He glanced around to make sure no one else had heard them talking. Karl was next to him on the other side, and Eiko and her husband Kensi were next to Karl. They seemed absorbed in their own conversation.

“Hey.” Law was greeting Jake, who was arriving on his other side. “Sawyer is freaking out about Eve.”

Sawyer glared at Law. “Will you shut up?”

The corners of Jake’s mouth turned up.

“Testing. Testing.” It was Maya, standing on the temporary stage Jake had built for the day. They’d held the bachelor auction on it yesterday, and now it was decorated with fake columns he supposed were meant to evoke ancient Greece.

“Can everyone hear me?” Maya called.

Law rolled his eyes, but he moved forward so he was sitting on the edge of his chair.

“Thank you all for coming. As you know, the fall play is always a labor of love for me.”

Sawyer tuned her out and let his attention wander over the crowd. If Evie was helping with costumes, what were the chances she would stay in the curtained-off area that functioned as a backstage?

As if she had heard him summoning her—not that he was summoning her—the curtains parted and she slipped out. He ordered himself to chill. Except she was on her way over. He looked around. The chairs next to him were empty now. Karl, Eiko, and Kensi were nowhere to be seen. Pearl, who had appointed herself usher, was escorting Evie his way.

She sat next to him and immediately leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I asked Pearl to seat me next to you.”

Oh God. Should he apologize for the almost-kiss? He’d left suddenly—and awkwardly—last night after it had happened. Or hadn’t happened.

Or maybe she wanted to sit next to him because she didn’t mind that they’d almost kissed? If that was the case, he had a whole other set of problems. He could not get into anything with her. She was leaving. He needed to remember that.

“You know,” she whispered, “this play is about a lying jerk of a dude who cheats on his wife.” She cracked up. “And then Medea gets her murderous revenge.”

“It is?” He’d heard Clara practicing and had intuited that this Medea lady was not a fan of men in general, but he hadn’t known about the murderous-revenge part.

“So I started thinking maybe you had it too easy. I mean, you just apologized, and I said okay? You got off easy.” She laughed again—cackled, really.

She was kidding, but she also wasn’t wrong. In his wildest dreams he could never have imagined a scenario in which he was sitting next to Evie at a town play because they were friends again. “Eve, I—”

But Carol Dyson walked out from behind one of those columns and started talking about a ship and a golden fleece.