He gave another wry smile but didn’t say anything to that.
“So can we do this? Just give each other the care we need, and be there for the other to talk to, but not move it beyond that?”
He lowered his eyelashes. “Okay.”
“And now I need to leave, because you are looking way too tired, and as your friend, I’m telling you—you need some sleep.”
“I’m kind of hungry, actually. Care to join me for some ramen?”
“Do you seriously still eat ramen, like in college?” She swung off the chaise lounge and followed him into the house.
“It’s cheap and easy.”
“Not like dating me, right? Yuk-yuk.”
“Too soon, Natalie.”
She laughed and explored his kitchen with him, looking for some vegetables to add at least, but his pantry and freezer were bare. Finally, at the very back of his cupboard, she found two cans of vegetables. The date stamp said they were still good.
“Those must have been from the previous renters,” he admitted.
“You don’t eat vegetables?”
“I just forget to shop.”
They made the ramen and canned vegetables, then swung up onto the kitchen bar stools to eat them with plastic chopsticks—also from the previous renters—while Elliott told her some of the funnier calls they got at the center from hapless tourists, like the ones who thought they’d spotted a harbor seal who’d been shot through the head, only to find that they didn’t know what harbor-seal ears looked like.
At three o’clock, after several stories and even more laughs, she shoved him off the bar stool and told him to get some sleep.
“Would you like me to call the center for you tomorrow and tell them that you won’t be in until ten?”
“I can’t go in that late.”
“If you get a good night’s sleep for once, think how much better you can be for the sea lions. And I’ve kept you up all this time, so I feel guilty anyway. Let me call. Sometimes friends need a little push. Promise me you’ll sleep until nine. One night.”
He rinsed their bowls and chopsticks. “I can’t. I’m used to very little sleep. I’m a bit of an insomniac.”
“Try. One night.”
He turned off the water. “It would be nice.”
“All right then. I’ll call Jim for you first thing in the morning. I’ll let myself out. Good night, Elliott.”
“Sunrises,” he said quietly, to the faucet.
“What?”
He walked in her direction and guided her to the back door. “Sunrises is something my sister and I say to each other when the other one can’t sleep. We started it as kids, when one of us was scared after the murders. We’d say it to remind each other to think of the sun rising the next morning—meaning everything will be fine, and tomorrow gives you a new chance at another day.”
“Everything will be fine, Elliott.”
He looked at her for a minute too long—searching her face, her eyes, as if he wanted to know that was true.
“Sunrises then,” she said quietly, and she stepped off the back porch and hopped into her cart, securing the Elsa doll beside her.
And she thought—as she drove slowly down the hill—that she’d never had a more wonderful, honest, comfortable night with a man.
And with Elliott Sherman.
As friends.
With clothes on.
Who would have thought?
CHAPTER 21
During the next few weeks at the center, Elliott gave her a wide grin each time he saw her. He didn’t flinch when she gave him a hug or encouraging pat on the arm, he stopped looking like a deer caught in headlights when she’d approach, and he even started to flirt a little.
She loved having him as a friend.
And helping him was a joy she hadn’t expected. She dragged him along when she went grocery shopping for Olivia and pointed to various food options: corn on the cob, broccoli, carrots.
“I don’t know how to prepare any of that,” he said, with a note of apology in his voice.
“What did you and your granddad eat every day?”
“Nell figured it out after my grandma died, and she’d cook for him and me, but for some reason I never thought I’d need to know any of this stuff.”
“It’s easy,” Natalie said, throwing a few ears of corn into his cart.
“I’m good at some other parts, though.”
“Eating?”
“I’ll show you later.”
Once they checked out, he got a mischievous grin on his face. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Get in. This is the part I was good at.”
She climbed on the front of the cart and laughed while he raced her through the parking lot. It was wonderful to see him so carefree—grinning like a child—and she felt the same.
They loaded the groceries onto his golf cart, swung down to his house, threw a couple of stalks of asparagus on a baking sheet, and sat on the kitchen counter while it roasted. They had spring salads and asparagus on the patio, staring down at the bright-pink blanket of ice-plant blooms that now covered the hillside.
“So, who would you invite to dinner if you could invite anyone at all?” he asked one night, as they lay on the chaise lounges eating ribs and watching the sun set over the horizon. He was looking better and better with each passing day—more rested, fewer circles under his eyes, the color back in his face.
“Mmm, good question. Living or dead?”
“Either.”
“Mother Teresa. I know it sounds corny, like a beauty-contestant answer, but I’d like to talk to her. I’d like to know her thoughts on forgiveness, and acceptance, and how she just kept it together all those years.”
“Forgiveness?”
“Yes, forgiveness is hard.”
His intense stare turned into a bit of a frown. “Yes. Well, that request for Mother Teresa sounds about right for you—it fits in with your Good Samaritan gene.” A small smile dimpled the sides of his mouth.
“Good Samaritan gene?”
“Yeah, it was one of the first conclusions I came to about you.”
She peered at him curiously. “That night Lily and I reported the sea lions to you? You came to conclusions?”
“Regarding that and other things.”
“What other things?”
He smiled shyly. “Is this where I come across as flirting, even though I’m just telling the truth?”
“It’s okay. I understand you.”
“What I thought the first time I saw you is that you were quite a Good Samaritan to travel all the way to my house from the tide pools with a little girl just to borrow a phone to report distressed sea lions. But I also thought you were pretty. And that you had great legs—you were wearing shorts—but I tried not to notice because I was on a date with someone else.”
“I thought you said I had intelligent eyes!”
“Intelligent eyes and great legs aren’t mutually exclusive, Natalie.”
“And here I thought you high-IQ types only noticed things like intelligent eyes and hair the color of the acorns in your grandfather’s yard.”
Elliott chuckled. “We may be quiet, but we’re not dead.”
She tried to look prickled, but really it pleased her. Elliott had been careful not to act or say anything very sexual around her, and she’d tried to return the courtesy. But the way he was blushing and looking away right now was really cute. And dangerously sexy. She needed to divert this conversation.
“How about you?” she finally asked.
“How about me, what?”
“Who would you invite to dinner, if you could invite anyone?”
“Oh, we’re back on that? Let’s see. There are a couple of Nobel Prize winners I wouldn’t mind talking to—Emil von Behri
ng, Gerhard J. Domagk, Alexander Fleming—”
“I think you have to pick just one.”
“Alexander Fleming, I guess.”
Natalie cocked an eyebrow in question.
“Penicillin.”
“Ah.”
“I admire the people who were able to use science for cures—to contribute something, help someone or something.”
“You’re doing that, Elliott.”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
She finished her rib and wiped her hands on her napkin, taking in his focus, his intensity. He even ate ribs with intensity. It was kind of sexy, how singularly focused he was on everything. She wondered briefly if he’d be like that in bed, but she pushed the thought away as soon as it entered her mind. She couldn’t let herself think that way about him.
“Work’s important to you,” Natalie finally said, not so much as a question but to acknowledge she understood this truth about him.
“Yes.”
“Is it the most important thing to you?”
He thought that over. “Nell’s important to me, too. And little Max, and now Jim. Family. They’re all I have now.”
“But what about you? Don’t you want anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Fame? Success? Money?”
“Nah. None of that’s important to me. What am I going to spend money on? Clothes?” He indicated the worn-out, nondescript tennis shoes that he wore almost every day.
Natalie smiled. She’d grown to like Elliott’s unassuming way of dressing. His sister was always trying to get him to dress better for dates, but Natalie thought he looked fine. He knew how to match, at least. And when he’d gotten his new glasses, some fashionably savvy optician had talked him into frames that were surprisingly trendy (although he didn’t know that). He now had a carefree, modern, hipster look that Abercrombie & Fitch seemed to be trying to replicate, but it was the way Elliott genuinely looked.
“So what are you doing all the work for?” she asked.
“Self-satisfaction.” He frowned as if the answer were obvious. “What about you? What’s the most important thing to you?”
Natalie thought that over. Was there anything she had that she was proud of?
“I’m proud of how the Senior Prom is coming together. They didn’t have much money to give me to work with—the last assistant activities director apparently absconded with the funds—but I’m happy with the way I’m still pulling it off.”
“Does it come easily to you?”
“It does.” She thought about that with wonder.
“And it gives you a little high when you get it right?”
She nodded.
“That’s how I feel about microbiology. I’m glad you’ve found something, too. Hang on to that, Natalie. I’m realizing it’s a gift.”
They carried their plates to the kitchen and ended up in a water fight that had them both laughing the rest of the night.
And Natalie realized she’d been given more than one gift these past few months.
The tide pools became one of their favorite places to spend time together. Elliott liked to go after work to relax and study different animals and algae.
“Look, low tide’s in twenty minutes! Let’s hurry,” Natalie said, pointing to the laptop page he was peering at as they sat on his patio.
They slipped on their “tide pool” shoes—completely caked with mud, dirt, and sand—then sidled down the hillside, jogged across the sand, and climbed over the lava-looking rocks to the very edge of the pools while the low-sitting sun bounced off the water. They’d found a spot where they’d determined the best creatures were—colorful starfish, side-moving red crabs, and tiny hermit crabs moving nautilus shells on their backs. Dark-blue mussels and lavender-pink sea sponges clung to the craggy rocks. Natalie loved the earthy, salty smell there.
“Ooh, what’s this one?” she would ask, pointing to a bright-green sea anemone, shaped like a multipetaled flower.
Natalie and Elliott always first scanned the pools for the sea anemones, with their crazy shapes, stripes, and colors, attached to the rocks with bizarre tentacles floating about them, waving with each brush of the ocean.
“That’s an anthopleura elegantissima,” Elliott said, coming closer.
She loved pointing at everything and hearing Elliott say all the names.
“That one clones itself.” He bent down beside her. “Splits right in two, and—through longitudinal fission—creates a clone.”
The fading sun caught the golden hairs on his arms as he braced himself against his knees. Natalie loved looking at the wonder on his face. He never touched anything—he always treated the tide pools with reverence and wonder, as she’d been taught to do since she was a kid, too. But with Elliott, somehow she guessed he’d never had to be taught such a thing, probably not even as a child. The unwavering respect for Mother Nature simply seemed part of him.
“There’s another starfish!” she said, crawling over a rock toward another small pool. She brushed the sand off her palms. “Can they really regenerate lost arms?” She’d been coming to these tide pools since she was a child, but she’d never had her own personal tour guide.
“Some species can. Depends on where their vital organs are.”
“What’s that one?” She pointed to a beautiful starburst-shaped one.
He leaped down to the other side of the pool and bent closer. “That’s an anthopleura sola. See its tentacles? Those are acrorhagi—they sting, and he uses them for fighting. These types of anemones sting each other until one moves and the other can claim the territory. Brutal world, these tide pools.” He smiled and shoved his hair out of his eyes, leaving little speckles of sand in the strands.
They traipsed along the pool for nearly an hour, carefully stepping around anything that looked living—even the algae—until the sun slowly set and the tide began gently rising, filling the pools a quarter inch at a time until the water began sweeping the toes of their tennis shoes.
At the top of the rocky ledge that led to a drop into the sand for their walk home, Elliott turned to offer his hand. It was the only time he ever touched her—at the tide pools. Natalie didn’t like to admit to herself how much she enjoyed these moments: the feel of his hand enveloping hers; the sand granules sliding between their skin; the sight of his forearm flexing as he lifted her from rock to rock; and the salty, manly scent of him when she’d steady herself against his biceps.
At the top, they paused to catch their breath, sitting on the ledge with the view back to Elliott’s house. The entire side of his property was a blanket now of bright-pink ice-plant blooms. They watched the waves rush in and out, appreciated the sunset, and stared at the sand crabs until the ice plants closed. When the moon came out, they gazed at the navy waves and talked about growing up, Wisconsin, darts, Humphrey Bogart, and any other crazy thing that came to their minds.
“Do you still have trouble sleeping?” she finally asked when they’d exhausted all their favorite lines from Star Trek.
“Some nights.”
“My sisters and I used to rub one another’s backs to fall asleep. We’d each have to count to ten. It always put us right to sleep.”
“I don’t want you rubbing my back, Natalie.”
“It’s not a sexual thing; it’s a comfort thing.” She watched a huge wave splash its sea spray up toward them. The white foam glistened in the moonlight.
When he didn’t answer, she glanced over at him. He was leaning back, looking at her from beneath his bangs.
“You ask me to do a lot of things that require my strength, but that might be pushing it,” he finally said.
They both watched the waves for another few minutes while Natalie stole furtive glances at him. She had the strangest urge to lay back, let him curl his arm around her, and sigh deeply as they wat
ched the stars and waves. But they were both working hard to keep this relationship in check.
“We’d better get back,” he finally said, standing.
She nodded and scrambled to her feet, even as she swallowed her disappointment that this time he didn’t reach back for her hand.
The following Thursday, Natalie opened the cottage door to see Elliott with a bag of saltwater taffy, which had become his little custom with Lily. She thought it was sweet that he knew the owner of the candy store and always managed to get Lily the first, freshest batch.
Paige had come in especially early for the weekend and did a double take when she saw Elliott.
“Hey, Paige,” he said as he pulled up his usual chair.
“Hey, Sea Lion Man,” Paige said, her wide eyes tracking his every move as he, Lily, and Natalie continued their saga of War with the playing cards they kept on the kitchen counter.
When their battle was over, Lily pulled Elliott to his usual spot on the couch.
“You have to see Elsa’s movie now,” she said.
“I’ve been promising, haven’t I?”
“Yes!” Lily sat close to him on the couch. Whenever they started a movie, she always took off his glasses and switched them with hers, giggling, but this night was too serious with her screening of Frozen. As the television flickered its lights across their faces, Natalie found herself transfixed by the growing love between Elliott and Lily. Suddenly all the tapes she’d always played in her head—she never wanted to get married; she never wanted kids—began dissolving right before her as she stared at these two people she’d come to care about so much. She could almost picture being married to Elliott. She could almost picture having a little girl like Lily. She could almost picture staring at her own little family on a couch just like this . . .
A pressing sense of betrayal washed over her. Was she allowed to want that? She glanced up furtively to make sure Paige wasn’t walking through the room. All her life Natalie had had the same script to recite—given to her primarily by her mom, edited and honed by Natalie herself—but now here she was, thinking of being part of a . . . couple? Thinking of being a mom? She’d spent so many years conspiring with her girlfriends, conspiring with Paige, about how they were going to live lives of adventure and weren’t going to even think about getting married until they were thirty-five, maybe forty. And now, here she was, staring at a man and a little girl on a grandmother’s flowery couch in a tiny cottage on a stifling island and thinking it looked . . . cozy? She must be losing her mind.
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