Chapter 8
EIGHT
ELEVEN YEARS AGO
Josie
Alice and I can’t believe our luck when we’re assigned to work in the dining room instead of out on the patio. One server had a table order a five-hundred-dollar bottle of wine the other night. The tip on that alone will pay for three nights in a hostel.
“Ibiza, here I come,” Alice declares gleefully when we check out the list of assignments in the break room.
“And Sistine Chapel, here I come!” I add.
“Ugghhhhh,” Helena, one of the other servers, moans, leaning past me to check out the list. “I’ve been working here for two summers. I can’t believe they put me out on the patio. If I have to clean up after those entitled prep school boys, I’m going to have to kill myself.”
Alice’s eyes widen. “Seriously, Helena? I can’t believe you just said that.”
Helena blinks. “What?”
“You know what.”
Helena flings her bag into her locker. “You don’t even know if those rumors are true.”
I look back and forth between them. “What rumors?”
Alice shoots Helena another glare and then turns to me. “One of the servers here at the club supposedly—” She takes a shaky breath. “She supposedly took her own life a couple of summers ago.”
“That’s terrible.” I gasp. “I never heard anything about that.” Sandy Harbor is so small that the whole island usually knows something practically the moment it happens.
“They say she was summer help, not a local,” Alice explains. “A college student. One of the bartenders told me the club asked the police to keep it quiet. I guess it reflects poorly on their business if bad things happen to their employees…” She trails off, shaking her head.
“Did something happen to her here at the sailing club?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. There were all sorts of rumors—she’d broken up with her boyfriend, she was having an affair with an older man, she’d failed out of college. Apparently, her roommates found her in the bedroom of their rental house. She’d swallowed a whole handful of pills.”
“That’s so sad,” I say. Whatever happened to her to cause her to take her own life must have been terrible.
“It is terrible.” Alice turns another glare at Helena. “Which is why we don’t joke about killing ourselves.”
“Fine,” Helena snaps. “Can I joke about killing the entitled prep school boys if they spill one more soda on the table and let their napkins blow across the grass so I have to chase them?”
“Have at it,” Alice says with a wave of her hand. “Just don’t harm Josie’s new boyfriend.”
I feel my face flush. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” But I know who she’s referring to. She saw me sitting with Ian on the dock the other day, our shoulders brushing as we leaned over my sketch of the sailboat. And she’s not about to let me forget it.
“I bet he’ll be in again today,” Alice says in a sing-song voice. “Maybe you should take the patio, and Helena can have the dining room.”
“No way!” I protest. “I don’t care if he’s out there or not.” But I’m lying. I’ve been looking for him every time I come in to work.
“Listen,” Alice says, pulling off her jewelry and sliding it into her locker.
“The Langleys have a huge Fourth of July party every summer at their estate. They fly in chefs from New York City and shoot fireworks off their dock. It’s supposed to be amazing.
If you and Ian hit it off, maybe he’ll invite you.
” She gives me a significant look. “And of course, you’ll want to bring a friend. ”
“I thought you didn’t like the entitled prep school boys,” I say warily.
“I don’t when they’re spilling sticky soda on the patio. But if they’re inviting me to a party catered by Tom Colicchio, I’m in.”
I laugh. “There’s no way Tom Colicchio is catering the Langleys’ Fourth of July party.”
“Well, whoever it is, I’m sure it will be amazing. I’d want to go just to see the inside of that house. Wouldn’t you?”
“I’d love to see the art collection,” I admit. “Ian told me they have an Akiko Walker.”
Alice gives me a good-natured elbow in the side. “Ian told you that, huh?”
I elbow her back, and we both try to hide our grins as we head out into the dining room.
My first table belongs to Elizabeth Goldsmith.
I rub my hands nervously on my pants. She’s on a phone call, and I don’t want to interrupt.
But she’s also been sitting there for five minutes, and I was told in my training that I should approach the table within ninety seconds of the diner being seated.
I wait another minute, but she keeps talking.
Finally, inspiration comes to me. I head over to the bar and ask the bartender if Elizabeth has a regular drink order.
“Gin and tonic,” he says immediately.
I put in the order and carry the drink to her table. When I set it in front of her, she looks from it to me, and gives me a thumbs-up, all while continuing to bark orders about a soft launch to whoever is on the other end of the phone. My confidence buoyed, I look to my next table.
The host seats a couple by the window, and my pulse quickens when I notice the man is Ian’s dad, Christopher, accompanied by a blond woman in a patterned wrap dress.
“Hello, Mr. Langley,” I say as I approach, hoping Christopher doesn’t remember me from the chair-crashing incident. To my relief, he barely looks up. Instead, his gaze slides over the menu as his companion places her order. Christopher holds up two fingers to let me know he’ll have the same.
I bring their orders without incident, and about an hour later, I deliver the bill. As he hands it back, Christopher murmurs, “Thank you, Josie,” under his breath.
My face heats up. I’m sure Alice would argue that it’s a good thing he knows my name, but I can’t help but feel a sense of mortification that it’s probably because of my clumsiness the other day.
But maybe I’m overthinking it because he’s not even looking at me.
His attention is drawn across the room where Ian stands in the doorway in his sailing uniform.
My heart gives a little flip at the sight of Ian, cheeks pink from the sun and hair windblown.
Christopher raises a hand to wave him over.
Something I can’t quite interpret crosses over Ian’s expression, and he gives a little shake of his head before crossing the room, away from his dad.
I head back to the computer system to close out my tabs, and Ian intercepts me there.
“Hey.” He leans a shoulder against the wall, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets.
His close-cropped dark hair looks damp, probably from the mist out on the water, and it sticks up slightly on one side.
I’m tempted to reach over and smooth it down.
The scent of salt water and sunscreen rises off him, and I unconsciously take a deep breath in before greeting him in return.
“I have something to show you,” he says.
Intrigued, I turn to face him. “Okay.”
He pulls out his phone and opens it to his photo app, scrolling for a second and then holding it out for me to look at.
I focus on the image. It’s my drawing, now encased in a simple black frame and hanging on a wall.
Next to it in the photo is an image I’d recognize anywhere. I gasp and my eyes fly to Ian’s.
He grins. “Now you can say your work is hanging next to an honest-to-God Akiko Walker.”
My mouth drops open. “Is that really real?” I reach over to pinch the photo to zoom in on the famous artist’s painting.
“It really is,” Ian says with a laugh.
“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
” My sailboat drawing is hanging next to the work of one of the most influential artists of the century.
“I know it’s not in a gallery or anything, but even the fact that it’s occupying the same building is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. ”
Ian leans in. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
“I like the Akiko Walker. But I prefer your sailboat.”
My heart gives a little flip. “I know you’re just saying that, but I’ll be smiling over this for weeks.”
“Good,” Ian says. “I like your smile.”
Now I know I’m grinning stupidly, but I can’t help it.
At that moment, Susan, my manager, comes by. “Did you get your tabs closed?” she asks.
Ian pushes himself away from the wall. “I’ll let you get back to work.” He gives me one more glance over his shoulder before heading out into the lobby.
“I just have one more,” I say to Susan, opening Christopher’s bill so I can add the tip he’s written in to his tab. When I see the number, I let out a startled gasp.
Susan looks over my shoulder, her eyebrows lifting. “Well, that’s very generous.”
I stare at the paper. Christopher’s bill was $200, and he’s left me a $100 tip.
My gaze flies to Christopher’s table. He glances in my direction and our eyes meet, but his face remains as impassive as ever.
I’m not sure what to think. Did he see me flirting with his son?
Maybe Ian likes me, and his dad knows it?
Is that why he’s tipping so well? My mind drifts back to Ian holding up the photo of the Akiko Walker.
Maybe Christopher saw Ian hang my sailboat drawing next to the famous painting.
He might have asked Ian what he was doing, and maybe Ian talked about me.
If Christopher disapproved, he wouldn’t tip like this, would he?
“Tips like this mean the client is happy.” Susan’s voice cuts in almost as if she can read my mind.
I take one more look at the number scrawled on the bill and then back to Christopher. He gives me a nod so slight that I almost miss it. A frisson of excitement runs through me. With a closed-mouth smile, I flip my hand open in his direction, giving a subtle wave in return.
“Keep it up and you’ll continue to be assigned to the dining room,” Susan says. “And tell Alice I said good job for training you.”
“Thank you.” I’m buzzing from the tip, from my work hanging next to Akiko Walker’s, from the possibility that Ian might have told his dad about me.
I glance back across the restaurant, expecting to see Christopher standing from his table and heading out the door, but he’s leaning back in his barrel chair, spinning his empty glass in his hand, his gaze still trained on me.