Chapter 62

So: the walks. Twice a day, he and Trick walked halfway down the beach and back, rain or shine. (It was more shine than rain, and wow, Scooter had not been kidding about the heat, because they weren’t even to the end of June and the early mornings were already in the mid-eighties, and the less said about the afternoons, the better.)

Now they’d figured out Andy was a resident and not a timeshare tourist, the locals were…friendly. It had been unnerving at first; Andy was used to New York, where people didn’t even make eye contact outside of social situations, much less strike up conversations with random passers-by. But now that he’d been here a while, gotten used to it, he didn’t mind it so much. Especially when they would wave, or even stop him to exchange greetings and gossip. Sometimes they’d ask him to pass messages on to Scooter (as if cell phones weren’t a thing, even if Andy himself still didn’t have one). It was nice. Normal. For Sandbridge.

The tourists were like tourists everywhere, Andy supposed. He recognized his own initial shell-shocked expressions on people with northern accents, and the same loud, boorish, pushy photographing-every-memory and nature-defilers and “I’m on vacation, I must complain about everything”-ers and “what are manners”-ists that occupied every corner of the country. It wasn’t like those were a rarity in New York, after all.

It was just that New York, while being a very popular tourist destination, was very very full of people who were nottourists. Sandbridge…not so much. Scooter had told him that, now that all the schools had let out, the townlet’s population would hover at around eighty percent tourists until September.

So Andy’s theory was that the locals banded together for “dear God please don’t let me strangle this idiot who can’t figure out why we don’t have both sunrises andsunsets over the ocean” mutual support. Comparing dumb tourist stories was a solid staple of local conversation, and some of them were pretty hilarious.

When the woman who ran the flower shop waved him over one morning, Andy wandered over willingly enough. Tourists didn’t buy a lot of flowers, but some of the fancier restaurants apparently had little vases of them on the tables, which was the main source of her business, supplemented with the occasional wedding.

Dockside wasn’t the kind of place that had flowers on the table, but Andy had run into her a few times when he’d stopped at the post office for Scooter’s mail; apparently they kept similar errand schedules. “You’re getting quite tan,” she said, squinting up at his face. It wasn’t the first time she’d made a comment about his face. She did seem to keep checking if his black eye had spontaneously regenerated, even though it had been healed for weeks.

“Seems inevitable,” he agreed. “Going to be hot again today.” Bitching about the weather was, he’d learned, not merely a staple component of conversation, but an obligatory one. It made him slightly crazy, since talking about it just made it seem worse, so he tried to get through it as quickly as possible.

“Allus is,” she said. And then, rather than delving into the next week’s forecast, she hesitated, glancing at him sidelong. “Stahl treatin’ you okay, young man?” There was a certain weight to her question and her expression took on a certain sly eagerness that Andy didn’t like.

Andy tried to suppress the blush that started up on his neck, and prayed the morning sun reflecting off the water would make it hard for her to see finer details. Not appropriate, he scolded himself. Especially since what she probablymeant was to check up and make sure The Local Gay wasn’t making advances on The Innocent Newcomer.

He’d been warned the level of homophobia around here was not what he was used to—not that New York was free of bigots, but they were usually a lot more forward about it, not this sly false concern. It had taken Andy a few encounters to get the hang of it. Even the people who thought they were being open-minded and supportive made offensive jokes—like Harry-Rex at the hardware store that first day.

Arguing just convinced them they were right, though, so Andy stuck to absolutely refusing to give them any ammunition. “He’s been great,” Andy said, as enthusiastically as he could. “Very helpful and generous.”

“That’s good, that’s good,” she said, nodding her head. “It’s good that he can make such a change, turn his life around. Better for him. Better for everyone. That other boy, poor thing…It’s good of you, to bring a positive change.”

Other boy? Andy had to blink at her in confusion for a moment. “You mean Jeff?” he asked. “The guy I replaced?” Trick whined at Jeff’s name, and Andy absently patted his side.