Page 12 of At First Dance
We duck into a shop that is absolutely not for him—linen dresses and sun-faded straw hats and a rack of swimsuits that make me break out in hives just looking at them—but Bailey beelines to the corner where a vintage record player sits atop an antique dresser. She drops the needle on Fleetwood Mac and tilts her chin toward my tote.
“Tell me you have a love of records like me.”
I blink. “How did you—”
“Because I am prescient.” She pulls a little card from behind the player and holds it up.Loaner Program.“Pick a player and five records. Keep them for a week. Trade for another.”
“Is that legal?”
She shrugs. “It’s Coral Bell legal.”
I choose a player, the color of sea glass with an arrangement of blue grass and classic rock records, Bailey scribbles my name on the card, and I walk out with a kind of fizz in my chest that has nothing to do with pastry sugar. Outside, the light is brighter. Or maybe I am because nothing sounds as good as a vinyl record.
We find Rowan on the bench by the planter, one ankle crossed over a knee, paper coffee cup turning in his hands. He looks up as we approach and stands immediately, like he wasn’t comfortable without us in his line of sight.
“You rob them blind?” he asks, nodding at the player's case.
“Sanctioned robbery,” Bailey says. “We’re cultivating taste.”
“Coral Bell legal,” I add, smug now that I understand the joke.
He shakes his head. “Let’s get you back before you start quoting bylaws.”
We walk the boardwalk before we leave, because I ask and because he says yes even though I can tell he’s not a strolling man. The bay is a sheet of hammered metal in this light, sun biting at the crests. A dog barrels after a tennis ball, then decides the real prize is attention, demanding scratches like payment.
Rowan obliges. Of course, he does.
We lean on the railing. I tilt my head back, breathing this. Bailey snaps a photo of the view and then—because she’s not subtle—one of me with a slice of Rowan’s jaw in the frame.
“Evidence,” she says, not sorry.
“For what?” I ask, even though the answer buzzes under my skin.
“That you looked happy on a Sunday,” she says simply. “You can forget, you know? Photographic proof helps.”
We leave before the sun gets bossy. Rowan drives, one hand at twelve o’clock, the other on his thigh. My gaze drifts there once. Okay, twice. I tug at the frayed edges of my shorts.
“You good?” he asks quietly, eyes on the road.
“Better than I should be,” I admit.
He nods like that’s a thing he understands.
Back at the farm, he unloads the record player and my book bag as if he’s not cataloging every new thing I’ve just set inside his life. We’re halfway to the cottage when my phone dings.
Publicist (Mara):
Zoom at 3p your time? Quick and painless.
Celeste:
Confirmed you for 2p CST. Join the link below.
I type one response.
Me:
3p works. Thirty minutes, that’s all I have.
