“Have you heard from Jake?” Eve called to Nora.
“No.”
“But has Jake heard from you?” Maya asked.
Also no.
It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen each other. He’d brought Mick by the clinic twice in the past two weeks. But both times he’d been on the way to a job and hadn’t been able to stay very long. He hadn’t suggested anything else, and she hadn’t, either.
There had been times in recent months when Nora had felt like she and Jake had ESP. Like he could sense her thoughts, her wishes, without her having to verbalize them. Was that what was going on here? She’d thought after New Year’s that they needed to cool it. Had he read her mind?
Or was this distance between them his idea? Had that weird moment outside on New Year’s Eve been a bigger deal than she’d realized? She had to wonder. Jake wasn’t an idiot. He would have sensed how warm things were between them before New Year’s. And while it was okay for things—historically—to be hot between them, warm was uncharted territory. Warm was dangerous. She’d gone to his house with her needs and her emotions all over the place and her speeches about how he was her best friend, and maybe she’d scared him off.
So if he was pulling away because he wanted to pull away, and not just because he thought that was what she wanted, she could hardly blame him. He’d been up-front from day one about what he wanted—and what he didn’t want.
“Anyway,” Maya said, “it’s a full moon tomorrow, so let’s ditch the boys, do tequila here, then go to the lake.”
Sounded fine to Nora. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do now that she wasn’t spending all her free time being sexed up.
Nora finished her business and sighed as she washed her hands, set the timer on her phone for three minutes, and thought about what Maya had said about boys causing problems. What Jake did, generally speaking, was solve problems. Decks, new housing, receptionists, paralyzing grief due to dead grandmothers—you name it, he solved it.
So no, Jake had not created this problem. That honor was 100 percent hers.
But she was getting ahead of herself. There wasn’t a problem. A problem was statistically unlikely.
Probably.
She just didn’t know the stats on how five-minute orgasms affected the likelihood of pregnancy. While female orgasm as a factor in successful conception had been debunked in many studies, most scientists thought oxytocin—the happy hormone—did play a role. And those had been five very happy minutes.
She rejoined her friends, setting the stick down on a Kleenex on the coffee table. But she thought better of it and moved to pick it up. “Sorry, this is gross.”
Maya stopped her. “No, no, this is great.” Eve elbowed her. “Well, not great. But dramatic.”
They all leaned over and looked at the little window. There was a horizontal blue line. That was supposed to be there—it appeared immediately after peeing. What they were looking for—or not looking for—was another line, a perpendicular one that would make the image into a plus sign.
“I can’t be pregnant,” Nora said.
Maya patted her hand. “You’re not pregnant.”
“I can’t be pregnant. I’m moving back to Toronto.” If she had a baby whose dad was here, things would be messy. “I’m only here for another year and a half.”
Maya snorted. “That’s what they all say.”
Huh? “That’s what who says?”
“She’s talking about me,” Eve said. “I was only planning on being in town for a year.”
“You might be following in her footsteps,” Maya teased. “This town will do that to you.”
“Oh, leave her alone,” Eve said.
“I mean, I like it here, but I have plans that do not involve being here indefinitely. Which is why I can’t be—” She squinted.
Was that…?
No. She tilted her head to get a better angle. No.
Maya whipped out her phone, turned on the flashlight, and aimed it, just as the timer on Nora’s phone went off.
Just coming into focus, very faint but definitely there, was a vertical blue line.
Well.
Shit.
Where the hell was Nora? Jake was going to get whiplash from swiveling his head to look at the door every time someone came into the bar. She was just as likely to come in from the back as the front—it depended on if she’d left the Mermaid from the back or the front. Or maybe she would come from the clinic. She said she’d been working late nights to catch up on charting and billing.
He shouldn’t have come.
But it sort of felt like if he didn’t come, it would be odd. He had skipped last Friday to avoid seeing her. One Friday absence was not a big deal, but two would look weird. And in the meantime, he’d been more successful than he’d anticipated on the whole cooling-it mission. He’d barely seen her. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Maybe for her to ask him to watch a movie. Maybe for her to suggest they jump each other. He had been worried about how he would respond to those kinds of suggestions. His thought had just been that they needed to reverse course a little bit. Become less…entangled in each other. He hadn’t really thought through what that meant in practice. Did they have to stop sleeping together entirely? Were they done with zombies? Should he give her dog back?
But she hadn’t asked him for anything.
Which made him feel…weird. He liked doing things for Nora.
Aww, damn, he missed her.
He missed his friend. His best friend. Even though his latest, most epic battle with the waves was behind him, he still flushed with pleasure when he thought of her thinking of him that way. You’re my best friend, Jake.
“She’s not coming.”
“Who’s not coming?”
Law snorted as he wiped down the bar. “It’s a full moon. The girls are at the lake.”
“But they usually…” Come here first. But he couldn’t say that.
“Hey.” Sawyer appeared and sat down. “What’s happening?”
“Jake is mooning over Nora, who’s not here because she’s at the beach.”
“Ah. Right.” Sawyer looked for a moment like he was trying to hold back a laugh but then stopped trying, which resulted in a snort-snicker hybrid. He hopped off his stool. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To the beach.”
“Nah.”
“Come on. You know even though I don’t work Fridays I usually loiter on the pier in case anyone’s wishing takes a bad turn.”
“In the summer when tourists are here. Not in January.”
“Dude,” Law said. “He’s trying to throw you a bone. Just go see your girlfriend. You know you want to.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“But you’re sleeping together.”
Jake sighed and looked at the ceiling.
“I knew it.” Law chuckled.
There really was no point in hiding it anymore, not from these two, anyway. He looked around to make sure there were no old folks lurking and lowered his voice. “I was sleeping with her. Last time I checked that wasn’t a crime. But for the record, I’m not anymore. And it never made her my girlfriend.”