The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry(31)

That spring, A.J. kisses Amelia just before she gets on the ferry back to Hyannis and says, “You can’t be based from an island. You have to travel too much for your job.”

She holds him at arm’s length and laughs at him. “I agree, but is that your way of asking me to move to Alice?”

“No, I’m . . . Well, I’m thinking of you,” A.J. says. “It wouldn’t be practical for you to move to Alice. That’s my point.”

“No, it wouldn’t be,” she says. She stencils a heart on his chest with a fluorescent pink nail.

“What hue is that?” A.J. asks.

“Rose-Colored Glasses.” The horn sounds, and Amelia boards the boat.

That spring, while waiting for a Greyhound bus, A.J. says to Amelia, “You couldn’t even get to Alice three months of the year.”

“It would have been easier for me to commute to Afghanistan,” she says. “I like how you bring this up at the bus station, by the way.”

“I try to put it out of my mind until the last minute.”

“That’s one strategy.”

“I take it you mean not a good one.” He grabs her hand. Her hands are large but shapely. A piano player’s hands. A sculptress. “You have the hands of an artist.”

Amelia rolls her eyes. “And the mind of a book sales rep.”

Her nails are painted a deep shade of purple. “What color this time?” he asks.

“Blues Traveler. While I’m thinking about it, would you mind if I painted Maya’s nails the next time I’m on Alice? She keeps asking me.”

That spring, Amelia takes Maya to the drugstore and lets her choose any polish color she likes. “How do you pick?” Maya says.

“Sometimes I ask myself how I’m feeling,” Amelia says. “Sometimes I ask myself how I’d like to be feeling.”

Maya studies the rows of glass bottles. She selects a red then puts it back. She takes iridescent silver off the shelf.

“Ooh, pretty. Here’s the best part. Each color has a name,” Amelia tells her. “Turn the bottle over.”

Maya does. “It’s a title like a book! Pearly Riser,” she reads. “What’s yours called?”

Amy has selected a pale blue. “Keeping Things Light.”

That weekend, Maya accompanies A.J. to the dock. She throws her arms around Amelia and tells her not to go. “I don’t want to,” Amelia says.

“Then why do you have to?” Maya asks.

“Because I don’t live here.”

“Why don’t you live here?”

“Because my job is somewhere else.”

“You could come work at the store.”

“I couldn’t. Your dad would probably kill me. Besides, I like my job.” She looks at A.J., who is making a great show of checking his phone. The horn sounds.

“Say good-bye to Amy,” A.J. says.

Amelia calls A.J. from the ferry, “I can’t move from Providence. You can’t move from Alice. The situation is pretty much irresolvable.”

“It is,” he agrees. “What color were you wearing today?”

“Keeping Things Light.”

“Is that significant?”

“No,” she says.

That spring, Amelia’s mother says, “It isn’t fair to you. You’re thirty-six years old, and you aren’t getting any younger. If you truly want to have a baby, you can’t waste any more time in impossible relationships, Amy.”

And Ismay says to A.J., “It isn’t fair to Maya to have this Amelia person be such a big part of your life if you aren’t really serious about her.”

And Daniel says to A.J., “You shouldn’t change your life for any woman.”

That June, the good weather makes A.J. and Amelia forget these and other objections. When Amelia comes to pitch the fall list, she stays for two weeks. She wears seersucker shorts and flip-flops adorned with daisies. “I probably won’t see you much this summer,” she says. “I’ll be traveling for work and then my mother’s coming to Providence in August.”

“I could come see you,” A.J. suggests.

“I really won’t be around,” Amelia says. “Except for August, and my mother is an acquired taste.”

A.J. puts sunscreen on her strong, soft back and decides he simply can’t be without her. He decides to contrive a reason for her to come to Alice.

The minute she’s back to Providence, A.J. calls her on Skype. “I’ve been thinking. We should have Leon Friedman come sign at the store in August while the summer people are still in town.”

“You hate the summer people,” Amelia says. She has heard A.J. rant on more than one occasion about the seasonal residents of Alice Island: the families who come into his store right after buying ice cream from Captain Boomer’s and let their toddlers run around touching everything, the theater festival people with their too-loud laughs, the reverse snowbirds who think going to the beach once a week suffices for personal hygiene.

“That isn’t true,” A.J. says. “I like to complain, but I sell them a fair number of books, too. Plus Nic used to say that, contrary to popular belief, the best time to have an author event was during August. The people are so bored by then, they’ll do anything for distraction, even go to an author reading.”