“What’s the deal with you and her?” Ellis points to Olivia walking up ahead of us with Beth and Jaz, and I smack his hand down.

“Shit. Stop.” Not that she’s going to see us behind her, but still.

“What?”

“Stop acting like you don’t know. That you didn’t set this whole thing up. You told me she wasn’t coming.” I stop and turn toward him. “Tell me you don’t know.”

“Okay.” Ellis shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“God, you’re obnoxious sometimes.” Ellis has been this way since we were kids; getting into my business, trying to fix things to the way he sees them. And for some reason the way he sees things is me and Olivia. Together. There’s no other reason that the two of us are constantly scheduled for the same days, and always at the docks together. The only others paired up so consistently are Beth and Jaz, and they flat-out beg Ellis to put them together.

“I know you weren’t sick and I had to work on my day off,” Ellis says. “I know you’re avoiding her. And I know you’ve got a real stick up your ass about something.”

I grunt.

“And you’re pissy. Like when you were a kid and didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas.” He kicks a stick that’s in his path. “It’s like—”

“Don’t even say it.”

“It’s like that year you wanted that ugly green baseball mitt, but your dad got you the navy one instead.”

“I wasn’t pissy.”

“Please. You were the most passive-aggressive ten-year-old ever.”

“I screwed up,” I say, hoping he knows I’m not talking about the mitt, so I don’t have to say it.

“You can’t avoid her all summer. It’s been hard enough keeping you apart for a few days. The Depot isn’t exactly Disney World, I can’t keep you on opposite ends of the park.”

“It’ll blow over,” I say, and I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.

“I hope so. Because if I have to choose between you and her—” His voice is teasing.

I laugh. “Understood.”

OLIVIA

It turns out Beth is building a tiny house with her dad in her free time. She pulls the pictures up on her phone and starts sliding through them as we walk.

“The stairs are going to have little cubbies under them,” she says as she shows me a photo of the hollow stairs that ascend into the loft over what will eventually be the kitchen. The more I work with Beth, the more I can see her living in some tiny house built on a trailer, with a weird little toilet that doesn’t flush and a special window where she grows her own lettuce. It totally fits the I-could-be-happy-anywhere aesthetic she has going on.