Chapter Twelve – Andie
Chapter Twelve
ANDIE
I ’m up early the next morning. The sun is a bright orb beaming through the bedroom window like a prelude to tonight’s supermoon.
I reach up to wipe the sleep from the corners of my eyes and almost detach a retina. I’m still wearing Grace’s spectacularly sharp engagement ring.
When I returned to Keith’s place, Grace had been about to launch herself off the jetty again. She’d handed me her ring for safekeeping, so that it didn’t end up sharing the fate of the diamond necklace in Titanic – a treasure left at the bottom of the sea. Maeve would cast her down along with it.
As I slipped it onto the finger next to my mother’s engagement ring, I looked up to see Jack and Taylor sitting together at the end of the dock.
I raised my phone in their direction, torchlight still on, and called out to them.
‘Yoo-hoo, lovebirds! I’m back.’
I’m not sure what exactly came over me.
Under the glow of their own personal spotlight, I could see the confusion streaked across both their faces.
Later, once we were home and tucking into a 2 a.m. tub of hummus, Taylor had had words with me.
‘You’re trying too hard to make this thing with Jack happen. If it’s meant to be, it will be,’ she roused. ‘Anyway, I think he has a thing for you .’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I muttered, while my heart did a joyful flip.
I slip off Grace’s ring and place it on my bedside table, then pad quietly downstairs. It’s a relief to find it mostly clean, aside from the empty hummus container.
I’m collecting it to toss in the bin when I see a brown paper package on the floor in front of a doggy door that I haven’t noticed before now.
I bend down to retrieve it and am surprised to find that it’s weighty and warm. I slide the contents into my hand, then peel a soggy paper serviette from where it’s stuck around a wrapped bread-roll shape. There’s something written on the serviette in thick black marker.
Enjoy your glutenous b I’ve seen something in the water. Not a dolphin, but a Jack. On a paddleboard, stroking confidently towards the house, paddle in one hand, fishing rod in the other and abs glistening in the sun.
Hazel spots him a few seconds later, her eyes lighting up with a glorious warmth as she rushes to the porch railing and begins waving wildly.
‘Morning Jackie-boy!’
He looks over at us and grins, his white teeth snagging a sunbeam.
‘Are you out there fishing for that cake again?’ she yells to him.
‘I’ll find it one day, Mum,’ he calls back.