Love At The Shore

by Teri Wilson

  Yes, he was charming. And yes, much to her astonishment, he’d even been kind of great with her kids. But that didn’t make him a good influence. He knew nothing about being a good role model. Nick had never even thought about sneaking out, much less swimming to the lighthouse and back before she’d welcomed Lucas into their lives.

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter anymore.” She shook her head and realized her teeth had started chattering.

  “It clearly does. I mean, look at you.” He stepped closer and ran his hands up and down her arms in a gentle, soothing motion. It felt so good, so comforting that she almost wept.

  No.

  She took a backward step. Letting him get close was how she’d ended up in this situation.

  “I’m fine.” She lifted her chin. “Remember?”

  Lucas grew still. Quiet. So quiet she could hear a crab skitter past them on the sand and then nothing but the gentle push and pull of the tide. It rose and fell in tender harmony with the moon—a natural dance as old as time.

  Jenna had never felt such kinship with the sea before. She knew now what it was like to be swayed by a lovely, irresistible force of nature. Lucas was sand and salt, sea and sky. The beach was in his veins. He belonged here.

  But she didn’t. The summer was ending, and the time had come to stand her ground. After all, Lucas himself had said it best.

  “You were right.” She looked straight into his rich brown eyes one last time before she walked away. “Furry kids are the only kind you should handle.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  A few hours later, after she’d showered and washed off the lingering bits of sand and maternal anguish, Jenna sat at the kitchen counter icing cupcakes with Ally.

  Chocolate ones, obviously.

  “Do you really think they’ll like them?” Ally asked as Jenna swirled a generous dollop of frosting on one of the tiny cakes.

  “Double fudge cupcakes for the last day of camp? Who wouldn’t?” She’d whipped them up from a boxed mix as soon as they’d returned from Doran’s Cove, desperate to make the beach house feel like home again. Cozy. Safe.

  Now the smell of chocolate lingered in the air, but Jenna still felt strange and unmoored. Why she felt that way was no big mystery.

  While she’d been elbow-deep in cupcake batter, Nick had showered and then gone straight to his room and shut the door. He still hadn’t emerged. Jenna had pressed her ear to the door a few times to assure herself that he hadn’t tried to sneak out again, but even his presence hadn’t made her feel any better.

  She didn’t have this kind of relationship with her kids. They talked about things and trusted each other with their feelings. But Nick had been sullen and quiet on the walk back from Doran’s Cove. Sooner or later, she was going to have to hash things out with her son. The longer they went without speaking, the worse she felt.

  Maybe that’s why she seemed to be icing the same cupcake over and over again. It was piled high with a towering mound of frosting. Perhaps she should step away from the chocolate before somebody got hurt.

  Jenna placed the cupcake on the platter alongside the others and set down her frosting spatula. She smiled at Ally. “You finish the sprinkles. I’m going to go talk to your brother. All right?”

  Ally grinned and plunged her hand into a bowl brimming with rainbow-colored sprinkles. She tossed a handful of them onto the cupcakes as Jenna left the room.

  When she reached the kids’ bedroom, she knocked once or twice before pushing the door open. “Hey.”

  Nick was situated on the bottom bunk with his backpack beside him, reading a book. He’d finally decided to get started on his summer reading, apparently.

  “Can we talk?” she said, lingering in the doorway.

  He closed the book and set it aside. “Sure.”

  Jenna crossed to the other side of the room and took a seat on the adjoining bottom bunk. Their knees were only inches apart. She felt better already, having him close.

  Keeping her voice as even and calm as possible, she said, “So you want to tell me what happened this morning?”

  Nick shrugged. “I told you. I just wanted to surprise you.”

  “By sneaking out?” Just saying it made her stomach churn. “That’s not a good surprise.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He blinked wide, earnest eyes. Sunlight streamed through the bedroom window, illuminating the dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks.

  Sometimes—times like now—the fierceness of the love Jenna had for her kids snuck up on her and took her breath away. Being a parent was the toughest job in the world, but worth all the heartache a million times over.

  “I know, but you did,” she said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” He sighed. “It’s just I wanted to do it and then tell you, so you wouldn’t have to worry.”

  Jenna felt herself smiling. “Honey, that’s the beauty of being a mom. I’m always going to worry about you. Both of you, for the rest of my life. I’m just trying to understand why you did it.”

  “I just had to prove I could.”

  “To who?” She did her best to keep any bitterness from her tone. “Lucas?”

  “Myself.” There was an unwavering firmness in his voice. He paused, then his words were laced with soft sincerity. “I don’t want to be afraid of failure anymore.”

  Jenna took a moment to consider his explanation. She thought about how nervous he’d been at the swim trials when he realized Lucas wouldn’t be there to push him to swim his fastest. And then she thought about how afraid of her own writing she’d been for most of the summer, how she’d second-guessed every sentence she typed.

  It wasn’t a way to live. She knew that as well as anyone did, but she wasn’t sure she could change. With Lucas, she’d just about been ready to try. And then circumstances intervened, and she crawled back into her safe little shell, just like the hermit crabs that lived in the tide pools down at the shore.

  As safe as it felt to retreat behind her barrier, she wasn’t sure she wanted to pass that kind of attitude on to her children. She wanted them to be brave and strong.

  “I get it. I really do.” She nodded. “How do you feel now?”

  “Like I did my best, like maybe that’s enough.” Nick’s gaze shifted to his lap. “Sounds stupid, right?”

  “No,” Jenna said, pausing to wait until he met her gaze again. “But it does sound a lot like someone we know.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “It wasn’t his fault, Mom. Lucas didn’t tell me to do it.” Nick blew out a breath.

  Jenna stood and lingered once again in the doorway. They’d said what they needed to say. Hopefully, Nick would talk to her next time he wanted to prove something to himself and she’d do her best to understand.

  But as far as Lucas was concerned, she wasn’t budging.

  “I’m sorry, bud. But I don’t want to talk about our neighbor anymore, okay?” She leaned against the doorframe and did her best to ignore the rebellious flutter in her belly at the thought of him.

  “But he leaves tomorrow,” Nick implored.

  As if she could forget. She’d been glancing at the clock all day, wondering what he was doing on the other side of the fence. Folding his clothes and putting them his suitcase? Packing food, treats and toys for Tank?

  She smiled to herself at the thought of them together, and then she remembered the terrible thing she’d said to him on the beach earlier this morning.

  A weight settled on her heart. Maybe that was just the price of being safe.

  “Then I guess we only have one more day to get through,” she said. Nick didn’t look convinced. Maybe a little chocolate with rainbow sprinkles would do the trick. “Come on, let’s get a cupcake before your sister eats them all.”

  It was worth a try.

  The next morning, Jenna slipped
into yoga pants and a tank top for her last walk on the beach with Maureen. But before she dropped off Nick and Ally for their final day at summer camp, she whipped up one last batch of homemade beach pancakes.

  Unfortunately, Ally was going to have to make do with the plain old-fashioned buttermilk variety, because there wasn’t a morsel of chocolate left in the pantry. Summertime was truly coming to an end.

  Jenna poured a ladle of batter into the pan she’d used nearly every morning for the past five weeks and looked around the now-familiar kitchen. Its beach glass hues were still so soothing. Next year, they’d have to stay at a different house. She couldn’t take going back to being just Lucas’s neighbor again.

  She’d miss this place, she realized. Even after all that had happened, all the mistakes she’d made and all the tiny pieces of her heart she felt like she was leaving behind. Scattered like seashells.

  She took a deep breath and turned to face her laptop, sitting open on the kitchen counter opposite the stove. Her draft email that she’d written to her publisher, Stan, was ready and waiting to be sent. The first draft of her manuscript was already attached. All she had to do was click the send button.

  Her cursor lingered, and the same frustrating doubts swirled in her mind. What if the story wasn’t as good as her first novel? What if Stan hated it? Would the publishing company give her another chance, or would they cancel her contract and call it a day?

  Maybe she should read through the manuscript one more time.

  But then she sighed and closed her eyes and thought about her conversation with Nick yesterday.

  I don’t want to be afraid of failure anymore.

  Neither did Jenna. Nor did she want the harrowing experience at Doran’s Cove to be forgotten. It had to count for something, didn’t it?

  If her eleven-year-old son could figure out how to be happy with his best efforts, despite the results, couldn’t she? Shouldn’t she at least try and let go, just this once?

  She opened her eyes, moved the cursor over the send button and clicked.

  There. It was done. She’d come to the beach with a goal to finish her book and meet her deadline, and she’d made it happen. She should be thrilled.

  For reasons she didn’t want to contemplate, she felt only a nagging sense of emptiness. So she closed the laptop and turned back to her pancakes before they burned.

  She flipped each one over with a turn of her spatula as Ally and Nick thundered up the stairs and dropped into stools at the kitchen counter behind her.

  “Hey, Mom. Can we go outside and play for a bit?” Nick said.

  “You need to get ready for camp.” Jenna stared absently at the bubbles rising to the surface in the batter.

  “But we already are.” Ally chuckled.

  Jenna turned around, and sure enough, both of her kids were dressed and ready to go. Nick’s t-shirt matched his shorts, and Ally had even remembered to brush her hair. It was the first morning of the entire summer that Jenna hadn’t needed to micromanage their morning routines.

  This is new.

  And she had to admit, it was also kind of wonderful.

  “I’m proud of you both for getting yourselves ready.” She forced her lips into the widest smile she could. “But no. Not today.”

  If she let them play outside and Lucas was out there, she’d probably be forced to find them and drag them to the table when breakfast was ready. And she just couldn’t face him.

  Or maybe she couldn’t face saying goodbye. After all, he was leaving today. Either way, she was keeping her kids and her heart on the proper side of the fence.

  “Your pancakes are almost ready,” she said.

  Then she turned back to the stove so she wouldn’t have to see Nick and Ally’s defeated expressions.

  Lucas ran his sander over the surfboard he’d been refurbishing all summer, pausing once or twice to glance over the fence toward Jenna’s patio.

  Okay, so maybe it was more than once and twice. Maybe it was closer to ten or twenty times.

  He wasn’t in any hurry to finish his board. In fact, he didn’t need to be working on it at all since he was about to go on a road trip for several weeks. There were definitely other matters that needed his attention.

  But he’d been hoping to get a chance to see Ally and Nick one last time before he left. Maybe if he was really, really lucky, he’d get to see their mom too.

  He didn’t get it. The kids were usually out and about this time of day, playing on the deck or searching for new turtle nests on the dunes. The time had come and gone for Ally to take Tank for his early morning walk.

  Lucas powered down the sander and glanced at his scruffy sidekick, lying on the porch swing with his chin resting on his paws. The beautiful disaster of a shell collar Ally had made for him was holding up surprisingly well. Not a single scalloped seashell had fallen off.

  But Lucas wasn’t focusing much on the collar. He couldn’t see much past the melancholy softness in Tank’s brown eyes. “It’s a little quiet, buddy. You want to talk to me?”

  Tank lifted his head a fraction of an inch, grunted and then resumed his pouting position.

  “What are you thinking?” Lucas said.

  He stole another glance over the fence. He knew exactly what the poor dog was thinking. Tank was wondering if the beach house had always been this quiet before Jenna and the kids moved in. After weeks of Ally’s constant chatter and swimming questions from Nick, the silence was unsettling.

  Lucas didn’t like it, and judging by his dog’s drooping ears and sad little puppy-dog eyes, neither did Tank.

  Lucas unplugged the sander and gave up on getting any work done on the board. He couldn’t concentrate. He’d botched things up really thoroughly, hadn’t he? He’d managed to break his dog’s heart as well as his own. Possibly Jenna’s.

  Maybe it was a good thing he didn’t have any houseplants. He probably would have broken their little leafy hearts, too.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he promised, willing himself to believe it. Tank’s nose twitched, then he opened his mouth to let out a squeaky dog yawn. The pup always yawned when he was sad.

  Lucas offered his best friend a reassuring smile. “A change of scenery will do us both good.”

  The beach was windy—breezier than Jenna had seen it in the entire time they’d been at Tybee. It seemed appropriate though, since change was blowing in from all sides.

  That was the thing about the shore though, wasn’t it? The tide was its only constant. It washed in and out, over and over again, stirring up sand, moving things around. Shells, driftwood, tiny silver fish…even the shore itself. Next year, everything would look the same but different.

  Kind of like the way Jenna felt while she stood alongside Maureen and watched Kayla address the kids on their final morning at camp.

  This summer had changed Jenna. She might look the same on the outside, but on the inside, she felt like she’d been tossed overboard during a stormy sea. It was beginning to wear on her in a major way.

  She crossed her arms and focused on Kayla, standing in the middle of the crowd of children, wearing a red long-sleeved t-shirt, jean shorts and her ubiquitous whistle around her neck.

  “We’ve got absolutely no agenda today.” Kayla grinned, and the wind whipped her blonde hair around her face. “I just want you to go get out there and play hard.”

  The kids exchanged happy glances, excited to make the most of their last day at the beach. Only Ally stuck her hand in the air, classroom style.

  Kayla pointed at her. “Yes, Ally?”

  “Since it’s the last day, can we get half off M&M’s?” Ally shot her a hopeful grin.

  Jenna wanted to remind her about the double fudge cupcakes they’d brought. She and Ally had made so many of them the night before that each camper could probably eat two and they’d still have cupcakes lefto
ver. But before she could say anything, Kayla laughed and promised Ally a discount on M&M’s.

  Then she blew her whistle and the kids sprinted toward the ocean, yelling and cheering into the wind.

  Jenna and Maureen began their beach walk with much less enthusiasm, at least on Jenna’s part.

  Maureen chatted away beside her, tossing out suggestions for tomorrow’s trip back to Savannah. “We could always caravan or get lunch or talk.”

  Jenna trudged on.

  And on.

  She didn’t realize she was walking too fast for Maureen again until her friend quit moving altogether.

  “All right, stop. You need to vent, or talk plans, or do something normal. Because you’re freaking me out with all this silence.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jenna winced.

  “Don’t be sorry. Just…” Maureen threw up her hands. “Talk to me!”

  Jenna wanted to, but she didn’t know where to start. Everything was such a mess. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Maureen wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easy. Because of course not. “It’s okay to feel disappointed. I liked him too.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t about Lucas.”

  “No?” Maureen frowned. “Then what is this about?”

  Okay, it was totally about Lucas.

  But Jenna didn’t have to admit it because Maureen already knew. That’s what best friends did—they read one another’s minds when the occasion really warranted it. And if any occasion ever did, it was this one.

  “Maybe you should just talk to him.” She shrugged. “It might make you feel better.”

  Or it might make her feel even worse. Which was probably the more likely scenario given how her last two encounters with Lucas had gone.

  She’d said such terrible things. She’d lashed out because she’d been afraid—not just for Nick, but for herself. The truth of the matter was that she just wasn’t ready to fall in love.

  Too late.

  She shook her head. “I think we’ve already said way too much.”