Chapter 2 Noah
“You know, New York had a lot going for it, but it didn’t have this,” I mused as I took a bite of the grilled salmon I’d ordered.
“Salmon?” Matt asked with a raised eyebrow. His face was just as expressive now as it had been when we’d been in high school, and I could read the confusion on his features as clearly as if he had the word confused scrawled across his forehead.
“They had salmon,” I corrected. “The salt air. I missed this.”
“I don’t think I could live anywhere that didn’t have it,” Matt mused. I could believe it.
For as long as I’d known him, I’d associated Matthew Bennett with water.
Our first kiss had been on the beach, so close to the restaurant we were sitting at.
He had a boat, probably one of the ones I could see from our table on the deck.
I’d seen pictures of him as a toddler, taking his first steps on a different beach, further down the coast. He’d sent me pictures of him learning to surf when he went off to college in California.
Even today, he picked a restaurant by the water for us to eat at.
Of course, I had no complaints about the restaurant choice.
It was a newer seafood restaurant, one that hadn’t been in business when we were in high school.
It wasn’t seeped in memory, unlike every other place in this town.
I couldn’t even go to work without being bombarded with memories of Matt.
It was where we’d connected for the first time, and it had been where we’d gone on our first date.
We’d held hands for the first time by a painting I passed every day, and I could still feel how clammy his palm had been against mine.
It was nice to have a place that wasn’t flooded in memories of what had once been.
It was a great reminder of the fact that things had changed, no matter how comfortable I felt hanging out with Matt.
I’d even felt comfortable hanging out with his friends when he’d invited me to the bar after one of my Shakespeare in the Park performances a few weeks ago.
They’d always gone out of their way to make me feel comfortable and included when Matt and I had been together in high school.
They’d done the same thing when we’d hung out in the present day, drawing me into conversation and asking me questions about my life since high school.
They did tiptoe around the elephant in the room—my past relationship with Matt—but I think we were all doing that in a way. It was easier to be friends with someone when you weren’t thinking about the epic love story you’d once had with them.
I felt something nudge me under the table and realized, a moment too late, that it was Matt’s foot. When I looked at him across the table, I noticed a softness in his deep brown eyes as he studied me, a concern there that I’d seen a thousand times in our shared past. “You okay?” he asked softly.
“Just thinking,” I assured him. “This place is pretty nice.”
“You were thinking about the fact that this place is nice?”
“No, but I’m changing the subject,” I confessed with a laugh. “No need to go into all the weird places my head goes.”
“How’s your salmon? I haven’t had the salmon here yet.”
“Pretty good.” I took another bite and chewed it slowly. “How’s your pasta?”
“Amazing. Some people swear by Firelli’s for pasta, but their shrimp alfredo is so boring. Like yes, the sauce is good, but it’s generic. It’s basic. This one is seasoned better.” He paused his rapid-fire speech. “Want to try it?”
I nodded and watched as he carefully twirled pasta around his fork, using his spoon to keep it neat the way my nonna had shown him when we were younger.
My eyes stayed trained on his hands as he speared a shrimp onto the tines of his fork.
I caught myself leaning forward, ready to accept the bite the way I once would have, only to be slapped by the cold reality of the modern day by him passing the fork over to me.
Because of course he would. This wasn’t a date.
We weren’t dating anymore. We’d seen each other only a hand full of times since we’d broken up at the ripe old age of eighteen.
There was no way he was going to be feeding me pasta.
What was wrong with me?
I took the offered bite. He was right. It was a lot better than Firelli’s, but then, the Italian restaurant had never been my favorite.
I was raised in an Italian family. I could taste the difference between boxed pasta with mass produced sauce and the real deal.
This was definitely boxed pasta, but the sauce was homemade and the seasoning?
It was some kind of Cajun blend that had just the right amount of heat to be flavorful without burning my tongue. It was excellent.
“I’m ordering this next time,” I declared after I chewed and swallowed. I passed the fork back across the table to him. “Want to try my salmon?”
“Sure.” I repeated the process, and I noticed that he didn’t lean forward for me to feed him. Clearly, he was intelligent enough not to succumb to the waves of memory, but then, he’d always been smarter than me. I watched as he chewed and swallowed. “Good, right?”
“For salmon. Still not my favorite fish.”
“Is it still cod?”
“Flounder, actually.”
I nodded.
We made small talk while we finished our food. When the check came, I was faster than Matt at pulling out my card and handing it to the server. Matt opened his mouth, like he was going to protest, but then shut it. That had to be a first.
“So, we’re near the boat,” he started as we left the restaurant, “if you wanted to see it again.”
The boat. He’d gotten it the summer he turned sixteen, a present from his stepfather.
It was the summer we’d gotten to know one another, exchanging late night texts and talking on the phone for hours.
He’d sent me a thousand pictures of the boat, and I’d started to catch feelings for him through those pictures and texts.
There was something about the awkward, lanky nerd I’d gotten to know covered in grease that just did it for me.
Even if I never wanted to touch anything greasy, ever.
Some things just did not come out from under the nails easily, and I was too vain for that.
I remembered him calling and telling me that he was bringing the boat back to King’s Bay that summer.
I had expected to hear that his mom or stepdad had rented a tow for it, but instead, he’d sailed it and docked it at the same pier we were at now.
The boat, like every other part of King’s Bay, held a lot of memories of the relationship we’d once shared.
I did want to see it again.
“Let’s go.”
I followed him down the sidewalk toward the marina where his boat was docked.
He led me to the same dock the boat had been in when we’d been in high school, but it was in a different slip—three down from where it had once been.
The boat hadn’t changed, though I could tell that he’d painted it at least once in the years we’d been apart.
The hunter green at the bottom was less cracked than it had been in my memories, the white on top more crisp.
He expertly stepped aboard the boat and offered his hand to me.
I’d never been as steady as he was boarding the boat, always afraid that I’d slip in the space between the wooden planks and the boat itself. I was surprised Matt remembered that, but at the same time, I wasn’t. He’d always been attentive to the needs of others.
He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the sliding glass door that led to the interior. “You haven’t changed much, have you?”
He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “I’ve changed a few things,” he countered. “Pictures. Sheets on the pull out.”
“I’d hope you’d changed the sheets.”
“Oh my god, Noah, you know what I mean.”
I laughed, the noise echoing around the small space.
My eyes moved around the boat, taking inventory of the things that had changed and the things that had stayed the same.
It still had the same wood paneled interior.
The upholstery on the couch had been dated when we were in high school, and it might have been considered ancient now.
I would have had to change it. The captain’s chair was different.
I remembered it had cracked brown faux leather, but the chair I was looking at was smooth black.
I ran my fingers over it. Oh yeah, that was real leather, none of that plastic crap he’d had years ago.
“You’ve changed the chair,” I commented.
“Of course that’s what you’d notice,” he said with a laugh. “Yeah, had to change it. The old one broke and dumped my ass right on the floor. I was so glad I was alone because it was embarrassing.”
I could imagine it. One minute he was sitting on the chair and the next, he was on the floor, sprawled out with that baffled look on his face.
I followed him down the three stairs that separated the living area from the rest of the boat.
There was a small kitchenette. The refrigerator had been replaced, but I didn’t think the one he had now was any newer than the one that had once been there.
I only knew it wasn’t the same one because the old one had been an awful shade of pea green, and this one was a murky shade of off-white that looked dirty.
If it were anyone other than Matt, I would have thought it was.
However, I’d cooked with him enough to know that he kept the kitchen area meticulous, no matter where the kitchen was.