The Stand-In(84)

“Could be the pioneer village near the underpass.” He gives me a doubtful look, since this could be a real place. “Kidding, the pioneer village is further north. We’re here.”

“The ferry terminal? We’re taking a ferry?” He lights up.

Sam is as excited to get on the ferry as I’ve ever seen him or any person. As predicted, hardly anyone is going over to the islands in this weather, and Sam relaxes a bit under his umbrella, holding it high to read the signs.

“Do we want Centre Island, Ward’s Island, or Hanlan’s Point?” he asks.

“Hanlan’s has the nudist beach.”

He wiggles his eyebrows at me. “I’m game if you are.”

“You’re wearing a face mask and a hat so low you look like the invisible man in disguise,” I say. “You expect me to believe you’d go to a nudist beach? Where the entire point is to be naked?”

“Well, I doubt they’d be looking at my face.”

Don’t look down. Don’t look down. I keep my eyes straight. “We’re going to Centre Island.”

The ferry arrives in a few minutes. Sam climbs the staircase to the upper level and leans over the side, breathing in deeply. “I love the smell of water,” he says.

“Ocean or lake?”

“Ocean but lake will do. I have properties on both.” He catches my glance. “Grossly overindulgent to have multiple homes?”

“You know it is.”

“They’re investments. I rent them out.”

“Slightly better.”

The ferry starts moving and Sam grins into the wind, his capitalist spirit silenced by the beauty of the view. Sam stands at the front of the ferry, watching the island as it approaches, then moves to the back. The city shrinks in the distance until it transforms into a graph, the CN Tower the western outlier to the normal distribution of downtown business towers. A few intrepid boaters are out, and one dude on a Jet Ski zooms by. I often forget that Toronto is a lake city and there are people who own things like kayaks and actively enjoy being on the water.

When we arrive, Sam’s content to let me play tour guide. Even though it’s been years since I’ve been to the islands and it’s rarely been while sober, I do a good job of getting us to the beach on the other side of the island. The rain has stopped but it’s deserted. We pull off our shoes and make our way across sand that’s been dappled by the raindrops, taking selfies and digging in our toes.

“Canada geese,” Sam says, pointing as if I can miss the flock ten meters away. “Pretty.”

“Don’t go near them,” I warn. “Geese are mean.”

He’s already approaching them and looks over his shoulder with scorn. “I can handle a goose, Gracie.”

I swipe the water off a picnic bench and sit down to enjoy the show. Sam is determined to get the perfect close-up of one of the geese, as if the zoom feature doesn’t exist for a reason, and he creeps closer. I pull out my phone and start the video to show Fangli later.

He’s already off-balance in a stealthy attempt to get to the goose without spooking it when it attacks, thrusting out its beak as if to give him a nip. Sam leaps back, phone flying off to the side. The goose hisses and advances on him and Sam—action star Sam Yao, hero of the silver screen Sam Yao—falls back on his butt and does some weird commando roll to get away from it.

I’m laughing too hard to film properly so I don’t capture Sam’s indignant expression when he pops back to his feet.

“It’s not funny.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Go ahead.” He dusts the wet sand off his knees.

“What?”

“Say it, Gracie. I know you want to.”

“I told you. I told you so.” I hop off the bench to find his phone, which I hand over.

“You did.” He opens his phone and we check the photo. Sam captured the goose in attack mode and the entire image is a wide-open hissing beak, slightly blurred, with open wings in the background.

That sends me into another laughing fit. Sam groans. “All that for nothing.”

“Nothing? That’s a classic goose shot. It’s gorgeous.”

“Like you.”

Does he mean that as a real compliment or a quick tease? I don’t want to say “thank you” if it’s the latter because that would be embarrassing. I decide to treat it like a joke. “I think the goose has better feathers.”

Sam reaches out to touch my hair, then realizes he’s covered with sand when a clod drops on my shoulder. “You’re much prettier than a goose, feathers or not,” he assures me as he rubs his hands on his thighs.

Is it still a joke? It’s safer to act as though it is. “High bar.”

I grab my shoes and keep going down the beach. Sam comes up from behind and almost hesitantly laces his fingers with mine, his hand wet from the rain and rough from the sand. I do my best to be casual but holding hands is almost more intimate than kissing. When I glance up, Sam smiles and kisses my temple.

Ugh, why is he like this? My heart can’t deal.

We walk like that for a bit, matching our steps to each other until the rain begins again and we let go to open our umbrellas as the wind picks up. I gasp as it catches my umbrella and promptly turns it inside out.