Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
JESSICA
My day off starts exactly how it should, alone on the beach with a book, a bag of grapes, and zero emotional complications.
I’ve staked my claim on a prime stretch of sand near the pier, my ancient beach umbrella providing shade that’s only slightly lopsided. The umbrella has survived twelve summers, two hurricanes, and one unfortunate incident involving a seagull and a hot dog. It’s a crooked, faded warrior.
I’m halfway through chapter six of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter—V. Langley’s best work, in my humble and absolutely correct opinion—when a shadow falls across my towel.
“You’re blocking my light,” I say without looking up.
“You’re reading my book.”
I look up.
Scott is standing there in khaki pants, a blue button-down shirt, and leather dress shoes. With socks.
On the beach.
“Did you come straight from a board meeting?” I ask. “Or do you genuinely not understand how beaches work?”
“I have beach attire.”
“And yet.”
He looks down at himself, then at the sand, then back at me with a sheepish expression. “I was going to change. Then I got your text about where you’d be. Then I...forgot.”
“You forgot how to dress for the beach?”
“I forgot everything except wanting to see you.”
My heart does an inconvenient flutter. “That’s either very romantic or deeply concerning.”
“Can’t it be both?”
I sigh and reach into my bag, pulling out the emergency sunscreen I always carry. “Sit down before you burst into flames. You’re so pale you’re practically reflective.”
“I’m not that—”
“You’re a walking lighthouse. The ships at sea are using you for navigation.”
He accepts the sunscreen with what might be a smile. “I have a beach chair in my car.”
“Then go get it.”
He returns five minutes later with a folding beach chair that still has the tags on it. It’s clearly never been used. I watch with increasing delight as he attempts to set it up.
The chair wins the first round, snapping shut on his fingers.
“Ow.”
“Need help?”
“No. I’ve got it.”
He does not have it. The chair collapses again, this time tangling with his legs and nearly taking him down to the sand.
I eat a grape. “This is very entertaining.”
“I’m glad my suffering amuses you.”
“Immensely.”
On the third attempt, he gets it partially open, but one leg won’t lock. He sits anyway, very carefully, and the whole thing immediately folds sideways, depositing him onto the sand in a heap of khaki and wounded pride.
I eat another grape.
“Not a word,” he says from the ground.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You’re smirking.”
“I would never.”
He finally wrestles the chair into submission, gets it locked, and sits with exaggerated caution. When the chair holds, he looks triumphant.
“Now,” I say, “about those pants.”
“What about them?”
“Roll them up. You look like someone’s accountant on a forced vacation.”
He rolls them up to mid-calf, revealing ankles that are, predictably, just as pale as the rest of him. “Better?”
“You need to take off the shoes too, and the socks. This is a beach, not a country club.”
“I’m sensing judgment.”
“I’m sensing someone who has never actually relaxed a day in his life.”
He removes the shoes and socks, placing them neatly beside his chair like they might escape if left unattended. His toes dig into the sand with hesitance like he’s encountering a foreign substance.
“When’s the last time you went to the beach?” I ask.
“I live at the beach.”
“When’s the last time you actually sat on it all day, doing nothing?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Vera used to bring me when I was young. We’d build sandcastles and look for shells and she’d tell me stories.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It was. Then I grew up and forgot how to do things that weren’t productive.” He looks out at the water. “I’m trying to remember.”
I hand him the bag of grapes because the moment feels too tender for words.
We sit in companionable silence for a while, the waves providing a soundtrack. I go back to my book. He stares at the ocean like it might have answers.
“You’re reading my first novel,” he says eventually.
“I’m rereading it. For research.”
“Research into what?”
“Your early work versus your later work. I’m gathering evidence.”
“Of my decline?”
“More like your evolution.” I flip the book so he can see my margin notes. “See? Page forty-seven: ‘Good use of metaphor. Why did you stop doing this?’ Page eighty-two: ‘The emotional honesty here is devastating. More of this, please.’”
He takes the book, flipping through my annotations with an expression I can’t quite read. “You wrote notes in my book.”
“I do that with all my books.”
“You wrote ‘the velvet darkness problem has not yet emerged’ on page twelve.”
“You had a velvet darkness phase. It’s well documented.”
“I was going through some things.”
“Clearly.”
He hands the book back, and when our fingers brush, neither of us pulls away immediately.
A kid with a metal detector chooses this exact moment to wander directly between our chairs.
“Excuse me,” the kid says, not looking up from his detector. “I’m looking for treasure.”
“Aren’t we all?” I mutter.
The kid beeps his way past us and continues down the beach, completely oblivious to the moment he just interrupted.
Scott shifts his chair closer to mine. “Where were we?”
“You were explaining your ‘velvet darkness’ phase.”
“I was doing no such thing.”
“You were about to.”
He shifts in his chair to face me better, and the chair makes a threatening creak. He freezes.
“Don’t move,” I advise. “You’ve achieved a fragile peace. Don’t disrupt it.”
“This chair hates me.”
“The chair doesn’t hate you. It’s just establishing dominance. All beach chairs do this with newcomers.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Am I? Look around. Every beach chair on this sand has defeated someone today. It’s a rite of passage.”
He looks around. A teenager three umbrellas down is struggling with a lounger that keeps folding in on itself. An elderly man appears to be in a standoff with a camping chair that won’t lock.
“This is anarchy,” Scott says.
“This is the beach. Same thing, really.”
A drone appears overhead, hovering directly above us with the persistence of a mechanical mosquito. Someone down the beach is clearly testing their new toy with zero regard for other people’s beach moments.
Scott glares up at it. “Is there no privacy on this beach?”
“Welcome to peak tourist season.”
“I feel like we’re in a fishbowl.”
“Wait until the sunburned tourists start asking you to take their family photos. That’s when the real fun begins.”
The drone finally buzzes away. Scott’s chair has somehow shifted even closer to mine. Our umbrella—my ancient, crooked warrior—is now providing shade for both of us, though just barely.
“Jessica,” he says, in a tone that makes my name sound like the beginning of something important.
“Scott.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About wanting to try.”
“I remember what I said.”
“I want you to know—” He stops as a tourist appears directly in front of us.
“Excuse me, do you know how to get to the pier?”
I point. “That way. The giant wooden structure extending into the ocean. You can’t miss it.”
“Oh! I see it now. Thanks!”
She wanders off. Scott looks like he might actually combust from frustration.
“You were saying?” I prompt.
“I was saying that I—”
“Excuse me?” Another tourist. This one has a map. An actual paper map, like we’re in 1997. “Is this where the dolphins are?”
“The dolphins are in the ocean,” I say patiently. “They don’t have a designated area. They’re wild animals.”
“But I heard there were dolphins here.”
“There are dolphins in the Atlantic Ocean, yes. Sometimes they swim past. It’s not a scheduled event.”
The tourist looks disappointed and wanders off, presumably to find someone who can provide a dolphin itinerary.
Scott stares after them. “Does this happen often?”
“You have no idea. Last week someone asked me where the beach bathroom was while standing directly in front of a sign that said ‘Beach Bathroom’ with an arrow pointing at the bathroom.”
“I’m stressed on your behalf.”
“This is why I bring grapes. Stress eating.”
A gust of wind catches our umbrella.
The ancient warrior tilts dramatically, caught by the breeze, and before either of us can react, it collapses directly onto us.
Faded canvas and metal poles are everywhere. Scott makes a noise of surprise. I’m tangled in the fabric, my book somewhere in the chaos.
“Are you okay?” His voice is muffled, close.
“I’m fine. Just—hold on—”
We’re somehow both trapped under the collapsed umbrella, pressed together in a ridiculous tent of faded stripes. I can see his face inches from mine, all concern and barely suppressed laughter.
“This is absurd,” I say.
“Completely absurd.”
“We should untangle ourselves.”
“We should.”
Neither of us moves.
His eyes are very gray this close, the color of the ocean before a storm or the sky at dusk.
“Jessica,” he says again, softer this time.
And then he kisses me.
Or I kiss him.
Or we both just stop fighting the inevitable and meet in the middle.
It’s not a careful kiss. Not tentative. It’s the kind of kiss that happens when two people have been circling each other for months and finally stop pretending they don’t want exactly this.
His hand comes up to cup my face, gentle despite everything. I grab the front of his ridiculous button-down shirt and pull him closer, and the umbrella collapses farther around us, and I absolutely do not care.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“That was—” he starts.
“Yeah.”
“We should—”
“Yeah.”
“The umbrella—”
“Still on us.”
“I noticed.”
We’re grinning at each other like idiots. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my fingertips.
And that’s when I realize it.
Not like a lightning bolt. More like a sunrise—something that’s been building so gradually I didn’t notice until suddenly the whole sky was bright.
I love him.