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Nora is roused the next morning not by the smell of coffee or the sun on her face but by the rustle of Dani getting dressed at—Nora squints blearily at her phone, lit up on the bedside table—five thirty in the goddamn morning.

“Hey,” Dani whispers, seeing Nora’s movement and sitting down next to her on the bed. “I have to work today. I tried not to wake you.”

“Come back to bed,” Nora grumbles into her pillow, burying her face in the soft fabric. Three months ago she wouldn’t have been caught dead sleeping in, especially not on a Monday, but she’s currently tired and a bit worked up from the combination of last night’s memories and a pleasant dream she was having. She tugs at Dani’s arm until she falls onto the mattress.

“As much as I wish I could, I think Sarah would genuinely kill me if I didn’t show up because I was too busy getting laid,” Dani says, chuckling.

After a few last indulgent minutes of morning kisses, Nora follows Dani downstairs to show her out, and she takes note for the first time this weekend of the state of her house.

The couch cushions are in disarray, probably from her attempt to straddle Dani’s face last night, which had ended with her on the floor and Dani screaming with laughter until they relocated to bed. Two days’ worth of clothes are scattered across the living room and kitchen. The remains of last night’s dinner are still all over the countertop—she had cut up some cheese and bread, which they ate mostly naked before using the surface for other activities.

Most noticeably, the evidence of the drastic change in their relationship is painted across their bodies. Hickeys and bruises, bite marks and smudges of lipstick tracked over Dani’s skin. Nora knows she needs to shower and clean the house, but something in her is also enjoying having such a tangible reminder.

Dani is heading to her truck and Nora is about to close the door behind her to get started on her morning when she has a stark realization.

“Dani?” Nora calls out. She hesitates, twisting the fabric of her robe in her fingers. It seems ridiculous now, given how much time they’ve spent together. They’ve spent the bulk of the last two days naked, for God’s sake, but after all this time, she still hasn’t asked. “Could I have your phone number?”

And just like that, they’re seeing each other. Casually.

It’s not much different than before, if Nora is being honest. She still meets Dani for lunch, still hangs out with everyone at the bar, and still goes to town events—only now she also has Dani in her bed several nights a week, and her new acquisition of Dani’s phone number means that there’s also texting involved. Very detailed, very private texting.

Any trepidation Nora still feels about taking this huge step is erased the first time Dani texts:

I can’t stop thinking about you.

Oh? Nora texts back, smiling and taking a sip of the wine she’s just poured. Do tell. She’s given up on work for the day, and it’s just about the perfect time for such a distraction.

When Dani replies with Thinking about how you’d look riding my strap , Nora chokes so hard that she ends up with a burgundy spray-radius all over her white living room rug.

They have a lot to try together, Nora realizes as she clears her airway and formulates a response, and so little time to do it in. But if she’s leaving in a month and a half, she’s damn well going to take advantage of having Dani now.

After a few minutes of thinking, Nora finishes typing and hits send, grinning down at a text that she thinks might actually throw Dani off her game.

You really think you have one big enough for me?

Dani’s phone screen has a huge spiderweb crack in it the next time Nora sees her. When Nora presses her on how it happened, Dani only blushes and mutters something about slippery hands and the concrete shop floor.

* * *

At the very least, the fact that Nora now sees Dani naked almost every day means that she’s not struck completely dumb the first time she sees her in a bathing suit.

The occasion is a day at the river, arranged for Ryan’s birthday. The end of July is approaching, and the heat makes it clear that August is on the horizon—it’s hot and sunny, but it’s also unbearably humid, and the stickiness of the air is enough to convince Nora to actually get into the water every so often rather than simply lounge on the grass under an umbrella.

Even so, she can only spend so long getting splashed. She ends up back on the beach with Mila and Sarah, sitting on a plastic lounge chair placed just where the short, pebbly beach meets the grass, and watching the impromptu volleyball game from afar. She tries not to follow Dani’s every move too obviously, but Sarah is already looking at her with suspicion.

It’s not that she and Dani are keeping anything intentionally secret, but since they aren’t exactly dating, there isn’t any kind of announcement to be made. So Nora says nothing. She relaxes a little, snacks on Mila’s homemade trail mix, and watches Dani enjoy herself in the water.

“You know, you’ve been in town a while,” Sarah says, drawing Nora’s attention briefly away from Dani. “I was expecting a city girl like you to be outta here by now. How long do you plan on staying?”

“End of August,” Nora says, her eyes flickering back to the river when she hears a massive splash . Dani has picked Ryan up and tossed him into the deeper water, and her trademark laugh makes Nora smile.

“Hm,” Sarah says. Her mouth has formed a thin line, and Nora’s attention is diverted from Dani for a moment.

“What?”

“We don’t get a ton of vacationers up here anymore,” Sarah says, still looking thoughtful. “And the ones we do get don’t integrate themselves into the community like you have. They buy their groceries, come to the restaurant sometimes, and go back to their big cottages. Usually we like it that way.”

Nora swallows her mouthful of trail mix, but Sarah’s words bring with them a sick feeling that steals away any hunger she might have had.

Kayla and Ash’s calls have become more infrequent in the last few weeks, and even though she’s barely opened her laptop since June, Nora has been trying to focus instead on enjoying herself while she can rather than working on her project. Getting involved in the community, getting to know everyone, has been an unexpected byproduct of getting to know Dani. Yet another reminder that Nora has been concealing her identity from everyone, Dani included, is unwelcome, especially now that their relationship has become more complicated.

It’s getting harder to compartmentalize her vacation from her actual purpose here.

“I haven’t been imposing myself too much on you, have I?” Nora asks, trying not to let her unease show on her face.

Sarah’s thoughtfulness turns into a soft smile.

“No, don’t worry. We like you. You didn’t come in here trying to make us into what you want,” Sarah says, blithely unaware of the way it makes Nora’s heart sink. “Didn’t make demands. Most people who come through from down south just want to suggest all the ways we can change to make the town better . With you, we can be ourselves, and you don’t act like an asshole about it.”

“I’m…glad you feel that way,” Nora says.

In her mind is the presentation she started weeks ago, full of alterations to make Riverwalk better : the land purchases she suggested; the resort; the luxury houses.

What does better mean, exactly?

“You sure you want to go back down to the city so soon?” Sarah asks, tossing a cashew into the air and missing her mouth completely. It lands on her chest, and Sarah frowns down at it as Mila laughs at her failure.

Nora swallows past her dry mouth. “I have responsibilities there.”

“That doesn’t really answer the question.”

When Nora’s bag of trail mix disappears from her hand, she’s too distracted by Sarah’s bluntness until it’s too late to notice that her snack has been pilfered by a seagull. The bird is making off with the Ziploc bag in its beak, squawking all the way.

Dani wades onto the shore from the river, picking up a nearby stick and throwing it at the retreating bird. It misses by a wide berth, but Nora appreciates the effort.

“Stupid shit-hawk,” Dani yells after it, cupping her hands for volume, but the seagull pays no mind. Dani’s presence soothes some of the anxiety sparked by Sarah’s questioning, but it still hovers on the edges of her mind.

“Shit-hawk,” Nora says as Dani flops onto a damp towel next to her. “Never heard that one before.”

“It’s true, though. They do nothing but crap and steal,” Dani mutters. She opens a can of pop and takes a few hearty gulps, and Nora watches her throat bob for a few seconds before she considers getting a drink of her own to cure her sudden thirst.

As the day marches on, Nora becomes aware of a bigger problem than her own guilt: She needs to use the washroom, and the path to the little town building housing the public restrooms and a single vending machine is being guarded by the biggest Canada goose she’s ever seen. Nora tries to put off the inevitable, but eventually it becomes a necessity.

She’s had just about enough of birds, today.

The seagull incident has left Nora nervous. She tries to act nonchalant as she slips into her sandals, but the goose seems to sense her hesitation—it pauses in its slow pacing over the grass when she approaches. As if it can smell her fear, it starts to hiss.

Nora considers calling for Dani, but yelling for someone to come save her from a stupid bird seems ridiculous. Cowardly. Instead Nora gathers her courage, and she steps forward.

The moment she does, the goose lets out an absolutely hell-rending honk, puffs up its wings, and charges straight at her.

Nora manages not to scream, but a massive, hissing demon bird is running at her at full speed, flapping its gargoyle wings. There’s not much she can do besides let out an undignified squeak, drop her bag, and run.

She sprints not back toward the group at the beach but instead to the left, ducking around a thick tree trunk and hoping that she can avoid being bitten. The goose is persistent, giving chase even when Nora has gone out of sight, and Nora is just wondering if it’s illegal to kick the country’s national bird like an avian football when it lets out a disgruntled squawk from behind the tree.

Nora peeks around it, breathing heavily, to see that the disruption is Dani. She’s holding a wet beach towel like a whip.

“Square up, big fella!” Dani yells, spinning the towel and then snapping it at Nora’s feathery nemesis. She doesn’t even flinch when it hisses again. “Get outta here!”

The goose stands up to Dani for a moment—it charges with its wings akimbo, snapping at her calves and leaving a red mark near her ankle—but Dani shouts and snaps the towel again, and the bird seems to concede. With a final angry honk, it takes flight and disappears over the hill toward the boat launch.

Dani turns around, throwing the towel over her shoulder and saluting in Nora’s direction. “Need an escort?”

Nora laughs. She takes Dani’s offered arm, all previous stress forgotten. “My knight in shining towel.”

“You should see what I can do with a slingshot.”

* * *

As the summer rolls on, Nora’s new lifestyle makes something obvious that Nora hadn’t realized before.

Nora was lonely before this, and not fleetingly so. She’s been deeply, intensely lonely for most of her life, in a way that she couldn’t detect until she started spending so much quality time with someone. Multiple someones, actually, now that Dani insists on inviting Nora to game nights and dinners with her friends and family.

She’s had Kayla and Ash, but Nora has always held even them at arm’s length. She’s been quietly pushing them away ever since she took over at CromTech. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but the effect is the same. She’s had more genuine and enjoyable conversations with her best friends now that she lives several hours away than she ever did when they worked in the same building.

In Riverwalk, Nora can stay up late—not to finish paperwork or run conference calls to different time zones but to stargaze or go to karaoke night or even just to watch movies on her couch until she falls asleep with her head in Dani’s lap. It’s so easy to lose herself in the rhythm of Riverwalk, even if she can always hear the clock ticking down.

In fact, Nora gets so lost in the new facet of her relationship with Dani that she entirely forgets to update Kayla and Ash about it. When her phone rings with a FaceTime request for the first time since they started seeing each other, Nora has a moment of full-blown panic after she instinctively hits the talk button.

“Hey, stranger,” Kayla says, a hint of reproach in her voice as her face comes into pixelated view.

“We thought maybe you’d been carried off into the woods and murdered,” Ash quips.

Seeing their faces brings a warm, familiar feeling. It looks like Kayla got new glasses, and Ash’s beard is a bit longer than Nora remembers. They’re calling from Nora’s office, which looks unchanged.

Nora doesn’t miss it at all. She misses her friends, sure, but she doesn’t have the desire to pack up and go home that she thought she would at this point in the summer.

Perhaps the messy sheets and the remnants of last night’s activities scattered around her bedroom have something to do with that.

“I’m sorry,” Nora says, only half meaning it. “I’ve been…busy.”

“Doing what?” Ash asks incredulously. “Communing with squirrels? Learning how to fly-fish?”

“There’s plenty to do here,” Nora says, annoyingly aware of how much she sounds like Dani.

Having her face visible while she says it is a mistake. Nora knows it from the second Kayla’s eyes narrow. Kayla has a razor-sharp mind—it’s why she’s so good at her job, after all. Nora can seldom hide anything from her.

Kayla’s next words fly like an arrow through Nora’s already precarious poker face, and she knows she’s sunk.

“Oh, is there? Like, maybe, the hot mechanic?”

Nora tries to stop the blush. Truly, she does. But she sees the traitorous redness creep up her own neck and onto her face in the tiny corner of her phone screen, and Ash and Kayla’s eyes widen comically in unison.

“Holy shit!” Ash crows, disappearing briefly off-camera as he rocks back, laughing. “Oh, please tell me she’s right.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Nora says, the urge to hang up and salvage what’s left of her dignity getting ever stronger.

Kayla is laughing, too; the camera is shaking with it. “Don’t you dare deprive me of the juicy details, Cromwell. We want to know everything.”

Nora sighs. “There are some things I’d really rather keep private.”

Nora actually flinches at the volume of the cheer they let out.

“Eleanor’s getting laid!” Ash shouts, ever the gentleman. Kayla is much more reserved, but her smile is genuine.

“Shhh!” Nora hisses, but she’s unable to keep herself from smiling back. “You’re in the office building I need to return to soon, so I’d appreciate you didn’t scream about my sex life where all of my employees can hear.”

Kayla is decent enough to quiet down, although her troublemaking grin doesn’t budge. Ash, however, seems to have taken stop yelling to mean start singing . He starts parading around the office, chanting while Kayla talks more reasonably. “See, I knew you could do it. All you had to do was—”

“ Eleanor’s getting la-id, Eleanor’s getting la-id —”

“Put away that stupid propriety of yours for five seconds, and—”

“ Eleanor’s getting LA-ID—”

“Okay!” Nora finally says, laughing hard despite herself. “You were right; this was exactly what I needed, and I’ll allow you fifteen seconds more of proper gloating about it.” She knows they won’t listen to that time limit, but she should at least try.

“When do we get to meet her?” Ash asks when he’s finished with his song. Nora barks out an incredulous laugh.

“Hopefully never, if you’re going to act like children.”

“I’m just excited for you!” Ash claims, taking the phone from Kayla and leaning close enough to the camera lens that Nora can see his nose-hairs. “I’ve been trying to get you to unwind ever since you stopped fucking Lydia.”

Nora groans, closing her eyes against the close-up of Ash’s nostrils. He always did have trouble paying attention to the screen—she can’t even recall how many times she’s had to remind him that he can’t leave the phone pointing up at the ceiling. “Give the phone back to Kayla, please.”

“Okay, for real: When can we meet her?” Kayla asks, yanking the phone out of Ash’s hands.

“For real? Never.”

“ Why ?” Ash whines, and Kayla levels Nora with an almost-effective set of puppy dog eyes.

“Because this is a temporary arrangement,” Nora says, decisive against their onslaught. “Strictly casual. She doesn’t need to be subjected to an interrogation.”

“Can we at least get a picture?” Kayla wheedles.

Nora sighs. Hopefully giving them a crumb will divert their attention. “Fine.”

Nora forwards Kayla a photo she took a few days ago at the beach—Dani in her bathing suit, her hair just starting to dry, laughing, and reclined with her hand buried in a bag of hot Cheetos. After Kayla’s phone pings its arrival, Nora is treated to a few seconds of silence as the video cuts out and they stare at the screen.

When the video comes back, Kayla is looking at the camera with an air of complete seriousness. “How much money do I need to pay you to let me take your place?”

Nora snorts. Truly, the amount is inconceivable; she came a total of five times yesterday, and Dani gave her a massage before bed. “In your dreams.”

“You’re damn right, in my dreams!” Kayla says. Even Ash nods his head in solemn agreement. “You’re being eaten out by a Cheeto-dusted goddess with the hands of a craftsman, and you haven’t been bragging to us about it? I thought we were friends!”

“I hate you both,” Nora sighs affectionately, but she resigns herself to spending the rest of the afternoon being mercilessly teased.

“Does she at least have a sister?”

“She has a cousin. And she’s actually kind of your type,” Nora says, thinking back to the last few people Kayla has dated. She does tend to favour short women with quick tempers. “But Sarah is caught up in someone else.”

“Damn,” Kayla mutters.

“What about me?” Ash says, poking his head into frame.

“They’re both lesbians, Ash.”

“I meant those cute boys you told us about!” Ash says flippantly. “The couple. Are they looking for a third? Do they like Indian guys?”

Ash is delighted to hear that while Nora is pretty sure they are not looking to open their ten-year relationship, he can take a wild swing at a throuple with Ryan and Owen if he so chooses.

It’s not like they’d ever come to Riverwalk themselves to take her up on it.