I returned to find Tyler sitting on my doorstep, knees up, arms crossed, back in his casual black—sneakers, jeans, the inside-out t-shirt.

“Heya,” he said. “Ready?”

“I’m excited.”

“You ran away last night.” He rose up above me.

I stepped back a bit. “I was…tired, and overserved,” I said—not a complete lie.

“No. You ran away from Jes,” he said with a smile, stretching, leaning against the house. He was so at home here. “You shouldn’t be afraid of her. She’s extremely interesting, and incredibly kind.”

“I didn’t want…” I struggled to find the appropriate words. “To embarrass myself. I was saying whatever came into my head.”

“I liked how you spoke to Charlie,” he said.

“Well—it doesn’t matter what someone like me says,” I explained. “To him, I mean. I’m a little bug.”

“Some bug.” He laughed. “Do you need anything from inside?”

I shook my head. “I’m desperate to see the studio,” I said. “Which building is it?”

“It’s next door,” he said, hopping up, walking down the driveway.

“You mean at Max’s?”

“No. Between here and there. Want to walk? There’s a walking route and a driving route. This way you can see both. Then we can come back and grab your stuff.”

“Sure. I’m still starry from yesterday, anyway.”

We crossed the resort, past the other bungalows, the Mission, and the lobby, and then we walked along the eastern edge of the forest and turned down a pathway so strangled by ivy and plant life that I wouldn’t have dared set foot upon it without someone else leading the way. What had once been a proper road was now reduced to barely a footpath. Tyler marched down it confidently, scrambling easily over the fallen trees and hungry, grasping shrubs, and I did my best to keep up.

As we hiked, the lake making the occasional shush sound through the thickets of trees on our left, he launched into a history of the property like he’d done it a thousand times before, which, naturally, he had. Granger’s Summer Resort, built in 1930, promised secluded lakeside hospitality equidistant between the Adirondack and Berkshire Mountains. As Susan had mentioned, it was once openly restricted, serving only white, married, heterosexual Christian couples. The Granger family allowed divorced couples and people of color after anti-discrimination laws were passed in 1961, but until they closed in 1975, they’d never, they proudly told their bank in a loan document, hosted a single homosexual.