by Lea Coll
Good. Maybe we were on the same page. “I’m not a friends-with-benefits kind of guy. I don’t want to mess around with you until you leave. We’re either together or we’re not.” She started to interrupt but I held my hand up. “I don’t mind being friends with you and doing stuff like this, but what happened in that boat can’t happen again.”
She pulled her bottom lip under her teeth. “I agree.”
I hadn’t expected her to agree so easily. “Really?”
“It doesn’t make sense to start something when I’ll be leaving.”
My stomach dropped. Nothing had changed for her.
“I’m hoping we can move past what happened when we were kids. I intend to prove I’m a better person—someone you can count on. I won’t always physically be here, but I’ll keep in touch and visit. I’d like to be friends.”
“Friends.” I could do that, right? She wasn’t leading me into a relationship only to leave. She was being upfront, honest. I drew in a breath. It still hurt like hell, so I pulled the cooler out of the beach bag so she wouldn’t notice my hands shaking.
“You packed a picnic?” Her voice held sweet surprise.
“Are you hungry?” I pulled out the picnic lunch of sandwiches, apples, and chips.
“This is perfect, Wyatt. Thank you.” She unwrapped a sandwich and chewed thoughtfully for a few minutes. She took a long draw from the water bottle, wiped the droplets from her lips, eyes focused on the sand in front of us.
“You’ll make a great boyfriend to someone.” She glanced quickly at me and I thought I saw regret and longing, but why?
I almost regretted saying we’d be friends. If I’d offered no-strings-attached sex, would she have gone for that?
When we’d finished the sandwiches, I opened a bag of chips. “Was your dream job everything you thought it would be?”
She chewed on her lip as she thought. “I was a graphic designer. That’s what I wanted, but we worked a lot of hours. There was a lot of pressure to come up with the perfect concept in a day or two and sometimes the ideas wouldn’t come. It was stressful.” She glanced over at me before continuing, “Part of our job was going out at night, happy hours, drinking and more drinking. If you didn’t wear trendy clothes you might not get pulled into the client meeting. If you didn’t go to happy hour, it would show up on your performance evaluation.”
“That doesn’t sound particularly appealing.”
Lucy laughed and I realized how much I missed the sound of her laughing. “I’m sure it doesn’t to you. You enjoy the peace and quiet, dressing casually, not conversing with clients.”
“You have me pegged. But is that job what you wanted?”
“At the time, I thought so. It’s very difficult to get a job. I worked at a news station doing graphics for a few months, but I was unhappy. A friend pressured me to drop off a resume at Planit, which I did. It was unconventional, but I put on this cute trendy outfit and walked my portfolio to the front desk. The receptionist told the creative director I was there, and he took one look at my portfolio and hired me on the spot.”
“That must have been a kick-ass portfolio.”
I smiled. “I was just grateful to have a job at a design firm. As cool as it was, it paid next to nothing for the number of hours we were expected to work. Everyone was just happy to be working there and it was a stepping stone to something better, or at least I hoped it would be.”
“What happened?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew. My creative director said I wasn’t producing anymore. My ideas weren’t innovative enough.”
“Was he right?”
“It’s so subjective. My concepts hadn’t been chosen as often at the end, but whether the other ideas were truly better or more in line with what the client wanted, I don’t know.”
“The good thing is that you’re here now, relaxing. That job didn’t allow you much time to visit family or to catch up.”
“I know and I didn’t realize how much that bothered me until I was here. It’s easy to ignore things when you’re a hundred miles away, buried in work.”
“I’m sorry that you lost your job but I’m not sorry you’re here.”
“Me neither,” she said quietly.
The conversation was heavy and I wanted to lighten the mood, especially since she said she wanted to remain friends. “Want to go for a walk?”
“Absolutely.” Lucy stood and brushed the sand off, falling into step next to me on the beach.
We spent the rest of the day walking along the beach, looking for seashells, and scanning the horizon for horses. I itched to thread my fingers through hers. The beach was deserted from the overcast sky and I wanted to sink into the sand, pulling her into my lap, and continue what we’d started a few weeks ago.
The day made me long for more days and moments like this with Lucy—and not as friends. But there was no way we could be together. Even if she agreed to a long-distance relationship, I wanted to get married and raise a family where I’d grown up.
On the long drive home, I noticed Lucy taking deep steadying breaths with her hand over her stomach. She was quiet and a little pale.
“Are you okay?” Had something she ate made her sick?
“Yeah, just a little car sick.” I didn’t remember that ever happening before.
“Want to stop for a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
“You normally get car sick?”
“Not when I was a kid, but now if I read in the car or look at my phone I do. Maybe the rough ride of the Jeep is making it worse.”
“Maybe.” I reached over to rub her shoulders as she laid her head back on the seat.
“I really don’t want to throw up.”
“Maybe some food would help. My sister got car sick and she always said eating seemed to settle her stomach.”
“Maybe.”
I pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot. “I’ll go grab some fries and a Sprite.”
I moved to open the door, but Lucy grabbed my hand. “Wyatt?”
I turned to face her. “Yeah?”
“Thank you for always taking care of me. Before Jack went to college, he would sit in my room and read me books or tell me funny stories to distract me from parents arguing. When he left, the arguing escalated, and you were always there willing to take me away from that.”
“You’re welcome.” Should I tell her that Jack asked me to take care of her? It was the opportune moment, but she was looking at me with something akin to hero worship in her eyes and I liked it. If I told her Jack prompted me, she wouldn’t look at me the same way. She’d think I did it out of obligation. We were friends before Jack asked me to look out for her and it naturally developed into something more. Protecting her, keeping her safe and happy, and loving her weren’t an obligation. They were as natural as getting up and getting dressed in the morning. I was exactly where I was supposed to be but none of that mattered if she wanted to be friends.
Instead of telling her, I pushed open the door to get her food. I returned with a bag full of French fries and a few burgers, placing it on the console between us. “Eat a few fries to see if it settles your stomach. It’s greasy so it could go either way, but my sister swears this helps.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
I watched her take a few bites of fries and sips of soda before grabbing a sandwich for myself. When I was finished, I cleaned up our wrappers. “Feel better?”
“Much. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Ready to head back?”
“Sure.” Within a few minutes, she laid her head back and fell asleep.
When we arrived at her parents’ house, I came around to her side of the Jeep, pulled open the door and nudged her awake.
She opened her eyes and looked around. “It’s dark.”
“We’re home.” I helped her out of the Jeep and onto the porch. “This reminds me of dropping you off after dates when we were kids.”
She smiled. “It
does but hopefully my mom isn’t peeking out the window at us anymore and my dad isn’t waiting to yell at me that I’m a few minutes late for curfew.”
“Again.” Wyatt laughed. “We never could make curfew.”
“Yeah, my time with you was never long enough.” She bit her lip as if she hadn’t meant to admit that.
I reached out to touch her face but dropped my hand. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
She looked up at me, the light of the moon highlighting her face. “What do you mean?”
“You sure the best thing for you is to get a job and move back to the city? This town is in you—in your blood.” You’re in my blood. It was then I remembered one of the things I’d said to her when I was trying to convince her to stay: You think there’s something better out there for you when the best thing that will ever happen to you is standing in front of you.
Why was I trying to change her? Why was I always trying to convince her to stay? She had to realize it herself.
“Thanks for inviting me.” She averted her gaze, not answering my question.
“You’re welcome.” I stepped off the porch and paused without looking back. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Lucy
I could barely get out of bed the next morning to go for a walk, I was so exhausted. Was it the salt air and hiking or being around Wyatt that sucked all of the energy out of me? I wanted to stop fighting whatever was between us—the physical attraction that burned so bright that not even years of separation and bitterness could stifle it—but I knew he wanted more and I couldn’t do that to him again.
I couldn’t be with him and walk away. He’d asked me not to start something unless I was staying and I had to abide by that. That’s why I told him I wanted to be friends even though it hurt to say it. Even when I tried to convince myself it was possible to be near him and not fall back into him. I knew that one encounter on the boat had cracked the wall he’d erected between us after we’d broken up.
I tried to get up on my elbows so I could sit up and look at my phone, but the movement of my head made me nauseous. I laid back on the pillow. Was I really sick and not just car sick? But I’d eaten food and felt better. That’s not usually how stomach viruses worked. They came on hard and strong and I couldn’t eat anything when I got them.
I stayed still until moving didn’t spark queasiness. I laid there long enough that the sounds of my stomach rumbling drowned out any worry about sickness. I got dressed in sweats and a T-shirt before going to the kitchen to make some toast.
“No walk this morning?” my dad asked, drinking coffee at the small round table in the alcove of the kitchen.
“No. I’m really tired.”
“Where’d you go all day yesterday?”
I popped two slices of whole wheat bread into the toaster and pushed the lever down before I answered. “Wyatt took me to Assateague.” I smiled at the memory before I turned to face my dad and leaned against the counter. I felt too weary to stand upright.
“You guys hanging out again? I take it you got over whatever the problem was between you?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s too bad. Wyatt’s a great guy. He’s hard-working, steady. He was a good friend to you and Jack.”
“Really?” I didn’t think he’d be happy with anyone I dated.
“Yeah. I was surprised when you broke it off.” At my raised brows he continued, “I know you always said you didn’t want to take a boyfriend with you to college—you wanted to experience college single, but I didn’t believe it, I guess. Not the way you two were.” He shook his head as if he was remembering something. “That’s rare.”
I shrugged. “What do teens know about love?” We were childish and immature. There were bound to be feelings tied to the first guy you slept with. That doesn’t mean he’s the one you’re supposed to be with forever.
“He was different than the other immature guys in high school. You guys were always late with curfew, but I knew you were safe with him.”
He was different than the other guys in school. He didn’t play games like the other guys did with my friends. He’d naturally fallen into my life and we were so wrapped up in each other that each stage of our relationship was a natural inevitable progression, like the sun rising in the morning and setting at night. Everything about Wyatt and I was inevitable—from the beginning to the end.
My toast popped up in the toaster behind me, causing me to jump. I placed the hot toast on my plate and suddenly felt odd again. I braced my hands on the counter to steady myself. I hoped Wyatt was right and eating would help, so I took a tentative bite. I slowly chewed and drank a few sips of water to see how I felt.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so. I felt a little sick yesterday from riding in that Jeep. It was bumpy.” Hopefully that’s all this was—residual vertigo. I didn’t want to be sick right now. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been knocked down by a stomach virus and it was the last thing I wanted now. I needed to meet with the caterers this week to help Jack and Samantha with the cake tasting. How was I going to do that with an uneasy stomach?
“I’m going to grab the eggs from the chickens unless you wanted to do it?”
I’d always loved those little chores on the farm. We didn’t have a large working farm because the marina and the business was my parents’ income. But we had goats, chickens, and dogs.
Now my parents only had the chickens. As the marina business became more consuming the animals were harder to take care of because Jack and I were no longer around to help. “Sure. I’d like that.”
I ate a few more bites of toast when it felt like my stomach wasn’t going to revolt then I stepped into my sneakers, grabbed the yellow wire egg basket by the back door, and walked toward the tiny chicken house. I counted only five chickens—four walking around inside the fence and one on her nest.
I nimbly stepped over the short fence and reached my hand into the chicken house feeling around for eggs and carefully placed each one in the basket so they wouldn’t crack. I carefully moved the hen still on her nest to get to her egg.
The chickens playfully clucked around me. I know the smell of the chicken house and farms in general would have had my so-called friends at work wrinkling their noses in disgust. But these smells were like home to me. The same things that had pushed me to leave this town now were familiar and comforting.
I carried the basket into the house to find my mom pulling out ingredients to make omelets. “Oh good, you’re here this morning. I wanted to make you a big breakfast.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I ate some toast.”
Mom raised her brows at my piece of toast with a few bites taken out of it. “That’s not breakfast.”
I didn’t want to argue and hoped the worse of the nausea was behind me, so I said, “Sure, breakfast would be great.”
I sat at the table watching her as she sautéed onions, peppers, and mushrooms.
She cracked the eggs into a bowl to whisk before pouring them into the pan. “What are your plans for the day?”
“I need to plan the menu with the caterer and meet with a baker for the cake. I finally convinced Samantha to consider hiring someone else baking her cake.”
“She wants to bake her own cake?”
“She doesn’t think anyone else can make it the way she wants.”
Mom laughed. “Maybe because she’s a baker she thinks it will be less stressful to do it herself than having to worry about someone else doing it.”
“I don’t know. I promised Jack I wouldn’t let her get stressed out.”
“Really?” she asked. “That’s sweet—you’re looking after his girl.”
I didn’t want to be the sister who was so busy working she couldn’t attend important family events. I sucked in a sharp breath. When did that happen? I was literally that girl a few weeks ago. I was planning on missing all of these small seemingly unimportant event
s then. Now the wedding was the most important thing in my life—I was responsible for making Samantha’s wedding the perfect day. Making all of her dreams come true.
“You’re enjoying planning the wedding?” she asked knowingly.
“Yeah. I am.”
She plated an omelet and placed it in front of me. “I’m sure something will come up soon for you. And if not, couldn’t you work from home doing graphic design? I always hear about people designing websites and such from home.”
“That’s not what I do and I’m not sure I’d want to do that.” What I did was different than website design. Sometimes I wasn’t sure my parents had a clue what my career entailed but I had probably never bothered to explain it. There were too wrapped up in their own business.
I took a bite of the omelet. The appeal of my job was the social aspect—planning extravagant parties, socializing with my coworkers who were also my friends, feeling like I was part of something.
“Keep your options open. You never know what will fall into your lap.” She poured more eggs into the pan.
I laughed. “Like planning a wedding.”
“Exactly. Sometimes the best things in life aren’t planned.”
I’d had my life planned out since I was a kid. I may not have known I wanted to be a graphic designer at that age, but I knew I wanted away from my parents’ arguing and far enough away that they couldn’t ask me to help out with the business. But when I thought back to the two best things in my life—Wyatt and my job—both were organic. Neither was technically planned. Maybe my mom was right.
Lucy
Jack held open the door for Samantha and me at the Centreville Bakery, Elegant Creations. I smiled weakly, hoping my stomach would cooperate. I’d had bouts of nausea all week with just enough time in between to pretend everything was okay and my body was winning the fight with the stupid virus. When the smell of cakes met my nose, I felt nothing. Relieved, I scanned the shop taking in the framed photos of elaborate wedding cakes and cupcakes hung on the mint green walls, a display case featuring items to take home lined the opposite wall, and several small tables for patrons to eat were arranged in the small space.