Chapter Six
Tyler
“This place is amazing, Mayflower.” I stepped inside the tiny cottage, and Mae spun around with a mischievous look.
“It’s Mae.” She pretended to swat my chest, and what I really wanted to do was catch her hands in mine and pull her into me for a kiss.
It had been something I’d wanted to do since I was a teenage guy, crushing on his best friend’s sister.
She looked up at me as her gaze connected to mine, and she smiled. “Let me rinse off really quick, and we’ll head down to the beach.”
Mae wove her fingers through mine and tugged me toward a small sitting room, where she stopped in front of a couch.
“Sit.” She handed me a remote as she unlinked her hand from mine.
It felt like old times. She’d always kind of bossed me around growing up, and it was one of the things I’d always loved. It was cute then, and it’s sexy as hell now.
“What am I? A dog?”
She chuckled and started toward a short hallway. “Beats me. You haven’t been around these parts for decades, Tyler.”
I couldn’t help but take in the back of her as her legs moved, her hips swayed, and her shorts left little to the imagination.
It was hard to reconcile the Mae I left and the one walking before me.
She quickly spun around, and her eyes narrowed on mine. “The television is that way.” She thumbed the flatscreen anchored to the wall.
“I know. I know. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t need any help.”
Mae laughed and shook her head. “Ah, the infamous flirt I remember.”
“Not a flirt. Just an optimist.”
She smiled and turned around before heading down the hall.
I kicked out my legs and stretched as I turned on the television. With the small space, I could hear the shower competing with the television and smiled.
I could imagine Mae coming back home after an early day at her coffee shop, puttering around her house, making dinner, reading…
The thought brought a smile to my face.
It had been so long since I’d let myself really think about Mae that it kind of felt wrong. Like I shouldn’t think of her as anything but what I knew of her back then.
But the problem was that now, she was even more gorgeous. Her curves nearly left me panting at the table last night, and her mind blew me away. The way she thought about world events or made snappy comments about things I’d revealed…
I let out a low groan and ran my palms over my face as the news came over the television speakers.
Outside, when I snuck up on her, I swore I saw a glint of fascination, hope, or curiosity. It was the same look I’d seen when we were kids, and I never knew what it meant.
I straightened up on the couch and looked around the cozy sitting area. It definitely screamed single. Someone else would be lucky to keep an extra pair of shoes here, let alone live.
The thought made me happy.
As I switched channels, I heard the shower turn off, and within minutes, Mae remerged in a sundress, high-top sneakers, and sunglasses propped on her head.
“Ready to see why I fell in love with my little shack?”
I stood and shook my head. “It’s not a shack. It’s a cottage.”
“I’ll show you pics of what it looked like beforehand,” she assured me. “It was barely standing.”
“You’ve always been a visionary,” I said admirably.
And it was true. She was one of the reasons I wanted to hang out at the Evans’ house so much.
Sure. Brad and I had been best friends, but Mae always made me feel like anything was possible. No matter what I wanted to conquer, she was right there with her brother to lend a hand.
I doubted she even remembered any of it.
Why would she?
She had a happy family, many friends, and a life she’d built independently.
But I’d held onto those memories with her and the rest of the Evans fiercely. The moments where I’d cried so hard from laughter, the times I stayed for dinner, which led to an overnight sleepover, the seconds I had alone with Mae when no one was around to notice I was like a lost puppy dog in her presence.
All the times they’d saved me from having to return to my home at night when my dad was having one of his moods.
That was what my mom would call them.
Usually, it meant he’d gambled away his paycheck.
“I don’t feel much like a visionary.” She laughed. “A hopeless romantic, a dreamer with a side of delusion. But not a visionary.”
Her smile was exactly as it always had been— warm and welcoming.
“You’ve always dreamed big,” I told her. “Remember when you convinced me and Brad to build that go-cart and enter the race when I was in ninth grade?”
She nodded, grinning. “I do remember that. Brad was in seventh grade and got so mad he didn’t get to qualify since he wasn’t officially a freshman. You both spent all summer in our garage.”
“It was one of the best summers of my life,” I said softly. “But I never would have even thought about doing it if you hadn’t convinced me I could.”
She hugged herself and cocked her head slightly, looking baffled. “Really?”
I nodded my head. “Yeah. You believed in me and your brother, told us to imagine the trophy in our bedrooms and that we could share it. Brad could have it one week, and I could have it the other. You even went to the library and gave us a whole bunch of books on building go-carts.” I shrugged. “Anyway, that’s just one of many times you proved yourself as a visionary to me.”
Her gaze caught mine, and I felt my heart skip a beat. Her fierce green eyes softened, and she shook her head.
“I’m surprised you remembered.” She smoothed her hands over her sundress and glanced toward the door leading to the back yard. “Anyway, we should get going.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath and following her out back.
“There’s the path we can take to get down to the beach,” she said, pointing toward a narrow dirt path dipping into the cliffs. “I cut back all the blackberry bushes, so we shouldn’t get scratched up.”
I nodded, following her along the compacted dirt trail. The muffled sound of the waves crashing against the shoreline reminded me of what I’d missed leaving this part of the world so many years ago.
It was part of the reason I sought out property in the Carolinas, but it didn’t have the same sound, the same crashing and slapping against the rocks as it did in Washington.
“I have to confess that it’s nice bumping into you,” she said, calling over her shoulder.
“Yeah? Your brother’s best friend isn’t annoying you like I used to?” I teased.
She stopped on the trail, and I nearly bumped into her as she spun around to face me.
“Tyler, you never annoyed me. If anything, I annoyed you.” She shook her head and chuckled. “I was that irritating sister who always snooped around you two.”
Shock spun through me, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t think there was a thing you could have done to irritate me. I loved having you around, Mae.”
She chuckled and locked her gaze on me. “So you do know my name is Mae and not Mayflower.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Anyway, you were always welcome.”
“Not according to Brad. He told me to buzz off more times than I could count.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I get it. I was a girl.”
“But you were always an amazing girl. You’d do such awesome things. Remember when you helped me build a fort? Brad got tired of digging the trench for all the sticks to go into the ground, so he went home, but you stayed.”
Her cheeks flushed, and she nodded, pushing a piece of hair that had fallen from her braid. “Yeah, I remember.”
“And do you remember that treehouse your dad built in your back yard and Brad thought it was for him, and you and your sisters thought it was a clubhouse for you all?”
She laughed and nodded. “Yeah. Sharing wasn’t a concept that Brad wanted to deal with.”
“So you came up with a compromise. One side was for him, and the other side was for you and your sisters. You always wanted to make sure everyone got along.”
Her gaze stayed on mine, and it felt like the ocean air was getting to both of us. I felt the same warmth radiating from Mae as we stood less than a foot apart going down memory lane.
“True. Life’s too short to spend it arguing or getting mad at each other.” She shrugged. “I still feel that way. Usually, my siblings do too.”
I nodded, still in awe of Mae Evans.
Part of me wondered if she remembered what happened in that tree house so many years ago.
Probably not.
But I did.
I thought about it more times than I wanted to admit.
“The moral of the story is that I never thought you were annoying,” I added. “I liked you. Somedays, I probably liked you more than Brad.”
She chuckled, and her gaze brightened.
“Just don’t tell him that.”
Mae brushed her hand against my arm and smiled. “Your secret is safe with me. Now, let’s get going before I have to be at the coffee shop.”
I nodded, following her down the last of the winding path to the beach. I stopped in my tracks when we reached the bottom. It was like her own private oasis boxed in by cliffs and fir trees.
The pebbly beach gave way to some larger boulders as the ocean slapped against the cliffs in the distance. There was a tiny square of sand that met the smaller beach pebbles.
“I had no idea this existed here,” I said, truly taken aback at how beautiful this slice of the world was, and it didn’t hurt that I was standing next to Mae. “And I thought Brad and I had uncovered most of the island’s hideaways.”
She turned to look at me as the breeze picked up, and the hair that escaped her braid blew in the wind.
Mae tucked the stray pieces behind her ear and smiled. “Gorgeous, isn’t it? The beach is technically a public beach, but nobody really knows about it, and I’m certainly not going to advertise it.”
I chuckled, nodding. “I don’t blame you.”
She pointed at the square of sand. “When I’m feeling really ambitious, I do yoga over there.”
I clenched my jaw together and shook my head. “Of course, you do yoga.”
She laughed and folded her arms over her chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re Zen.” I laughed and shrugged. “It figures you’d be beautiful, smart, ambitious, and then… Zen about it all.”
Her gaze focused on me, and she tilted her chin. “I thought you thought I was wild?”
“A bit.”
“That’s a tad contradictory, don’t you think? How can I be calm and wild at the same time?”
I smiled, loving the challenges she still threw my way. “You’re a force to be reckoned with, but even the wildest storms signal a calm right beforehand.” I shook my head. “I don’t know how to explain it, Mae. Maybe I’m wrong, but you strike me as a woman who sets goals, throws herself into them with every ounce of your being, and then stops to enjoy the moment.”
Her lips curled into a smile as she locked her gaze on mine. There was something about her that just drove me wild. Over the years, I’d thought that maybe I’d let my teenage hormones warp my memories, but standing in front of her only made it worse.
“I guess I can see that.” Mae sucked on her bottom lip for a second and glanced toward the waves. “But there are many times when I feel like a wreck or like I don’t have a strong grip on reality. Does that make any sense?” She turned to look at me.
And it did, more than she knew.
“You dared to dream to do something other than work at your folks’ store, and you not only accomplished it, you crushed it.” I shook my head, thinking back to the line to the door this morning from the rush-hour crowd. “Yet, you stopped your day to lead me down here.”
She reached for my hand and twisted her fingers with mine with a slight tug. “That’s because you need a break. I can tell.”
“More than I realized,” I said, sighing. “But that’s something special I noticed about you, even when you were a kid. You always cared about others.”
Mae kept my hand in hers, and she squeezed it. “I wish I’d known what was going on when you were a kid.”
I nodded slowly and smiled. “Would it have changed anything?”