Chapter 3
Chapter Three
J uliette had never seen Pride the way she was looking at it now. About the only thing that could make the evening more magical was if Max kissed her.
Seeing the bandage on his forehead again had her realizing that probably wasn’t going to happen.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been up this high.” She turned towards him.
He was standing close to her, watching her instead of looking at the view outside the window.
“If it was a warmer night, we could go outside. But I think it’s a little too windy right now,” he said.
She could hear the wind outside the glass and the waves crashing far below them. She even smelled the salt water in the cool breeze.
“I’m fine just looking out the windows for now.” She turned after the light passed them. “So this is all automated?” She turned back around before the light hit them again.
“Yup.” He nodded as he glanced out over the Pacific. “Can you imagine having to turn this bad boy on or light it each night with a flame like they had to do in the past?”
“I bet a lot has changed since they stood here.” She sighed.
“The town is probably a lot bigger now.” He motioned to the lights in the distance.
She chuckled. “How did they manage without internet?” She shook her head.
“No television,” he pointed out.
“Right.” She snapped her fingers. “You’d be out of a job.” She turned and tilted her head as she looked at him.
“I’d have to revert to my first job,” he joked.
“Which was?” she asked, curious.
“Busing tables. Half of my paycheck used to go to paying back for all the broken dishes.” He leaned a little bit closer to her. “I’m a bit of a klutz.”
“Noooo.” She dragged the word out. “I wouldn’t have thought.” She smiled and touched his forehead. “What about your writing?” He shrugged and didn’t respond. “How are you doing?” she asked, concerned.
“The stairs caused my heart to pound, which of course is sending blood pumping to my head. It feels sort of like I have a huge melon up here.” He smiled at her and suddenly she knew exactly what he meant. Her own heart was racing, making her head spin, but it wasn’t from the climb. It was from how close Max was and the way his eyes slowly locked with hers.
He turned back around after a slight silence and said. “How about we head down? I’m feeling a little dizzy.”
“Oh, sure.” She took his arm as they started down the spiral staircase, guiding him and taking in the details of the place as they went. “You know, I bet it would be a pretty popular project if you filmed the remodel of this place. You know, make it into a thing,” she suggested.
“I had planned on it,” he admitted. “Then, well, things just got so… big.” He shrugged.
“I could help you, maybe, on my time off?” she offered.
He glanced at her. “You’d do that?”
She chuckled. “Yeah, if it meant I’d get a front-row seat to watching the work around here and seeing what you have planned.”
“Deal,” he said eagerly, leaning on her a little more. She could tell he was really tired now. His eyes were droopy, and he looked a little paler than before.
She’d enjoyed working in the older kitchen earlier and could already see some of his vision for the place. Most of the cupboards were bare and several had already been removed from the walls. The appliances were older and she assumed they’d be replaced. He had the kitchen table and two chairs pushed up against the wall, and the large dining room sat empty.
The living room only had a sofa, which sat in the middle of the floor close to the fireplace, and a television on a low stand in the corner. She wondered if the rest of the home was as empty.
She really wanted that tour but knew that he was tired. Just looking at him, anyone would be able to tell he was hurting.
“Oh,” she said once they reached the last landing, “we forgot your medication.”
“What?” He frowned down at her.
“Your medication. I forgot to give it to you when you ate.” She helped him down the rest of the stairs. “Here. Now that you have some food in your stomach, these will help with the pain.” She half-pushed him into the first chair she saw and then ran into the kitchen to get the bottle of pills and a glass of water.
She watched him swallowed the pills.
“Help me back to the sofa?” he asked, standing up. He swayed slightly and she wrapped her arms around him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just tired now.”
“Don’t you want to go to your bedroom?” she asked, glancing towards the stairs.
He chuckled. “The sofa is sort of my bedroom for now.”
“Right.” She helped him to the sofa. “Do you want anything before I leave?”
“A kiss,” she thought she heard him say. But then he was lying back on the sofa and his eyes were closed. A moment later he was snoring softly.
She placed a soft kiss on his forehead before letting herself out.
It had taken all her willpower not to sneak around the place and look in every room before going. As she drove back down the hillside towards town, she called Sophia.
Her friend answered on the third ring and sounded a little breathless.
Sophia had pushed her to take Max up on the offer to see the lighthouse. Maybe it was the way she’d described their first meeting in the restaurant, or maybe Sophia had seen the spark in her eyes when she talked about Max, but she got the idea that Sophia knew that she was attracted to him.
Either way, Sophia had encouraged her to go see the lighthouse. Not that she’d needed much convincing. She’d been dying to look around. It had been years since she’d been out to the property, and she’d never been inside.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Juliette asked.
“No, we were just coming back from taking Loki for a walk on the beach. What’s up?”
“I just wanted to tell you that I finally stopped by the lighthouse for that tour Max offered.”
The phone shifted and Sophia whispered, “And?”
“And, I found him almost unconscious after knocking himself out and putting a knot on his forehead from the kitchen cabinet.” She smiled.
“What?” Sophia’s voice raised. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, I took him to see Dr. Stevens. He has a clean bill of health. I made him dinner and then he took me to the top of the lighthouse.”
“Ooooh,” Sophia chimed in. “And?”
“And then we talked for a while about the town before we headed back downstairs, where he practically passed out on the sofa.”
“I did warn you that Max moves very slow,” Sophia said.
“It’s not that.” She sighed. “I was really hoping for a full tour of the property.”
Sophia laughed. “Trust me, you’ll get it. Isn’t tomorrow your day off? Why don’t you go see how his head is doing and maybe then get the tour? Palmer and the guys will be there working, so it’s sort of a good opportunity anyway. You can bring them all food or something.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, remembering her proposal to Max about helping him film and his statement about wanting to kiss her. Which had pretty much turned her knees to jelly.
“Well, I’m going to go hose Loki off. He rolled in something that smells like my brother’s locker.” Sophia chuckled.
“Okay, night.” She hung up.
When she arrived home, her parents were sitting in the living room watching sports with their two dogs fast asleep between them on the sofa.
“Who’s winning?” she asked, sitting beside her dad and grabbing a handful of popcorn from the bowl in his lap.
“It’s tied,” her mom said. “How was your date?”
“It wasn’t a date.” She rolled her eyes. “I was just going to get a tour of the lighthouse from Sophia’s friend Max, who purchased the place.”
“Right, Max Wilson.” Her dad wiggled his eyebrows. “The big-shot Hollywood writer and producer.”
“He lived in New York last,” she corrected.
“Right.” Her dad held the bowl of popcorn towards her, and she took another handful.
“So, how was the tour?” her mother asked, not missing a beat.
“I only got to see the lighthouse itself. The view from the top is amazing.”
“What happened?” her dad asked.
“Max bumped his head, and I had to take him to Dr. Stevens.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s resting. Dr. Stevens glued the cut. It was pretty cool to watch,” she admitted.
“You were always chill around that sort of thing.” Her dad nudged her elbow. “We thought you’d end up a doctor.”
“Not that we are pressuring you.” Her mother nudged her dad hard on the side.
“No, of course not.” He smiled at her and then wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.
“Right, well.” She got off the sofa and, feeling slightly annoyed, took the entire bowl of popcorn from her dad and walked away.
“Hey,” her dad whined.
“That’s what you get for not knowing when to shut your mouth,” her mother said with a chuckle.
“Damn,” her dad added as Juliette climbed the stairs to go to her room.
Okay, so she was twenty-two years old and still living with her parents. A lot of people were in the same boat. Right?
After she locked herself in her room, she set the bowl of popcorn down and looked around. Not much had changed in the room outside of her bed growing to a queen shortly after she’d graduated high school.
What was she doing with her life? She plopped down on her bed. She stared up at her ceiling as she ate the rest of the buttery popcorn and thought about her next move.
It wasn’t as if she had intended to stay in her parents’ house this long. After all, her brother had moved out right after high school when he’d gone to school in Portland.
The thought of leaving Pride had scared her enough back then that she’d decided to take online classes from the community college in Portland. She’d gotten her associates degree in art last year and had taken a few more classes after, but then she’d taken a break after the last semester. She’d wanted to save up the money for a down payment on her very own place.
Privacy was becoming more important to her the older she got.
When the bowl of popcorn was empty, she rolled over and pulled out her diary and wrote everything down in it.
One of the first gifts her parents had gotten her was a diary. Her parents were half-owners of the Brew-Ha-Ha bookstore in town. They split ownership with her two aunts, Cora and Alice. She spent a lot of her childhood among the stocked shelves of those books and had learned at an early age that writing down her feelings helped.
Dear Diary,
Tonight, I learned two very important things:
Max is stubborn as hell.
Chickpea pasta has magical healing properties. (I mean, that’s the only explanation for how he went from half-comatose to leading me up a million stairs like some kind of lighthouse tour guide.)
Let’s rewind.
I found Max on the floor of his house today, looking like he’d lost a fight with gravity. Turns out, he hit his head and just… decided to exist in that state until I showed up. Because obviously, seeking medical attention is for other people. After much eye-rolling (mine) and some minor medical intervention (thank you, Dr. Stevens and your miracle glue), I got him home, fed him, and somehow—somehow—he convinced me he was well enough to take me on a “short tour.”
Which, apparently, meant climbing the thousands of stairs to the top of the lighthouse. No complaints from me.
Did I think this was a good idea? No. I was worried about the golf-ball-sized knot growing out of his forehead. Did I let him do it anyway? Well, I asked him if he was sure, because I wasn’t, but did he listen? Not even a little bit. So there I was, practically spotting him like a toddler learning to walk as we made our way up what felt like one thousand steps while he told me this heartbreaking love story about Karnia, the woman who spent a year waiting for her husband to come home from war. She never saw him again. And, oh yeah, there was a legendary missing diamond involved.
(Which, let’s be honest, is the kind of thing you hear and immediately go: Yep, totally cursed.)
This, mind you, is the same diamond Nate and I used to sneak up to the property and look for.
I never knew it had a name before—the diamond, not the lighthouse.
The Ocean’s Heart.
Sounds even more romantic than I used to dream of.
By the time we reached the top of the lighthouse, I was out of breath, and he was miraculously still standing. And the view? Absolutely worth it. The lights from Pride sparkled like stars, and for a second, I totally forgot that I’d spent the evening playing babysitter to a concussed man-child.
Would I do it again?
Sigh. Yeah. Probably.
But next time, I’m bringing a helmet and getting a proper kiss at the end.
–Juliette