This Is What Happy Looks Like(80)

“You look nice,” he said, and she glanced down at her green sundress.

“It’s the same one I wore—”

“I know,” he said, interrupting her with a kiss on the cheek. He’d just shaved, and his skin was soft against hers. “It looks even nicer this time around.”

“Thanks,” she said, then waved at his shirt. “You look nice too.”

There was an awkward moment as they regarded each other. For all the hours they’d spent together, this was the first time they’d been on anything resembling a real date, and they were suddenly weighed down in the niceties, the things you say to people when you’re meeting them for dinner, as opposed to the things you say when you’re rescuing them from photographers or stealing lobster boats or just walking on a beach.

The door to the Lobster Pot swung open from the inside, and Joe appeared in the doorway. “You’re all set,” he said to Graham, then looked over their heads at the street, the people strolling by in the falling dusk. “Nobody for me to get rid of?”

Graham shrugged. “Guess not.”

“You must’ve scared them all away,” Joe said with barely concealed delight, then ushered them inside with a sweep of his arm.

Graham stepped in first, followed by Ellie, but they both paused just beside the coat rack that was shaped like a giant fishhook. Every single pair of eyes in the restaurant had snapped up at their entrance; forks were lowered and lobsters forgotten as they collectively stared at the pair by the door. Ellie’s first instinct was to duck behind the hostess stand, or to turn and walk back outside; after so much time spent worrying about this exact scenario, it was odd to stand here before a crowd of faces—some familiar, others not—and let herself be seen with Graham. But it was no longer a secret, this thing between them, and there was no longer a reason to hide.

Joe was motioning to their table, in the far corner, in an area he’d left otherwise open so that they’d have plenty of space to talk. But it wasn’t until Graham reached for her hand that she felt herself come unstuck, and she followed him to the back of the room, her eyes on the floor. At their table, Graham pulled out her chair and then sat down across from her, and Joe produced a matchbook from his pocket to light the candles, winking once at Ellie before leaving them on their own.

“So,” Graham said, leaning forward, and Ellie couldn’t help smiling.

“So.”

“You still holding up okay?”

Last night, as soon as the fireworks were finished, Ellie had walked over to where Graham was sitting. All around them, families were packing up their blankets and picking up their sleepy children. She sat down beside him in the grass, and the two of them had stayed there like that for a long time without speaking.

“You heard, right?” she’d asked eventually, and he nodded. “I guess everyone knows about us now.”

Beside her, a slow smile had bloomed across Graham’s face, and he crooked a finger into the darkness. “That guy?” he asked, pointing at a random man dragging a cooler across the lawn. He scanned the crowd for more. “And her?” he said, nodding at a pregnant woman before shifting his gaze to an elderly man with a cane. “And him?”

Ellie laughed. “Yes,” she said with mock exasperation. “Probably him too.”

Graham leaned toward her, so that their faces were only inches apart. “So that means we can do this now?” he asked, and then he kissed her, a kiss that seemed to go on forever.

She grinned as they finally broke apart. “I guess so.”

“That’s not such bad news then.”

“No, I guess not, when you put it that way.”

“As long as you’re okay,” he added, and she nodded.

“I am,” she said. “You?”

“I’m great,” he said. “Strange, isn’t it?”

She’d smiled. “Not a bit.”

Now he was leaning across the table, his face framed by the nautical map on the wall behind him, looking at her with concern.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Really. Though I still haven’t read any of the articles. I’m just operating under the assumption that every teen girl in the country probably wants to kill me. But it could have been a lot worse.”

“How’s that?”

“Your scandalous behavior managed to overshadow all the stuff about my dad,” she said, picking up her menu and smiling at him over the top of it. “Imagine that.”

“So that means your mom’s okay with everything?”

“She will be,” Ellie said. “We both will.”

Graham nodded. “I’m glad.”

“She took it better than expected. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would’ve guessed I’d be locked in my room tonight.”

He waved this away. “I’d have come to rescue you,” he told her. “I might not have a white horse, but I do have a very portly pig.”

“How romantic,” Ellie said, and Graham straightened his menu.

“So what’s good here?” he asked. “I didn’t end up staying for dinner last time. There was this girl I had to go find…”

“So this is kind of like take two?”

“No,” he said, suddenly serious. “This is definitely a first.”