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We find Sloane and Conlin again outside another gallery, and the four of us wander for a while longer before Sloane gets distracted by a booth selling handmade jewelry.

Music drifts from half a block away, something bluesy and rough enough to pull my attention.

Ruby hears it too. “Want to go listen?”

“Yeah.”

Sloane is still looking through a table of jewelry, and Conlin glances toward the music before nodding at us. “Go ahead. I’ll stay with Sloane. We’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

Ruby and I head toward the small crowd gathered around the musicians. When we stop near the back, I put my arm around her shoulders and pull her against my side.

She fits there easily.

We listen through most of the song before she looks up at me.

“Your friend called me your girlfriend.”

“I heard him.”

“You didn’t correct him.”

I look down at her. “Did you want me to?”

She thinks about that before shaking her head. “No.”

“Then I’m glad I didn’t.”

Her eyes stay on mine. I could make a joke, but I don’t want to.

“I’m not seeing anybody else, Ruby. I haven’t been for a while, and I don’t want to.”

She doesn’t look surprised exactly, but I see something shift in her expression.

“I’m not seeing anyone else either.”

I nod once. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

That gets a small laugh out of her, and she settles back against my side.

The next song starts before either of us says anything else.

No big conversation about what comes next. No need to figure out what word fits us best. She’s under my arm in the middle of Old Town, our friends somewhere behind us, my family already expecting her at cookouts, and neither of us wants anybody else.

For now, that feels like enough.

Later, when we catch up with Sloane and Conlin, they’re still talking about something that started in the photography gallery and never ended.

Ruby slips her hand into mine as we start back toward the cars.

I think about the whole day while we walk. Her laughing with my mom. Holding Jack while Briar ate. Dad asking her about tattoos. People in town recognizing her work. Ruby standing beside me when someone casually assumed she belonged there.

Ruby is becoming part of the places and people that matter to me, and somewhere along the way I stopped wanting to keep those parts of my life separate.

I like having her beside me, and more than that, I’m starting to like how natural it feels.

Chapter twenty-one