Chapter 5
On a normal day off,I’d be in bed until at least nine, ten if I managed to ignore the birds squawking in the tree outside my bedroom window.
But today is not a normal day, and I’m up and dressed by seven, pounding down the stairs from my apartment above the garage. I swing into the kitchen of the main house to grab the raincoat I left in the closet when Gramps and I made chowder a few days ago, careful to circle around the creaky floorboards so I won’t wake him on my way out.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” he asks from the living room, making me jump half a foot into the air and press a hand to my chest.
“Shit, you scared me,” I say, spinning to face him.
He sits in his usual spot by the woodstove, a steaming mug in hand. If I’d been in my right mind, I would have smelled the coffee and known he was up, but I’m not in my right mind.
I haven’t been in my right mind since I realized I had sex with the worst man in the world.
All Tripps are bad, but Weaver Tripp?
He’s the worst.
He basically destroyed my father.
And he…may have had sex with my mother.
Ugh. The thought makes me want to gag. I press a hand to my stomach, willing it to settle until I can make it out the door. Gramps knows I never get sick. I only vomit when I’m really, really upset. Like when my cat died when I was four or when Elaina broke her wrist on the playground when we were seven, and I was the one who had to help her to the nurse with a bone poking through her skin.
Or like when I was eight, after my mom left and my dad ended up in the hospital…
My stomach was off for months after that nightmare of a morning. I woke up to silence in the house and neither of my parents’ cars in the drive. My dad occasionally stayed out all night and came dragging in late the next morning, but Mom was always there. I could count on her to have food on the table and forms signed for school, even if she wasn’t cuddly or “fun” like my father or Gramps. Even at a young age, I instinctively realized my mom didn’t relish being a mother, but she was solid, dependable.
Until the day she wasn’t…
I was alone and terrified for hours until Gramps showed up with the news that Dad was in the hospital. He was as surprised to learn that Mom was gone as I was, but his surprise didn’t last as long as mine.
Gramps has been a lobsterman since he was seventeen and a gossip probably even longer than that. He knew the ugly story months before I did, but I eventually put together the pieces from scraps of things overhead whispered around school and down by the docks.
Apparently, my father went drinking that night, as usual, only to run into my mom at a bar in the next town over. It sounds like the start of a 1970s song about drinking pi?a coladas and getting lost in the rain, but it didn’t end with my parents realizing there was still a spark between them.
Because my mother wasn’t alone. She was with Weaver Tripp, a man about a decade her junior, and they weren’t sharing a drink as friends. Apparently, that was clear from the moment Dad walked in.
My dad is usually a happy drunk, but that night he showed his violent side. He punched Weaver, Weaver beat the absolute shit out of him, and Mom dipped with her date, leaving Dad bleeding on the ground outside the bar. Dad, who’d already had several drinks at a different pub, pulled himself off the ground and got into his car to chase after them, but ended up running off the road instead.
He broke both legs and sustained a head injury serious enough to keep him in the hospital for weeks.
The therapist I talked to as a kid, after I moved in with Gramps and it became clear that I wasn’t snapping back from the family tragedy as quickly as he’d hoped, said it was possible the head injury was the reason my dad was so different after the accident than he’d been before. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me anymore, but that he simply wasn’t capable of taking care of me or communicating the way he had before he cracked his head open like an egg.
I wanted to believe her.
I really did.
But in my gut, I knew it was Mom leaving that closed my father’s heart to everything and everyone, including his own daughter. He loved her so much. Even when I was a toddler, I remember being a little jealous of the way he looked at my beautiful mama, like she was an angel come to earth, better than all the rest of the people in the world put together, too perfect to be real.
She wasn’t perfect, of course. She was just really pretty, and men are dumb when it comes to beautiful women. I understood that sometime around thirteen or fourteen, and it made me have even less respect for my broken father.
You don’t stop being there for your child because you’re not with her mom anymore.
You should love and take care of your babies no matter what.
Gramps gets that. Gramps has never let me down or stopped loving me, even when I ruined his truck by putting diesel fuel in it instead of regular gas or when we had a knock-down-drag-out fight about me staying to help him on the boat instead of going to college. He wanted me to get out of Sea Breeze and “make something of myself.”
I told him the only thing I wanted to “make” of myself was to make myself useful to the people I love. Gramps needed me on the boat. His arthritis was getting too bad to haul traps in all day on his own, and I had good friends in Sea Breeze, friends as close to me as sisters. They weren’t going to college, either. Elaina was opening a cat café with an inheritance from her grandmother, and Maya was going to work for her parents in their rental property business. My family was here. No matter how much I loved taking pictures or how proud I was of landing a scholarship to art school, that made the decision not to go to college an easy one.
Eventually, Gramps came around to seeing my point of view and we’re even closer than we were when I was a kid. He’s not just my grandpa or surrogate parent, in many ways, he’s my best friend. He just gets me, in a way not many people ever have.
Until this morning, I would have said nothing could come between us or damage the bond we’ve forged over the past sixteen years. But that was before I slept with a Tripp, the same Tripp who wrecked my family and ruined his son.
The thought makes my stomach roil again.
“Everything all right?” Gramps asks, frowning over the rim of his cup. “I haven’t seen you that green since I made liver for dinner last winter. You didn’t drink too much last night, did you?”
I shrug on my coat, averting my gaze. I don’t want him to see the guilt I’m sure is plain in my eyes. “Maybe a little. Elaina was making the hot toddies and she’s a heavy pour.”
He grunts, his sharp blue eyes still fixed on my face. I can feel his attention prickling across my skin, even though I keep my gaze lowered as I tuck my keys and wallet into my pockets. “You know better, Gert,” he says. “Don’t let anyone pour for you, not even a friend.”
Gramps and I both enjoy a pint at the pub after work as much as the next harvester, but we’re careful to drink in moderation. Neither one of us wants to be like my father. We leave the pub by no later than six most nights and have a three-beer maximum, even on Saturdays.
But better he thinks I drank too much whiskey than had kinky sex with our family’s sworn enemy.
“You’re right,” I say, nodding as I rake a hand through my hair. “I’ll be sure to mix my own drink next time. See you later. I’m going to run over to Elaina’s for breakfast and cat therapy.”
He grunts again, but seems mollified. “Be sure to use the lint roller in the carport before you come back inside.”
“I know, I know. See you later,” I say as I back through the door and pound down the stairs into the cool morning air.
Gramps’ alleged “cat allergies” are the reason I don’t have a cat of my own to love and spoil. Funny how his “allergies” didn’t act up when I snuck a cat-hair-covered pillow into his bedroom a few weeks ago. Gramps slept just fine that night, and when we headed out to the boat in the morning, there wasn’t a red eye or stuffy old man nose in sight.
I’m ninety percent sure he’s been lying to me about his allergies since I was a kid who begged him ceaselessly for a cat. But considering what I did last night, I’m in no position to throw stones.
Fuck. Just thinking about it sends shame flooding into my stomach, making it so tight and heavy, it feels like it’s dragging behind me as I hustle down the sidewalk toward downtown. I pass the fisherman’s memorial on the way, a circular arrangement of stone plaques with a giant, wrought-iron wave in the middle. These plaques list the names of all the men lost to the sea from 1795 all the way to modern times.
When I was little, Gramps would take me there every Memorial Day and read the names of all the Sullivans who went to a watery grave. He knew which Sullivans were “our” Sullivans and which were from the other Sullivan family in town, the one that left Sea Breeze in the 1930s, looking for a better life out west. From 1930 on, all the lost Sullivans are ours. There are only two—my great-uncle and a second cousin who drowned when I was just a baby, but still…
I feel the weight of my legacy every time I pass the memorial. My ancestors gave everything for our family, sometimes even their lives. They’re the reason Gramps has enough money to pay for Dad’s bills and mortgage payment, even though my father hasn’t held down a job in years. They’re the reason we have enough left over to keep our gorgeous old Victorian in the family, instead of being forced to sell like so many of our friends who used to own waterfront homes.
I’m sure all the dead Sullivans are rolling over in their graves right now, ashamed to be related to such a Tripp-sexing, trash heap of a human being.
I walk faster, speeding past the memorial and the entrance to the docks, careful to not so much as glance toward the ice cream shack or the yacht behind it.
Past the hardware store, the fish market, the souvenir shops and the upscale resale shop, I push into Elaina’s café, my shoulders sagging with relief when I see that she’s alone at the counter and no one occupies the tables near the front.
Crossing the softly gleaming hardwood floor, I brace my hands on the counter and ask in a harsh whisper, “Do you think ghosts can see who we fuck?”
She cocks her head with a soft “thinking” sound, sending her sleek brown ponytail shifting to one side. “I don’t know. I mean, I hope not. My grandmother would be horrified that I’m such a slut, but…” She trails off with a wicked grin. “Does this mean you finally nailed your lobster Romeo, my sweet Juliet?”
I roll my eyes. Elaina has been calling Mark and me “Romeo and Juliet” ever since she found out we were hooking up. The bad blood between the Sullivans and the Tripps is public knowledge and Elaina loves drama.
But this isn’t a Shakespeare play, this is my real life, and I desperately need some sane, solid advice. “No. I did something much worse.”
Elaina’s eyes glitter with excitement as she claps her hands softly together, bouncing on her toes. “Oh, yay! I’m so excited. You have to tell me everything! Throw on an apron and get back here. We can gossip between customers.”
“I’m serious, Elaina,” I say, frowning at my still delighted best friend. “I did a bad thing. For real. A very bad thing, and I can’t take it back, and if anyone in my family finds out, they’re going to hate me forever. I might hate me forever. I haven’t decided yet.”
Her smile fades and a worry line forms between her warm brown eyes. “Okay, okay, I hear you. We’re in crisis containment mode, not gossip mode. Got it. Just put on an apron and come sit next to your bestie, baby squirrel. We’ll figure this out. We always do.”
She’s right. We do figure things out. We’ve been problem-solving together since before we could read.
Back in kindergarten, Elaina would give me half her cookie at lunch, supplying the sugar fix my mother denied me, and I would boost my much shorter friend up on the monkey bars during recess so she could dangle from her knees beside me. We’ve been making up for what the other one lacks for going on two decades.
If anyone can help me figure out how to contain this latest crisis, it’s her.
“And get yourself a scone or something,” she calls after me as I head into the cat-heavy section of the café, where lazy felines bask in the morning sun streaming through the big windows or lounge on couches and tattered wingback chairs. “You look hungry.”
I’m pretty sure I look sick, not hungry, but she’s right. It’s hard to think straight on an empty stomach, and I didn’t eat much for dinner last night, either. I punch the access code into the door leading back to the kitchen and slip into the spotless food prep area with a sigh. I don’t remember baking with my mom as a kid, though Gramps said we made Christmas cookies together when I was really small, but I have enough warm memories of this kitchen to last a lifetime.
Elaina, Maya, and me—and sometimes our long-distance bestie, Sydney, from New York, who’s here in the summers—have spent hours in here sipping wine in the evenings, helping Elaina bake for vendors at the local farmers’ markets or for the country store down the street. We’ve helped make cakes for local friends’ weddings and baby showers, soda bread for Saint Patrick’s Day, and chocolate truffle candies…just because.
Because we like truffles and we relish a treat and because all four of us have been out with enough losers to know we shouldn’t wait for a guy to give us chocolate.
We shouldn’t wait for a guy to give us love or support, either.
I’ve always been proud that I have such strong emotional ties with my friends. I knew that my support for them and their support for me was what made it possible for me to be so picky about dating. I didn’t need a man for anything, so I was free to wait until I met someone who was everything I wanted in a partner.
And sure, I have urges that weren’t satisfied by a hug from a friend, but I also have a vibrator and a fabulous collection of kinky short stories on my phone. Until now, that’s always been enough.
But after last night…
As I toast an English muffin and fetch my favorite strawberry cream cheese from the fridge, I do my best not to think about all the things Weaver did to me…or how much I want him to do them again.
I can’t step foot on his boat again, let alone anywhere near his bed. Having sex with him when I didn’t know who he was is forgivable. Going back for more when I know damned well that he had a romantic relationship, no matter how brief, with my mother would be the rancid act of a depraved sex fiend.
And I am not depraved.
Or a sex fiend.
But as I finish my breakfast and fetch a mug for coffee from the collection hanging on the wall above the sink, I’m keenly aware of the ache between my legs. Part of it is being sore from having sex for the first time, but part of it is from wishing I were still in Weaver’s bed, with his talented hands warm on my skin, making me feel things I had no idea my body was capable of feeling.
A vibrator just can’t compare. It doesn’t even come close.
Or maybe I just need better toys…
That’s something Elaina will be able to help me with. She’s unabashedly sex positive and a big proponent of meeting her own needs when she’s in between partners. Bare minimum, I’m going to leave the café this morning with a list of top-notch vibrators and dildos, if not the absolution I’m pretty sure only a priest could give me at this point.
(And I’m not about to tell Father Thomas one word about this. Not even if it means another century in purgatory after I die.)
After adding a touch of cream to my coffee, I push through the heavy blue velvet curtain separating the front of the café from the back to find Elaina busy with a customer.
A very familiar customer…
With a soft squeak of surprise, I drop into a squatting position, hoping the counter will conceal me from view.
But I should have known better. My luck is solidly in the shitter right now, a fact proven when a deep voice murmurs, “Good morning, Sully,” from the other side of the cash register.
“Yep, good morning,” I mumble, my face hot enough to sear a scallop. “Just…looking for lids. You said the lids were down here, right, Elaina?”
“Um, yes,” Elaina says, rolling with me like the bestie she is. “And stirring sticks, too. You should find a box of both down there. On the shelf beside the little fridge. We need to get both of those restocked before the morning rush.”
There’s nothing but cleaning supplies down on this shelf, but I make a show of looking for lids and sticks until I sense Weaver moving away.
Before I can stand, Elaina nudges my hip with her foot and hisses, “What is going on? How are you and that gorgeous sexpot of a man on a nickname basis without me knowing about it, woman? You need to spill it, Gertie, and spill it quick. Before I expire from curiosity.”
I stand, shaking my head as my heart does its best to punch through my ribs. “I can’t,” I whisper. “I have to get out of here. I can’t see him again. Ever.”
Her grin falls so fast I swear I hear it hit the floor. “Did he hurt you? If so, I’m going to kill him. I’ll poison his bacon and cheese sandwich. Just say the word.”
I shake my head harder, backing toward the curtain. “No. Nothing like that. It’s…complicated. I can’t talk about it here.”
“Okay, meet me back here at three, okay?” she says. “I’ll close a little early and we can shut the curtains and talk in private.”
I nod. “Okay. Thank you. Love you.”
“Love you, too, honey,” she says, concern still writ large on her face. “Take care of yourself today, okay?”
I mutter something in response and fumble my way through the curtain. A few moments later, I’m pushing out the back door into the alley behind the café , not certain how to take care of myself in the wake of something like this.
I just know I need to put some distance between Weaver Tripp and myself.
I break into a jog, cruising into the narrow alley between Elaina’s café and the souvenir shop next door so fast, that by the time I see the broad chest looming in front of me, it’s too late to stop.
I ram into a cable-knit sweater, nose-first, and suddenly find myself in the arms of the last man I want to see right now.
Well, the second to the last, but who has time for semantics?
“Woah, there.” Mark laughs, his arms tightening around me. “You’re in a hurry. What are you doing back here?”
“I am in a hurry,” I insist, ignoring his question. I try to pull away, but he holds me close, his thick fingers digging into the small of my back, making my skin crawl. Sometime in the past twelve hours, Mark’s touch went from interesting to repulsive. “I have to get back to the house. Gramps needs me.”
“Oh, come on, Gramps can get by on his own for one morning.” His lips turn down hard. “I need you, Gee. My dad’s dead. Heart attack out of nowhere on Thursday. It’s been fucking crazy.”
“I heard last night,” I say, torn between the urge to comfort him and the urge to demand he get his hands off me. Now. “I’m sorry, Mark. That’s really awful.” He and his dad weren’t really close—I’m pretty sure he hated Rodger most of the time, just like the rest of the harvesters in town—but losing a parent is still intense. “I can talk later, if you want to call, but I really?—”
He tugs me closer. “I can’t find my cell, and I don’t want to talk on the phone, anyway. I need you, Gee. None of the girls I’ve been seeing lately get me like you do. When I’m with you, I can relax and forget about everything, and I really need to forget right now.”
I dodge his lips as he bends to kiss me, pushing harder on his chest, but he’s strong, and he isn’t pulling any punches this morning. “Stop it, Mark. I’m serious. I have to go.”
“Just five minutes,” he says. “Just jerk me off, and I’ll return the favor later.” He releases me with one hand, reaching between us to work open his belt.
I take advantage of his divided focus to twist free. When he reaches for me again, I act on instinct, bringing my knee up between his legs before shoving him again—hard. He falls backward, tripping over his own feet before colliding with an empty trash can and tumbling to the concrete.
Only when he’s down, cursing a blue streak, do I notice the silhouette moving slowly down the alley.
Fuck.
It’s Weaver Tripp.
And he looks ready to do some violence of his own.