Chapter 19: Happy Place

“I thought you weren’t staying for the second movie,” I whisper to Bianca as we settle into our seats again.

This time, Livia has put Bianca and me in the middle of the row. I can’t tell whether she planned it so we wouldn’t slip out early a second time, but it’s possible.

Bianca shrugs. “This matters to Liv. And I don’t want to hear about it for the rest of the week if I leave.”

A soft hiss comes from behind us. Jules leans around Bianca, holding a little plastic bag toward me. I peer inside. Red gummies.

“Are you trying to sell me weed?”

“I’m trying to give you weed,” Jules says. “There’s a difference.” She shakes the bag once, then drops it into my lap.

“You’re a model of discretion.”

“I don’t need to be discreet. It’s legal here.”

Rhys bends close from my other side. “Is Jules dealing drugs?”

“Want one?” Jules asks him.

Livia is watching the screen, still working through a bucket of popcorn. She puts one finger to her lips without looking away.

Rhys glances at me, then back at Jules. “If Mara’s in, I’m in.”

“How strong are they?” I whisper.

Jules lifts one shoulder. “Not very.”

“For you, or for me?”

“You’ll enjoy yourself. You won’t need me to call the emergency room and find out whether you’re dying. Not again, anyway.”

I take a gummy. We didn’t come all this way to be sensible about a small piece of candy.

The three of us tap them together and eat them.

“Are you all getting high?” Livia asks, at full volume.

“Tiny weed gummies,” I say.

“Do you have more?” She looks from Jules to the bag. “I haven’t been high in ages.”

Jules passes it down. Dane and Livia each take one. Bianca declines.

“I barely smoke now,” she says.

“I’m cutting back, too,” Jules says. “Anything we don’t finish this week is yours to fight over.”

“Can it make me hungry this fast?” Livia asks.

“No,” Bianca, Rhys, and I answer at once.

Someone behind us shushes. We sink lower in our seats.

Jules turns to look over her shoulder. “Did anyone know there was somebody back there?”

Dane peeks between the seats. “It’s a ghost.”

“It isn’t,” I whisper. “He’s wearing his sunglasses backwards. That’s Mack. He’s a pilot.”

“Pilots can be ghosts,” Jules says, with great seriousness.

• • •

The rain has stopped, though water still drips from the gray roofs along the main street. The first night of Crab Week has drawn nearly everyone outside. The concerts, contests, and parade of former festival queens in red gowns won’t begin until Friday, but the food trucks and game booths are open. Their lights flash over the crowd while an old pop song plays from speakers that seem to be competing with each other.

Children with painted crab claws and mermaid tails weave between people. Couples in matching jackets dance near a stand selling wine slushies. A few teenagers pass around water bottles that probably don’t contain only water.

“Do you smell it?” Livia skips ahead of us, taking in the street. “This is what heaven smells like.”

Salt air. Fried clams. Garlic butter. Burnt sugar from the kettle corn stand.

“I want a cup of beer with a head the size of my fist,” Livia says.

“I want fries with extra seasoning,” Jules says.

Bianca laughs. “I want a video tomorrow so I can show you what you look like tonight.”

“I want to win at the crab game.” Dane veers toward a booth where players throw beanbags at painted crabs. Rhys follows him, both of them staring at the lights.

I hook my arm through Bianca’s. “You’re glad you came out, right?”

“This isn’t what I wanted to skip.” Bianca nods toward the row of games. “What’s the story here? The crabs have had enough and are fighting back?”

“Let’s hope that’s not a prediction.”

She looks past me toward Livia and Dane, already arguing over how to play. “I don’t know. It feels like the week is half over and we haven’t really had time together. I understand why Liv wants to do everything one last time. I do. But today was a lot of movies when we could have been catching up.”

I take her hand. “I’m sorry. That makes sense.”

Bianca watches Livia and Dane tease each other at the booth. Her expression eases. “I just want it to be a good week for her.”

“Me too.” I squeeze her hand. “There’s time left tonight. Pick a ride, a game, anything. I’ll go with you. I’ll even listen to you talk about mushrooms.”

She laughs and rests her head against my shoulder. “I just want to be here with you, Mara.”

My eyes sting. Maybe it’s the gummy. Maybe it’s the way she says it. I’m happy and sad at once, missing her already even while she stands beside me. I think about the semester I spent abroad—not the old streets or crowded pubs, but Livia and Bianca calling me late at night to sing me “Happy Birthday.” I remember how much I wanted to be home with them, and how lucky I felt to have people I missed.

We keep moving, talking, eating. Crab rolls, funnel cake, fried fiddlehead ferns, salted popcorn, and a whoopie pie too large to finish. The air cools; the crowd grows darker around the bright booths.

“Does anyone else feel like time is going faster?” I ask.

Bianca and Livia look at each other, then start laughing.

“You’re very high,” Livia says.

“From the person who made us wait while she searched whether corn is a nut or a vegetable,” I say.

“I wanted to know.” Her eyes have narrowed to slits.

“A grain,” Bianca says. “You thought corn was a nut.”

“They look like little nuts before they pop,” Dane says, defending her.

Bianca bends over, laughing. Rhys has wandered toward the Ferris wheel and is staring up at it.

“Rhys is about to be taken to space,” Jules says.

He looks over his shoulder. “Look at it. It’s beautiful.”

He’s right. The wheel is lit against the night, and the colors change as it turns.

Dane leads us to the line. I try to stand with Livia, but she changes places with me so she can ride beside Dane. Rhys is next to me.

“Raise your hand if you’re high,” Dane says.

“What if we close our eyes first?” Jules asks. “Then nobody has to admit anything.”

Rhys’s head settles against my shoulder. His laughter catches in his breath. I feel it through my sleeve. The gummy has made everything soft around the edges, and I’m laughing more than the joke deserves.

“I feel young,” I announce.

“We are young,” Dane says, gripping my shoulders. “We’ll always be young. It’s a state of mind.”

“Just so you know,” Bianca says, “Jules gets these from a neighbor who makes them at home. They aren’t regulated. You should prepare to go to the moon.”

Jules’s eyes are nearly closed. “You’ll have a great time. The moon is lovely this time of year.”

Normally I might worry about an unregulated edible. The way Jules says it, and the fact that she looks as surprised as the rest of us, makes me laugh instead.

“How do you make gummies at home?” Rhys asks, looking grave.

“It’s a mystery,” Jules says.

“I love it,” Livia says.

A young attendant waves us onto the loading platform. Dane and Livia take the front bench. Rhys steadies me as I climb into the next one. I’m still trying to catch my breath from laughing.

“These aren’t my mother’s edibles,” he says.

I laugh against his shoulder, then make myself pull away. I don’t move quickly, but I manage to get my face off his neck. That counts for something.

We lift our arms while the attendant checks the bar, then lower them as he secures Jules and Bianca behind us.

“Remember the maritime museum?” Rhys asks.

“Remember might be too strong a word. I have a few pieces of it left.”

“It was the trip before your last year of veterinary school.”

“Really?” My hand lands on his over the safety bar. I pull it back. “That long ago?”

He nods. “Same trip when Livia and Dane first got together.”

I can see it now: they stayed up late playing gin rummy, each determined to beat the other. The next morning they came downstairs together, tired and smiling. Livia warned us not to say a word. They said nothing had happened. We all nodded and hid our smiles. That night, they shared a room again.

“We all shared a joint later,” Rhys says. “Then we went to the museum. You watched a boatbuilding demonstration for half an hour without blinking.”

“He was an artist.”

“He was. And for a couple of hours you thought you should leave veterinary school and build boats.”

“I’d barely been on a boat.”

“I don’t think that was a requirement.”

“I was probably scared I wouldn’t match with a residency.”

“You told me you wouldn’t care. You said it would be a sign from the universe.”

I feel a small pinch of guilt. I had spent my whole adult life working toward veterinary medicine, and one joint had been enough to make another life seem possible.

“It was adorable,” Rhys says. “I texted my dad and asked what we’d need to buy so you could build boats in the shop.”

“You did?”

“He was excited. He was going to ask around and see if someone could teach you.”

“You never told me.”

“You never brought it up again. I figured the weed was doing the talking.”

“It had a lot to say.”

“What about tonight’s gummy?” he asks. “Is it telling you to buy heavy machinery?”

We. The word lands between us. I see his shoulders in the moonlight beside the car. His hoodie around me. The kiss in the wine cellar. The small bed we shared and the night he asked me to marry him. Then the morning we learned Hank was gone, the quiet in our Seattle apartment, and the night Rhys ended our engagement.

“Besides thousands of dollars we don’t have, and the limbs we’re used to having, what could we lose?” I say.

The wheel starts moving. I grab his arm as we roll forward and rise above the loading platform.

Colored lights pass over Rhys’s face. For a while I watch them. I can’t tell how long. The gummy has made time uneven; the lights seem to hold still, then change before I can take them in. A salty breeze moves through his hair. The smell of fried sugar clings to his shirt.

“You’re staring at me,” he says.

“Am I?”

“Or are you just high?”

When he laughs, I notice my hand is still around his forearm. His skin is warm and smooth. Tiny freckles cover it where the sun has reached him. I want to touch them, though I know I would lose track before I finished.

We sit close enough that I can feel his breath and the beat of his heart through his shirt.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.

“Like what?”

“Like you want to eat me.”

“I do want to eat you.”

His thumb brushes the middle of my chin. “Is that the gummy talking, or do I still have powdered sugar on my mouth?”

My thoughts quiet. I feel my skin, my breath, the space between us.

“This is confusing,” I whisper.

“I’m not confused.”

“You can’t be as high as I am.”

“I know I’m not. You’re having a much more intense evening than I am.”

“I can feel my blood moving. The colors have tastes.”

“What do they taste like?”

He closes his eyes and tips his face toward the breeze. When he opens them, his pupils are wide. “Red gummy.”

I laugh. “Very precise.”

“Do you want the real answer?”

“About the lights? Absolutely.”

His hand leaves the safety bar. He runs his fingers along the outside of my thigh to my hip, watching my face. The satin of my dress feels smooth under his touch. I try not to move toward him.

“Soft,” he says. His nails travel down to the bare skin above my knee. My head tips back. “Delicate. So light.”

He looks at me. His hand moves upward again, a little farther each time. We keep looking at each other while the wheel turns.

“Can I see more pictures?” he asks.

I blink. “What?”

“Your pottery.”

“It isn’t good.”

“I don’t care. Will you show me?”

I work slowly to get my phone from my pocket. There are a few saved ads for murder mysteries I mean to watch, then photographs of my recent pieces: a mug, two vases, and another bowl that only vaguely resembles a butt.

I hand him the phone. He studies each picture, turning it over in his hands and enlarging the images to see the glaze. We make a full circuit before he reaches the last one. Then he goes back through them.

“This one.” He stops at the smaller vase, with green, blue, purple, and brown glaze running together.

“That one’s called Hank.”

He looks up. “You named it after my dad?”

“Isn’t that embarrassing?” I try to take the phone. He holds on. “I’m not Michelangelo. My vases don’t need names.”

“This one needs a name. It’s Hank.”

He looks at the photograph again. “It looks like him.”

“You don’t have to say that, Rhys. It’s just something I made.”

“It looks like the coast here. The colors are right.”

“Or you’re high.”

“I am high. I’m also right.”

Our eyes meet. I hold out my hand, and he gives my phone back.

“Did you show it to Mom?”

“No. I was thinking about giving it to her.”

“Let me buy it.”

“Definitely not.”

“Why?”

“It isn’t worth anything.”

“It is to me.”

“Then you can pay to ship it. It can be from both of us.”

“Okay. I’ll pay for shipping.” He pauses. “How did you get into ceramics?”

“About a week after we broke up, I was walking home after a shift. I was a couple of blocks from my—our apartment.” I correct myself, and my face heats.

I hadn’t wanted to go home that day. I’d assisted with a difficult surgery. The animal had made it through, but I’d felt sick since the procedure. All I wanted was to be in Rhys’s arms. I knew the apartment would be full of reminders of him and that he wouldn’t be there.

“I saw a pottery shop. It reminded me of being here.”

“Because you can’t go four feet without seeing a ceramic nautilus?”

“Exactly. I’d never been very interested in the shops when we visited. But that day the place looked like a little piece of home. Or whatever this cottage is to us.”

“So you went in?”

“I went in.”

“That’s not like you.”

“I know. I was having a bad day. There was an ice-cream shop next door, so I got a scoop. By the time I came out, people were arriving for a beginner class. The alternative was going home to watch another mystery rerun, so I signed up.”

“And you liked it.”

“I really liked it.”

“You’re good at it.”