“And you never pushed me to. You found other stuff for us to do. Picking berries. Breaking into lighthouses. I always appreciated that.”

He nodded. That’s why he’d been building her the canoe, too. He wondered if she remembered it. He almost mentioned it, but then he thought about it sitting in his garage. He had no way to explain—to her or to himself—why he had suddenly decided to finish it. There was no way to say, Hey, remember that canoe that I was making for you as a giant-ass symbol of my teenage devotion? Guess what? I’m back at it! That wasn’t in the friends-with-benefits script.

So he said nothing.

So much for their new era of talking.

How many times do you think we had sex your last summer here?

The next day, Eve was at the library when Sawyer started texting her. Unlike her branch in Toronto, it was actually quiet, so when she snickered, she drew the attention of nearby patrons.

“Sorry,” she whispered, scrambling to silence her phone when another text arrived. Like, not actually that many when you think about it, right? It was hard to get any privacy.

What was going on here?

Eve: I guess it depends what you mean by sex. Like, are we talking penis-in-vagina only?

Sawyer: Hmm. Good point.

Eve: If so, yeah, between Clara and Lucille, it wasn’t like we had that many opportunities.

He didn’t reply right away, so she sent another one.

Eve: You’re still really bad at sexting, Sawyer.

He ignored her joke.

Sawyer: What I’m actually talking about is opportunities for orgasms. So not just penis-in-vagina. Heavy petting counts.

Eve: Heavy petting!? Hello, did we back-to-the-future ourselves to 1956?

Sawyer: Humor me. I’m doing some data collection here.

Eve: Wow, REALLY bad at sexting.

Sawyer: It’s not sexting. It’s data collection that happens to be on the topic of sex.

Eve: I don’t know, Sawyer, I wasn’t making notches on my bedpost. I didn’t have a spreadsheet.

She had been, however, writing about it in her diary in the Pink Room of Pain and could probably pretty accurately come up with the number he wanted, or at least a ballpark. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. She was going to have to deal with the room. One of these days.

Sawyer: Listen. I have this idea. You’re in town for what, six more months?

She paused. Was this a bad time to tell him she’d found out this morning that she’d gotten the collections development job? There was nothing stopping her from moving back to Toronto and starting the job right now. She could come back on the weekends to deal with inn stuff.