Page 11

Life in Riverwalk eases into a natural rhythm as June turns into July.

Nora spends less time in her home office and more time in town, not just visiting Dani for lunch but spending time with the others as well. She’d even say, tentatively, that she’s made more new friends.

More than ever, Nora tries to put her still-unfinished project and imminent move back to the city out of her mind in favour of just enjoying herself. She still has time. Kayla and Ash wanted her to rest and relax, after all.

Though when they next call her to give her the weeks’ worth of updates, their position seems to be reversing.

“When can we expect you back from your little holiday?” Ash asks once the pertinent information is done with. “What’s it been now, two months?”

“Nearly,” Nora says. She has them on speakerphone while she makes a cup of tea, and Ash’s voice is echoing around her kitchen.

“A big achievement for someone I’ve never seen take even a single sick day,” Kayla says. “Were we right?”

“Yes,” Nora concedes. Even their friendly gloating isn’t enough to bring her mood down—she’s meeting Dani for lunch later. “I needed this. And I’m going to stay a bit longer.”

The connection crackles.

“Really?” Kayla says.

Nora drums her fingers on the countertop as the kettle starts to boil.

“How long? A couple of weeks?”

“Until August.”

“August?” Ash says loudly. “You’re going to take another whole month?”

“Two, actually. I’m leaving August 28.”

“Christ, Eleanor,” Ash says after another long silence. “When we said take a break, we didn’t mean four months .”

“No, this is good. If she needs the time to recharge, she should take it,” Kayla cuts in. “But can you at least send us your report? Renée has been getting uppity about it.”

Nora freezes in mid-pour.

“It’s not really her place to make demands,” Nora says quickly. “I agreed to present it in quarter four.”

“Hold on. Is it not finished?”

“That’s not relevant.”

“It’s very relevant!”

“This is new. You never procrastinate,” Ash pipes in. “Ever. In fact, when I rather think you should be procrastinating a little, you work harder.”

“I’m not procrastinating,” Nora insists. “I’ve already booked the moving trucks.”

“And the report?”

“It’s going through some edits,” Nora says edgily.

Kayla’s voice takes over—Nora assumes the phone has been passed. “Such as?”

The report is in fact not undergoing edits so much as it’s completely stalled out. Nora has been less confident in it the longer she’s been in Riverwalk, and she’s more comfortable putting it aside until she can get a handle on what she actually wants to do. “I’m reassessing the methodology. You’ll find out when it’s finished.”

“Does it really need reassessing? Wasn’t this whole thing supposed to be a simple slam dunk?” Ash says, his voice going high-pitched in confusion. “To fund your eco-tech?”

“It was. It is ,” Nora corrects quickly. “I just want to make sure I’m doing it in a way that’s beneficial to everyone.”

“This doesn’t happen to have anything to do with that hot mechanic you didn’t sleep with, does it? Are you flinging after all?”

Nora rolls her eyes. She grabs her mug, settling in on the living room sectional and grabbing the latest in her pile of library books. “Leave Dani out of it, please. She’s given no indication that she’s interested in anything beyond friendship.”

“Yes, because you’ve historically been great at determining when you’re being flirted with,” Kayla says sarcastically. “It took Lydia putting her number into your phone under fuckbuddy for you to get the message.”

“Unfortunately Dani isn’t in my phone as anything,” Nora says thoughtlessly.

She winces into the stunned silence that follows.

“Do you not have her number?” Kayla asks, her crackly voice a mixture of disbelief and amusement. “Haven’t you two been hanging out, like, every day?”

“We usually run into each other in town. Or I call the shop.”

Kayla sighs heavily. “Eleanor Cromwell, your love life is a disaster of international proportions.”

While Kayla and Ash aren’t wrong about her tendency to overlook flirtation, if Dani harbors any attraction, she’s been perfectly platonic so far. It’s Nora who has been succumbing to embarrassing fantasies, and the last thing she wants is for her lack of self-control to ruin what’s turning out to be one of the most genuine friendships she’s ever had.

* * *

When one of her planned lunch days with Dani dawns with pouring rain, Nora is proud of her initiative in heading out early to pick up their food and bring it to the garage instead. The daily lunch special at the restaurant is turkey club sandwiches, and Nora grabs two side salads to accompany them—she’s discovered that when they don’t eat together Dani usually ends up eating hot pockets or protein shakes, and she’s endeavoured to introduce healthier foods to Dani’s diet.

Nora enters the shop through the office door in the back, as Dani has told her to do more than once by now. The rain is so loud against the roof and the large windows that Nora doesn’t hear voices until she’s almost reached the door to the garage.

Sarah’s voice is first, ringing out in exasperation.

“It’s clear that you’re crazy about her, that’s all I’m saying.”

Nora’s hand freezes on the doorknob. She hears Dani’s awkward laugh follow.

“Kinda an overstatement, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. She is your type.”

“And she’s totally off-limits, so it doesn’t matter,” Dani says firmly.

Nora’s heart sinks. Between everyone in Dani’s circle, only a few women could be considered completely off-limits. She shuffles through them like a Rolodex—Naomi is unlikely considering Sarah’s involvement in the conversation. Jenny is an unlikely candidate. Could it be Mila? Being married certainly makes her off-limits.

The weight of Nora’s belligerent, summer-long denial of just how much she wants something with Dani beyond friendship is coming to bear all at once now that it could be off the table.

It was stupid to think Dani might be interested in her in the first place.

“Has she specifically told you that?” Sarah challenges.

“She doesn’t have to.”

“Come on, I saw the way you were looking at her at the potluck. We all did, Casanova.”

“She’s stunning,” Dani says. Something about the way she says it, the low sureness of her tone, sends a wave of something hot through Nora, even if it tragically isn’t directed at her. “Of course I was looking at her. Everyone was!”

It’s all a little bit too much for Nora’s overheated brain. She takes a step backwards, but she can still hear their voices.

“Nobody looks at a girl the way you were without wanting to get down on one knee,” Sarah says before pausing and amending. “Or both knees. Whatever. Either way, you should get to it.”

Images of exactly what that would entail jump to Nora’s mind immediately. The wave of jealousy that follows is so strong that Nora almost drops the container with Dani’s lunch in it.

“Sarah!” Dani hisses, as if someone could be listening to them. Which, Nora realizes with an equal wave of guilt, is indeed the case. “You haven’t made a move with Naomi either.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“It just is!” Sarah grumbles. “Naomi and I have, like, twenty-five years of friendship at stake. What’s holding you back with Nora?”

Nora’s heart skips several beats.

The course of this conversation has been a roller coaster, from a crushing low up to a dizzying high; she might even have stopped breathing in her sudden eagerness to not miss a single word from Dani’s mouth.

It’s not Mila that Dani is interested in. It’s not Naomi. It’s Nora .

“What’s holding me back? Are you kidding?” Dani says. Her voice quiets. She suddenly sounds solemn in a way that she didn’t when Sarah was teasing her. Nora could hazard a guess at what Dani might bring up next—that Nora is emotionally unavailable, that she’s pretentious, that she’s not worth the effort of cracking the shell.

“Of course I’ve thought about it,” Dani says instead. “But she’s out of my league. She’s a beautiful, intelligent businesswoman with a billion university degrees, and she’s going back to that life soon. She’s amazing. I’m just some hick mechanic. Outside of the physical, what could I possibly offer her? Why would she ever give me a second look?”

Something shifts in Nora, a new light on the negative self-image she’s always clung to. It’s pried open by the fact that Dani thinks so highly of her, and, in fact, is under the impression that she has nothing to offer to Nora. In what world?

Nora shifts from foot to foot. Her mind is going a mile a minute, rapidly trying to re-calibrate to this new information. Dani thinks she’s beautiful. Stunning, even. Dani has commented on her looks before, but Nora’s always put it down to innate kindness. And Dani values her intelligence. Her personality. She’s saying it even when Nora isn’t present to hear it.

“Did you have your brain turned off during the hockey game?” Sarah sounds completely exasperated. “She looked like she wanted to vault over the barrier and climb you like a tree. And then she messed Shaun up for threatening you. She likes you, dumb-ass.”

Dani says nothing for a moment. Nora can hear something that sounds like a boot sliding across the shop floor, twisting against the concrete. One of Dani’s fidgets.

“You really think so?” Dani says quietly.

Sarah doesn’t reply. Over the rain, Nora can hear the tow truck pulling up outside. The engine cuts out, and Owen’s voice comes booming in to end the conversation.

Nora exhales slowly.

Dani likes her. Dani might be thinking about acting on it. And despite the fleeting nature of anything that could develop between them, despite how bad an idea it probably is to let their friendship advance into something more, if Dani asked, Nora’s first instinct would be to say yes.

She doesn’t have much time to think about the revelation. Footsteps are approaching the office hallway from the garage, and Nora quickly pretends that she’s just come in from outside as Sarah opens the door.

“Nora!” Sarah says, looking surprised but not unhappy as the door swings shut behind her. “What are you doing here? That Porsche crap out on you again?”

Nora chuckles, trying to sound as normal as possible when she’s only just avoided getting caught listening to Sarah telling Dani to make a move. “No, the car is fine. I just, um, I came to bring Dani lunch.”

Nora holds up the takeout containers. Sarah’s eyebrows raise, and her grin is far too smug for Nora’s liking.

“Right. Dani’s in the shop, but she’s due for her break, if you want to sit in the office with her.”

Dani seems just as happy to see Nora as she usually is, and their lunch is mostly unchanged from what Nora is used to, despite the conversation still echoing in her head. But once or twice Nora could swear that she catches Dani looking at her with an expression she’s never taken notice of before.

The hug Dani pulls her into when her break is over lasts just a little bit longer than normal.

* * *

In her thirty-one years of living, Nora has done many things that she didn’t want to do. She’s gone to schools she didn’t choose, studied business at her father’s request, and abandoned her fulfilling job to take over a company she never asked for. But thus far nothing has made her second-guess herself as much as Danielle Cooper.

Her attraction is almost painful. She can’t seem to keep herself away. She craves the discomfort it brings, soaks it up like nicotine every time Dani has a few spare moments to spend with her. But what Nora truly wants is less clear.

Dani belongs in Riverwalk in a way that’s fundamental to her being, and Nora has responsibilities to get back to at the end of August. They’re from two different worlds. The fact that they ever met at all is an anomaly. Nora is so rusty at maintaining even normal casual relationships that using that skill set again feels like relearning a language she’s forgotten—not to mention the fact that Dani is missing some key information about who Nora is and why she’s here. Dani was the one to suggest that nobody is entitled to that information unless she chooses to share it, but, even so, it’s been feeling increasingly disingenuous to keep it hidden.

Nora’s fascination with Dani doesn’t dim as the summer progresses. It only gets brighter, even when Dani asks her to do activities she’d never considered.

“You want me to watch you compete in a lawn mower race?”

Dani nods as if the request is completely ordinary. It’s one of Dani’s days off, and when Nora ran into her at the hardware store, Dani suggested that they hang out for the rest of the day.

“Yeah! This Saturday,” Dani says, shoving more ice cream into her face. “Owen thinks his rig is faster than mine. Gotta prove him wrong.”

Nora blinks a few times, still trying to come to terms with the concept. “His rig? You mean…his lawn mower?”

“Yeah!” Dani says matter-of-factly.

“Okay, I need to be completely sure we’re on the same page here,” Nora says, abandoning the spoon she’s stuck into her ice cream. “You want me to watch you drive a riding lawn mower at top speed down Main Street in the hopes that you beat Owen. Who is also on a lawn mower.”

“Yes. I don’t know why you’re having trouble with this.” Dani chases a stray ice cream drip down her wrist. Nora almost loses track of her argument while watching the progress of Dani’s tongue up to her hand, but she manages to shake it off.

“It’s the lawn mower of it all, I think.”

“It’s the best part of the duck race!”

The duck race is another concept Nora is having trouble with. Why people would gather in the hundreds to throw rubber ducks into the river and bet on which one will get past the finish line first is completely beyond her, but it seems to be one of the biggest events of the year.

Nora sighs, shaking her head but already resigned to her fate. “This town is so odd.”

* * *

The duck race is strangely less strange than Nora thought it would be. Nobody takes it too seriously—it’s a day of fun, where the ice cream shop gives out half-priced cones and serves specialty slushies to kids. Main Street shuts down for pedestrians, people sell trinkets from streetside tables, and a town full of adults gets excited over rubber duckies being dumped into the river.

The most excited of them all is Dani, who spends no less than eighteen minutes picking the perfect duck out of a pile of identical dollar-store toys with numbers painted on the back. When the dump truck bearing hundreds of rubber ducks empties into the water, Dani is practically vibrating, watching their slow progression under the bridge and down toward the finish line, where they’re caught in a big net. When Dani gets so excited about her duck winning tenth place—she chose number eighty-nine due to its slightly crooked, wonky eyes—Nora knows she made the right choice in attending.

Dani names the duck Mortimer. She puts it in a place of honour on her truck’s dash and promises to treat Nora to lunch with the hundred-dollar cash prize.

“I still don’t really understand the point of all this,” Nora says, looking around at the sheer number of people who turned out for the event.

“It’s an excuse to socialize,” Dani explains. She waves at a group of people Nora doesn’t recognize gathered by the river and gives Mila a fist bump as she passes by. “People like having something to look forward to. It brings us together as a community.”

It’s a deeper answer than Nora was expecting.

“And lawn mower races also bring the community together?” Nora is aiming for sarcasm, but Dani nods excitedly. She’s completely genuine, as per usual.

“Exactly!”

Said race starts just after four o’clock, when all the ducks have been fished out of the river and all the ice cream consumed. Everyone seems to know it’s coming—they line up on the sidewalks all along the main street, some people in the front rows even producing lawn chairs or pillows to sit on. Dani leaves Nora with Sarah while she disappears to get ready.

Sarah finds a spot near the makeshift finish line—a long piece of duct tape stretched across the road and affixed to two street lamps—and Nora shifts from foot to foot, wondering when Dani will appear.

Sarah seems to take her restlessness as boredom.

“It’s good of you to play along,” Sarah says, peering over the heads of the crowd in front of them. “You’re probably used to bigger excitement.”

Nora snorts. “The only excitement I ever had back home was when I got to leave the office before midnight. This is much more fun.”

Sarah’s brow knits. “You worked until midnight?”

“Usually later,” Nora says. Sarah’s concern is eerily reminiscent of Kayla and Ash. “And then got up before six to do it all again. I had a couch put in my office so that I could sleep there when I needed to.”

Sarah whistles, shaking her head. “Shit, Nora. What job could have been that important?”

“At the time it seemed life or death, but now…” Nora trails off. It’s always felt like if she didn’t do the work, if she didn’t dedicate every waking moment to her job, she’d be failing. Here, it all seems so silly. Unimportant. Unnecessary.

And soon she has to go back.

It’s the first time in weeks that Nora has thought about what going home truly means, exactly what she’ll be going back to. The shocked, slightly pitying look on Sarah’s face is a stark reminder.

Nora will be returning to sleeping in the office, working herself to the bone, and going to meeting after meeting, only to be talked down to by Renée and her army of condescending old men. She’ll be returning to present her suggestions for improvements to Bracken County, after which Riverwalk will be quite different from the town she’s come to like so much. It’s hard to ignore the truth now that she’s spent half a summer away from it all:

Nora hates her job.

“I guess try to enjoy the vacation while you can, right?” Sarah says.

Before Nora can reply, there’s a mechanical roar from down the road, and everyone turns to see the commotion.

Rolling down the pavement come six lawn mowers. But they almost aren’t recognizable as lawn mowers anymore—each is modified in some way, from exposed engines to tire blades to what looks like a makeshift flame-thrower on a back tailpipe. Dani is front and centre, standing up on a red-and-gold-painted lawn mower with lights illuminating the undercarriage and spinning tire rims.

DANI’S DEATH MACHINE is scrawled on the hood in spray paint.

Sarah laughs. “She’s such a goofball.”

Even though her mind is occupied with this newest inconvenient realization, Nora smiles, too, watching Dani wave at the crowd and rev her engine dramatically. Beside her, Owen is showing off the oversized monster tires on his machine.

“They always like to show off first. The race starts when the flare gun goes,” Sarah explains, and sure enough, the competitors quiet a few moments later when someone approaches the starting line with said flare gun in hand.

As soon as it goes off, there’s a noise so loud that Nora actually covers her ears. The mowers are making a commotion, but when Nora looks at the group, they’re moving at a snail’s pace.

“I thought they’d be faster,” Nora yells over the noise.

“We have a rule,” Sarah shouts back. “Nobody gets to mess with their engine too much. The fun of the race is everyone trying to win when the max speed is ten kilometres an hour.”

True to Sarah’s word, it is rather hilarious to watch. Everyone seems to be taking it completely seriously, their faces set in competitive determination, but when their full speed could be topped by an idle housecat, the entertainment of the whole thing is ratcheted up. They might as well be racing on noisy tricycles.

When Dani crosses the finish line mere seconds before Owen, she catches Nora’s eye and throws her a wink. Nora is embarrassed to admit how much such a tiny gesture coming from a woman in denim overalls astride a spray-painted lawn mower makes her heart flutter. The knowledge that Dani is attracted to her only makes it worse.

Through all of it—the hockey games, the overalls, the pool games, the pickup trucks, and the ridiculous, endearing enthusiasm of Dani’s personality—Nora’s attraction has grown, the flames only fanned even more by her new knowledge that Dani feels the same way.

The fact that she could easily make the first move is one that Nora ignores, no matter how tempting it is. It would only make things more complicated.

It’s better for both of them this way.