Chapter 9
“He taught me how to surf,” Oliver said.
Cora laughed. “I can’t believe you knew our grandfather.”
Muriel immediately jumped in. “Wait. Do you think we should wait until Mom is here to hear all of this?”
“We can tell her,” Cora said, waving her hand at Muriel’s concern. “So…what was he like?”
Oliver glanced at Muriel. She gave a nod of her head.
“Cora’s right. We’ll see our mom tonight.”
He smiled, thinking back to the first time he’d met the old man next door. He had heard so many folktales over the years from cousins and at sleepovers about Old Man O’Neill. So when Jacob came down to the beach yelling at him and Jules when they were teenagers, he’d almost peed his pants.
“He told me if I was going to surf on his beach, I better learn how to do it right.” Oliver chuckled at the image of Jacob standing in shorts, no shirt, tanned skin, crazy hair, and an even crazier beard. Oliver thought he was going to be kidnapped and eaten later. “He turned out to be one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He’s one of the reasons why I wanted to teach and live in Blueberry Bay.”
Muriel’s mouth opened in shock or amazement and stared right back at him. “Isn’t it crazy that we ran across each other that night in Concord?”
“Ah, there’s that lovely capital city again,” Jules said, smiling mischievously at Oliver.
“Did you guys meet each other in Concord or something?” Cora asked, trying to piece Jules’ childish passive-aggressive behavior together.
Oliver didn’t know Muriel very well, but by the way she flashed a look at him, it almost looked like she didn’t want to talk about their encounter, which was fine by Oliver because he didn’t want to talk about Amy.
“I bumped into her on the street in Concord by accident,” Oliver said as though the whole thing was an oopsie-daisy moment. “And then I saw her here, at the market.”
“Where do you live in Concord?” Jules asked Muriel. “Do you happen to know a woman named Amy Silver?”
Oliver shook his head. Why did Jules always have to jab? His brother knew exactly where to poke at Oliver, and he got him almost every time. But he wouldn’t say anything out on the patio at the tavern. Word traveled faster than the seagulls in this town.
“No, I don’t think so,” Muriel said, wincing as she shifted her arm.
“How’s your arm?” Oliver said, feeling really guilty that he had pressured her into going for the wave. “I’m not kidding, but you really seemed like a natural.”
She had picked it up faster than he remembered as a kid with Jacob.
“That’s weird,” Muriel said, looking straight at him, sending electric currents throughout his body.
He didn’t need a drink to feel buzzed around Muriel. Under the moonlight, her green eyes glowed.
“What’s weird?” he asked her, noticing Jules and her sister in their own conversation.
“My grandfather taught you and you taught—or tried—to teach me,” she said, rolling her eyes at herself.
“Let me make it up to you with another lesson when you recover,” he offered.
She shook her head. “I think my surfing days are coming to an end.”
“No, don’t say that.” Oliver slapped his hand to his heart. “I’m not that terrible of a teacher.”
Muriel dropped her gaze to her drink, then shifted her attention to her phone, her thumb dangling above the home screen. Then she took her phone and dropped it into her purse.
“We should probably get going,” she said.
“You ladies have a ride home?” Oliver asked. He would walk home through the beaches. “Do you know the shortcut?”
Muriel shook her head. “There’s a shortcut?”
Jules eyes opened wide. “We have to take you home through the shortcut.”
“How short is this?” Muriel asked doubtfully. She held up her arm. “I think I’ll just have our mom pick us up.”
Jules was about to argue, but Muriel picked up her purse and stood. She looked at her sister and said, “You ready?”
“I should head back home anyway,” Oliver said, pushing back his chair. “It’s been a long day with surfing and broken arms and stuff. We’ll wait until your ride gets here.”
“I think I’ll walk with you guys,” Cora said. “I’m not rushing home.” She gave her sister a look. “Don’t you think they need their space right now?”
Oliver threw a couple twenties onto the table.
“How about that bonfire girls?” Jules said to Cora.
“That sounds great,” she said. “We’d love that.”
But the look on Muriel’s face said anything but.
“It’s really been nice hanging out,” Oliver said, but he was exhausted, too, and he wanted to try to call Natasha to see if she made it home alright. “I should go home.”
It turned out that both women enjoyed the walk home, but only Jules and Cora were up for a bonfire.
“Come,” Jules said, walking out onto the screened porch where Oliver sat. Jules held a bottle of red wine he had found in the wine cellar. “I’ve got a”—he twisted the bottle to read the label—“1982.”
Oliver shook his head, sitting down in one of the chairs. “I need to call Natasha.”
Jules sighed. “The kind thing to do is end it with her.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary at this point, but thanks,” Oliver said, opening his phone to her number. “How do you always break up with the girls you date?”
Jules smiled at his sarcastic comment. “I’m honest with myself and not afraid to be honest with others.”
“I wasn’t lying to her,” Oliver said. “I really do love her.”
“Love? You’re living six hours apart, on totally different life paths. You guys don’t even really like each other that much,” Jules said. “Why are you forcing it?”
“Oh, and you know what love is supposed to look like?” Oliver scoffed. “You’ve never even been in a relationship.”
“Because I won’t settle,” Jules said, shrugging. “I want to find the perfect person, or I’d rather be alone.”
Oliver wanted to remind him that he’d lost his perfect someone long ago.
“I need to make this call,” Oliver said, not wanting to continue this conversation.
“You want to tell me what you were doing with Amy?” Jules asked.
Oliver groaned, wishing that bottle had been opened and poured already. “Not really.”
“Are you two…?” Jules didn’t finish the question, but he didn’t need to.
“No.” Oliver stared Jules down. The dinner had been devastating. “She’s getting remarried. She wanted to tell me in person so that I wouldn’t hear it from someone else.”
“What a saint,” Jules muttered under his breath.
Oliver didn’t even bother trying to say anything at this point. “She’s happy, and that’s all that matters.”
“She’s the devil reincarnated,” Jules said. “I don’t know why you would even meet with her.”
Oliver didn’t know either. “Aren’t you going to meet Cora?”
“Oh, right.” Jules grabbed the bottle and headed toward the door. “See ya.”
Oliver didn’t move from where he was. He would check on his grandfather before he went to bed, but his mind and thoughts were spinning.
He went to press Natasha’s number but stopped, thinking about Amy and when she told him about her engagement. She’d invited him to lunch at their favorite spot during their marriage. She had told him by asking if he’d be willing to come to the wedding. The woman who had promised her life for better or for worse to someone else.
When she had passed him the invitation, he’d almost lost it. He’d never tell Jules that detail. He’d stayed at the bar of the restaurant just staring at the stupid invitation and that was when he’d heard Muriel with the guy.
The first thing he had noticed about Muriel had been how stunning she had looked, even when she was angry. Like a supermodel standing there arguing with her dinner companion. Then he had noticed the pathetic cheap flat box sitting on the table. Then she’d stormed out. Did that restaurant have a reputation for breaking people’s hearts?
Oliver had paid at that point and left, not thinking about the woman until she had stood literally in front of him, crying at a window front of a wedding store. It broke him to see how made-up she looked for a Thursday night in an expensive dress and high heels. She clearly appeared to have had thought something big was about to happen at dinner.
He was just as big of a jerk as that guy at the table with her, who didn’t do anything other than order his next drink after she’d left. That was how he had imagined Jules breaking up with all the girls he became disinterested in. Moving on with his life like nothing had ever happened. Not him, but there he was, breaking up with Natasha.
He opened his home screen again, and Natasha’s number was still open. He dialed. It went straight to voicemail.
“It’s me. I just wanted to check in and make sure you made it home alright.” He paused, not sure what else he should say. He didn’t feel as though he should be forced to change his life just because she wanted him to, and Jules was right, he should let her go. He shouldn’t force her to change her life either. “I really do care a lot about you, Natasha. I never meant to hurt you.”
He hoped she would feel it was sincere, but he doubted it. The back-and-forth bickering had started long ago—he should’ve ended it long ago, too.
Why didn’t he see the problems when he first met someone? Even now. Muriel was going through a breakup, not looking for anything. He’d just ended a relationship. She lived in New Hampshire and was only visiting her mother for the summer to get over the guy back home. He was still hung up on his ex and now had a new ex. Yet, Oliver still couldn’t help but find her attractive.
What was wrong with him?
His phone started ringing. It was Natasha. “Hello.”
“I hope you know you ruined my life!” she screamed into the phone. “I want nothing to do with you or your stupid family. I hope you rot and end up smelling like the piece of slime that you are.”
Ouch.
“I’m really sorry, Natasha,” he said.
“I can’t wait until you figure out what you lost when you finally figure things out!” She hung up the phone.
He stared at the profile picture she’d put on his phone of the two of them. They sat together on his boat. He’d really messed things up this time. Tapping his thumbs together as he sat on the porch, listening as the waves rolled in. What would he do now? His year of figuring things out was up. Natasha wouldn’t be the only one disappointed in him. There would be a line of people behind her.
He sighed as he leaned back into his chair. It could have been so easy to just fall into the path of an Abbott. Get married, buy the big boxy suburban house, have juniors, spend most of his life stressed and anxiety-ridden to keep up with the Joneses, and spend two weeks out of the year at his favorite place on earth. It seemed kind of pointless.
No one really understood him except for his grandfather, but he’d rather give it all up to be at peace with himself, and he’d found peace here. Sitting right on that porch, listening to the waves kiss the earth like a heartbeat. Living in the city, growing up in the suburbs, he’d always felt alone. Here in Blueberry Bay, he rarely felt that way even though he was almost always by himself.
The people here started conversations, with their ties to Blueberry Bay serving as common ground. The weather, the landscape, the events happening around the village. Sure, he supposed there was local gossip and maybe some negatives about living here. But he hadn’t come across any of it. Back home, his friends and even family enjoyed seeing people’s lives crumble in disaster. In Blueberry Bay, people respected Oliver for teaching their children and helping in their community. Back home, most of the people he had once thought to be his closest family and friends didn’t understand what he was doing, and according to Natasha, thought he was losing it.
“Why are you wasting all your talents being a teacher?” his father had asked him last spring. “Why spend all that time and effort for other people’s children?”
He thought about his group of students and the past year. He had signed the contract for the upcoming year, but should he just go back to the city? Go back to the grind of medical school and finish what he had started in the first place before everything hit the fan? Natasha had stuck it out with him over this past year, and that said a lot about her, because he had been a complete mess.
But then, he thought back to the moment Muriel had fallen. He hadn’t thought twice about jumping in and wanting to help. He wanted to jump in the car and drive her to the hospital himself. Even, stay with her at the hospital.
He shook the thoughts away. He’d left medical school and had never felt so relieved in his life. Teaching happened as an accident, but now, he didn’t think he wanted to do anything else.
The house phone began to ring, and it jolted Oliver out of his drowsiness. What was someone calling the house this late for?
“Hello?”
“Oliver!” his father bellowed into the phone. “Is your brother around?”
“No, I’m afraid he’s out at the moment,” Oliver said, not telling the details just yet.
Steven Abbott didn’t allow for much fun these days.
“Tell him to call me right away,” his father ordered.
“Sure,” Oliver said. He paused for a moment, wondering if his father would ask about him. “How’s it going? How’s Mom?”
“She’s fine,” he said shortly. “I better get going. But tell Jules to call as soon as he can.”
“Dad,” Oliver said, wishing his punishment for not living up to his father’s expectations would end. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“I’ve got to go, Oliver,” he said.
“You guys coming up for the Fourth?” Oliver asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” his dad said. Then he quickly added, “Bye, Oliver.”
And hung up.