Salt and Sea Glass

The Bonfire

Dahlia had called it "the whole town's one collective personality trait" a bonfire on the public beach every Friday in August, folding chairs and coolers and somebody's ancient guitar that never quite stayed in tune.

"You're coming," she'd informed Jessica that morning, not a question, sliding an extra muffin across the counter like a bribe. "And you're bringing the photographer. Don't argue. Everyone's already talking, might as well give the gossip something accurate to work with."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Sweetheart, you've had coffee with that man eleven mornings running. Around here, that's basically a wedding announcement."

Jessica hadn't been counting. She was fairly sure that was a lie, given how precisely she could have confirmed the number without checking.

The fire was already roaring when she got there, throwing orange light across two dozen faces she was slowly learning the hardware store owner, the bakery girl, a cluster of teenagers pretending not to notice each other. Finn stood near the edge, apart from the crowd the way he always positioned himself, camera notably absent, hands in his pockets.

"You came," he said, like he hadn't been sure she would.

"Dahlia made it sound mandatory."

"Dahlia makes everything sound mandatory. Professional skill." He smiled and it looked so beautiful

"Glad you did, though."

"Me too."

The fire cracked and shifted, sparks going up into a sky gone fully dark, salt and woodsmoke tangled together in a way she suspected she'd remember for a long time. Somebody had produced the ancient guitar and was murdering a song she half-recognized, badly, to general uncaring applause. Dahlia caught her eye across the flames and made a gesture toward Finn so unsubtle Jessica pretended not to see it.

"They think we're together," she said, leaning closer over the noise.

"Small towns." He didn't seem bothered, watching the fire instead of her, though his jaw had tightened slightly. "Decide a story before they've got the facts. Comes with the territory."

"Does it bother you? People assuming things?"

"Depends what they're assuming." He glanced at her, firelight catching his jaw, something unguarded in his face that made her breath catch. "This one doesn't bother me much."

The words sat between them, warm and a little dangerous. Her pulse picked up, aware of how close they were sitting, how the fire's heat wasn't the only thing making her skin feel tight and alive.

"Careful," she said, voice softer than she intended. "That sounds like flirting."

"Does it." Not really a question. "What would you call it, then?"

"Don't know yet." Honest, more than she meant to be. "Haven't decided what to call anything, lately."

"Fair." He looked back at the fire, but his hand had drifted closer on the arm of his chair, close enough now their fingers were almost touching. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere. Not for six more weeks, anyway."

The deadline landed like a small cold stone dropped into warm water — a reminder of the clock neither of them wanted to discuss out loud. Her ten weeks, his six, two countdowns running side by side that would eventually both hit zero.

She didn't let herself think about that tonight. Tonight there was only the fire, the badly tuned guitar, and Finn's hand a fraction of an inch from hers.

She closed the distance herself. Just her fingers, resting against the back of his hand. He went very still, not the patient stillness of a man waiting for light, but something more charged, more present, his breath catching audibly enough that she heard it over the crackle.

He turned his hand over slowly, palm up, fingers curling around hers, and neither of them said anything, the whole conversation happening now in that small warm space where their hands had finally decided to meet.

"Jessica." The way he said her name, made her shiver a bit yet she felt hot.

"Yeah?"

He leaned in, slow, giving her every chance to pull back, and found she didn't want to.

"JESSICA!" Dahlia's voice cut across the fire like a foghorn, entirely too cheerful, entirely too well-timed in the worst possible way. "Come settle a debate, the Hendersons think you're from Boston, I said no way, you don't complain enough about the Sox.."

The moment shattered gently, both of them pulling back with matching rueful expressions, Finn's hand still loosely wrapped around hers even as the world reasserted itself.

"To be continued," he murmured, low enough only she could hear, and the promise in those three words settled something in her that the almost-kiss alone hadn't quite managed.

"To be continued," she agreed, and let Dahlia pull her back into the fire's orbit, already counting the hours until dawn, until the tide pools, until whatever came next between her and the quiet, unhurried man who'd just rearranged something in her chest with nothing more than the sound of her own name.

The Hendersons, it turned out, had a genuinely passionate opinion about her accent, one that involved a fifteen-minute cross-examination about vowel sounds and which she failed almost entirely to satisfy either side of. Dahlia declared her "aggressively regionless" and moved on to refilling everyone's cups from a cooler that seemed to have no discernible bottom.

Jessica found Finn again an hour later, near the edge of the fire's light, and settled beside him without needing an invitation this time.

"Win the debate?" he asked.

"Lost badly. Apparently I sound like I'm from everywhere and nowhere, which the Hendersons found deeply suspicious."

"That's the highest compliment this town gives out, for what it's worth. Means you don't sound like you're performing an accent for anybody." He glanced at her sideways, firelight catching the curve of his mouth. "You looked good up there, arguing vowel sounds with two people twice your age who were never going to concede the point."

"You were watching?"

"I'm always watching. Occupational hazard, remember." He nudged her shoulder with his. "Come on. Dahlia's about to make everyone do the thing where we sing something terrible and off-key. You don't want to miss it."

She didn't, as it turned out. The whole beach dissolved into a ragged, cheerful chorus of some song nobody quite remembered all the words to, Dahlia leading with the confidence of someone entirely unbothered by her own limitations as a vocalist, and Jessica found herself singing along to words she was inventing on the spot, laughing so hard at one point she had to lean into Finn's shoulder just to stay upright.

It was, she thought later, walking home under a sky gone thick with stars, the first night in longer than she could remember where she hadn't thought about her old life even once until she was already in bed, and even then only briefly, like a door closing gently somewhere far down a long hallway.