Abe nodded. “She’s kept you together after Samantha, I know.”
“She has.” Licks of guilt tongued through me. If he only knew.
“I can’t imagine, son,” he continued. “Lost my Sarah after fifty years of marriage, and I still reach out for her in the night, still call her name like she’s in the other room. The brain knows she’s gone, but the heart won’t accept it.”
I didn’t say anything because I had nothing to say. His situation and mine were very different. I had celebrated only one anniversary with Samantha and had yet to adjust fully to life as someone’s husband. It was a role I didn’t think I was very good at, which only added to my guilt.
We were quiet for several minutes, the soft lap of waves in the distance our only company.
I had to stop thinking about this. I’d found myself slipping into a dark place that I was quickly realizing I didn’t like visiting lately. My gaze dropped to the pile of mail that I’d brought in from his front porch.
“More offers?” I asked, leafing through the pile I’d set on the dusty glass table between us.
He nodded. “Throw them out.”
“Maybe you should open these first?”
The return addresses were real estate companies, investors, and even a lawyer in South Carolina. Real estate developers wanted to bulldoze the place down and had offered him outrageous sums of money for his beachfront property, but Abe held fast.
“What am I going to do with a pile of money?” he asked.
The man had a point. He was eighty-seven. No sense in trying to pretend he’d be around long enough to cash their checks, let alone enjoy the money. He didn’t have any kids or much in the way of relatives, as far as I could tell. I was the closest thing he had to family, and I certainly wasn’t interested in the money, or in seeing a line of condos go up on the plot of beach that had once been his home.
“Built this place with my own two hands. It isn’t much but it’s where I loved my Sarah, and where I lost her too. I’d just as soon live out my days here, thank you very much.”
I nodded. I couldn’t blame him. This was his home, all he knew.
“You need anything?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Go on. Go help Chloe. I’ll be here.”
“Okay. I’ll see you next weekend, and sooner if I find any lobster.”
He grinned at me and gave me a wink.
Chapter Three
Chloe
I was still a little shaky after my encounter with Shaw, but did my best to focus and get back to work. Most days I felt like I was trying to find an answer to the question: how far would you go to be there for your best friend?
He and I grew up together swimming and surfing and spending entire lazy Saturdays lying in his parents’ hammock, talking about how when we grew up and finally got off this stupid island, everything would be better. I taught him how to climb trees and catch lizards, and he taught me how to kiss.
Then we got older, and four years of college at the University of Miami and city life sent us straight back to the place we’d vowed to escape. But with the perspective of twenty-somethings, we realized that people who lived in the city worked all year just to be able to spend one week in the place we called home. Sun-kissed shoulders and flip-flops and casual beach life weren’t easy things to get out of your system, it turns out. Of course, now I wouldn’t trade it for anything. You couldn’t drag me away.
Back then, things were so different. I never thought of Shaw that way. But now, looking back, there were signs that deep down I felt something more for the boy I called my best friend.
It seemed so obvious now. I always hated his girlfriends, never thought they were good enough for him. When we were younger it was because they didn’t know how to bait their own hooks or catch minnows in the bay, and when we were older it was because they always seemed too polished with painted nails and highlights in their platinum-blond hair, and this season’s designer jeans.
One thing was for sure—girls always flocked to Shaw. I was always by his side through all the breakups and rebound flings. But then he met Samantha and my whole world changed. I couldn’t blame her—Shaw was lovable times a thousand. And I couldn’t blame him, either.
It was a year after we got home from college and I’d been busy working seventy-hour weeks at the inn my parents owned but left me and my brother to run when they retired. They took off in an RV with maps and a plan to explore the lower forty-eight states. Instead, they were parked in the driveway of my older sister’s suburban Kansas City home so they could be close to their grandkids. I was guessing they wouldn’t be back to Florida until I popped out a few kids for them to spoil, or my brother knocked up some poor, unsuspecting tourist. Most locals knew Jason was a player and steered clear.
Part of me wished Shaw was like that—a player moving from girl to girl, never settling down or getting serious. But he wasn’t built that way. He was a serial monogamist through and through, moving from one serious relationship to another while I remained perpetually single.
The year after graduating with a hospitality degree, I threw myself into the family business while Shaw fell in love, and I knew I had really lost him this time. It only made me pull away more. Which was fine with Samantha—she never liked the revered place I’d once held in Shaw’s life.
The inn Jason and I ran was on the tiny Florida key of Marathon. And anyone here would tell you, island living made for close quarters. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone, and usually by name. It was something I’d always loved, but now I had mixed feelings about. It was impossible not to see Shaw, not to feel his presence on an island with a couple of thousand full-time residents. It swelled to more than ten thousand during peak travel season, which the permanent residents always viewed with mixed feelings too.