Page 56 of Catch and Release

“What happened with Willa last night?” Grams asked, attempting nonchalance.

He’d expected it. After all, he’d bolted out of here last night after getting a phone call from her, and Grams was here to witness the whole thing.

“Just gave her a ride home,” Shawn said.

“Hmm,” Grams responded.

“Don’t go getting any ideas, Grams. You’ll just be disappointed.”

“If you say so.”

Shawn took a bite of his food before Grams jumped in with another zinger: “How come I haven’t seen Tucker or Hanna in months?”

He stiffened, then sighed. “It's a busy season for Tuck, you know that.”

“That’s never stopped them from seeing me before,” Grams said, her brow furrowing. “Besides, Hanna’s a teacher. She has summers off.”

Shawn’s heart clenched. His idiocy—his unwillingness to have a hard conversation—was hurting Grams’ relationship with his best friends.

He knew if he told her the real reason, she’d tell him to get over himself and tell them. It was the right advice, but he felt his stomach drop at the thought of it.

“I’ll call them and invite them over soon, okay?” he finally said.

Clearly displeased with his response, she said, “If you say so, Scoob.”

They finished eating before Grams headed out on her morning walk. Shawn knew Willa wouldn’t be back for another hour or so, and his skin was itching with a desire to be near her, to talk about what happened, to run his thumb along her lips again. He needed to keep himself busy until she got back.

Before he knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed fishing gloves and pulled on swim trunks, then headed to her house. He waded into the water from the beach below her wharf, and quickly came upon what he was looking for: the rusted chair she’d tried to pull out of the water on her own the other day.

He gave it a tug and it didn’t move at all. He shook his head absentmindedly, disbelieving that Willa was going to try to remove this by herself. Widening his stance, he grabbed the edges of the chair and wiggled it a bit until it started to loosen from the sand. He continued to work at it, slowly easing it from the sand, until after a few minutes, he tugged it completely free.

Shawn heaved the chair up out of the water and carried it to the shore and up the stairs, setting it on the wharf. Once he got there, he took a quick look at it and noticed some clams had stuck to it. He began pulling them off and tossing them in the water, trying to preserve the few he could. It was tedious work, pulling off clams of all sizes from where they’d found a home on this chair. But he’d grown up listening to his grandfather talk about how much more life there was on the Bay—until pollution and overfishing had depleted the wildlife significantly.

When he was a kid, Shawn could remember swimming and finding clams underneath his feet all day long. Now, he was lucky to find even one clam during the summertime. They weren’t as plentiful as they used to be, making the small, fingernail-sized clams on the chair even more precious. As much as he would’ve liked to have just left the chair in the water so they could continue to thrive, it was a hazard. Anyone could accidentally trip over it just like Willa had, or a net or fishing line could easily get stuck in it.

He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Willa walking down toward him, her red hair pulled in a bun on top of her head, a few stray strands framing her face. She was wearing a baby blue pair of leggings and a matching sports bra, and she was sipping from a water bottle in her hand, her face slightly flushed. Memories of the way her tongue swirled around his length last night came back to him, and it took everything in him not to toss her over his shoulder and carry her inside.

“Hi,” Willa said shyly.

She was acting timid for the first time since he met her, and he thought it was possibly the cutest thing he’d ever seen.

“Hi,” he responded with a grin. “How was yoga?”

“Good.” Her eyes flickered to the chair. “Thanks for doing that. I could’ve done it, but I appreciate it.”

“No problem. It was pretty heavy, though, so I was happy to do it.”

“Are you trying to imply that I couldn’t have gotten it out without a man to help me?” she asked, crossing her arms, all shyness gone.

“Me?” Shawn asked jokingly. “I’d never say such a thing.”

Willa rolled her eyes. “I know I look scrawny, but I’ve been doing yoga for years. I could’ve done it.”

“Isn’t yoga, like, relaxing? Like getting a massage?”

“Ha!” Willa said. “It definitely can be. But you should come to one of my yoga classes one time. I’d love to see if you’d still compare it to a massage.”

He smirked. “Next Saturday, then. I’ll be there.”

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