by Isabel Jolie
Once again, I pressed the accelerator, but with more caution, as the windshield wipers on my grandmother’s decades-old golf cart barely functioned. It wasn’t like we were in danger out here on the roads of the island, but I didn’t want to ram someone in the ferry parking lot or on the way back home.
“I brought the good weather,” Gabe joked.
“Only for today. Rest of the weekend should be nice. Tomorrow morning’s surf should be good.”
Lightning cast a shot of light across the horizon, and I searched the waves heading back, hoping the lone surfer had found his way home.
Gabe hit the side of my arm. “What’s up? Ten years. It’s good to see you.”
I glanced at the ocean one last time, then focused straight ahead on the road, which now had several inches of rain over the black asphalt in places, sending sprays of water out both sides of the cart.
“Keep an eye out on the waves as we pass by, okay? I saw one nut job out there by himself.”
“On this side? I thought all the surfers were on the other side.” Gabe had spent plenty of time here, too. I’d spend my entire summer here, but he’d always come down for a week to visit.
“Yeah, that’s where the surfers who know what they’re doing go.”
Gabe got it and dutifully twisted so he could watch out on his right side as the angry, white-capped ocean came into view between the houses and dunes. Not exactly Coast Guard protection, but it made me feel better knowing we were keeping an eye out.
As we drove up Killegray Ridge, all the cottages went dark. “Shit. We lost electricity.”
“You got beer? We can sit on the porch and watch the storm.”
I thought about the dark, musky smelling cottage and the slim pickings I had for food. My plan had been to take him out to dinner, anyway. “How do you feel about going to Jules for a few beers and dinner? My treat. They should be on a generator.”
“Works for me. Let’s at least stop by the cottage to drop off my bag. I need to change shoes too.” He kicked up a leg to show me his rain-splattered leather loafers. “This is flip-flop land,” he added with a grin.
So much about Gabe made him an unlikely friend. Everything about him said preppy, conservative, financial business guy. He even had a framed photo of Ronald Reagan in his bedroom growing up. And then there was me, tattoos, faded tees, Greenpeace activist, and, while I tried to avoid the haze of U.S. politics, I sure as shit didn’t think much of any Republican. Yet we’d been friends since we were four. The kind of friendship that acknowledged differences and appreciated our shared history.
We parked as close to Jules’ entrance as I could manage and ran up the wooden steps to the marina side restaurant. Rain gushed down on the vast, open deck overlooking the marina. The single glass door tinkled as I pulled it open. I nodded at the hostess and led the way past the small indoor dining area, down a long narrow hall, to the lacquered L-shaped bar in the back.
The seafood restaurant had two different menus to select from. One with seafood, a lot of it fried, and the other a sushi menu. If you ordered from both menus, your food almost never came out at the same time. The drink menu catered to the tourists, with a wide variety of sweet concoctions with Jimmy Buffett inspired names. They also offered a decent selection of drafts. In peak season, waits here often exceeded an hour. Fortunately, in September, the crowds had thinned, and we easily found two barstools.
The bartender slid our beverages of choice over to us, and before we had a chance to discuss food, Gabe lit into me.
“So, dude. I don’t get it. Why no contact?”
“It wasn’t a choice. Believe it or not, there are places on this planet without signal.” A mirror hung on the wall behind all the shelved liquor bottles, and I attempted to avoid my reflection.
“Is that why you missed the funeral?”
A dull throb intensified, and I rubbed my forehead, attempting to ease the ache. I’d hoped Gabe wouldn’t dive right into everything the moment he arrived. No such luck.
“For the thousandth time, I was on a ship in the Bering Sea when Dad died. You don’t just book a flight and make it back in forty-eight hours. It’s not physically possible. And I’ve explained this to Gregg. Over and over. I didn’t think I’d need to explain it to you too.”
“Gregg didn’t seem to have an explanation. He’s pissed.”
The bubbles in my beer rose, and I rubbed a finger along the condensation so I could better see the pattern.
“So, what? You were out on these ships for ten years? Don’t you have to dock at some point?”
“Sometimes. You can get gas from ships that come out to you.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to think about all the years spent on the vast ocean. “Even when you dock, the places we docked, they were third world.”
“Like what? Where? If you needed money, I would have sent you money. Your grandmother would have, too.”
“I know. And I appreciate it. But the issue wasn’t money. When we docked, it wasn’t for long. And it’s not like I was twiddling my thumbs. Or we were around people I could ask to plug my phone in for a charge.” I thought of the tamped down red dirt floors, the filthy fabric hanging from slim dried bamboo, the men, women, and kids in tattered clothes, many barefoot. How did I communicate any of that to someone like Gabe?
“What’d you end up doing?” He tapped my shoulder with a lighthearted smirk plastered on. “CIA? Were you kidnapped? Like we had a million theories. Personally, I think the CIA option is the best one.” I chugged my beer, doing my best to ignore him. He put on his serious face. “But, for all Gregg’s anger, he was worried about you. He’d stop by the house, talk to my dad about his options for trying to track you down.”
I scratched my head, letting that sink in. My conversations home had been brief and short by necessity. But it wasn’t like there’d been tears. The lawyer my brother hired to contest the will certainly told a different story. A text informed me of Dad’s heart attack. A text alerted me to Nana Pearl’s passing. She’d been in hospice, and no one contacted me.
Gabe tapped my arm. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me anything that you’ll have to kill me over. Just give me the highlights.”
“I don’t even know where to begin.” I’d seen so much, done so much. On the other hand, so much of what I’d seen was all the same, and I hadn’t done nearly enough. “I started out on the Panglossian. That, you know, right?”
“Yeah. And we all got it, at first, that you didn’t have a way to call home. And your goal was to track boats that were violating international fishing law? Did you catch any bad guys?”
“It wasn’t exactly like that.” I chewed on my lip, thinking about the results from four years of my life following ships around, tracking their activities. “We stopped two of the big offenders.”
“So, you saved lots of fish?” He leaned his side against the bar with a smirk.
I sighed, ignoring his slight. “These fishing ships nowadays. Did you know they have nets that can trail two miles back? Freezers that let them haul catch for months? They’re depleting the oceans.” Something of the old emotion I used to feel stirred at his amused expression. He’d always seen me as the crazy one, the one who cared about fish.
“It doesn’t matter. You stop one boat, another three set sail. Until governments care, and someone tries to police the ocean, it’s…even if they care, it’s not something that can be solved easily.”
“You giving up on our planet?” I side-eyed him, and he still wore that blasted smirk, but there may have been a shadow of concern.
“No. Not giving up. I don’t know. Aside from the fish, which I know you don’t care about—”
“Hey, I care about the environment. Just because I didn’t join Greenpeace doesn’t mean I’m an ass.”
“Aside from the planet, it’s the living conditions. The humans.” I stretched my fingers out before me, struggling with how to explain. “The men on those fishing ships. Most of it’s modern-day slave labor. You dock in
ports that, let’s just say, tourists don’t visit. Kids—like, kids, Gabe—are in brothels, if you can call them that. You can walk down alleys and step inside a room and have your choice of a ten-year-old girl or boy, to do whatever the fuck you want for a dollar American. It’s…” I closed my eyes, aiming to prevent those images from resurfacing.
“What’d you do after Greenpeace?”
“Helped an organization get women out to sea so they could have abortions. It’s a women’s organization that helps women in countries with no rights.”
“Damn. I guess I can see why you didn’t want to tell your grandmother about that.”
I knew what he was assuming, but he’d be wrong. My grandmother was pro-choice. I’d taken the job sometime after my dad died. He would have wanted me to pursue a more lucrative career, but I didn’t expect he’d have more of an issue with my helping desperate women than helping the planet. And Nana Pearl, she was supportive, period.
“But I guess a phone was still hard to come by on those missions?” he prodded.
“I worked for that group for less than a year.” The group had been tiny, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could do long term. Not only was it dangerous, but it was emotionally grueling. I saw battered women, women who looked like girls, too young to even get pregnant. I swallowed, trying to shake the eyes. It was the eyes, the dark pupils set on white, that haunted me. An ever-present reminder of the other human beings with the misfortune of being born into squalor.
“And then? Ten years,” Gabe prompted.
“I started working for a man based out of Mississippi.”
“Let me guess. Saving whales?”
I slung back the rest of my beer and slid it forward for a refill.
“Hardly. Stealing boats behind on payments.”
“No way. A repo man.”
“Yep. Paid good. That’s about it.” Yes, I’d set out to change the world for good. And all I’d really done is ended up joining the capitalists.
“Did you ever get kidnapped? Was there a reason you went a year without calling home? Gregg considered trying to hire contract help to find you, but they weren’t even sure where to start. Said the GPS tracker your dad bought you stopped working your first year.”
The tracker had gotten crushed sometime early on. Didn’t matter, as I hardly ever charged it. I’d forgotten about that thing. Gabe wanted answers. Sounded like there’d been more worry and concern than I realized. But, at a certain point, I’d evolved into more of a drifter. My past felt distant, another universe away.
Chapter 8
Luna
* * *
Poppy and I ran up the wooden ramp, laughing, completely soaked from the torrential downpour by the time we tugged open the heavy door. A slim awning hung over the door, providing zero shelter from the deluge. Even the hostess had abandoned her outdoor stand and stood just inside the door, holding a clipboard. Her apologetic smile told me a lengthy wait existed for one of the indoor dining room tables.
They designed Jules with the beach crowd season in mind. It had a wide deck sitting over part of the marina, and an upstairs deck for overflow, but inside, there weren’t nearly as many tables. Indoor tables weren’t often needed during the busier, warm season, as everyone wanted to sit outside and enjoy the harbor view. That made getting a seat in inclement weather difficult, even in the fall shoulder season.
“Any seats at the bar?” I asked.
“Probably. You can check.”
Poppy led the way back through the front seating area, past the narrow hall and kitchen, into the barroom. The bar took up about half the space, and there were a few more tables set back along the windows.
My breath caught, and I stopped short in the doorway. Poppy, ever oblivious, moved on, pulling out a barstool and sitting on it before searching for me.
“What’s wrong?” She might as well have shouted across the bar.
Tate nodded an acknowledgment. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find him here, but I felt shellshocked. I searched for him every day when I surfed, and we never crossed paths.
“Hey.” The guy he was sitting with turned my way and flashed all of his teeth in a grin so big it stood as a direct counterpoint to Tate’s furrowed brow.
“Well, hello there,” Tate’s friend said.
Poppy had chosen bar stools a couple down from the guys. I held my hand up and wiggled my fingers in a silly girl half-wave as I made my way to the stool Poppy had commandeered.
Poppy pushed a cocktail menu my way, and as I read through the specials, my skin tingled and warmth radiated off my rain-drenched skin. I lifted the wet strands off my back and looped them to twist into a bun, and only then did I dare to glance his way. Our eyes met, and I felt him, all of him. I breathed deeply, opening my core to the energy flowing between us, taking him in, accepting. One with the sea.
He blinked and twisted on his stool, showing me his back. His friend leaned around him, smiling. “You ladies want to join us?”
“We’d love to.” I picked up my menu and took the stool beside Tate.
Poppy walked around to stand in front of the guys.
“Hi. I’m Poppy. Are you guys vacationing here?”
I doubted Tate would speak up, so I did. “Tate lives here now. He’s the guy I told you about.” I raised an eyebrow and gave her a tight smile, hoping she’d connect the dots.
“Oh! We went by your house one night. That’s right. You weren’t home,” Poppy said with a snap of her fingers.
Tate gave me a questioning look, squinting, no doubt wondering when I stopped by and why. He’d probably forgotten my showing him the note we left when we missed him.
Poppy ignored us and centered her focus on Tate’s friend. “So, are you visiting?”
His clean cut, dark-haired friend smiled, and his posture and smooth grace reminded me of a politician. “Tate and I go way back. I’m Gabe.” He shook Poppy’s hand and held on to it for a beat before letting her hand go and setting his gaze on me. “And you are?”
“She’s no one.” Tate’s voice broke through. I gasped, and he added, “Not no one. I mean, she’s a young girl who lives on the island.” His voice was stern, and embarrassment lit my skin at his emphasis on the word girl. He glared at Gabe as he spoke, as if warning him.
“I’m a coastal scientist at the Haven Island Nature Conservancy. And I’m assisting Tate with the redesign of his cottage.”
Gabe looked back and forth between us and covered his mouth with his hand. Even with his mouth covered, you could tell he wore a big grin. His eyes gave him away. Then he looked to Poppy. “And what about you?”
Poppy had a good base tan and wore her everyday level of blush, but I could swear I saw tints of color expand along the sides of her face and down her neck. I jumped in. “Poppy owns an internet business.”
“Oh, what kind of business?”
“Photography,” I blurted.
Poppy asked Gabe, “What do you do?”
“I’m a hedge fund manager,” he answered.
Poppy slid onto the stool on his other side. As they continued their conversation, I asked Tate, “How long is he in town for?”
“Just the weekend.”
“Where’s he from?”
“New York.”
“Wow, that’s quite the trip for one weekend.” It wasn’t that North Carolina was far from New York, at least by plane, but there weren’t many direct flights from New York to Wilmington, which meant he probably had a connection in Raleigh then a drive to the beach and then a ferry. Even with a direct flight, it was still a hassle getting to the island.
Tate grunted then offered, “We hadn’t seen each other in a long while.”
Tate frowned at his friend’s back. Gabe and Poppy sat engrossed in conversation, their heads noticeably close together for two individuals who just met in a bar. Tate held up the menu.
“What’s good here?”
“Oh, I normally order the salad with quinoa.” The menu didn’t
offer an abundance of options for a vegetarian. “But they offer several farm-raised fish options if you’re interested. You can ask Julie, too. Sometimes there are some options not on the menu. And she can tell you where she sourced the fish.”
My subtle reminder that I too was aware of the dangers befalling our Earth’s ocean seemed to elevate me in his eyes. He sipped his beer while gazing at me.
Gabe leaned over. “We’re ordering sushi rolls. You two want in?”
Tate kept his eyes on me when he answered, “Nah, we’re good.”
“What’re you getting?” Gabe asked.
“We’re getting the salads.” If Brandon had ever ordered for me, or even answered for me, I would’ve become irate. But instead of anger, a thrill vibrated through me. Tate and I bonded, and even if it was over something as benign as ordering food, it felt good.
Poppy expanded on Tate’s statement with, “Luna’s a vegetarian.”
“Do you not eat fish?” Gabe asked, thunderstruck.
Tate looked down at the bar, but his lips spread into a smile.
“On a blue moon I’ll eat farm-raised fish. It’s just not something I’m in the mood for right now.”
“They have chicken,” Gabe prodded.
“Vegetarians don’t eat chicken,” Tate said, more amused than annoyed. “We’ll be fine with the salads.”
“Why’d you bring me to a seafood place if you don’t eat fish?” He leaned back on his stool, so he could include Poppy and us in the conversation. “He picked the place,” he told Poppy while shooting Tate an accusatory glare.
“Well, in all fairness, there’s a limited number of restaurant options. Jules has the best bar. The clubs each have restaurants, and then there’s Delphina’s, and then there’s another seafood restaurant on the inner island, Provisions, but half the time we just go to the market. You can get takeout Chinese and Italian over there.”
“Huh, yeah, that all sounds familiar. So, I guess as animal saving marine biologists, you both feel the need to not eat meat?”