Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(31)

“Lots of things,” I said vaguely. I bit into the bun, which all but dissolved on my tongue.

“Not bad, right?” he said.

I nodded and washed my mouthful down with a swig of coffee, which was every bit as strong as Shiloh had warned. “So you’ve been here”—he counted on his fingers—“four days now? Have you had Isla’s conch fritters yet?”

“What’s a conch fritter?” I asked.

“Oh, my. You’ve never had a conch fritter? We’ll have to fix that. Do you have plans tonight?”

I eyed him suspiciously. “Maybe. Why would you want to go to dinner with me?”

He cocked his head. “As you keep pointing out, I almost killed you. It’s the least I can do, don’t you think?”

Sure, since you know I have cancer. “Okay,” I agreed, but only because I had nothing else to do. (That was my story and I was sticking to it.) “You know where I live.”

He winked. “That I do.” He pulled his sunglasses out of his front pocket, grabbed the bun from the plate, and took one of the coffees. “See you tonight, Libby.”

I watched him saunter away. He had broad shoulders and a high, firm ass. I had an uncanny capacity for catastrophe and a history of choosing the worst possible partners, both real and imagined.

It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized we hadn’t agreed on a time and I had no way to contact him. In fact, I didn’t even know his last name, and frankly, I was in no position to attempt to act like a normal human for a sustained period of time.

This was a very bad idea.



Just after seven, I heard tires rumble in the gravel outside the beach house. After one last glance in the mirror, I swung the door open and found Shiloh standing there.

“Hello,” he said lightly. He had on the same shorts from earlier, but had swapped his T-shirt for a crisp butter-colored button-down. I was wearing a sundress, which I felt stupid about, as it seemed very date-like and this was not a date.

“Hello,” I said as I locked the door behind me. “Do you want to drive or should I?”

“Why don’t I, since I know where it is?”

“That’s fine,” I said, standing stiffly in front of his Jeep. The easy-if-barbed banter of our café conversation was long gone, and I lamely tried to think of appropriate ways to interact with him, which made me even more uncomfortable.

He opened the passenger door and offered me his arm, which I accepted, but not before adding, “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know,” Shiloh said, giving me a curious look as he closed the door behind me.

“So, Chicago,” he said as we backed out of the drive. “I haven’t been there since I was in my twenties. Is it still cold?”

“Like the Arctic.”

He laughed as though this was actually funny, and I decided I was right about the cancer pity. I’d have to put an end to that. “How’d you end up there?” he asked.

I tugged a curl, then sat on my hands so I would stop fidgeting. “Um . . . honestly? My ex. His best friend was already in Chicago, and he thought it would be a good place to launch his career.”

“And you?” he asked. “What did you think?”

I wanted to be with Tom wherever he was. But there was no way I was going to admit this. “I thought I would like it. And I did, until a few weeks ago.” I was grateful when he didn’t ask me to elaborate.

We pulled up at a restaurant tucked into the hillside, right off the side of the road. The banisters and awnings were strung with holiday twinkle lights, and as we entered, I saw that most of the tables were in an open-air courtyard.

“Hermano, how’s it going?” the bartender called to Shiloh.

“Bien, Ricky, bien,” he said, and started rambling in Spanish. At which point he stopped being the guy who almost killed me and started being the one I wanted as my main course. Yes, I’d heard his romance-language routine at the café, but this was different. He was having a full-blown conversation, and it shifted his whole demeanor. His hands flew around. His laughter deepened. He oozed confidence and, you know. Sex.

“Sorry about that, Libby,” he said as the hostess seated us at one of the booths in the open-air courtyard. “He’s chatty.”

“And you’re very fluent in Spanish,” I said, a bit accusatorially. It wasn’t that his being bilingual was such a surprise. It’s just that his English lacked the lilt I’d grown accustomed to since landing in Puerto Rico, so I had assumed he was from somewhere else. “You’re Puerto Rican?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My mom’s a Nuyorican—her parents were from here—but my dad was born and raised in Fajardo.”

“And were you raised here?”

“My parents split, so I was shuffled around way more than most kids like to be.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Hey, what can you do? Anyway, that was ages ago for this old man.” He smiled, and as I instinctively smiled back, a sharp zing shot through my hinterlands. I glanced away, acutely aware of the inappropriateness of the tingles I was feeling. My already pathetic judgment (see Ty, et al.) had undoubtedly been further weakened by the week’s events. What’s more, Shiloh knew I was going to die soon, so any relations between us would be laden with sympathy—or worse, the understanding that I would be an easy and extremely short-term lay.