A Spot at Starlight Beach (Spotted Cottage #3)

Seven

The sea pen supplies arrived without further incident. Liam captured the scene from the hillside, painting the large ship just as it was – gray and industrial – though in his mind’s eye, he envisioned the shore as it looked a hundred years ago, with a wooden ship’s blinding white sails approaching, the trees and birds and seals unchanged.

His daydreams stopped when he noticed Mackenzie walking down the dock. He dropped his paintbrush and ran.

“Mackenzie!” he called out, breathless by the time he reached her.

She turned. “Hi, Liam. Everything okay?”

“I wanted to let you know I’ll keep an eye out for the boaters. I’m here painting every day, and I can keep them from blocking the dock again.”

She nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“Should I contact you? If I see them.”

Her eyes scanned the water. “Sure. Call the tea shop. They’ll get the message to me.”

Before he could ask what he should do when the shop was closed, she walked off.

He winced. Frostiness noted. It wasn’t undeserved. Liam was disappointed in himself for losing his patience the day they’d met. The grind of travel had gotten to him – plus his fear that Russell had scammed him into coming all the way out here.

He had truly been his worst self, and now he had to find a way to undo it.

For the next few days, he watched the water constantly. If any boats full of indignant partiers showed up, he’d be the first to report it. If he was extremely lucky, he might get to see Mackenzie jump from a plane again.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t lucky. The boaters didn’t return, and the little cove brimmed with peace and nature. The unrest stayed in his chest, saved especially for the quiet nights in his room.

He was used to living in remote places. Liam bounced between remote parks and artist colonies, though he’d had enough of sharing a bathroom with a dozen other people.

The quiet places were better for thinking. He could read books, catch up on podcasts, or watch movies. It was best to avoid scrolling the internet – it was a path to madness and depression – but he sometimes couldn’t resist it.

Late one night, while mulling over his surly debut in Russell’s circle, he stumbled onto a slew of videos from the San Juan Islands.

Most of them were from tourists – their favorite spots and hikes. Whale watching tours. One woman who’d posted a two-hour vlog of herself chasing after Bailey Jo Collins, whom she insisted she’d seen in Friday Harbor.

The shakiness of the camera on that one gave him motion sickness, but he found her to be so hilarious, he had to watch.

After he finished that one, a video popped up from Stuart Island: Crazy woman forced her way onto our boat!

His stomach sunk. Liam clicked the link and a box popped up, telling him he had to download the ChatterSnap app to watch it.

Ugh . A lot of the people at his last artist colony used the app to promote their work. Liam refused to. The apps were bad for him. He couldn’t look away. He’d sit around all day, clicking, pictures and videos scrolling past his dull eyes as the life drained out of him. He wouldn’t get any work done if he downloaded it.

But the video was linked in an article by the San Juan News, and if this was what he thought it was…

He downloaded the app, tapping play as soon as it finished.

“The craziest thing just happened to us on Stuart Island,” a woman said, her voice slow and tinged with the vocal fry of a Valley Girl.

He recognized her immediately, though seeing her close up was jarring. Her lips were swollen and unnaturally smooth, her skin shiny like plastic.

“So my boyfriend, who is the CEO of ZenithGenius, just bought this beautiful property on Stuart Island. You can check my profile to see pictures from the parties we’ve been having—it is amazing here.”

How old was this woman? Maturity-wise, she seemed like a teenager, but it was hard to tell. She could be anywhere from nineteen to forty-nine.

“We thought the people on the island were like, super friendly, but obviously not, because then we met this woman.” A freeze-frame of Mackenzie popped up next to her head. She pointed a long fake nail at Mackenzie’s face. “She literally jumped onto our yacht like a crazy person , screamed at us, threw a drink all over me and the Italian leather loungers, and then told us that we weren’t welcome here! I found out she’s working for Russell Westwood, which is just crazy. I’m sure his PR team won’t be happy about her literally assaulting us.”

Liam scoffed. No one was buying this, were they? He scrolled through the comments.

Looks like someone’s about to get fired!

That is crazy. I’m so glad you’re okay!

Can’t pay attention to the haters 3 3 LOVE YOU!!!

Liam tossed his phone aside. How were people so gullible? Were they willing to accept this woman’s version of events just because she was the one telling the story? Hadn’t they ever heard of an unreliable narrator…or read a book?

Even the local news featured the video with a silly headline, “Watch your boats this summer!”

Absurd. A waste of words.

He stood, grabbing his laptop, and took a seat at the desk in the corner of the room. He plugged in his video camera and uploaded everything he’d recorded in the last month.

Then, scrolling through, he found the footage from that day. It began with a shot of the plane floating in. It rumbled along, slow and steady, when suddenly a blurry mass flew from the plane and slammed into the boat’s deck.

He smiled. He remembered her moving more gracefully. Maybe it was best to leave that part out.

Liam kept watching. The video showed Mackenzie speaking respectfully. The boorish drunks, even worse on film, bellowing at her, laughing. The thrown drink. Mackenzie standing tall.

He smiled. Time to fight fire with fire and, perhaps, find a way to make up for his rudeness earlier.

Liam tapped away on his computer, making an account on the sworn-off ChatterSnap app.

When forced to add a profile picture of himself, he added the painting of the plump seal, then quickly uploaded the video of Mackenzie’s confrontation before copying the link to the snarky woman’s original video.

“It doesn’t seem that’s quite how it went down…” he wrote, hitting REPLY.

Then he waited, his heart pounding in his ears.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. He kept hitting refresh, expecting someone to comment, or the woman to pop in to argue with him, but nothing happened.

After an hour of no response, he shut his laptop and picked up his paperback copy of 1984. He made it two chapters before his eyelids grew heavy, and he set the book down and shut out the light.

When he woke the next day, the first thing he did was check the app. His comment had been deleted, which he’d expected, but the rest of the comments on the original video harassing Mackenzie were flooding in too quickly to be nixed.

Hm are you sure she threw that drink?

Liar liar, pants on fire!

There were dozens of links to his video. He clicked over to his profile – thirty thousand views! And he’d somehow collected a few thousand followers, some of them leaving comments on his painting.

I am not being hyperbolic when I say I would die for that fat seal.

Where can I get a print?

He rushed to respond – the San Juan Island Farmer’s market – then sat back, biting a nail.

He could see why people spent so much time on these apps. Each comment popped a bubble of dopamine in his brain, inviting him to stay there, hunched over, scrolling for the rest of the day.

But the sun was coming up and Liam was too old to develop an addiction to his phone. He refused to do it.

He found a way to set a timer on the app – no more than twenty minutes a day. He posted two more of his paintings with the caption, Catch me and my work at the San Juan Island farmer’s market next week!

Then he turned his whole phone off.

He stood and managed to get himself to the hilltop just as the sun peeked out.