend—the long Labor Day weekend—Nora was beginning to think that there were two versions of Jake. There was Friend Jake, who, although he was far from chatty, was thoughtful and, she would even go so far as to say, charming in his own quiet, low-key way.
Then there was Public Jake. Public Jake didn’t talk unless he was asked a direct question. On the boat ride last weekend, for example, he’d been as silent and grumpy as the one time they’d overlapped at the bar.
And today, the day of the infamous Mermaid Parade, he was practically mute, to use Maya’s characterization.
But to be fair, maybe that was because he was busy. On the boat ride, he had agreed to be the brawn to Maya’s brains—Maya had been cooking up schemes for the vaccine information table Nora was planning for outside the clinic. She was really gung ho about designing it, and frankly, Nora was happy to let her run with it.
The funny thing was that there were a few different ways a person could interpret vaccine information table. Nora had—call her crazy—imagined a table. With some information. And yes, probably some pretty signs or maybe even some balloons.
Maya, however, had interpreted vaccine information table by sourcing a nearly dead used van from this guy Jordan who owned an auto shop in town. She had enlisted Pearl to help paint and decorate it, though the word decorate did not seem to do justice to what had occurred.
“Welcome to the Vaccine Machine!” Maya exclaimed, waving her arms in the air like a game-show hostess.
“The concept is based on the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo,” Pearl said while Nora stood there with her mouth hanging open, “But with mermaids.”
“Mermaids getting shots,” Maya added.
The outlandishness of the van, they theorized, would attract attention. They were not wrong about that.
“Wow,” Nora said. The van was painted aqua and lime green, like its Scooby-Doo namesake. But it was also painted with mermaids—mermaids getting shots, just as Maya had promised/threatened.
“Oh my,” Eve said, laughter in her voice—the bar crowd was on hand for the unveiling. “This sure is…something.”
Law snorted.
“Just wait,” Maya said. “It gets better. It’s not fully set up yet.”
Jake appeared, dragging what appeared to be a wooden arch that had been painted a deep blue.
“Come check out the inside while Jake finishes getting it ready.” Maya opened the rear door. “We removed the seats and built a little exam ‘room.’ Well, by ‘we,’ I mean Jake.”
“Wow,” Nora said again. It seemed to be the only word she could summon when it came to this crazy van. She glanced at Jake. He was attaching the arch to the top of the van.
“I know you’re not going to give shots today,” Maya continued, “but I thought in the future, you could drive it around.”
“Hang on now. That might be a long shot,” Pearl said. “It barely made it here.”
“We can find you a mini refrigerator that you plug into the lighter, and you can be a mobile clinic,” Maya said, ignoring Pearl. “Like the ice cream truck!”
“Except instead of dispensing tasty treats, she’ll stab people with needles,” Law said.
“Oh, shut up, Benjamin.”
“Don’t you need to go get ready for the parade, Queen Maya?” Law asked.
“No, Benjamin, because at this point I can do it in my sleep, thanks to you and your machinations.” She turned to Nora. “This jerk has gotten me elected mermaid queen three years running now.”
“And you don’t want to be mermaid queen?”
“Would you, a grown professional woman, want to be mermaid queen?”
“I see your point,” Nora said, although she wasn’t the one who’d designed a mermaid-mobile.
“Okay, so one version of this thing is the mobile clinic,” Maya said.
“Again, I just want to point out that mobility might be a little ambitious,” Pearl said.
Maya continued to ignore Pearl as she led them back around to look at the outside of the van. “The other version is a display of sorts, for at events like this where you’re just going to be parked. Jake installed brackets on the van and built this arch thing with slots in it. The arch is the base, and we insert event-specific signs on it as needed.”
She pointed at Pearl, who produced two pieces of plywood. One was a brightly colored sign that said, “Get a booster.” The other was a mermaid smiling atop a rocket.
“So this is for today, when you’re going to give Sawyer his booster shot,” Pearl said, “and hand out info about the MMR vaccine.”
“But we can swap these out for other ones in the future,” Maya said. “‘Keep your health pristine, get your vaccines,’ could be a general one.”
“‘Fight the flu, it starts with you,’” Pearl said. “For the Anti-Festival.”
Nora glanced at Jake to see if the mention of the flu had made him uncomfortable, but he was just silently attaching the signs to the arch he’d already braced to the van. The result was…
“Amazing.” Ridiculous, but amazing. She was certainly going to get people’s attention.
Finished with the installation, Jake climbed down the stepladder he’d been standing on and winked at her. He found the whole thing ridiculous, too, she was pretty sure.
“Jake.” Maya pressed her hands to her heart as she admired their creation. “You. Are. The. Best.”
Jake didn’t answer—he hadn’t said a word the whole morning—just started dragging the ladder away.
Nora had to agree, though. Jake was indeed the best.
Chapter Eight
Jake didn’t have people over to his place. Letting them use the beach—ignoring them while they used the beach—fine. And sometimes Law and Sawyer came over, but that was as far as his hospitality generally extended.