Page 39 of High Season
She stands, grit sticking to the backs of her thighs.
“Fine,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”
At the dive shop, Josie finds a pair of women’s jeans scrunched up in the bottom of the lost-property basket. It’s always hard to find clothes that fit her right, jeans always coming up too long for her, too tight on her thighs, but when she pulls them on, she finds that they are perfect.
“Thanks,” she says when she emerges from the back room.
Nic looks up from the front desk, where he’s counting a basket of regulators.
“Hey,” he says. “They suit you.”
“Oh,” she says. “Thanks. They’d probably look better on someone taller. But. You know.”
“You’re not very good at accepting compliments, are you?”
Josie doesn’t have a response to this, so she bends down, pretends to be smoothing the jeans down against her thighs.
“Well,” she says. “Thanks again for the lift. And the jeans.”
“It was my pleasure,” Nic says. “It was cool to see you again, Josie Jackson. After all this time.”
She finds herself smiling at this, ducking her head to hide it. It’s an unexpected pleasure for her, too, to come across someone from her past. Someone who knows who she is and doesn’t flinch away from her. Who doesn’t look at her as if she did the worst thing imaginable.
“Hey,” says Nic. “I have to open up here in twenty minutes. But do you fancy maybe going for a drink later?”
Josie pauses, one hand already raised toward the door.
“A drink.”
“Yeah. Or a coffee. Whatever you fancy.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Oh, come on,” he says. “Don’t tell me you have something better to do.”
“Like… a date?”
He tilts his head to one side. Smiles.
“Sure,” he says. “Like a date.”
He must see the expression on her face, because he holds his palms out flat toward her, mock-defensive.
“Wow, OK,” he says. “Not the reaction I usually get. Too forward?”
“It’s not that, it’s just…” She hesitates. “Don’t you think you should be dating someone your own age?”
“I’m thirty-two!”
“You are not.” In her head, Hannah’s cousin had seemed so young. Childlike in comparison to their pretense of adulthood.
He laughs. “Alright,” he says. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“I’ve dated older.”
“Showing off now, are you?”
