“I really am sorry,” I said. “Was it a rare book or super valuable?” I hoped not. Being in between chef jobs was not leaving my bank account flush.

“No, it was just the latest Joe Pickett mystery from C. J. Box.” He shrugged. “I’m just stuck at a cliffhanger without it.”

“Oh, that is a bummer.” Personally, I hated cliffhangers on my shows—Just give her the rose already!—so I imagined the feeling wasn’t any better with a book. I glanced at the choppy water below as if I could manifest the book and make it rise out of the ocean and float back to the boat in perfect condition. See? Just because I don’t read, that doesn’t mean I don’t have an imagination.

“It’s fine, really,” he said.

One thing I’d learned in my twenty-eight circles around the sun was that when a person said it was fine, it never ever was. I glanced up and noticed we were approaching the pier.

“Listen, I’m happy to replace it, really,” I said. I reached into my shoulder bag, wondering how much cash I had in my wallet. My nausea threatened to punch back at the thought of how broke I was.

He put his hand over mine, stopping me. His skin was warm despite the cool breeze blowing in from the water. He gave my fingers a quick squeeze before he let go and said, “It really is okay. Accidents happen.”

We’d leveled up to “okay.” Well, all right then. “Okay” usually did mean exactly that. I smiled at him, relieved. His gaze met mine and for a second I forgot about everything—my anxiety about returning to Oak Bluffs after so long, the nature of my responsibilities while on island this summer, the low balance in my checking account, the future of my culinary career—and suddenly it was very important to me that this guy not think badly of me. Why? I had no idea, it just was.

“You know, it’s not so much that I’m not a reader as my occupation keeps me too busy to find time,” I said. “There’s not a lot of downtime to curl up with a novel in my world.”

The wind whipped my long black hair across my face as if to chastise me for being a fibber. Whatever. I hooked my finger around the hank of hair and pulled it away from my mouth.

Reader Guy leaned an elbow on the railing. Now I had his attention. “When you do have time, what do you like to read?”

Uh-oh. I hadn’t really thought the natural conversational trajectory through. Shit. I scanned my brain for the title of a book—any book.

“Stephen King,” I said. One does not grow up in New England and not know the King. “Big fan. Huge.” Not a lie, because I’d watched all of the movies repeatedly.