We finished our dinner and went Dutch on the check, at my insistence.

"I'm buying your drinks at the next place, though." Andy cast me a sidelong smile as we left the restaurant. "Speaking of which—where to?"

The night was crisp and clear, with the slight, salty scent of the Boston Harbor on the breeze. "There's a pub nearby that I like," I said, bouncing on my heels to stay warm.

"Lead the way."

We walked down a narrow side street to the small Irish pub where I sometimes had a low-key pint and looked through my notes after work. But inside, the crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder, with people roaring with laughter and shouting over both the Red Sox game and the blare of rock music.

"It's not usually so crowded," I said to Andy, then had to say it again to be heard over the crowd. "Sorry, I should have—"

A cluster of girls wearing sparkling mini-dresses in complete defiance of the cool Spring weather crammed in the door after us, pushing us deeper into the pub. Andy ended up so close to me that we were practically touching. For once, he didn't jerk away. He leaned in and spoke in my ear, just loudly enough for me to hear him. "Don't apologize. You don't need to apologize for anything. Seriously. I'm so happy to be here."

I swallowed and tried to nod, but he was so close to me, it was incredibly distracting. I felt immersed in his clean, perfect scent, mixed with the sweet florals of the IPA he'd had at dinner.

A second group of people crushed into the bar—this time, a group of guys in Sox jerseys and ball caps. We moved even further away from the door, until my back was almost touching the wall. Andy's forearm brushed mine again—the lightest, most electrifying contact.

The guys in jerseys shoved through the crowd towards the bar, zeroing in on the pretty girls in minidresses while I watched in chagrin. "I didn't realize this place turned into a meat market."

Andy glanced up at the radio speaker that was now directly above my head and leaned in a little closer, his upper arm bumping my shoulder. "It turns into what?"

My cheekbone grazed his jaw, and my heart seized; I gave an involuntary little gasp. "Meat market," I choked out, my skin burning. If Vi could see me right now, she'd die of vicarious embarrassment. Even Genevieve from work would tell me I had no game.

Andy's gaze flicked towards the group of guys in jerseys. "So that's not why you come here, usually?" He gave a wry little smile. "They're not your type?"

"Those guys? Are you kidding?"

He shrugged. "How would I know?"

I was drowning in his scent now, his closeness, and I didn't want it to end. The truth was Andy and I had kissed once, years ago, when I was still in college. I'd come back up to the island for Vi's New Year's Eve party, and Andy and I had just happened to be standing next to each other while we were all watching the ball drop on television. When the clock had struck midnight, everyone had cheered and hugged and some people had kissed, and Andy had swept me up somehow, and pressed a swift, crushing kiss to my lips, taking my breath away. Just as quickly, he'd let me go, with a quick, embarrassed smile and a wink.

I had thought about that kiss a lot over the years.

"I guess you like smart guys, right? Like Dalton?" His tone was casual, his smile still in place.

"I guess," I said helplessly. "But Dalton wasn't actually that smart. He was kind of an ass." I'd let my relationship with Dalton go on way too long after college, long-distance, with him in Portland and me back at home on the island. I'd ended things with him after I'd tried to surprise him with a visit one weekend and caught him in flagrante with another woman. "He was a complete ass, in fact," I added, and Andy gave a soft, surprised laugh. For a moment, he looked at me as if he were trying to solve a puzzle. Then he leaned in close again.

"What do you want?" His voice was low and husky.

"What?" I shivered.

"To drink. I'll grab it for you."

"Oh." Right. Of course. "A stout, please. Thank you."

He nodded and slipped carefully through the crowd to the bar, ignoring all of the girls in mini-dresses and instead making small talk with the bartender.

By the time he came back, the music had somehow gotten even louder. Conversation was impossible, leaving us standing awkwardly next to each other, looking at each other, then looking away. I couldn't concentrate on the baseball game, but the only alternative was to watch the people flirting with each other all around us. One of the girls at the bar laid her hand on a man's arm, leaning in and laughing. Another tossed her hair, like a show horse.

Overwhelmed, I drained my stout. "Want to go somewhere else?" I shouted over the chaos, and after a few more tries, he got the gist and nodded agreement. We left our empty pint glasses on an abandoned high top and worked our way to the door. It closed behind us, swallowing the sounds of pub, leaving me with my ears ringing on the quiet side street.

I giggled suddenly, surprising myself, and pressed a hand to my cheek. "That place was unbearable. Good grief. I had no idea it would be so ridiculous."

Andy grinned. "How would you even introduce yourself to someone in there? Charades?"

"Maybe some people do better if they don't actually have to talk."

He laughed. "Bet you're right."

I imitated the girl who'd tossed her hair—although, even if I'd known how to move like that, my pixie cut wasn't going anywhere. "I'm super single!" I said, as if I were her. "My body is yours."

Andy laughed again. He stepped closer to me on the sidewalk, backing me up against an empty bike rack, and braced one hand on the metal behind me. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "How's this? Effective at all?"

Adrenaline hummed under my skin. "That's pretty effective." I tried to keep the thread of the joke. "But I think you could do better." He could kiss me, for example. Not that he would.

"Yeah? Any advice for poor, incompetent me?"

"You're hardly incompetent." He'd had plenty of girlfriends over the years. Sporty girls who were always a little wrapped up in themselves and their next adventure tourism vacation to Thailand, and were never as nice to him as we all would have liked.

"Nice of you to say," he said, and winked. We were almost touching again, even though we had the sidewalk to ourselves. He wanted to be next to me, because he was joking around or because he was—flirting? Andy was always affectionate, but he didn't really flirt. Not unless he actually liked someone, and that—

"How's about this?" he asked softly, lightly brushing his fingertips across the shoulder of my sweater, lingering at the top of my collarbone. "More effective?"

Very effective—unbearably effective. I looked up into his dark eyes, my pulse pounding.

Suddenly, a police car screamed down the street, blasting by us with its sirens blaring and its lights flashing. A second police car followed, its lights and sirens hammering straight through my skull. We sprang apart, turning towards the street, but they vanished around the next corner just as quickly.

In the ensuing silence, Andy took a big step away from me, raking his hands through his hair.

"City life," I said awkwardly. "Got to love it, right?"

He didn't answer, just sighed.

I frowned across the street, hugging my arms to my chest, disappointed and out of sorts. For the first time, I noticed the group of college students sitting in a stairwell of a different bar and smoking cigarettes. They were smirking at us. One of them caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up.

"We should go somewhere else," I said to Andy, blushing.

"How about just...a walk?"

"Sure." A walk sounded good to me, too. I needed a moment to collect myself.

Andy fell into step beside me and we headed back towards the Commons in silence. Eventually, I brought him to the Brewer Fountain, a two-tiered bronze fountain featuring mythological gods, goddesses, and cherubs. A handful of spotlights illuminated curves in the bronze and ripples in the water, with the dark, wooded park as a backdrop.

I plunked down onto a bench in front of the fountain. "I come here to take photos a lot."

"I'd like to see those," Andy said, joining me on the bench.

I glanced at him. "Yeah?"

When he smiled, I reached for my bag and pulled my camera free. I scrolled through a set of skyline photos until I got to the ones I'd taken here a few nights ago. The set was a mix of color and black and white. Some looked a lot like the view in front of us, but others were focused on the reflections of the light on the water, or the spray of individual drops, or one small swell in the bronze.

I handed him my camera, and he looked through them, his brow furrowed. "You're so talented, Kaye," he said quietly, lingering on a photo of water droplets.

"I'm not, really."

"You are. It makes complete sense you're a photojournalist now."

My mouth twisted. "Does it?"

Andy lowered my camera and glanced at me. "Doesn't it?"

I shrugged. "Don't you think a proper a journalist would've..."

"What?"

All the memories of this time last year came rushing back: the fire at the Lodge; Miranda's bold, crazy confrontation with James Emory; the bomb. I shook my head.

"I was clueless," I said. "About Owen, about Scott. Everything."

"How were you supposed to know? I was clueless, too. We all were."

"You weren't, really, though. Not about Owen. You'd always known he was innocent."

"I had believed he was—but I didn't know any more about what had happened than anyone else did."

"But that's just it... You're a better judge of character than I am. Aren't journalists supposed to be good at figuring out who's telling the truth or not? What kind of journalist suspects an innocent man for years?"

"It wasn't about being a good or a bad judge of character, though. All of this... You and I were too close to it to see it objectively. Owen and I were friends. That was why I believed him. But you had never hung around with Owen very much. You and Suze had been really close. The three of you—you and Suze and Violet."

In high school, Suze and Violet had been the popular girls who'd deigned to be friends with my dorky, gangly teenaged self. Suze in particular had loved my photos; when I'd been on the cusp of giving photography up completely, she'd given me the confidence to keep going.

"I still miss her," I confessed. "Sometimes when I'm writing up a story and I'm terrified that it sucks, I still hear her saying, 'for fuck's sake, Kaye, when are you going to realize you're fucking talented?'"

Andy laughed. "She had a way with words."

"She did." I wiped a tear from my cheek.

"Is that what you need to hear right now?" He bumped his knee lightly against mine. "You know it's okay not to be perfect, right? And you're pretty darn close to perfect, anyway."

"Andy," I protested, but I couldn't help smiling.

A few seconds passed. He looked out in the dark Commons, his expression turning pensive.

"I do understand, though," he said eventually. "I feel really guilty about Scott. I feel like I should've known. Like I should've helped Scott, or at least warned Owen. Done something."

Scott had no real family, no friends other than us; we had always known he'd needed Andy to be his best friend and something like a parent, too. But Scott had been too far gone for anyone, even Andy, to truly help him.

"I feel really guilty about it, too," I said quietly.

Andy took my hand and let our joined hands rest on his knee. "Probably neither of us should feel guilty about it, though, right? How should we have known that, either? That he was capable of that kind of stuff?"

I squeezed his fingers. "I guess we feel how we feel?"

His gaze lingered on my face. The corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Guess you're right."

*****

Thank you so much for reading! What did you guys think of this scene? Btw, the Brewer Fountain is real and actually is located in the Boston Commons! The pub is fictional but based on a mishmash of several real pubs that are all quite ridiculous. :-)

xoxo,

London