Chapter 2 #2
Because what he’s really saying—what Dean Beckett would never actually spell out because he’d rather chew glass than have an emotional conversation—is that maybe she didn’t look through me. Maybe she looked so hard at not-me for so long that her own mind did the rest.
I don’t know what to do with that.
“She left me twice, Dean.”
“I know.”
“She never explained why. Just...gone. Both times. I woke up, and she’d vanished like I dreamed her.”
He doesn’t say “I know” again. Just nods once. Sets his jaw in a way that tells me he’s thinking about his own losses—his first wife, the years after, the walls he built so high he almost missed Jo entirely.
“I’m not doing this again.” I set my beer down harder than necessary. “I can’t. I came here for the wedding and to try to find my music again. That’s it. A couple months, then I’m gone.”
Dean is quiet for a long moment. Then: “You remember what Dad used to say? About your mom?”
I go still. We don’t talk about my mom. Not ever. She left when I was eight, ran off to LA to start a new family, and Dad never once said a bad word about her. Just: “Some people aren’t built for staying. Doesn’t mean the love wasn’t real.”
“He said loving her was worth it,” I manage. “Even though it ended.”
Dean nods. Finishes his beer. Sets it on the coffee table like he’s closing a book he’s done reading.
But I hear what he’s not saying. Dad loved a woman who left, and he never once called it a mistake. Dean’s sitting in my living room drawing a line between my mother and Delilah, and he’s not wrong, and I hate him a little for it.
“It’s about the music,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”
Dean just looks at me. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t need to. The look says everything.
I don’t answer.
Dean stands, stretching like a man twice his age. “Jo’s waiting for me. But hey—you should come to dinner this week. She’s planning some wedding thing, wants input from the wedding party.”
“Will Delilah be there?”
“Probably. She’s doing the flowers.”
“Dean.”
“What? It’s Jo’s wedding. You’re both in it. You’re gonna see each other.” He heads for the door, then turns back. Gives me a look I can’t quite read—part sympathy, part challenge. “You say she’s the one who ran.”
Then he leaves. No follow-up. No explanation. Just drops that grenade and walks out.
Which is annoying, because now I’m standing in my living room replaying the sentence on a loop, trying to figure out if my brother just called me a coward in six words.
The house is too quiet after he’s gone.
I pick up my guitar again. Sit on the porch in the fading light, as the waves crash against the shore. The ocean doesn’t care about my problems. It just keeps doing what it’s always done—pushing and pulling, advancing and retreating. Never quite the same twice but always essentially itself.
I think about Delilah’s face when she realized it was me. The shock. The flash of something that might have been pain. The way she said my name like it was a word she’d forgotten how to pronounce.
Levi.
My fingers find a chord. Then another. Something unfamiliar. Something that doesn’t sound like everything else I’ve written in the past three years.
I chase it for a few bars before it dissolves into nothing.
But it was there. For a second, it was there.
I haven’t felt that spark since—
Since the last time I saw her. Ten years ago. When she walked away without looking back.
“Ugh,” I mutter to no one.
I just have to survive a couple months.
Then I can go back to LA and forget all about Delilah Smart and her flower shop and her face and the way my heart still skips like a stupid teenager every time she’s in the room.
A couple months.
How hard can it be?
Sleep doesn’t come.
I try everything—the meditation app my therapist recommended, the breathing exercises, counting backwards from a thousand. Nothing works. Every time I close my eyes, I’m somewhere else. Somewhere years ago.
We’re sitting on the hood of my truck at the edge of town, seventeen and nineteen and too young to know what we’re promising.
She’s got her bare feet on the bumper, a jar of sweet tea balanced on her knee, and she’s naming constellations she’s making up.
That one’s the Runaway Bride. That one’s the Boy Who Sings Too Loud.
And that one—see the three in a row?—that’s the Pier Where Everything Started.
I’d laughed. Told her those weren’t real constellations.
They’re real to us, she’d said. Like that settled it. Like the two of us agreeing on something was enough to make it true.
Then there’s the other memory. The one I try not to touch.
Her apartment in Asheville, the second time around.
We were twenty-seven and supposed to know better, but she’d opened the door and it was like no time had passed at all.
She’d made dinner—burned the garlic bread, laughed about it, eaten it anyway.
We’d talked until two in the morning about everything except the thing that mattered, which was that I was about to leave for a three-month tour and she was looking at me like she already knew how it ended.
I’d woken up the next morning and she was gone. Just a note on the pillow. I’m sorry. I can’t do this again.
I never understood which part she couldn’t do. The loving me, or the watching me leave.
At two in the morning, I give up on sleep and pad to the kitchen for water. The house is silver with moonlight, all those big windows turning the living room into an aquarium. I stand at the sink and stare out at the ocean, dark and restless.
My phone is on the counter where I left it. The screen shows a missed text from hours ago—my manager, sent while I was lying in bed pretending the ceiling had answers.
Diane: Just checking in. Label wants to know about new material. Any progress?
It’s two in the morning. I should wait until a reasonable hour. I text back anyway.
Me: Working on it.
Three dots appear almost instantly, which means either Diane never sleeps or she’s been waiting for me to surface. Probably both.
Diane: They’re getting antsy, Levi. You’ve been dark since summer. People are starting to talk.
I know what “talk” means. Washed up. One-hit wonder.
Lost his edge. I’ve heard the whispers at industry events, seen the speculative articles online.
“Has Levi Cole Lost His Magic?” one blog asked last month, complete with a timeline of my declining album sales and a poll where 47% of respondents said I should “take a permanent break.”
Forty-seven percent. Nearly half.
Me: Tell them I’m working on something different. Something real.
Diane: Different how?
Me: I don’t know yet. But it’s coming.
Another lie. Or maybe a hope dressed up as a promise. I’m not sure there’s a difference anymore.
I set the phone face-down and grab my jacket from the hook by the door. If I can’t sleep, I might as well walk. The beach has always been where I think best, ever since I was a kid sneaking out of my dad’s house to sit on the sand and dream about a life bigger than Twin Waves.
Funny how that bigger life led me right back here.
The night air is cool and salty, spring still fighting with the memory of winter. I take the wooden steps down to the sand and start walking toward the pier, hands shoved in my pockets, head full of noise.
Dean’s words keep circling back. Maybe it’s that remembering hurt too much.
Is that what happened? Did she spend ten years trying to forget me the way I spent ten years writing songs about her?
The thing about songwriting is that it’s supposed to be cathartic. You take the pain, you shape it into melody, you give it away to strangers who turn it into their own stories. That’s the magic—transformation. Taking something that hurts and making it beautiful.
But I’ve been writing about Delilah for so long that the pain has calcified. It’s not raw anymore. It’s just...there. A permanent ache I’ve learned to live with, like a bad knee or a scar that never fully healed.
Maybe that’s why I can’t write anything new. I’ve been mining the same wound for a decade, and there’s nothing left to dig up.
I reach the pier and lean against the weathered railing, looking out at the black water.
This is where we kissed for the first time, twenty years ago.
She was seventeen and laughing about something—I can’t even remember what—and I was nineteen and so in love I couldn’t see straight.
I’d kissed her mid-sentence, just because I couldn’t stand another second of not knowing what it felt like.
She’d tasted like salt water taffy and summer. She’d grabbed my shirt and pulled me closer. Whispered “finally” against my lips, like she’d been waiting for me to work up the courage.
We spent that whole summer tangled up in each other, making plans that felt as solid as the pier beneath our feet. I was going to make it big—touring, albums, the whole dream. She was going to come with me. We’d conquer the world together.
Then August ended, and so did we.
I never really understood why. One day she was there, and the next she was on a bus back to Asheville with a note that said I’m sorry. Please don’t follow me.
So I didn’t. I respected her wishes, even though it nearly killed me. I told myself she’d come back when she was ready. Wrote her letters she never answered. Left voicemails she never returned. Eventually, I stopped trying.
But I never stopped wondering.
Ten years later, she came back. Walked into Twin Waves like a ghost made flesh, and for one stupid second, I thought the universe was giving us a second chance.
Then she left again. Same note, different words. Same disappearing act. Same silence that stretched for years until I stopped expecting anything else.
And now here we are. Third time around. Both of us older, supposedly wiser, definitely more broken.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.
The waves crash against the pier supports, steady and relentless. The sound used to comfort me. Now it just feels like mockery. You thought you could run from this, the ocean seems to say. But I always bring everything back to shore.
I stay until my fingers go numb from the cold. Then I walk back to the rental house, fall into bed, and stare at the ceiling until dawn starts to lighten the edges of the sky.
I need coffee.
Twin Waves Brewing Co. opens at six, and I’m standing outside at 5:58 like a desperate man. Which I am. The woman behind the counter—Michelle, according to her name tag—gives me a knowing look as she unlocks the door.
“Rough night?”
“That obvious?”
“Honey, I’ve been serving coffee to this town for years. I know what ‘haven’t slept’ looks like.” She gestures me inside. “What can I get you?”
“Whatever’s strongest. And biggest.”
“Coming right up.”
The shop is cozy and warm, all reclaimed wood and soft lighting.
It smells like fresh espresso and something baking in the back—muffins, maybe, or scones.
A few early risers are scattered at tables, nursing their own cups and scrolling their phones.
Nobody seems to recognize me, which is either a blessing or a sign that I’ve faded further from relevance than I thought.
I take a seat at the counter, Michelle grinding beans and steaming milk like she could do it in her sleep. There’s something soothing about watching someone who’s genuinely good at their job.
“You’re Dean’s brother, right?” she asks, sliding an enormous mug across to me. “Levi?”
“Half brother. But yeah.”
“Jo’s been talking about the wedding nonstop. She’s so excited.” Michelle grins. “We all are. That girl deserves every bit of happiness.”
“She seems great. Dean’s lucky.”
“They both are.” She tilts her head, studying me with frank curiosity. “I heard you’re staying for a couple months. Working on music?”
“Trying to.”
“Twin Waves is good for that. Creative energy, or something. My friend Scott—he’s a writer—he always says the ocean clears his head.”
The name snags my attention. “Scott? Scott Avery?”
“You know him?”
“Dean’s mentioned him. Your husband’s business partner, right?”
“And husband to my best friend Jessica. They own The Fiction Nook—the bookshop down the boardwalk.” Michelle refills my mug without asking.
“Scott went through a rough patch with his writing a while back. Couldn’t get words on the page, felt like a fraud, the whole spiral. But he figured it out eventually.”
I wrap my hands around the warm ceramic. “How?”
“That’s probably his story to tell. But between you and me?” She leans in conspiratorially. “I think it had something to do with finally being honest about who he really is. Dropping all the masks. Writing from the gut instead of the head.”
“Sounds easier than it is.”
“Doesn’t everything?” Michelle shrugs. “If you’re stuck, Scott might be worth talking to. He’s been where you are. And he’s good people.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The bell above the door chimes, and I glance over automatically. An older woman bustles in, already talking before she’s fully through the door.
“Michelle, you will not believe what I saw this morning. That new florist girl—Delilah—was out running on the beach before the sun was even up. Before sunrise! In this cold! And she was wearing the shortest shorts I’ve ever—”
“Mrs. Jacobs.” Michelle’s voice is pleasant but firm. “Can I get you your usual?”
The woman—Mrs. Jacobs, apparently—deflates slightly. “Well. Yes. But I’m just saying, it’s not seemly. A woman her age, running around half-dressed—”
“It’s called exercise, and it’s good for you. Americano?”
“Fine, fine.” Mrs. Jacobs drops onto a stool two down from me, still muttering about propriety and standards and “what would her mother think?”
I stare into my coffee and try not to react.
Delilah was running on the beach this morning. Before dawn. While I was lying awake staring at my ceiling like a lovesick idiot.
We probably missed each other by minutes.
The universe really does have a sick sense of humor.
Michelle catches my eye and gives me a tiny, sympathetic smile. Like she knows exactly what I’m thinking and she’s not going to say a word.
“You should talk to Scott sometime,” she says casually, wiping down the counter. “About the creative block thing. He’s at The Fiction Nook most days. Tell him I sent you.”
“I might do that.”
“Good.” She slides a fresh pastry across the counter. “On the house. You look like you need it.”
The door chimes again, and this time I don’t look up. I just eat my pastry and drink my coffee and try not to think about Delilah Smart running on the beach in short shorts while the sun came up.
I fail completely.