Several of the guests went off to start their day. Harper’s mom was deep in conversation with the last two couples. Harper nodded toward the kitchen door, meaning it was safe to make our escape. We took our dishes with us so Sawyer wouldn’t have to bus them. He was methodically working through a huge pile of plates, dumping food in the garbage, rinsing the dishes, and setting them in the dishwasher or dropping them to soak in an industrial-size sink. He was doing the work of probably six people at the Crab Lab.
He looked up when we walked in. “Sorry I flaked out on y’all last night,” he said.
“What’s the last thing you remember hearing?” Tia asked playfully. She winked at me.
Oh God.
Sawyer said without missing a beat, “The girl who had her heart set on a strapless dress, but her mama said she looked like a harlot.” If he’d really been awake when we started talking about Aidan—and him—he hid it well.
Harper grabbed the first pan out of the drying rack and toweled it off. “You don’t have to do that,” Sawyer told her. She ignored him, talking to Tia about our walk to the beach in a few minutes. She turned to him only to ask if he could go with us.
“Thanks,” Sawyer said with a quick glance at me, “but I’m working a double shift at the Crab Lab. I need to make up the hours I’m missing on Friday nights.”
My heart went out to him. I would spend the morning relaxing by the ocean and trying to recharge for more school on Monday. He would be working and apparently needed the cash rather desperately. It didn’t seem right that we both had gotten to play hard at the game last night, but he had to pay for that now, and I didn’t.
“I’ll dry,” I told Harper, “and you put away, since you know where everything goes.” She wasn’t really paying me any attention, but she moved when I pushed her and dragged the dish towel out of her hands. I took her place. Now I stood beside Sawyer.
“So, you’re going to stay at Harper’s house until a room opens up here?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said absently, concentrating on scrubbing something sticky out of the bottom of a pan.
“What are you going to do when you can’t have the room here anymore? Harper said that will happen in December.” I hoped I sounded like a concerned friend, not the girl in the van last night who’d made the comment about the box. I felt like I’d aged a year since then.
Tia chose this moment to wake up and pay attention. “I want him to move in with us at my house,” she interrupted. “We should have the whole main floor done by December, so we’ll have plenty of room. I just have to . . .” She glanced at Sawyer. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?” I asked.
Sawyer looked up from the sink and gave me a warning glance. He didn’t want to talk about it.
But Tia didn’t understand warning looks, and there was pretty much nothing on the planet she wouldn’t talk about. “I have to convince everybody,” she said. “The main problem is Will. He says”—she broke into an incredibly bad imitation of a Minnesota accent—“ ‘I trust you, and I trust Sawyer, but I don’t trust you and Sawyer. He’s quit drinking, and you’ve cut down, but what if you both fall off the wagon and something happens?’ ”
Sawyer glanced over his shoulder at her and wagged his eyebrows.
She laughed. “Will worries about these things. I’m like, ‘But I am totally devoted to your body, and your accent is so sexy.’ ”
I should have been glad her family might give Sawyer a place to live. I was glad. But my jealousy wouldn’t let go. I knew how Will felt.
“The main problem is my sister,” Tia went on.
“Which sister?” Harper asked.
“Violet. You know, she’s moved back in, and she doesn’t want a guy moving in too, because she’s sworn off guys for the next five minutes. But the main problem is my other sister.”
“Which other sister?” Harper asked.
“Izzy,” Tia said.
“Do you realize there are three main problems?” I spoke up, trying not to sound as irritated as I felt.
Tia looked at me. “What?”
“You’ve said ‘The main problem is . . .’ three times.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to get across here. It’s an uphill battle. So the main problem is Izzy.”
“She doesn’t even live with you anymore,” Harper pointed out.
“That’s what I say,” Tia said, “but she’s working on my dad. She’s like, ‘I got pregnant at seventeen. Tia’s going to college. Trust me, you need to protect her from boys. The last thing you want to do is invite one to stay in your house.’ Of course, this whole conversation is going on in Spanish, which I’m not as fluent in as they are, and the word for ‘pregnant’ sounds like ‘embarrassed,’ so I misunderstood what she was saying at first. I’m all like, ‘I don’t need to be protected, and I’m not embarrassed to have a boyfriend! Why should I be embarrassed just because you got pregnant?’ The discussion kind of devolved from that point. I’ll spare you the details.”
Sawyer didn’t speak through any of this. He left the sink to pull yet another fresh batch of orange rolls from the oven. Passing behind Tia with the basket, headed toward the dining room, he tugged on one of her braids. She responded by patting his shoulder.