Chapter Thirty-Nine
SAWYER
When I woke up the next morning, Quinn was still gathered against my chest. I didn’t want to move and wake her up—until, that was, I saw that she was already awake, probably in the same predicament.
“Hey,” I said, not wanting to disrupt the quiet. I could hear birds outside.
“Hey,” she said back. She smiled up at me, and I wished I could have taken more time, all the time in the world, to appreciate how lucky I was to have her with me. I kissed the top of her head and gathered her closer for a second before sitting up.
“I told my dad I’d go fishing with him today,” I said. “Do you want to come?”
“I’ve never been fishing before,” she admitted. She sat up, a blanket around her shoulders as though she had anything to hide from me.
“Really?” I raised my eyebrows. It was hard to grow up anywhere around here and not eventually go fishing. “It’s a classic pastime!”
“For guys,” she pointed out. “I’ve never really been outdoorsy, remember? I never had a reason to go fishing.”
“Well, you do now,” I decided. “You’ve gotta come with us.”
“I won’t be any good at it.”
“There’s no being good or bad at it. You just sit on a boat for a little while and talk about stuff. Sometimes you don’t catch anything. You’ll do fine.” I smiled. “Come on, please?”
“If you say so,” she conceded.
After we got dressed and had a quick breakfast, we headed out to the nearby lake. We would have gone to Pete’s house to fish in his tank, but Pete wasn’t home, and Dad had made it relatively clear that he wanted to have some family time. I texted him to let him know that Quinn was coming with us, too.
He was waiting for us when we got out there, sat against his car. “Well, hello! Sawyer told me he was bringing a friend.”
“A friend?” Quinn lifted her eyebrow.
I laughed. “I did not!”
“You been fishing before?” Dad asked.
Quinn shook her head. “No, sir. I’m not terribly good with it, I don’t think.”
“You can’t be bad at fishing,” Dad said, echoing my earlier consolation. “And you can call me Eugene.”
When Dad turned around to get a fishing pole for her, Quinn smiled at me and shrugged. I smiled back. It seemed they’d get along; at least that my dad liked her. That was a big deal in and of itself.
We got set up on the river where the trees did a decent job of shading us. The river was cool to the touch, and we set up some lawn chairs in the sturdier soil.
“If you get too close to the riverbank, you’ll get stuck in the mud, and we’ll have to come pull you out,” Dad warned Quinn.
“Really?”
“No, he’s messing with you,” I told her. “Well, don’t get too close to the riverbank. You will get stuck. It just won’t be all that bad.”
She glanced down at her feet. “I wore sandals.”
“That might be a problem,” I agreed. “Sorry. Forgot to mention the mud. I’ll do all the stomping around down there; you stay up here where it’s dry.”
“Sounds good,” Quinn said.
“You could just take your shoes off,” Dad joked.
“No!” Quinn laughed and sat down in a lawn chair.
Dad held the fishing rod out to her and said, “Now, what kind of bait do you want? Do you know what kind of fish you’re hoping to catch?”
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “What kind of bait works?”
“They all do,” Dad said. He popped open his tackle box. “Here, you wanna get a worm on the hook?” He popped open the tub of worms and held it out to Quinn, who stared at me, mortified.
“Dad, come on.” I picked up the tub and shook my head. “She’s never been fishing before, remember?”
“They’re just worms!”
But Quinn was laughing all the same. “I don’t want to touch them!” she exclaimed. “Use them, by all means, but I’m not ready yet.”
“That’s perfectly fair,” I said to her—and to my father, who already had a protest forming on his mouth. I hooked the worm for her and made sure that her fishing rod was set to work properly. It wasn’t a particularly great fishing rod. My dad had the really expensive, top-of-the-line fishing rod, insisting that it was his best shot at getting the biggest fish in the river.
Quinn cast the fishing rod perfectly well, and we sat back for a moment talking about nothing and everything. Quinn told Dad a little about where she worked, even though Dad already knew, and I served as the occasional barrier when Dad made a joke that was just a little too cruel. All in all, it was a fun gathering, and I was grateful that two of my favorite people were getting along so well.
As the sun started to get higher up in the sky, the heat went from warm to uncomfortable. It reflected off the river and made for an unpleasant experience, and Dad declared the fishing time to be over.
“I think it’s about time we packed up,” Dad said. “Fish are all at the bottom of the river.”
“Wait, I think I got something.” Quinn furrowed her eyebrows and grabbed at the lever on her rod. “I think I got something.”
I looked at her bobber—or, where her bobber had been, but wasn’t anymore. “Oh, shoot. Um, reel it in. Give it a tug.”
Quinn tugged it back and started cranking the reel.
“Slowly, slowly. Let it fight a little.”
She loosened her grip and then began to turn the knob extremely slowly, and I laughed.
“Well, not so slow that it gets away.”
“I’m trying!” Quinn exclaimed. She tugged the rod up again, and a fish flopped up on the surface of the river. “Oh my God, I got something!”
“You did! Reel her in. Easy goes.” Dad said, and he had a grin on his face.
Quinn began to reel it in, and the fish became visible within a few seconds. A small perch, probably just going back for a little nap on the ocean floor, flopped in the air, suspended by the line.
“Is that a good one?” Quinn asked. “What kind is it?”
“You want to pull it in?” Dad asked.
“Um…” Quinn stared at it, and I leaned forward to catch the line for her. I took the fish off the hook and held it in my hand.
“Look at him. He’s a great fish,” I said.
“I told you I’d catch something!” Quinn declared, beaming.
“You told me nothing of the sort!” I protested.
“Told you!” Quinn stuck her tongue out.
I held the fish out to her. “You wanna hold him?”
“No thank you!”
My dad laughed behind us. “If you’re not going to hold him, toss him back. Let me get a picture first.”
It was hilarious to me to take a picture with this tiny perch. But it was Quinn’s first fish, and so I smiled with her until Dad took his phone down and put it back in his pocket. “Toss it back and let’s pack up.”
I helped Dad lug some of the tackle boxes back to the car while Quinn got the chairs folded. For a moment, Dad and I had some alone time to talk.
“I’m proud of you, Sawyer,” Dad said. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”
“She’s something,” I agreed. I smiled and waved at her from afar. She grinned and picked up the lawn chairs.
“You two got any big plans together?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know. I… I hope we do.”
He nodded. “Well, I certainly hope it works between the two of you. I like her, and I think she likes you too.”
I grinned and laughed a little at how he phrased it, like it would be a feat to like me. “Thanks, Dad.”
“I’m proud of you,” he repeated. “I really am, Sawyer.”
I smiled, and I nodded, just to show that I appreciated the gravity of his statement. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d said that with sincerity, not buckled down to an apology or tied to some sort of treaty between the two of us. He clapped me on the back, and we got everything in the car loaded up.
I didn’t know if Quinn and I had any big plans together, but I knew that my life was never going to be the same, now that she’d come into it.