Page 22 of Hang the Moon
Hand cupped over her brow, she shielded her face from the glare of the sun and stared up at the wheel. “Let’s do it.”
Frappe empty, she ducked over to a trash can beside the public bathroom. She hesitated, eyeing the door to the restroom. In the last two hours, she’d consumed a whopping thirty-two ounces of iced coffee and her bladder had reached capacity.
“Annie.” She turned. The line had moved and Brendon was at the front, standing near the attendant, waving her over. She glanced back at the restroom and frowned. It was a Ferris wheel; how long could it take to go in a circle? Fifteen minutes?
“Come on!” Brendon called again, the attendant tapping his foot behind him, beginning to look annoyed, as if she were holding things up.
She could wait fifteen minutes.
Having hit the sweet spot on timing, they were the only two people in their cabin. She settled in atop the leather bench seat, wiggling a little to get comfortable. The bench could’ve comfortably sat four grown adults and yet Brendon sat directly beside her, their knees knocking gently as he stretched his long legs out in front of him.
The wheel was relatively slow moving; it took five minutes for their cabin to reach the top. The view was more than worth the wait. Sunlight glinted off the placid, glassy blue surface of Elliott Bay. To the right, the Space Needle stood tall and proud against a clear, blue sky.
“Mount Rainier.” He pointed at the snowcapped mountain looming majestically in the distance. “We picked a good day to come up here.”
She dug into the depths of her bag for her phone, wanting more pictures. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is.”
The space between her shoulder blades itched with awareness. She turned. He was staring at her, not the view, and his brown eyes were locked on her face, his lips tipped up at the corners.
“You ever miss San Francisco?” she asked, changing the subject. He wasn’t implyingshewas beautiful. That would be ridiculous, not to mention utterly corny. People didn’t say things like that in real life. Not to her, they didn’t.
He shifted on the bench, his thigh pressing firmly alongside hers. “Sometimes. I miss In-N-Out, but Dick’s isn’t bad.”
“Dick’s?” What was that? A—she wasn’t even going to let her brain fill in the blanks.
“Burger joint. Great fries. I’ve heard they make a decent milkshake.” His smile went charmingly crooked. “Not that I’d know.”
“I’ll have to check it out. See for myself how it stacks up.”
He nodded. “You picked the best time of year to visit. Nothing beats summer in Seattle. It’s a running joke that if you want to convince someone to move here you should get them to visit May to September.”
“Not October through April?”
He bobbed his head from side to side. “That’s the rainy season. Not that it rains as much as people say it does. Miami gets almost double the rainfall annually as Seattle. It just drizzles a lot.”
“I don’t mind rain.” A good thing, as London was known for being gray, almost as much as Seattle.
“It grows on you,” he agreed. “How about you?”
“Do I miss San Francisco?”
He nodded.
She tucked her hair behind her ear and shrugged. “The last time I was in San Francisco was... four years ago? It’s not really home anymore.”
Not that anywhere felt like home these days.
“Four years?” He sounded surprised.
“My parents moved back to Greece after my dad retired.”
His brows knit. “Wow. That’s—far.”
“I visit for Christmas. One year, I even managed to swing an extra week of vacation and I was able to spend my birthday over there.”
“Oneyear? What do you usually do for your birthday? It’s on the nineteenth, right?”
