“True,” she says, pulling back just far enough to meet my eyes. “But there’s no twenty-four-hour chapel nearby manned by some reckless idiot willing to marry us, so I think we’re safe.”

Point made.

Harlow knocks back her shot and winces. “Ooooh... I don’t think I can do any more.” She holds up her hands, pretends to count out about thirty shots, and then smiles up at me. “One more and I’d face-plant into the bowl of these Fritos London is so excited about.”

She may have lost count, but I haven’t. Four shots into my time in the kitchen with Harlow and—besides Vegas—I’m drunk for the first time in years.

It feels like he’s been gone for an hour, but Not-Joe finally returns in a cloud of weed-smell. As he approaches, he extends his hand to me, saying very slowly, “I’m Not-Joe... it’s nice to meet you.”

Laughing, I remind him, “We met earlier at the store, when Oliver was doing the final walk-through?”

Not-Joe makes a little clucking sound, saying, “That’s why you looked familiar.”

It was three hours ago. This guy must not breathe unless it’s through a joint.

“You’re the lumberjack from Nova Scotia?” he asks.

“Fisherman from Vancouver Island.”

Harlow bursts out laughing. “Poor Finn.”

He looks back and forth between me and Harlow. “So do you guys know each other through Oliver, too?” he asks.

“Not exactly,” she says, and then looks at me with a silly grin. “Finn is my ex-husband.”

Not-Joe’s eyes go as wide as saucers. “Ex-husband?”

Nodding, I confirm, “That’s right.”

The kid looks at Harlow, and then really looks at her. Like eyes moving up and down her body in a way that makes me want to slap him into awareness and so he’ll stop fucking leering at her like that.

“You don’t look old enough to be divorced,” he finally concludes.

I lean forward to break his attention away from her chest. “But I do?”

Now he looks at me, but with far less interest. “Yeah, actually. You’re older than her, right?”

“Right,” I say, laughing as Harlow giggles delightedly next to me. “Thanks.”

Not-Joe digs his hand into a bag of corn chips on the counter, asking, “It must be weird hanging out at a party with your ex.”

She waves him off, saying, “Nah. Finn is an easygoing guy.”

“Am I now?” I ask her, and this makes me laugh because if there has ever been a phrase to describe me, it’s not easygoing. Easygoing is Ansel. I often get “contained.” I am, admittedly, sometimes a little closed off. I am not easygoing.

Nodding, she studies me for a breath and then says, “Yeah. You like long walks on the dock, making little dream catchers out of your extra fishing line, and evenings spent yukking it up with some Mountie MILFs at the local Mooseknuckle Bar.”