"This is technically not dinner," I say. Opening the white plastic bag, I take out two styrofoam boxes and hand one to Ellie. We're sitting on a wooden bench on the Riverwalk. Daylight is beginning to dwindle, the sun lowering itself on the horizon which throws shades of orange and pink onto the Cape Fear River in front of us.

Furrowing her brow, Ellie looks over at me with a smirk. "Oh yeah? What exactly do you call this?"

Trying to suppress my own smile, I shrug and pop open the top of the first box. "Apps by the river."

"This was your plan all along, wasn't it? Invite me here on the pretense of buying your sister a birthday present so you can trap me into eating dinner with you? I'm on to you, Mason Matthews."

"Not dinner," I say, handing her one of the cold cans of lemonade. "Appetizers." Crossing my heart with a finger over my chest, I grin at her. "I promise that wasn't my intent. But I'll take it."

"How do I know you even have a sister?" she asks, wiping the top of her can with the hem of her T-shirt then opening it.

"Look, I know it seems like I have that bratty, only-child vibe down. But I do have a sister. She's actually pretty cool." Cracking open my own can of lemonade, I take a swig. "You know. Cool for a high schooler."

At that, Ellie dramatically glances down either side of the riverwalk, left then right. She puts a hand up to her mouth. "Brother-of-the-year right here, ladies and gentlemen," she calls out to the water, garnering confused expressions from a few strangers who happen to be passing us.

I can't help but laugh at her. "You mean boyfriend-of-the-year, don't you?"

And with a quick whip of her head, she stares at me and nods once. "Yes. You make a great boyfriend," she says softly.

And I think I feel my dick get hard. I want to reach over and take her hand, maybe put my arm around her. Anything. Instead, I let the one phrase I probably shouldn't slip out of my

mouth. "I love this," I say, motioning between us.

The turn of her expression from sweet to sudden discomfort puts a wrench in the mood, and I immediately realize I've said too much. "Has anyone ever told you you're funny?" I ask, trying to move us on from the situation.

With a very straight face followed by a flash of a grin, she answers me. "Never."

There's a warm breeze surrounding us as Ellie takes the lid off of her styrofoam box of crispy Brussel sprouts with pancetta and parmesan. She stabs one with a plastic fork and pops it into her mouth. Then, peering over into the box I open, she scrunches up her nose. "What are those?"

"Rattlesnake Bites."

Her eyes grow wide as she shakes her head.

"They're jalapenos filled with shrimp, corn, and cheese. The Shoreline has some of the best appetizers in Wilmington.

"And how do you know?" she asks. Picking up one of the appetizers, she holds it eye-level, examining it suspiciously. As if it were an actual snake.

"You act like I never get out. I used to come down to Wilmington with friends every other weekend. Here," I say, handing her the Habanero jellied purple sauce. "You can dip it in this."

Her eyebrows shoot up, and she smirks. "You have friends?"

Ellie's unintentional dig makes me laugh, and I can't help but look at her with a different feeling in my chest. "Surprising, I know."

If she'd been paying me one ounce of attention this afternoon, I'm oblivious. But the way she floated around the boutique trying to find Beth a suitable gift on my behalf, I swear she's some type of savior. Beautiful, balanced, unapologetic. A lovelier kind of simple.

When I look up from the food, she's staring at me with easy eyes that seem to look right through to my soul.

"Thank you for helping me today," I say, chewing a bite of food. "The concert tickets are a perfect addition."

She nods with a shrug, playing the whole thing off. "No problem. Which tickets did you end up getting her?"

I pull out my phone and open to the web browser I'd been searching earlier while waiting in the checkout line. "Let's see. Looks like there's Tony Welling, Dori and the Dogs, and Sweet Tennessee."

"Oh yeah, I've heard Sweet Tennessee before. They've got a great sound. I don't know Beth, but I would've been into them back in high school."

"Sweet Tennessee it is then," I say, adding three tickets to my cart on my phone. It's only right I ask her to come with me, right?

Building up the courage to ask, I watch Ellie as she wipes her mouth with a napkin, her eyes trained on a pelican that's landed a few feet in front of us. Absentmindedly, she spears another Brussel sprout on her fork, and holding it out to me, she feeds me the green orb.

"So we're feeding each other now?" I ask with a smirk.

Looking up at me as if she didn't realize what she'd just done, she closes her eyes as if reprimanding herself. "I guess we are."

We fall into a comfortable silence, eating our appetizers and enjoying one another's company in the warm evening air. The Riverwalk lamp posts dimly ease on at the disappearing sunlight. I steal a few more glances over at her, watching her take small bites, her eyes fixed on the serene river. A motorboat suddenly passes in the distance, and she views it, her eyes trailing it all the way across the horizon. In her silence, what seems like fits of discomfort seize her every few minutes. When someone laughs unusually loud behind us, she jolts and looks over her shoulder. And as a skateboarder swoops by us, causing the wooden planks to vibrate beneath our shoes, she grows antsy. Through all of this, I can tell she's preoccupied.

When she passes on the last jalapeno popper, a crow hops down from a neighboring bench which causes her to jump in fright.

"Hey, you okay?" I ask, uprooting her from her thoughts.

She nods her head and forces a polite smile.

I reach for a conversation-starter to keep her engaged, to keep her mind here with me. "So, you're a writer, huh?"

The question must pull her from her reverie because she looks over at me blankly and shrugs. "Not exactly. Maybe a little bit."

I chuckle at her indecisive response. "What little bit of writing do you do?"

Shaking her head defiantly, she hands me back the Styrofoam box with Brussel sprouts, clearly done eating on them. "Trust me. You don't want to know."

"Of course I do. That's why I asked."

Ellie scoffs. "I write stuff, but it's not the significant type of stuff. Not like the writing you do."

It's apparent to me that she doesn't want to tell me. "Come on, Ellie," I say quietly.

"You're my girlfriend, right? That makes me curious. What is it that you write?"

Staring back out at the horizon, she sighs, a smile forming at the corner of her mouth. "I write fortunes. For fortune cookies."

And though I can't tell if she's joking or not, in all my life, I've never felt so much adoration and intrigue for another human being. I scrub a hand over my jaw and shake my head in complete disbelief. "You're telling me that when I order Chinese takeout and crack open that disgusting little fortune cookie, those are your words?"

Pursing her lips, she ducks her chin down like she's embarrassed or maybe even a little shy about my inquiry. "Yes, but not quite. Something like that, though. Long story short, I freelance for a guy in Brooklyn, so no. You probably aren't opening the fortunes I write."

I cannot fathom what is going on right now. I feel like I've just met the girl I'm supposed to be with for the rest of my life.

"So you write whimsical little fortunes? It seems like that would be difficult."

Smiling out of shame, she rubs her forearm, and I swear, this is the first time I've seen her like this. Almost bashful. "It's not so hard. You just have to take a tiny piece of life, turn it inside out, and grow it into something meaningful."

Her insight is simple but intense. Something so goddamn profound I want to remember it for the rest of my years. "That's beautiful, Ellie." My voice is quiet, and I have to hold myself back from reaching over to her. I want to hold her hand or make some semblance of contact. Desperate, yes. But she is such a tender human under all that snark.

Shaking her head as if she'd just heard my thoughts, she looks down the riverwalk away from me.

To avoid making her feel any more uncomfortable than I already have, I change the subject. "Three tickets then?" I ask, hardly being able to form the words of my entire thought. But before I can open my mouth to be more precise, she answers me.

"Cool," she nods, and for a second, I wonder if she even heard me correctly. "Beth will have a great time," she says, turning to smile at me. And like that, she's snapped out of her fog.

When I look down at my watch, it's seven o'clock— close to twilight now. The people walking past us on the boardwalk cast deep shadows that flicker on the wooden planks in front of us.

"Sorry about dragging you all the way out here just to buy concert tickets."

"You should be," she laughs. "I've got about a thousand other things I should be doing right now." She leans over to me with a Cheshire cat-like grin. "I'm just teasing you. You clearly needed me to find that leather purse for you." Pulling her phone from her pocket, she's in her own world again.

I can't tell if someone is calling her or if she's gotten a text, but she looks over her shoulder opposite of me then back down to her phone.

Deciding to chance it, I try to reel her in. "You'll come to Raleigh with me then? To Beth's party?"

"Mhmm," she mutters, her eyes still focused on the screen of her phone. The bright light of it illuminates her face making her look young and unaware as she taps it a few times.

"Really? You'll come stay in Raleigh with me?"

Furrowing her brow, she puts her phone away and looks up at me. "Sure. Why wouldn't I? Reaching into her bag, she digs for something. But when she comes up empty-handed with a huff, I realize what she can't find.

"You're nervous," I say, reaching into my pocket. Pulling out a pack of Big Red gum, I hand her a piece.

When she sees it, her eyes grow big as quarters. "Oh my God, I haven't seen this gum in ages." Taking the piece from me, she unwraps it and pops it in her mouth. And I swear I hear her hum the Big Red song over the ambiance of the river.

"Hey," she says, furrowing her brow at me as if she just remembered my accusation. "What makes you say that?"

With a grin, I nod toward her bag. "You left 'em at home. Your cigarettes."

Shrugging, she sighs. "We should probably get back soon anyway."

After tossing our trash into the nearest can, we fall into step next to each other, Ellie's smaller frame moving effortlessly beside me, throwing me the occasional sweep of her dark citrus scent. A few blocks out from the parking lot, we pass a silver van whose alarm suddenly blares. Ellie latches onto my forearm in fear, her warm palms pressed against my skin.

"Sorry," she says, not letting go of me.

But I'm not sorry. The gesture is small and may even be accidental on her part. But our close proximity and the bridge of contact she created pulls so tightly on my heart that I start to feel strange. Focusing on the sidewalk in front of us to keep myself from going off the edge, I can't explain how this girl makes me feel.

"Hey, I know we're just friends," I say when I can see my sedan overtop the rest of the cars in the lot. "But if something's wrong, you can tell me. I might be able to help."

Ellie throws her head back and laughs.

"I'm serious, I tell her," not indulging in her humor over the situation.

"Thanks, but you can't help me," she says, unconsciously pressing her fingers further into my skin.

"Well, I'd like to try."

"Besides," she grins. "I'm your girlfriend, remember?"

The sentiment pulls at my emotions, and I wish to fuck this was true. Maybe this means she's at least open to the idea. As we round the corner of the paid parking lot, a question emerges, poking at my soul. "Can I ask you something?"

"Always," she says, letting go of my arm.

I silently lament the loss of her touch. But my curiosity persists. "What's the greatest fortune you've ever written?" As she hears the question, I watch her soft face in the passing golden lamplight. Emotion works its way through a myriad of expressions on her face. I'm expecting some sharp, sarcastic, or offhanded fortune. But when she answers, I'm completely smitten.

"I don't think I've written it yet."