Page 26 of Yard Sale

“Oh. Should I⁠—”

“No,” he cut me off very quickly. “No. It’s a good name.”

I stared down at Snoot the Boop and stroked my thumb over his head. Yeah. I was going to keep this thing forever. “Well, ah…it was good to see you outside of work and whatnot.”

Ferris frowned. “Yes. Um. Will you be doing pieces on the NHL this year?”

“Nope.” God, it felt so fucking good to say that. “I quit my job. I’m heading out into the world to find myself. Or something. Like a white lady going to love, eat, and whatever in Italy.”

“Oh. I’ve never been to Italy. They probably have good pasta, but I really only like it with butter and maybe a little pesto, and I think they’d be annoyed and think I was some terrible American tourist. But I’m not American. I’m Canadian.”

I fought back a laugh, covering it with a cough. “Well, I don’t actually mean I’m going to Italy. That’s just a thing middle-aged white women fresh off divorces do. At least according to movies and books. I just mean I need to figure out what I’m doing next.”

“I’ve been there,” came a rumbling voice from behind me.

Before I could spin around, Quinn appeared. I knew him both from his tenure in hockey and from the stir he’d caused when he not only came to work as a physical therapist for the Glaciers, but also when he came out as the husband of their newest rookie.

It was a whole thing, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what that attention had done to poor Ferris.

“You didn’t struggle. You always knew you wanted to work in PT,” Ferris said.

“Yes,” Quinn said, bringing Ferris’s hand up to his lips so he could kiss his knuckles. “But I was turned upside down in my brain when trying to decide if I wanted to come to work here and be with you.” His gaze met mine, and fuck, I would really like someone to be obsessed with me the way Quinn was obsessed with Ferris. “It ended up not being a hard decision.”

“My mom says something like, when you know you know,” Ferris said with a shrug. “I don’t really get it, but she’s probably right.”

“She is,” Quinn rumbled. “It’s good to see you, Ara.”

Vind, I finished in my head, but I didn’t say it aloud. Quinn got a pass. For now. “It’s good to see you too. Hope you guys have a good summer.”

With that, I walked off. I didn’t need to be subjected to people being so damn happy. It was gross.

And I was jealous.

And this was supposed to be the summer of me, so I made a vow right then and there that I wouldn’t subject myself to any more bullshit that made me question my life’s choices.

Too bad that didn’t stick.

CHAPTER 7

ARAVIND

I was pretty sure I was born to be a boat person. And not the WASPy, here’s my mini-yacht sort of person. That was gross.

No, there was just something profoundly soothing about being out in the open, still waters of the summer Atlantic. It was a sort of blue-green, dark in spots under the occasional cloud, and barely a ripple from the ferry as we crossed from the mainland to the little island where my dad had decided to settle in his off time.

We’d had the beach house for years, and while we avoided it the first few summers after my mom died, eventually, he went back on his own to grieve her. And then I followed. Then a couple of his sisters dropped in to make sure we were feeding ourselves properly.

And when the aunties deemed we were not taking care of ourselves, they made sure to tell the rest of the family—both blood and community—and now we only ever had a week or two of peace before they descended.

This year, it was Soma, my dad’s cousin, and her best friend, Ankita. They were only a decade older than I was, but Soma liked to describe herself as a floral cat lady in training, and she was just slowly aging into being allowed to wear mumus or oversized salwar kameez.

Ankita was a little more wild and a little more fun. She was my favorite auntie when I was a kid and my parents were attempting to control what they thought was me acting out. She was also the person who was the most vocal in support of my parents’ marriage, considering they wanted my dad to marry someone Indian, and my mom’s family wanted her to marry someone, if not Pakistani, at least devout Muslim.

Which my father was not.

My mom rarely saw her family. They came for the funeral and kept apart from both me and my dad. At the time, I didn’t give much of a shit because the only thing that mattered was learning to live with the pain of being without her. And maybe trying to live a life that would make her proud.

But I started to become more grateful for family who loved me for me and who understood just how much my parents adored each other. The judgment was hard to swallow, but there was no point in fighting it. It would be like fighting the tide, and I didn’t have the time or the fucks to try.