A couple of the watermen, also looking different in their dressed-up clothes, catcalled Bisky, and old Mr. James blew her a kiss, prompting her to go over to him and give him a big hug. Amid a lot of laughter, people started toward Goody’s.
Amber and Erica followed the crowd past the stores with Christmas-decorated windows. The streetlamps glistened with garland. Across the street on the bay side, tiny white lights wound around the railing.
A hum of excited voices and the smell of Christmas baked sweets drifted out from Goody’s. As she walked in behind Erica, Amber spotted Paul, who was hard to miss because Davey was on his shoulders. Her breath caught.
He was laughing, lifting Davey down to go inside, obviously enjoying his son’s excitement about Santa. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Couldn’t stop herself from thinking about what it had felt like to kiss him.
She’d been trying to forget that kiss for the past four days, to no avail. Involuntarily, she took a step toward him.
“Wait.” Erica gripped her arm, holding her back.
She turned to her sister, puzzled because Erica had seemed to be in favor of her having at least a friendship with Paul.
Erica’s eyes squinted a little, the same worried expression she’d had when they were kids and Amber was about to make some kind of mistake. “I think he might be with someone.”
“What?” Amber looked back in Paul’s direction. The crowd parted enough for her to see Davey let go of Paul’s hand...and grab the hand of Miss Harris, his teacher, on his other side.
At the same moment, Paul put his hand on Kayla Harris’s back to steer her through the crowd and toward the line of kids waiting for Santa.
Amber felt like all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. Her throat got tight, filled with an impossibly big lump.
Miraculously, the table beside them was empty. Amber sat.
Erica grabbed the chair across from her and leaned forward. “Did you see that? What’s going on? I thought...” She trailed off, studying Amber’s face, frowning.
Yeah, Amber had thought, too. She’d thought that kissing her the way Paul had kissed her meant that he felt something for her, actually felt a lot, wanted to date her.
But how much more perfect for him to be with Kayla Harris, who was pretty and sweet and healthy. Probably, she didn’t have the kind of checkered past Amber had. Davey’s grandparents wouldn’t have anything against her. And Davey obviously already loved her.
It was perfect, and Amber...wasn’t. She stared down at the table, picked at a dried speck of ice cream that whoever had wiped the tables off had missed. Around them, the festive crowd sounds seemed discordant.
“Well, that jerk,” Erica said after a minute. “I thought he was a nice guy, but I don’t like this at all.”
“She seems lonely,” Amber said. She was articulating clearly, as if she were on the radio. As if she had no feelings whatsoever about the matter. “Kayla, I mean. She and her mom have had a hard row to hoe, from what I’ve heard.”
“Everybody has problems,” Erica said, her voice impatient. “Paul acted like he cared about you. Are you just going to let this go?”
Amber closed her eyes for just a moment, then opened them and met her sister’s gaze. “I told him he should date someone else. I told him I could have a recurrence.” She just hadn’t expected him to take her advice quite so quickly.
Erica slapped a hand down on the table, the sound making a few surrounding people look their way. “He could be hit by a car! He could get sick! In fact, he already is sick. He’s got enough PTSD that he can’t own a gun. It’s not like he’s such a prize.” She glared over in Paul’s direction. “Idiot.”
Through the pain that was squeezing her gut, Amber felt the corner of her mouth lift. Oh, how she loved her loyal sister. Erica understood Amber’s health issues more than anyone else, because she carried the same genetic mutation that Amber did, had some of the same susceptibility to illness that Amber had.
Erica propped the side of her head on her fist. “I knew—I know—that I’m at more risk than the general population. And yet I got married.” She spoke like she was feeling her way. “And I’m glad I did, despite the possibilities of something bad happening to me. Trey and I are good together. We’re good for Hunter, too, even though there are times I worry about what the future will hold for him and for Trey, if I get sick.”
Amber nodded slowly. “You were right to get married, and you and Trey are a great couple. But this is a different situation. Paul has Davey, and Davey already lost a mom to cancer. He can’t risk losing another one, and I think Paul understands that. Paul has to put Davey first.”
“But what about you, your feelings?”
Amber stared at the table. Images of Paul’s hand at the small of Kayla’s back, of Davey grabbing Kayla’s hand, kept flashing before her eyes.
“You okay?”
Amber forced herself to meet her sister’s eyes. She even tried on a smile, but it wouldn’t stay on her face. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Hannah’s getting home tomorrow for Christmas break, and I’ll concentrate on her, and forget about him.” Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy, but she didn’t want Erica fussing over her. Erica was definitely a fusser.
“What’s Hannah got to do with it?” Erica scooted her chair closer to the table to make way for the increasing crowd. “I think she’d be glad if you fell in love.”
“Well...maybe.” Hannah had said she wanted Amber to date someone, but that was probably related to her worries about her mother’s health.
Erica frowned at a man who’d jostled her chair, and then her face softened when she saw
