Page 58 of Grace on the Rocks

All around them, the audience laughed at the antics onstage as characters pranced around their woodsy bacchanal hell-bent on doing just that.Whywas midsummer’s eponymous play also one of the horniest?Itwas starting to feel worse than high school.

And there it was, her book’s theme:Maya, surrounded by sex-obsessed teenagers, while she tried to sort out love and lust and what to do about the boy next door.

Grace itched to take out her phone and jot down the idea before she forgot it, but the problem with theHebridesin summer was that this play was being performed in broad daylight, and it would be the height of rudeness.Ifonly she’d brought a little notebook, she could pretend to be a theater critic or something.

Instead, she reached in her pocket, her fingers closing around the colorful worry stone.Sheturned it and turned it, tracing the letters on its soft, cool surface, spelling out her notes to commit them to muscle memory.Shewould write it all down, quick and dirty, as soon as they got home.

Or, back to the house, rather.Hishome.

Damn it.Nowshe was thinking about him again.

She kept on twisting the stone, pretending to pay the slightest attention toShakespeare.

* * *

“Want to stop at the pub?”Wesasked as they neared the house an hour later.Shewas probably starving despite having taken her beefWellingtonwith her and devouring it before the second act.

“I’m sorry, butI?—”

“Have to write.Iknew better than to ask.”

“Please don’t ever stop asking,”Gracebegged, putting her key in the front door. “Seriously, don’t.”

It was one of the things she loved most about her friend, that she hadn’t given up trying to forceGraceto have fun.

Wes grinned at her, then jumped at the sound of an earsplitting crash.

They looked at each other with eyes the size of frisbees, then dashed inside to find their host had set up a pair of support posts jacked clear to the ceiling and was now attacking the back stone wall with a sledgehammer.

“Oh shit,”Wessaid. “Iguess dinner didn’t get better.”

“Ryan?”Graceasked cautiously between hits. “Iseverything okay?”

“My name”—WHAM—“is not”—WHAM—“Ryan.”WHAM!WHAM!WHAM!

Shit.She’dnever asked, since literally everyone called himRyanexcept the heckler at karaoke.

WHAM.

“Do you think you could?—”

WHAM.

“Stop hitting the wall?”

He stopped himself mid-swing and turned, swaying off balance. “Wereyou trying to write?Ididn’t think you were home.”

His face was red, but he was eerily calm, despite the sledgehammer and cracking stone.

“Do you want to talk about it?”Graceasked.

“Nothing to talk about.Thiswas next on the list.”

She glanced at her watch.Itwas nine p.m., despite the bright light outside.

“Lùcas is going to be really bummed you started without him,”Wesinterjected.

Grace put a gentle hand on his arm, so he let the hammer slide to the floor.

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