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She wakes up disoriented. Her brain adjusts to her surroundings—creaky bed, filtered natural light streaming through plastic curtain panes, and faint smells, all mixing awkwardly with the dull neon sign over Gil’s bed.
Gil’s bed. Right. Now she remembers finding herself outside the Bobbseys’ at midnight, unable to stop herself. It feels like Nick all over again, when she buried her feelings in someone else and begged for a distraction from her own brain. But she keeps seeing Ace on that ledge when she closes her eyes, and can’t bring herself to let the thoughts linger.
The bed is empty, cool to the touch where another body should be. He’s been up for a while then, she thinks. Nancy sits up, straining her eyes against the morning light. Gently, an aroma of coffee and eggs wafts into Gil’s room, and she smiles, realizing he must’ve gotten up to make breakfast.
She pulls on her jeans and boots. Gil hadn’t seemed the type to cook a girl breakfast after a booty call, but maybe she’d misjudged him. She drapes her jacket over her arm and follows her nose to the kitchen.
“That smells gr—oh.” Abruptly, Nancy cuts herself off. It’s not Gil by the stove, but Amanda, who also quickly falls silent halfway through a laugh. At the counter, in his lucky pullover and an unbuttoned flamingo shirt, is Ace, who visibly straightens in his seat when he sees her.
“Uh.” Nancy finishes pulling on her jacket, adjusting her hair around the collar. Her neck feels very hot as she puts the pieces of the scenario together. The three of them, all before 8 am, all at the Bobbseys’s. She flashes Amanda an awkward finger gun. “You’re not Gil.”
Amanda smiles back at her sympathetically. “Sorry,” she replies. She glances down at the eggs sizzling quietly in the pan, and then back to Ace. “But I make a much meaner omelet than him anyway. Want one?”
For a long moment, Nancy just stares back at her. Red alarm sirens are ringing in her thoughts, but she’s still settling with the fact that both she and Ace seemingly slept here. “Is…Gil…here?”
“No. He left, about twenty minutes ago,” Ace says, his voice low. Nancy wonders if he always sounds this grumpy in the morning. “Forgot to mention you were here, though.”
Nancy blinks. “He left? Like—left? Is he coming back?”
Amanda turns off the stove and faces her. “He said he got a freelance gig that he couldn’t pass up. Kind of left in a hurry.” With a slight grimace, Amanda sighs. “Nancy, Gil can be…easily distracted. It makes him forgetful, you know? Of his manners, mostly. He doesn’t mean to be.”
Nodding distractedly, Nancy runs her tongue along her teeth. Of course he runs out the day he was supposed to help her out. After a long moment of Amanda and Ace watching her, he clears his throat. “Why? Did you need him or something?”
Ace’s tone is uncharacteristically harsh, and both she and Amanda turn to look at him. After another awkward beat, Nancy says, “Um. Well, he was supposed to help me run a boat over to this beach for the case I’m working on. It’s kind of…a two man job.”
He looks annoyed, but Amanda just smiles at her. “Well, we can help. Right, Ace? It could be fun. I’ve always wanted to go on one of your mystery adventures with you and Nancy,” she adds. Ace glances between the two of them, looking uncomfortable, but finally nods.
“Sure,” he says slowly, rolling his shoulders. “Yeah, we can help.”
“Great,” Amanda says cheerily, and plops the eggs she was cooking onto two plates. “Well, I’m gonna just take a quick shower. You two have these and then we can go!”
She disappears into the back of the trailer, and a few moments later, the sound of running water filters across the room. By the time Nancy glances back at Ace, he’s nearly finished eating the eggs before him, almost as if stuffing his face will keep him from talking to her.
Nancy takes a small bite of the eggs, chewing as painfully slow as she can. “This is good, actually. Maybe Amanda wants Grant’s old job. We still kinda need a line cook.” At the mention of his brother, Ace finally meets her eye. He doesn’t say anything, though—but she notes that he hasn’t left either. Attempting to fill the awkward silence, Nancy pushes on. “You know, I think this is the longest time you’ve been in a room with me since he left.”
“Yeah,” Ace sighs, and averts her look. “I’ve been busy.”
“Really?” She replies, skeptically. “Because it kind of seems like you’ve been avoiding me. Like, I don’t know, you’re mad at me?”
He glances at her again, like he’s considering his words. “Maybe I am.”
Nancy puts down her fork. She’d known this was coming, and hoped it wasn’t. Her hands slide over her face. “I know, I know, this is about the list of names. But…it was an emergency, Ace. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t let you—” She drops her hands from her eyes. “And—and anyway, I fixed it!”
“Yeah, you fixed it with Celia Hudson,” Ace replies curtly, getting to his feet. His voice rises. “You traded the list for letting a murderer get away with killing 12 people on that ship. You didn’t fix anything, Nancy, you just moved it to another place! You made me responsible for you doing—for those 12 lives instead!”
For a moment, chest heaving, she stares at him. “No,” she says finally, finding a level in her tone. “I made me responsible for the Bonny Scot. Not you. And I will find another way to bring Everett to justice, okay? There’s always another wa—”
“What if there isn’t, Nancy?” He shakes his head, pacing towards her. “Not everything is a puzzle you can just solve, okay? What if he gets away with this and hurts someone else? We know he will. And you’ll get pulled in deeper with the Hudsons. And when that happens—that’s—that’s on me.”
“Then it’s my burden, Ace!” They’re practically shouting now. Dimly, she hopes Amanda can’t hear this through the shower. “You’re right, Ace, okay, I did trade your life for the witnesses and then I traded the witnesses for the Bonny Scot. I made a necessary calculation in a crappy situation. But I did it, not you!”
“For me!” He yells back. She’s not sure she’s ever heard his voice this loud; she wasn’t sure his vocal cords could physically reach this decibel. He exhales, deflating and running his hands through his hair. “It was… a total Slytherin move, Nancy. Okay? Just…admit you didn’t think it through.”
She scoffs, throwing her head back. “Well, that’s rich.”
Hands on his hips, he glowers at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How many federal databases have you hacked into by now, Ace?” She exclaims, throwing her arms out. “I think I stopped counting after you broke my dad out of prison!”
“That was different,” he mumbles. “That was an—”
“Emergency,” she finishes flatly, raising her eyebrows.
Ace purses his lips, and he finally seems somewhat calmed. “Your dad’s life was in imminent danger. I didn’t risk anyone else in the process. But I told you, Nance, at the paper mill. I told you I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s life. ”
“Well, I was responsible for yours,” she replies softly, defeated. He stares at her, chest heaving. “And…I told you, I couldn’t lose you.”
He still doesn’t say anything, but a look passes between them. Her heart flutters so madly against her ribcage she’s afraid he might hear it. She’s reminded of that night after the wraith in the woods, when he’d told her something very similar. He didn’t want to lose her, then. She wonders if he’s thinking the same.
There’s a long moment of silence.
Finally, she nods, and her hand finds itself home on his arm. “I’m sorry I made you feel responsible for the Bonny Scot, Ace, I really am. But…even if you’re right, and I can’t find another solution, then…it’s still my fault. Not yours. It’s my problem, my burden, okay? Please, Ace. I can’t have you mad at me. I can’t…focus when you are. I need you on my team.”
When she meets his eye again, his expression has softened. She can tell the fight has gone out of him. Eyebrows knitted, he says, “No.” Her face falls, but then he continues. “I’m a Hero of Horseshoe Bay too, you know. You shouldn’t have to shoulder it all alone.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, before she can plan otherwise, and steps back from him. She lets out a self-deprecating sound from the back of her throat, thinking of how Gil abandoned her the night after her promised to help. She thinks of Owen Marvin, dead because of her. She thinks of Nick, who was right to have ended things with her. Finally, and bitterly, her thoughts jump to how happy Amanda and Ace had seemed before she walked in. “I’m used to alone.”
His face crumples and he opens his mouth, but whatever Ace is about to say, she’ll never know. Amanda has emerged from the back of the trailer, toweling off her damp hair and already dressed. “Okay, I’m ready,” Amanda says, striding towards them. She pulls to a stop after a moment, having picked up on the strange energy lingering in her kitchen.
Ace is still looking at her with an expression she can’t—won’t—name. If she had to try, it might be pity, or a kinder version of it. She inexplicably feels like crying, but swallows it, unwilling to feel weak in front of Ace’s girlfriend.
“Everything okay?” Amanda asks gently, and Nancy can’t help but think, that’s why Ace likes her. She’s sweet. Her heart squeezes again. Don’t think about it.
Exhaling, Ace nods at Amanda, and then back to Nancy. “Yeah. We’re okay.”
She hopes it’s true.