Island Encounters
My eyes went wide as I caught sight of her. The bright purple crop top and black shorts accentuated her flawless dark skin. Her long, black hair was up in a messy ponytail, like she had just come straight from the beach.
But it was her hands that I focused on. The way her fingers wrapped around each other, but her thumbs tapped together to a beat no one else could hear.
Grace was nervous.
With so much that happened since the seagull incident, I had all but forgotten about Grace. What she did and said that night hit me like a ton of bricks then, but with Reid… and the clues… and everything else, I had pushed her out of my mind.
Or maybe I did it on purpose. Maybe I wasn’t yet ready to put the past few years of betrayal behind me just because she apologized.
Though she did more than apologize. At least, Sean did with his warnings to the Baysiders. And if I knew Grace the way I used to, then she had most likely been behind that proclamation.
What really got me was seeing Reid and Grace talk so openly. They were chatting like old friends, not two people in separate parts of my life that I wasn’t sure I wanted intertwining.
As if she sensed me, Grace turned. Her face blanched, and she hesitated. She was waiting for me to say something, since she left the ball in my court.
But I didn’t know what to say. I desperately wanted to know what she and Reid were talking about. A selfish part of me wondered if it was about me, since that was the one thing they had in common. But it also seemed somewhat unlikely. What would they even discuss?
I took the last few steps toward the two of them. Reid tossed a glance my way and frowned. I shook my head slightly. He looked over at Grace, back to me, then bowed his head a bit before backing up and going around the shelves to another part of the store, giving Grace and me some space.
“I never thanked you. For what you did that night. What you and Sean did. And to Sean for… well, just thanks.” I cut myself off, knowing my tendency to ramble on if I didn’t.
Grace shrugged, like it had been no big deal. But it had been. It made a very loud statement, not only to me, but to the rest of the Baysiders who sided with Declan. Her gaze darted down to the necklace resting on my chest before coming back to meet mine. “We don’t hang out with those guys anymore.”
Those guys. Declan and his friends. The ones at the pool party, where Grace tried to make me feel like an outsider. And then, a few weeks later, she saw what happened to me and rescued me. What changed in that time?
“You know, there’s a whole group of Baysiders that don’t act like Declan. They’re actually pretty nice.”
I knew that. Not every Baysider was a stuck-up snob like Storms. Just like not every Crescent kid was as intolerable as Isla Covington, who thought just because she had the last name, that she was in charge and everyone else was below her.
Eleanor Covington had been the exact opposite. She had been selfless to the people of Covington Cove, not acting as if she owned the place.
“There’s a whole group of Gennies that are nice too,” I shot back, giving her a pointed look.
She knew that. She had been a part of it all of her life until she found Sean.
“I know. And I would like to apologize to them too,” she started, catching my eye and showing me her sincerity. The frown on her face seemed wrong. She had always been smiling, always laughing when we had been friends. But then again, it had been easier for both of us to smile and laugh when we didn’t have any other worries in the world.
“…just like I was doing with Reid right now,” she finished. I had zoned out for a moment and missed what she said in between.
What was she doing with Reid? Had she been apologizing to him? I whirled around, finding Reid on the other side of the shelves, listening in to our conversation a little. With his height, he loomed over the shelves by a good foot and a half. He didn’t even look ashamed as he nodded his head once, then mouthed ‘give her a chance.’
I turned back to Grace. She wanted to reconcile. Even though she hadn’t been the greatest in the past few years, was I the kind of person to stand in the way of someone wanting to make things right?
No. I was the forgiving type, sometimes too forgiving. But Grace had been my best friend since we were toddlers. Just because she chose the wrong group of people to hang out with didn’t take away all those years.
She looked up at me. I still didn’t know what to say, but she talked first anyway. “Maybe we could hit up Gennie’s soon and talk? Sandwich and chips on me.”
I paused. Talking couldn’t hurt. Especially if the talking was anything like this conversation or the one we had in her car in Reid’s driveway.
Besides… this entire scenario was new. It was rare. People in my life didn’t usually drop me, leave me, abandon me, and then come back.
Mom and Dad never did.
The first person to prove to me that I was loveable, that I was capable of being loved the same way I loved them, was Reid.
He had come back. He came back specifically for me.
If I could forgive him, if I could let him back into my heart again, then why couldn’t I do the same for Grace?
It was different from what I was used to. The betrayal from Mom and Dad didn’t set in for a few years. I grew up. Then Grace left. Reid left. Even Declan had worked his way onto the ever-growing list.
I just never thought people were capable of being taken off my lists.
“Okay. Next week?” I mumbled. I really wanted to solve the rest of this scavenger hunt before dealing with a best friend reunion. With so many things going on in my life at the moment, I needed to start compartmentalizing.
I had Reid in one list in my mind. That list had so many entries, many of them scratched off, rewritten, and so many question marks I couldn’t even count.
The hunt was another list, still waiting to be dealt with.
Grace had to be on a third list, tucked away until I was ready to check things off.
She nodded. “That’d be great. I’ll, uh, text you?”
I hadn’t had a text from her in over a year. It was a good thing I never changed my number. But I nodded in confirmation.
A hesitant smile grew. “Awesome. Well, I just saw you guys crossing the street earlier, so I thought I’d catch you. That was the only reason I came in here. So… see you later?”
She waved to Reid on her way out, the bell over her head jingling.
Reid appeared behind me, resting one hand on my hip, his mouth close to my ear. “Finally. Let’s get looking.”