Page 166 of The Lost and Found Girl

She shifted. “Sure. I’m... Not now. I’m headed out to...the museum.”

“Are you walking?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ll walk you.”

“Dahlia, are you...walking over to the newspaper office now?” Ruby asked, somewhat hopefully.

“No,” Dahlia said, grinning.

And Ruby didn’t really know how to politely decline his offer, and Ruby could tell that her sister wasn’t about to bail her out. And fair enough, really. She was an adult. If she really didn’t want to walk with him she should say. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was just that... Well, she didn’t want to.

But instead, she found herself waiting as he ordered coffee, then meandered back to her table, and then she picked up her own coffee and began to walk out the door with him.

“It is nice to see you,” he said, once they were out on the street.

Ruby surveyed the main street, the neat little square that sat in the center, where the road forked and the two lanes went around a patch of grass with trees whose leaves were beginning to change. Many of the businesses had American flags waving with overpronounced patriotism in the breeze, the redbrick facades bright, the trim a sharp white. She wondered how many coats of paint had gone over that trim in the years since the buildings had gone up. Probably hundreds. That was maybe not even an exaggeration. One layer of paint going straight over the other, drying crisp and white and new.

And if you are thinking about drying paint while walking next to a man, you really are not interested.

She looked at him and his boyish features and thought maybe she really ought to feel more for the man she had thought was her first true love. She knew now that she had never loved him. She had been enraptured by the idea of being in love. She’d been such a fierce romantic.

Maybe she still was.

But distance had well and truly broken any bond she had initially felt with Heath. “I think it’s good that you’re back,” he said, sort of abruptly.

“You do?” She hoped this wasn’t leading to any kind of declaration.

“The town doesn’t feel right without you, Ruby. You’re like the mascot.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “A mascot?” She immediately imagined herself doing a jig at the center of the town square.

“Yeah, you know. You made the town famous.”

The sentiment was seriously disconcerting. “I don’t know that I did that.”

“Well, certainly more famous than it was.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Bridge baby? Is that the name of my mascot?”

“That’s sort of grim, Ruby,” he said.

“It is sort of grim,” she said, her scalp prickling. “I mean if you think about it. And, now I am.”

“Sorry. That must be weird.” He looked at her, like he was seeing her for the first time. “To have people bring it up. I’m sorry.”

She was unsure of what to call the emotion that was turning over in her chest. “You know, Heath, don’t worry about it. I don’t even really think about it. Well, I did when I left. I noticed how different it was. You know, when people didn’t know. But I chose to come back, and I knew what I was coming back to.”

“I won’t bring it up again.”

“I’m not really...” The museum was in sight. An impressive building that stood apart from the others in town, with a low stone wall all around the expansive green lawn at the front. It was red brick, two stories tall, with the same white trim as many of the other buildings in town. There was a flagpole at the edge of the lawn with the Oregon state flag flying beneath an American flag. And next to that was a statue of a cowboy riding a horse with a lasso frozen above his head. She cleared her throat.

“Right now I’m creating space around myself to explore my new role at the museum and support my sister, so...”

He stopped walking abruptly. “That’s not why... I swear, Ruby, I just... I want to be friends.”

Heat suffused her face and she...stumbled slightly while walking. Which she did not do. He wanted to be friends.