He burst out laughing. “Really? That’s all you’ve got for me?” Heat rose in my cheeks. He didn’t let me gain my composure before continuing. “How about you tell me about yourself?” His teasing smile lit up his face, and he waited for me to answer.

“I’m pretty boring,” I said, flipping through my notebook like I was searching for something important, so I didn’t have to look at him.

“I see that you’re married,” he commented, noticing the ring on my finger. It was hard not to. Scott had outdone himself on our tenth anniversary. We’d been so poor when he proposed that he’d only been able to get me a plain silver band. It’d never bothered me—still didn’t—but it’d always bothered him, so he’d bought me the ring he’d wanted to back then. I nodded, still pretending to be buried deep in my notes. “How long?”

For a second, I considered lying to avoid the inevitable response, but I’d promised Scott a few years back that I’d stop lying about how long we’d been together. I’d only done it to avoid the comments about it, but Scott had flipped out when he’d overheard me, and we’d gotten into one of our biggest fights. He’d taken it way more personally than it had been—saying it hurt that I was embarrassed about our relationship. He was proud to have been together since we were teenagers and saw it as the most special thing about us. He hadn’t said it that way at first. Initially, he’d thrown his immature, fourteen-year-old-boy tantrum by swearing and stomping around the house while he had yelled in my face about how coldhearted I could be. It had only been after a two-hour conversation that he had come around to talking about what was really bothering him.

“We’ve been married for seventeen years,” I had said, bracing myself for whatever he’d have to say about it. Over the years I’d heard it all. There were people who thought it was the sweetest thing ever and others who asked if we’d been with anyone else, like people freely discussed their sexual history with strangers. Occasionally, I’d run across someone who thought it was gross after they’d found out that we used to have sleepovers together when we were kids.

“What’s that been like for you?” Ray asked.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, pulling my skirt down. “It’s been wonderful. Really wonderful. I feel blessed to have met my soul mate and best friend when I was nine.”

He burst out laughing again.

“What?” I shrank back in my seat.

“I’m sorry, but you just sounded like a Hallmark card commercial. I couldn’t help myself.” His eyes danced with humor.

I couldn’t help the smile from forming on my lips. “It is pretty cheesy,” I said.

He gazed at me from across the desk, even though it was his turn to speak. It didn’t take more than a few beats for me to realize he was content to sit in silence staring at each other. Not me. I looked out the window behind him, trying to focus. I had to control the interview. I couldn’t let him walk away with it. “Why Arcata?”