Epilogue #2
“It was a very emotional commercial!” Delilah laughs, then grabs my arm. “You have to be there when I tell them. Tonight. At book club. Promise me.”
“I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it.”
“And bring your camera. Jo’s going to want photos of everyone’s reactions.”
“Already planning the shot list in my head.”
She hugs me, tight and quick, smelling like flowers and happiness. “I’m so glad you moved here, Emma. I’m so glad you’re one of us now.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly. “Me too.”
Levi tugs her gently back toward him. “Come on, fiancée. Let’s go call your mom before she hears it from the Twin Waves gossip network.”
“Too late,” Delilah says. “Mrs. Sanders was walking her dog on the beach. She definitely saw. Mom probably already knows.”
They head off down the pier, wrapped up in each other, and I watch them go with that complicated feeling sitting heavy in my chest.
“Mom?” Jenna’s voice, surprisingly soft. “You okay?”
“I’m great.” I force a smile. “Come on. Let’s pack up. I’ve got book club, and you’ve got homework you’ve been pretending doesn’t exist.”
“It doesn’t exist if I don’t acknowledge it.”
“That’s not how homework works.”
“That’s not how you think homework works.”
We gather our fishing gear, no sharks caught, no sea monsters spotted, just a bucket of memories and a heart full of complicated feelings.
Aidan chatters the whole way back to the marina about the proposal, adding details that definitely didn’t happen, like fireworks and a marching band and a dolphin who jumped out of the water at the exact right moment.
I let him embellish. Imagination is free, and joy should never be corrected.
The marina is quiet when we get back, the boats rocking gently in their slips, the water dark and still. Our houseboat sits at the end of the dock, warm light glowing from the windows where I left a lamp on.
Home. It’s starting to feel like home.
“Emma.”
The voice comes from the shadows, and I jump approximately fourteen feet in the air.
Paul steps out of the dock office, arms crossed, expression set to its default state of vague irritation. He’s wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his son Dawson is behind him, headphones around his neck, looking bored.
“Paul.” I match his tone exactly. “Lovely evening for lurking.”
“I wasn’t lurking. I was locking up the office.”
“At sunset. Dramatically. In the shadows.”
“The shadows were incidental.”
“Sure they were.”
His jaw tightens. Six months of living next to this man, and I still can’t figure him out.
He’s grumpy and particular and has very strong opinions about my coffee maker’s electrical demands.
But he also fixed my dock line last month without being asked, and his son Dawson has been surprisingly patient with Aidan’s shark obsession.
“Your port running light is out,” he says.
“I know.”
“It’s a safety hazard.”
“I know that too.”
“So you’re going to fix it?”
“When I get a chance.”
“A chance.” He says it like I’ve announced plans to personally insult his mother. “It’s been two weeks.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy for basic maritime safety?”
“Too busy for your maritime lectures, definitely.”
Dawson and Jenna exchange looks. The look of teenagers who have watched this exact argument happen seventy-three times and are deeply bored by it.
“I’ll fix it tomorrow,” I say. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
“You don’t look ecstatic.”
“This is my ecstatic face.”
“Your ecstatic face looks exactly like your annoyed face.”
“Maybe I’m ecstatically annoyed.”
Behind me, Millie sighs the sigh of a ten-year-old with zero patience for adult nonsense. “Mom. Book club.”
Right. Book club. Where I’m supposed to go and discuss fictional romance and not think about grumpy marina owners with nice forearms and irritating opinions.
“I have to go,” I tell Paul. “But rest assured, I’ll dream about port running lights tonight. Thanks to you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.”
I sweep past him, kids in tow, and I absolutely do not notice the way his eyes follow me as I walk away.
I definitely don’t notice, because noticing would be ridiculous.
Paul is my nemesis. My adversary. My extremely annoying neighbor who thinks he knows everything about boats just because he owns a marina.
The fact that he’s objectively attractive is irrelevant.
Completely irrelevant.
“Mom,” Jenna says as we board the houseboat. “You know you were smiling at him, right?”
“I was not.”
“You were. You had your fighting smile on.”
“My fighting smile is not the same as smiling at him.”
“It kind of is, though.”
“Go do your homework.”
“I thought it didn’t exist.”
“It exists now. It exists so much. Go.”
She goes, smirking in that knowing way teenagers have perfected. Millie follows, already pulling out her math book like the overachiever she is. Aidan announces he needs to draw a picture of the proposal for his journal, except in his version, there will definitely be a dolphin.
I stand in the doorway of my tiny, leaky, electrically-questionable houseboat, and I look out at the marina.
Paul is still on the dock, talking to his son, gesturing at something on one of the boats. Dawson is nodding, actually paying attention for once. It’s a nice moment, father and son, the kind of moment I used to dream about when I was married to someone who was never really there.
As if he feels me watching, Paul looks up.
Our eyes meet across the water.
I look away first, because I’m a mature adult who doesn’t engage in staring contests with her annoying neighbor.
But my heart does a little flip anyway, traitorous thing that it is.
I close the door, grab my bag, and head out to book club.
Time to start the next chapter.