Page 35 of Enemies to Lobsters
“Okay, but seriously.” Marlow drops the brush, and her expression sobers. She leans in, lowering her voice. “That was you, right? It had to be.”
Stevie’s full-belly laugh echoes through the bathroom.
“For the last time, I did not shoot out the lights in the football stadium.” I groan. “Where would I even get a shotgun?”
“Don’t rich people shoot skeet?” Marlow asks. When I roll my eyes she turns on the blow dryer and finishes the job she insisted on doing.
When I showed up at Stevie’s place to kill time until my date with Ike, Marlow took one look at my half-wet hair and intervened. I didn’t want to seem like I was trying too hard, so I was letting it air dry. Ike has already seen my bedhead—a mental image I’m sure will be impossible to supplant. I don’t tell Marlow her efforts are fruitless. She loves doing hair, and we need something to distract me until my date.
With Ike Wentworth.
I’m going on a date with Ike Wentworth.
I shouldn’t be nervous. I shouldn’t be excited. I should be Googling symptoms of poisoning, or how to maintain the upper hand in a hostile situation. Instead, my thoughts are running a very different course. I can’t keep Ike’s hands out of my mind. How does the man have handsome hands? Genetics were good to him, even down to the shape of his hands.
I have to stop thinking about Ike’s very strong, capable hands. I need to focus on the goal: Fixing the lighthouse and resurrecting myjoie de vivre. Easy peasy.
I don’t know where this week went. I lined up painters for the interior of the lighthouse tower and the house, and they got started. I sourced and ordered the lights and hardware for the tower. Hinges and doorknobs are what I care about—not Ike’s hands that are so strong, yet so gentle when he moved my hair away from my cheek a few days ago.
“Argh!” I drag my hands down my face. The sound isn’t drowned out by the blow dryer.
Marlow bites her lip. Stevie lets my crazy slide this time. “Did he tell you where he’s taking you?” she asks, typing something on her phone.
“He just said dinner, and not to dress too fancy.” I didn’t know how to take that, but I was relieved. I’ve had enough of fancy. I’ve enjoyed hiding out in the keeper’s house in my stretchy pants these past few weeks. My grandparents must notbe eager to trek across the rocks to check in on us. I haven’t seen them since the wedding, and I’m crossing my fingers that it stays that way until we’re more settled. Our situation is precarious enough without them not-so-subtly pushing us together. I’m still figuring out how to act and what to say around Ike. I don’t want to lose myself in this marriage.
So tonight I paired my jeans with a navy and white floral blouse—my subtle salute to the Yankees. I’m trying to maintain some ground, even if I’m doing it imperceptibly.
Stevie nods. “And he’s picking you up here?”
“Yeah, I thought about meeting him in our dumpy little living room, but—”
A knock on the front door shuts my mouth. Is he early? I check my phone and realize that Ike is right on time. I’m the one who’s late. How did this happen? I’m hyperventilating as I try to pull away from Marlow and her blow dryer. My hair tangles around her round brush.
I curse and yank the brush out of Marlow’s hand, but only succeed in burying it deeper in my hair. “Sonofagun,” I mutter at myself in the mirror, tugging the thing away from my head and making the situation worse.
“I’ll get it,” Stevie sing-songs, barely hiding her laughter as she heads to the living room. When I shout after her to leave him outside she lets out a full guffaw, and I hear the door creak open. She is dead to me.
I tug furiously at the brush, cursing under my breath and working up a sweat. How did this thing get snarled into my hair so thoroughly and so quickly? It defies the laws of the universe.
Marlow is hovering around me trying to pry my hands away. “You need to calm down. Your panicking is only making it worse.” She bats at my hand. “Let me get it.”
“I’ve got it!” I maneuver away from her, and my elbow connects with her face.
Marlow swears, dropping onto the toilet and covering her nose with her hands.
I drop the brush, and it dangles against my head like a fender hanging off a boat while I check the damage to Marlow’s face. Her eyes are watering, and a small line of blood oozes out of her nostril.
My stomach flips at the sight of it.Oh no. I’m going to vomit right here in Stevie’s bathroom with a brush dangling off of my head. I can’t handle the sight of blood, even the tiniest drop. It instantly activates my gag reflex. Always has. The muscles in my stomach and throat are already revolting. My mouth fills with saliva.
I shove Marlow off the toilet. Flipping the seat open as I retch, the brush clunks against my cheek with every dry heave. Marlow is an angry blur of blonde hair and toilet paper in my periphery. I clench every muscle in my core to hold the contents of my stomach inside, but the gagging won’t stop, and the weight of the brush is pulling my hair.
“She’s in here—” Stevie stops short when she sees what she brought Ike into. I’m hovering over the bowl with a hairbrush dangling out of my messy hair. I groan at the sight of Ike. Marlow is on the floor with a plug of toilet paper dangling out of her nose, scowling.
Stevie isn’t just dead to me. I’m launching her into space.
“Did someone call the fire department?” Ike asks with an apologetic smile that is as charming as it is exasperating.
Before I can answer he moves closer, analyzing the brush situation with a critical eye. I’m sure the Boy Scout inside him is dying to untangle this major knot. But my friend needs him more.
