I shove my smoothie straw in my mouth, suck up more of its mango-banana sweetness to stall. Once I swallow I smile and—oh no. Nod. “Sure,” I add.

“You seem—” He breaks off, clears his throat. “Different. Sort of . . . wired.”

My cheeks heat in spite of the cold drink. I’m running through the stream of chatter I’ve kept up for the last half hour—the nice night, the guy who’s passed us on a unicycle a bunch of times, my curiosity in general about people who play Frisbee. I should know by now I can’t hide anything from Reid, not really. What he sees, what he hears—he asks about.

I shrug. “A lousy day at work, that’s all.”

“Your sketches didn’t go well?” That he asks—that he knew—is a reminder of how much closer we’ve been over the past week, how much we’ve stayed in touch.

“They were fine. It’s . . . a difficult client. Not a big deal.”

“Difficult how?”

I feel cornered. I don’t want to say anything about Lark, anything that would violate the privacy that’s so important to her. So I settle for putting the blame where it really belongs.

“He’s rude,” I say, keeping my eyes up and ahead, on all the signless placidity surrounding us.

Reid pauses on the path, his body going still.

“Rude how?”

Standing there, Reid doesn’t look all that different from the man who came into the shop all those weeks ago. Cold, determined, impatient. Looking for answers. And what am I going to say, that I went to a client’s house and judged her marriage? That I think she’s living a worse mistake than the one I so recklessly, secretly warned him about? That’ll be a great reminder for him, I’m sure.

This is worse than being cornered. It’s like being in a minefield, danger in every step I take.

“Well, first of all,” I say, trying for a joke, “he wears these bracelets.”

Reid blinks. “Pardon?”

I sigh. “Never mind. It’s hard to explain.”

“Meg.” He manages to make that single syllable sound shorter than usual. “Just be—” He breaks off and shakes his head in exasperation, and I can tell it’s not with himself. “Was he rude to you?”

Oh.

He’s being—protective? I definitely don’t want Reid to go all the way to Red Hook to punch Cameron in the face, but I am also not entirely opposed to adding this to my growing library of Reid-specific fantasies. Alas, cravats, pistols at dawn.

“He was rude to his wife. In front of me. It’s not my favorite thing, being around that kind of tension.”

I should ask Lachelle to make me a calligraphy certificate for Understatement of the Year. It’ll be worth it, if Reid drops this.