He watched Sam step from the car.
“Nick?” Nick was hardly aware of the pressure of Sara’s hand on his shoulder. She was shaking him, and Nick was looking back at her, into her eyes. He wasn’t focusing on her, though. The voice speaking his name seemed to be coming at him from a huge distance, resonating toward him like the sound of a stone being thrown against the walls of a long, narrow tunnel. “Nick? Are you okay?”
Nick blinked a few times, then at last brought Sara into focus. The cacophony of the traffic blared in his ears. He was surprised to find himself in downtown Seattle. He had felt so deeply transported back to Madison, he was disoriented.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked again. She didn’t try to hide her concern.
“Hmmm?”
“You were in a trance.”
When Nick smiled, her face melted into a genuine smile, too. Nick felt her fingers, cold in the late afternoon, sliding into his own. She drew herself into him, and he could smell the clean scent of her lipstick. Once again, as he recovered himself, his excitement overwhelmed him.
“Let’s just pretend your brother’s not here,” she said. “It’s good to see you. I’ve been thinking about you all day. I wanted to be alone with you—so that I wouldn’t feel self-conscious when I did this.” The movement toward him was so graceful that Nick had the impression that it was in slow motion. Her cheeks were cool. Her lips, though, were warm. Her hands squeezed his even tighter. Unexpectedly, she stood up onto her toes and, closing her eyes, kissed him, almost furtively. Nick hesitated, and then he was kissing her back.
The dull, hollow sound of a drum beating resolved itself into the sound of Sam rapping the windshield with his knuckles. Reluctantly, Nick drew himself back from Sara, aware of his brother’s impatience inside the car. A bus, Nick realized, had pulled up behind the BMW, and Sam needed to get out of its way. “We’d better go,” he said.
Sara didn’t let go of his hands. He had to pull away to open the front door for her. On his way into the backseat, he turned to look at the bus. The driver was looking back at him, an annoyed but envious look on his face.
“I hope this isn’t out of your way,” Sara was saying to Sam as Nick closed the door behind him. “It’s not much fun driving downtown at rush hour.”
“My name is Sam,” he said, introducing himself.
“Nick told me.” Sara twisted around in her seat and looked into Nick’s eyes as Sam began accelerating from the curb. “You’re his older brother. Sam.” She flashed Nick a smile, then turned to Sam. “You didn’t have to do this,” she said to him flatly. “We could just as easily have walked.”
“It’s only a few minutes driving.”
Sara’s leather jacket squeaked against the new leather of the seat as she turned back toward Nick once again. “You could almost be twins. The two of you look so much alike.”
“Sam’s three years older than I am,” Nick offered.
“And a few inches taller,” Sam said, glancing at Sara. Nick noticed his eyes widen as he faced her.
“And he drives a better car, I take it.” Sara laughed playfully. The small note of mockery in her voice wasn’t lost on Nick. Her hand found his knee. “Lucky I don’t care about things like that. I know what I want when I see it.”
In the rearview mirror, Nick was aware of the deflated look that crossed Sam’s face. Sara’s fingers were teasing his thigh. Stifling the confusion of pride and panic welling inside his chest, he shifted forward and took her hand in his own, shy of taunting his older brother.
The streets were crowded with traffic, but it was flowing smoothly, and they circled down to the ferry landing on the waterfront a couple of minutes later.
chapter 7
Sara took Nick’s hand as they were walking up the hill from the steel and concrete ferry dock on Bainbridge Island into the small village of Winslow. It was a careless gesture, but it sent a spike of pleasure through Nick’s heart. He tried not to show his surprise.
The sun was setting, and the tops of the clouds had turned a soft, golden orange. Across the flat plane of the bay, Seattle glowed, and the fading sun creased its towers with horizontal streaks of electric yellow light, like lines drawn in crayon. Nick and Sara stopped to watch the ferry as it churned the water white in its wake and began its slow glide back across to the city. A flock of seagulls gathered over the ferry, their screeches echoing up the hill. When the ferry blew its deep bass horn, in the aftermath the falling evening felt suddenly quiet.
Nick had taken a number of photographs on the crossing. The ferry had been nearly empty, and he had spent much of the half-hour ride positioning himself to get a few shots over the prow, with Bainbridge Island rising up from the water into the dramatic sunset. The slick from the toxic spill glistened like gasoline in the camera’s frame, in a psychedelic swirl stretching from one side of the bay to the other.
“So what now?” Sara asked, turning away from the sweeping view.
“There’s a small fish shack in town,” Nick said. “It’s not much to look at. It doesn’t even have a name, I don’t think. Maybe you know the place?”
Beneath them, the distant buzz of a car’s engine broke the silence. Nick cataloged the noise but paid no attention to it.
Sara shook her head. “I don’t know Bainbridge very well. When I was little, we always stayed over on the other side of the sound, on Lake Washington.”
The car’s engine was getting louder. The car was climbing the hill, getting closer.
“They serve caviar they bring in from Canada,” Nick said. “The only caviar in Seattle I can afford. I thought maybe you’d like it.”
The car switched on its high beams, carving holes into the fading light. It rounded a switchback curve too fast, its tires squealing. Nick realized how quickly it was approaching when he turned to face it. They were standing in the center of the lane, and he had to grab Sara and yank her out of the way, whipped by the car’s wake. Nick got a look at the driver as he tore past: a sandy-haired man wearing a Hawaiian print shirt.
Sara broke the silence. “I don’t know whether he even saw us,” she said breathlessly.
“He was driving too fast.”
“Well, he missed us.” Sara laughed. “So why don’t you lead me to your fish shack, then,” she said, trying to recover the mood, “Captain Nick.”
Nick held out his arm, and Sara looped her hand beneath his elbow. It didn’t just feel good to Nick, it felt right. His skin tingled beneath Sara’s fingers, and almost euphorically, he remembered the sensation of her lips unexpectedly on his, standing at the bus stop next to Sam’s new car.
The small, rustic restaurant was cozy and warm, crowded to capacity, its linen-topped tables laden with plates of freshly grilled fish and frosty glasses of chilled white wine. Coming inside from the crisp evening, Sara stood close to Nick, snuggling up to him as they waited for the hostess. Nick’s temper flared as they were being seated, though, when he noticed the sandy-haired man sitting with a young woman at a table next to the window.
“Don’t let a man like that ruin a beautiful evening,” Sara said to him a few minutes later. She touched Nick on the shoulder, and he noticed that she had poured him a glass of wine. He lifted the glass to his lips, determined to ignore the man and his date.
I should’ve just bought him out, the man said as the waitress set an icy plate of caviar in the center of the table between Nick and Sara. His voice bellowed through the tiny restaurant. The opportunity arose, and I coulda had him at a good price. Nick did his best to block the conversation out. He was aware of the way the man kept staring at Sara, though. His brow was sweaty, and he found himself barely able to control his hatred