Page 2 of Summer Reading

When he was about to argue, I cut him off with theduuun-dun duuun-dun duuun-dun dun-dun dun-dunsound from the iconicJawstheme music.

Reader guy laughed and raised his hands in defeat. He glanced back out at the water. “Did you pick that movie because we’re on our way to the location where it was filmed?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Also, it was the first movie that popped into my head.”

“I wonder if sharks are big readers?” he asked. He glanced back down at the water. His book had soaked up enough of the sea that it was slowly dropping beneath the surface, sinking down to Davy Jones’s locker forevermore. I glanced back at his face. He looked as if he was in actual physical pain.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. He rubbed his knuckles over his chest as if his heart hurt. “I was just getting to the good part.”

I had to force myself not to roll my eyes. It wasjust a book. I thought about abandoning reader guy to his grief, but it seemed impolite since hehadsaved me from a fountain of barf, hewascute in a “buy local” sort of way, and Ihadaccidentally smacked his book into the drink.

“I really am sorry,” I said. “Was it a rare book or super valuable?” I hoped not. Being in between chef jobs was not leaving my bank account flush.

“No, it was just the latest Joe Pickett mystery from C. J. Box.” He shrugged. “I’m just stuck at a cliff-hanger without it.”

“Oh, that is a bummer.” Personally, I hated cliff-hangers on my shows—Just give her the rose, already!—so I imagined the feeling wasn’t any better with a book. I glanced at the choppy water below as if I could manifest the book and make it rise out of the ocean and float back to the boat in perfect condition. See? Just because I don’t read doesn’t mean I don’t have an imagination.

“It’s fine, really,” he said.

One thing I’d learned in my twenty-eight circles around the sun was that when a person said it was fine, it never ever was. I glanced up and noticed we were approaching the pier.

“Listen, I’m happy to replace it, really,” I said. I reached to open my shoulder bag, wondering how much cash I had in my wallet. My nausea threatened to punch back at the thought of how broke I was.

He reached out and put his hand over mine, stopping me. His skin was warm despite the cool breeze blowing in from the water. He gave my fingers a quick squeeze before he let go and said, “It really is okay. Accidents happen.”

We’d leveled up to okay. Well, all right then. Okay usually did mean exactly that. I smiled at him, relieved. His gaze met mine, and for a second I forgot about everything—my anxiety about returning to Oak Bluffs after so long, the nature of my responsibilities while on the island this summer, the low balance in my checking account, the future of my culinary career—and suddenly it was very important to me that this guy not think badly of me. Why? I have no idea, it just was.

“You know, it’s not so much that I’m not a reader as my occupation keeps me too busy to find time,” I said. “There’s not a lot of downtime to curl up with a novel in my world.”

The wind whipped my long black hair across my face as if to chastise me for being a fibber. Whatever. I hooked my finger around the hank of hair and pulled it away from my mouth.

Reader guy leaned an elbow on the railing. Now I had his attention. “When you do have time, what do you like to read?”

Uh-oh. I hadn’t really thought the natural conversational trajectory through. Shit. I scanned my brain for the title of a book—anybook.

“Stephen King,” I said. One does not grow up in New England and not know the King. “Big fan. Huge.” Not a lie because I’d watched all of the movies repeatedly.

“So, you like the scary stuff?” he asked. “Like Stephen Graham Jones, Riley Sager, and Simone St. James?”

The heat of the sun beat down on my head. Why was it suddenly so hot out here? Who was I kidding? This guy was book smart and I was a book moron. Why was I even trying to converse with him?

“Yup, all those guys. Horror’s my jam,” I agreed. Before he could ask me any more questions, I spun it around. “How about you? Who are your go-to authors?”

He looked thoughtful and said, “Oh, you know, Kafka, Joyce, Proust...”

Even I, the nonreader, knew these were literary heavy hitters. My voice came out a little higher than normal when I asked, “For fun?”

His gray-blue eyes met mine, and I saw a spark of mischief in them. Relieved, I burst out laughing and swatted his forearm. “Funny, really funny.”

His return grin was like getting hit by a blast of sunshine at the end of a long winter. “What gave it away?”

“Joyce is not really known for his cliff-hangers,” I said. I hadn’t read any of that stuff since my D minus attempt at English 101, but even I remembered there were no creepy cornfields to be found in James Joyce. Pity.

He snapped his fingers. “Should have gone with Shakespeare.”

A gentle bump indicated that we’d landed, and as the boat rocked beneath our feet, he reached out a hand to steady me. A current of awareness rippled through me, and I was about to ask his name, when a shout brought my attention back to the direction of the puker.

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