“You seem kind of quiet,” she added. “I thought you’d at least comment on the Movers and Shakers’ float.” She nodded to the float directly in front of them. The Movers and Shakers was a historical club that was big into doing reenactments. They’d taken that kink and made a hodgepodge of weird decisions. For some reason, they’d tried to make a miniature Lincoln Memorial by putting papier-mâché around a lawn chair and pretending that Brett Townsend was Lincoln…if Lincoln had been into holding stuffed dolphins and squids. There was blue construction paper everyone—was Lincoln supposed to be in the middle of the bay?—and a three-person poster board sign that read, It’s time to get moving! Join us next Thursday! that was being held up by men who looked twice Brady’s age.

He’d definitely had thoughts about the float. Same as the local accounting and tax firm’s cheekiness in trying to make a Jaws-themed float, where they were the sharks and for some reason Nell Bennett, a client, was supposed to be the one in terrible danger. He’d also almost been jolted out of his pissy mood long enough to ask for a selfie with the absolute shit show that the Rotary Club put up. They must have run out of time or funds or just the will to care. All they’d done was take their winter-themed float that they parked outside of the grocery store the week before Christmas and added rolls of blue streams around snowflakes and painted fish on the paper they’d wrapped around the still-erect fake fir trees.

Of course he’d wanted to talk about it all—even the good floats he’d seen when they were walking up—but that stone that had formed in his stomach after reading Sloane’s blog post had been keeping a lot of his words down.

And now he was going to have to roll it out of the way if he had any chance at seeming normal.

“I’m a bit tired after last night is all,” he finally said. “I think I talked to more people at the party than I have all year.”

Sloane searched his expression, but he didn’t know what she found. It was hard to read her, thanks to the eye patch she had over one eye, the mustache she had drawn over her lip, and the pirate hat that was almost too big for her head. In any other situation, he would have teased her for all of that and the billowing shirt, insanely large-buckled pantaloons, and boots she had on, but what could he really say?