“It’s just routine, Joss. I’m fine.”
As Drew says my name, he takes my hand. And that’s how we walk. All the way back to my cabin.
Whatever this thing is between Drew and me, wherever it might go, or however long it may last, I’m grateful for it tonight. I’m grateful for him.
After he shuts all my open windows and checks the cabin over again for any stray cats, he instructs me to lock the door behind him. I doubt there’s been a single crime on the island for years, but I’ll appease him.
“Goodnight, Joss.”
With a wink, he’s gone.
It’s that wink that keeps me from falling asleep, but it’s the continuous buzz of my phone that wakes me.
Crap. I forgot to call my mom. Again.
Chapter Eight
‡
“I put an offer on the condo yesterday.”
This is how our conversation begins. I haven’t spoken to my mom on the phone since the day I came to the island, believing all I needed was a little time and space to deal with a word I hated almost as much as divorce: condo.
But I was wrong.
I yank the front door open, trip down the porch steps, and start up the driveway. My chest aches when I pull in my next breath and tug my sweater tighter around my middle. The chilly morning air is definitely fresh, but it comes with a wave of shivers.
“I’m hoping you might help me pick out some furniture before summer’s over and you go back to school. You’ve always had such a gift for decorating.”
I push my legs to walk faster up the rocky driveway. Her flattery falls on deaf ears. I don’t want to talk about decorating the condo. I don’t want to talk about anything that will happen after I leave this island—my safe haven.
Tall, bushy trees shadow my every step. And I don’t care that those steps are from my slippered-feet or that my hair looks like a nest of bees attacked it. But I do care that all my mom wants to discuss is a stupid condo. Not my feelings, not my pain, not my emptiness.
She continues without missing a beat, “I just want you to feel a part of this new place. I know how much you hate change.”
And yet, somehow, change just keeps smacking me in the face.
My steps halt. If I couldn’t breathe before, then I’m about two seconds from keeling over now. The phone slips down my face several inches as I stare at a sign staked into the roadside.
One that points to my cabin with a red arrow.
“Joss? Are you still there, honey?”
Hot, rage-filled tears inch their way up my throat and into my eyes.
“When were you planning on telling me, mom?” Anger cuts out the shape of every letter as I speak.
“Tell you what?”
“The cabin.”
Silence. It eats into my ear from the phone.
“Oh.” She sighs. “I was getting to that. I didn’t want to tell you over text, and you wouldn’t call me back—”
“You’re selling the cabin?” The screech of my last few words echoes in the hollow, tree-lined pathway to the cabin’s front door.
I stare at the eighties style “glamour shot” picture on the real estate sign. Dotty Harrison and Associates. I want to kick the cheesy smile off her face.
“We haven’t been there as a family in years, Joss. And there are many better vacation rentals on the island than our little shack.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” She sounds confused, though I know she’s not clueless. She’s in every memory I hold dear at this cabin. She and my father both.
“Don’t pretend this place doesn’t matter to you. Sure, we haven’t been here as a family for a few years, but…” I shake my head so hard my vision blurs. “You can’t sell it!”
“Joss, listen to me.”
“All I’ve done is listen to you! I’ve listened to you fight. I’ve listened to you complain. I’ve listened to you tell my father you don’t love him. That you haven’t loved him since I was skipping around in pigtails. I’ve listened enough!”
I lift my chin, try to stop the flow of tears by reversing the pull of gravity. It doesn’t work. Just like my plan to restore the house. Just like my plan to restore my family.
From the roadway, I have a perfect view of the cabin. But this time, instead of the warm memories it usually provides, I feel nothing but the stab of gut-wrenching loss.
“I’m sorry.”
She’s crying, but I can’t let myself comfort her. Not over this.
She sniffles loudly into the speaker. “We have to sell it, and this prime time to have the cabin go on the market. Dotty says the island gets the best real estate activity during Fourth of July. She called me yesterday, said from looking in the windows the place looked great inside. Really clean. I’m glad you’ve been able to enjoy one last summer.”
I close my eyes, and tears land on my chest. A woman was looking in my windows yesterday? While I was slaving over smelly carpet?
And I never even had the chance to show my parents all my hard work.
I clamp my teeth so hard my jaw throbs.
And then understanding dawns…what my mother’s saying without actually saying it at all.
“You need the cabin sale to purchase the condo, don’t you?”
Her silence confirms my fear.
*
I walk.
I walk and I walk and I walk. The tread on my slippers is threadbare; the light cotton fabric damp with dew.
And still I don’t stop moving. Because I can’t stop thinking.
My legs carry me down to the dock, and even though I know the chances of Drew waiting there for me are slim, I search for him anyway.
In less than four days, my ears have grown accustomed to his laughter, to his easy way of speaking, to his dependable optimism that tells me—even without words—that everything’s going to be all right.
Even when it’s not.
I sigh. He’s not here.
Tasting the salty air on my tongue, I kick off my soggy slippers and step out onto the dock. The morning breeze lifts the frazzled ends of my hair and tickles my cheek. Each stride feels purposeful. Daring.
Toes curled around the last cold plank at the ledge, I lean forward to peer into the placid water.
But the tear-stained face floating in the liquid mirror does not reflect a little girl. It reflects an adult. A young woman who’s dedicated her happiness to the stability of her family.
“No more.” The words carry across the vast water, their meaning resonating in my chest.
In the time is takes a lonely seagull to travel from the shallow end to beyond the horizon’s edge, the dutiful child in me disappears.
And Joss Sanders, the Rebel, has surfaced.
Soaked slippers in hand, numb toes and feet, I hike the path back to my cabin. The second I’m inside, I dive toward the junk drawer and yank it open.
And there I find my prize.
A black Sharpie.
Chapter Nine
‡
I watch Drew pull in, park, and leap up my porch steps two at a time. All the while, I lounge quietly on the Adirondack chair I rescued from the cobwebs an hour ago.
He doesn’t see me as he raises his fist to knock on the door.
I clear my throat. “Morning.” I’m the one to surprise him for a change.
Drew hops back a step and glances left, his eyes wide. His gaze free falls from the top of my head to the tip of my Converse-covered toes. “H-hi.”
It’s the stutter that gives him away. Drew likes what he sees. And I like that Drew likes what he sees.
The extra time spent on my hair and makeup this morning after my “little moment” on the dock was apparently time well spent.
I open my mouth to save us both the awkwardness of recognizing that I no longer resemble some kind of island-hobo when he speaks.
“You look really pretty.”
Really pretty. The sweet and simple words corkscrew into my heart.
Too many
people think boldness is the same as bluntness. But I disagree. Drew’s boldness doesn’t stem from the need to say everything that’s on his mind. No, he chooses his words carefully and lives by the honesty-is-always-the-best-policy rule. Which makes a compliment from him a thousand times more amazing.
His gaze steadies on mine.
I could take flight with the number of winged creatures filling my abdomen.
“Thank you.” A swirl of heat rises in my chest, then swims across my shoulders and down into my back and arms. I uncross my legs, plant them flat on the porch, and stand. “Did you want to come in?”
“Uh…not exactly.” Drew tugs on the back of his neck. “I was hoping you might be free today.”
“Do you mean free as in not ripping up soggy carpet, deep cleaning freezers, or rearranging old cabin furniture? That kind of free?”
Drew’s light laughter fills the space between us, my heart skipping to a new beat. “Free as in, would you like to come with me into town for the day and—”
“Yes!” I need an adventure—something to take my mind off of…well, everything. An adventure with Drew is a thousand times more exciting than sitting here alone.
“You didn’t let me finish. What if I was about to invite you to go garden supply shopping?”
“Then I’d tell you I’ll pick out the very best hoe you’ve ever laid eyes on.”
A quirk in his eyebrow followed by a twitch in his bottom lip takes my innocent comment plummeting to a whole new level of Joslyn’s Foot-In-Mouth Disorder.
He shakes his head. “Good to know. But I don’t want to take you to the Garden Supply Center.”
Heat floods my cheeks like a radiator set to high. “So where, then?”
“I need help building a float for the Fourth of July parade.”
A buzz of energy zaps through my veins. “Seriously?”
Drew’s confident expression wavers. “Yeah?”
I bounce and clap my hands like a three-year-old at a birthday party. “I’ve always wanted to help with a float!”
Drew holds out his hand to me and winks. “Then I’m honored to be the man who gets to fulfill such a wild fantasy of yours.”
Linking my arm through his, we head to his car. As he opens the passenger door, his eyebrows draw inward. “Joss?”
“Yeah?” I say, tugging on my seatbelt.
“Why is there a real estate sign at the top of the driveway with a giant X through it and the word ‘Not’ scribbled before the words ‘For Sale’?”
The heat in my cheeks is back, and it’s blazing down my neck.
I shift and sit straighter. “Because I’m not a child anymore.”
Three seconds of a solid Drew-stare later, he closes my door. No more questions asked.
*
When Drew pulls up to an old, dilapidated warehouse it’s as if I’ve jumped from Anne Shirley’s picture-perfect Green Gables farm into Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
My sense of adventure may not be the same as Drew’s.
This place is a dump. And given the dozen or so full black trash bags stacked in a pyramid at the side of the building, it might actually be a dump.
He shrugs apologetically as I step out of the car. “I know it’s not much to look at, but there’s no parking out front.”
I pinch my lips closed. Unlike Drew, my optimism is much harder to pull to the surface. I’d be willing to bet all four of my appendages that the front of this eyesore is no more appealing than the back.
Drew takes my hand and leads me toward a narrow alley at the side of the building. Half-dead patches of grass and half-eaten dandelions force their way though dirt and broken pieces of concrete.
We turn the corner. Drew stops, tugs on my hand.
I see the signs. They scream at me from every angle of the warehouse’s garage-like front. Most are weathered. All are bold, either in word or graphic or color.
“Birds poop every fifteen minutes. How long have you been standing here?”
“Children left unattended will be given to the Circus.”
“25 mph. Yes, your car can go that slow.”
And my personal favorite:
“In case of a fire. Please exit before tweeting about it.”
Drew laughs at my wide-eyed expression. “Impressive, huh?”
I nod slowly as my eyes work to take in the rest of the property. Hundreds of oversized rusty gear pieces, random cut-off pipe, metal, and rebar. “What is this place?”
A three-legged pit bull hobbles out of the open retractable door, bark-wheezing at us.
“You chasin’ the devil again, Pete?”
A weathered old man I’m certain could double as a deep sea fishing captain, calls after the mutt. The abrupt halt of the man’s shuffling feet and the gasp that leaks from his permanently puckered lips indicate we’ve been discovered. His wrinkled roadmap of a face transforms in an instant. “Drew Culver.”
Drew rushes to meet the old-timer, wraps a strong arm around his back and gives him a man-slap. “Good to see you again, Harve.”
Compared to Drew, Harve looks pocket-sized, shrunken and frail, yet his gap-toothed grin cannot be contained. It’s the face of joy. The kind carved from a lifetime of experience. The kind that’s chosen.
“You made it.” Harve says, beaming. “And you brought a lady friend with you.”
Harve faces me, and Drew’s cheeks brighten to a new shade of pink.
I take a step toward the men and the less than fortunate dog who sits at Harve’s feet, watching me through folds of skin. “Hi. I’m Joss Sanders.”
I offer my hand. Harve’s thick callouses scratch against the inside of my palm. He’s a hard worker. Even at his age. Which has to be eighty-five? Ninety-six? A hundred and ten? I’ve always been bad at guessing games.
“It’s mighty good to meet you, Joss Sanders. I’ve known Drew here since he was toddling around his old pops.” Harve grows silent, and it’s then I realize the connection between these two unlikely souls. Harve and Grandpa Culver were friends. “I think old Bill started bringing you out here to help with the float, well, what? A decade or so ago?”
Drew’s nod is thoughtful, as if he can see each year laid out before him in a colorful calendar spread, each memory, each moment with Grandpa Culver and Harve. His warm, acorn-colored eyes seem to hold a secret, and I hope he’ll share it with me.
“I’ll show you the supplies I’ve gathered. It’s not much, but I have faith you two can come up with something.” Harve pats the outside of his thigh. “Come on, Pete.” The pit bull limps after him obediently.
It’s hard not to stare at this odd couple of dog and man.
Drew bumps my shoulder and winks. “Probably should have given you a little warning, eh? I forgot how…” His eyes comb over the property again. “Unique this place is.”
Unique is one word for it. “No, it’s fine. This will be fun.” If a lie is small enough, simple enough, does it really count as a lie?
His smile answers my momentary moral dilemma.
He touches my arm, squeezes gently. “I’m glad you’re with me. Today would’ve been boring without you.”
Drew turns and follows Harve into the mysterious warehouse, leaving me with no other choice but to do the same.
Chapter Ten
‡
We trail after Harve in the dusty sanctuary of old car parts, gears, trinkets, and signs. Lots and lots of signs. He stops in front of a back room where a giant heap of “supplies” scatter the concrete floor.
“Here it is.” Harve nods at the mess as if we’re supposed to understand what it is.
Naturally, Drew understands. He walks inside the dimly lit room, leaving me with Harve and his wonder dog.
“Great. We’ll get started. Mind if we carry this stuff outside? Better lighting under the pavilion, I think,” Drew says, managing one of his mega-watt smiles.
My gaze drifts to the floor. I can’t take my eyes off this mismatched pile of materials.
“Fine by me. I don’t care where ya choose to assemble it. Help yourself to any tools ya find.” Harve folds his arms over his bony chest. “The big parade’s only six days from now, you sure you’re up for this?”
Drew’s confidence is as inspiring as it is unwavering. “Absolutely. Joss is an expert visionary.”
Harve flashes me a crumply grin, and I don’t know whether to feel flattered or flustered by Drew’s unfounded assessment of me.
“I’ll be over in the main shop today. Got a lot of tinkering to get done before nightfall. Come on, Pete. They don’t need you nosin’ about.”
“Sounds good.” Drew’s already dropped to his knees to examine what we’ve been given.
The second Harve is out of earshot, I lean against the splintery doorjamb. “An expert visionary? Really?”
“Look what you did with your cabin in only a few days. And those old frames you painted. That takes vision.”
“Or a few days of cleaning and a few cans of paint.”
“Joss.” Still hunkered on the ground, he looks up at me, eyes alight with the kind of bright belief I wish I possessed. “I think you’re perfect for this project. Now grab some of this stuff, and let’s get to work.”
*
Four hours into project Mess o’ Metal we are closer to filling a landfill than creating a float to pull behind Harve’s old Ford.
I hop up on an old workbench, the unsanded wood scratching the underside of my thighs. “We’re in over our heads, Drew.”
For the first time all day, he looks a bit, well, defeated. He’s rolled his shoulders, stretched his back, and sighed about a thousand times. Not that I’ve been counting. Everything he’s managed to piecemeal together has fallen apart.
Drew lifts the bottom of his shirt and swipes at his forehead. My throat feels stuffed full of cotton balls, and I drink the last few drops of warm water from the plastic bottle beside me.
“I swear this used to be easier.” He scratches his head, frowns at the pile.
“Probably because your grandpa knew how to build stuff. He had what? Forty some odd years of float-building experience.” I point between the two of us. “We don’t.”
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