Page 48 of Haunted Ever After

When she looked up, Nick was holding his own bottle of tea toward her in a mock toast. She tapped the mouth of her plastic bottle to his, and they each took a sip.

As Nick turned his attention back to his bag, Cassie stretched up on her toes, leaning across the table in an attempt to see what else he’d brought. But Nick caught her, narrowing his eyes and tugging the bag a few inches closer to his side of the table.

“No peeking,” he chided, but he didn’t keep the secret long as he kept unpacking. Food now: potato salad and pasta salad in little plastic containers. More Publix labels: the packaging was as familiar as the back of her hand. But her heart absolutely soared when he drew out two oblong, paper-wrapped packages.

“Are those Publix subs?” She couldn’t keep the squeal out of her voice or the excitement out of her body as she practically scrambled on top of the table to get to them.

“Wait, wait!” But Nick was laughing as he held the sandwiches over his head, out of reach. “This one’s yours.” He handed her one of the paper sleeves. “I hope I got the order right.”

Cassie plopped to the picnic bench with her prize, sliding the sandwich from its sleeve and unwrapping the familiar logo-ed deli paper. She groaned in ecstasy as the sandwich was unwrapped. “Look at you, beautiful.” The chicken tenders had been tossed in the perfect amount of buffalo sauce, the veggies were crisp, the bread was fresh and soft…this was a perfect Publix sub. She picked up one of the halves and took a bite. It was sensory overload: the spicy-tangy taste of the buffalo sauce exploding across her tongue, the pillowy bread giving way to the crunch of the fried chicken and veggies.

“Oh my god.” She held a hand to her mouth while she chewed. “This is amazing.” A Publix sub was something she used to grab once a week or so, usually when she was grocery shopping anyway because the last thing you wanted to do after unloading groceries was cook. But she hadn’t had one in a while now, so the nostalgia of it made her eyes mist over.

“Should I leave you two alone?”

Oh, right. For a moment there she’d forgotten that Nick was across the table from her, one eyebrow raised while she shoved a sandwich into her mouth.

“Where did you get this?” She took a swig of iced tea, sweet and cold, the perfect complement to the sandwich. “There isn’t a Publix anywhere nearby.”

“In town? No, there isn’t.” He nodded in confirmation. “But there’s one on the other side of the causeway, down the highway a ways.”

Cassie stopped chewing as his words sank in. She knew where he meant; she’d driven past that shopping center more than once, on her move out here and more recently when she’d had to hit a big-box hardware store. But Nick was downplaying his effort; he’d driven at least an hour to get there. Each way. To pick up her favorite sandwich. He’d gotten her order exactly right and she’d told him about it once, some several weeks ago.

This wasn’t just a sandwich. It was an apology. A declaration. Somehow that made it—and Nick—even more delicious.

While she’d been pigging out on her sub, Nick had sat down across from her, his back to the water, unwrapping his own sub and cracking open the potato salad—the yellow kind, with the egg. He’d gotten that right too. Cassie’s heart swelled as Nick glanced up at her with an apprehensive smile.

“Thank you.” She tried to imbue as much meaning as she could into the words. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to show her how much he meant his apology. She needed him to know that the effort wasn’t wasted.

Nick ducked his head, pink flushing the tops of his cheeks. “Of course.”

He suddenly seemed very far away, all the way across the table like that. “You know, this sunset’s shaping up to be a great one. But you’ve got your back to it.” She patted the seat next to her in invitation, and he raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah?” The flash of hope in his eyes was humbling, and Cassie smiled.

“Yeah.”

It took less than a minute for Nick to switch sides, tugging his sandwich across the table by one corner of the waxed paper. Cassie took the opportunity to check out his sandwich—knowing someone’s Publix sub order was important. It was a key insight into their character.

But she frowned at what she saw. “You don’t like chicken tenders?” His sub looked like a classic Italian combo, made up of cold cuts and veggies, loaded down with an herbal dressing. Which was fine, but…it wasn’t a chicken tender sub.

“I do.” He shrugged. “But we’re the opposite here. The fried chicken at The Haunt has spoiled me for all other chicken, while Publix did the same for you. I almost went with the Cuban, but—”

Cassie made a noise of acknowledgment while she chewed and swallowed. “No, you gotta have the right kind of bread for a Cuban.”

“Exactly. I didn’t want to chance it. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with an Italian sub.”

Cassie gave a hum of assent around another bite of her sandwich. “I still have to try The Haunt’s chicken. Tuesdays, you said, right?” Nick nodded while chewing, his eyes carefully on the sunset in progress over the water and not on her. She understood. He’d made this apology, but he wasn’t going to push further. It was her turn. “Maybe we can do that sometime soon?”

He looked at her then, and she held her breath as he swallowed his bite and took a long drink of tea. “Just be prepared to have your life changed.”

“I can’t think of a way that my life hasn’t changed recently. What’s one more?”

Nick gave a bark of laughter, the sound so unexpected that she grinned to hear it. “Good point,” he said. He handed her a plastic fork from the bag and offered her the carton of potato salad. They passed it back and forth, eating in silence, letting the crash and hiss of the waves against the shore fill the quiet between them, while the sun setting over the water provided a show of its own.

Nick cracked open a beer and cleared his throat. When he finally spoke his voice was soft, hard to hear over the sounds of the ocean. “Growing up, there was this girl. Madison.”

Cassie gave a start of recognition. Libby and Sophie had told her this story already. But she should let him tell it too. It was his story, after all.

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