Chapter 10
TEN
PRESENT DAY
Josie
When I wander into Ian’s kitchen the next morning, I find a pot of coffee, a bag of pastries from the local bakery, and a note from Ian to make myself at home.
It’s a sweet gesture, one that I can’t help thinking I don’t deserve after feigning a headache and hiding in Ian’s guest room last night instead of hanging out and chatting with him like a normal person would.
Still, as I take a heavy ceramic mug from the cabinet to pour myself a cup of the deep, rich brew Ian left, I can’t quite muster up regret that I’m not drinking weak coffee out of a Styrofoam cup with a bunch of hungover podiatrists at the Sunset Bay Beach Motel.
The bed in Ian’s guest room might be the most comfortable I’ve ever slept in.
I gaze out past the deck at the water gently lapping at the shore.
And you really can’t beat the views.
Besides, Ian isn’t even around. With a huge company to run, he probably had to go into work.
I’ll be busy with all of my maid-of-honor duties, and maybe I won’t even see him that much this week.
Madeline mentioned going to dress fittings and taking Mom for a tour of the island, and I booked a spa for the night before the wedding. Maybe I was worrying for nothing.
I make another pot of coffee and sit on the back deck with my sketchpad.
The sun sparkles on the water like millions of stars in the sky, and I feel myself relax as I drag my colored pencil across the textured paper, capturing the movement with dark and light shading.
A set of fins pops into the air and then disappears under the surface of the water.
Dolphins.
My heart expands with memories from childhood.
Madeline and I used to spend hours on the beach with the binoculars we got for Christmas, searching for Jaws in the water.
In the process, we spotted hundreds of dolphins and an occasional humpback whale.
Though I don’t know if we ever saw an actual shark, we were never disappointed.
I lean over my sketch, adding the shadow of fins to the layers of aquamarine and turquoise, and I’m so immersed in drawing that I don’t notice the man climbing the stairs to the deck until he’s standing right in front of me. My body jerks back against the chair, and I drop my pencil on the ground.
“Hey.” He holds out a hand. “Sorry. It’s just me.”
My gaze focuses on the man’s face as I press a hand to my racing heart.
Thank God it’s just Ian.
He’s shirtless again, and sweaty like he was back in the boiling motel room. But instead of board shorts and flip flops, he’s wearing a pair of workout shorts and sneakers. Sand clings to his muscular calves and sparkles in the sun’s rays.
“Do you ever wear a shirt?” I blurt out.
“Why live at the beach if you can’t go shirtless?” he says with a grin, sliding into the chair across from me. “I was out for a run and it’s hot today.” Ian peeks over at the sketchpad in my lap. “You looked pretty absorbed in whatever you’re doing.”
Taking a deep, cleansing breath, I hold up my sketchpad to show him the dolphins. “There was a pair of them.”
I use the excuse of leaning over to pick up my pencil to steal another glance at his golden skin and damp hair curling at the nape of his neck.
Again, I’m struck by how different his outward appearance is from the prep school boy I met a decade ago, but he still looks at me with that same admiration.
“You’ve perfectly captured the light and motion,” he says with a crooked smile.
I’m hit with a memory of the two of us sitting on the sailing club dock, our shoulders brushing, heat working its way down my arm. The way his eyes lit up at my simple sailboat sketch like it was an Akiko Walker… only better.
He leans back in his chair. “Madeline told me you work in a gallery?”
I nod. “I’m an assistant to a gallery owner. I mostly help her plan the exhibits, though I sell a decent amount of my own work, too.”
“Really?” He gives me a proud smile. “Congratulations on making it as an artist. I know that’s not easy, and a lot of artists end up shifting to other careers.”
“I can’t imagine not having art in my life. It’s helped me through so many hard times.” I look away because I can’t believe I just said that, and I hope Ian won’t ask for details. I could never tell him that the hardest time was the summer I knew him.
The summer I lost him.
“I still have that drawing you gave me,” Ian says in a low voice. “The sailboat.”
I lift my gaze in surprise. “No, you don’t.” I can’t believe he even remembers that silly little sketch. There’s no way he actually kept it. Especially not after… everything.
His eyebrows shoot up. “You don’t believe me.”
I shake my head.
“Come on.” He stands and motions for me to follow him into the house.
We climb the stairs, and he leads me into the bedroom at the end of the hall.
The door was closed last night when he gave me the tour, and I didn’t ask what was behind it.
But now I can see he’s set it up like an office, with a laptop sitting on a wide desk that’s angled toward a wall of windows overlooking the ocean.
Up here, the view is even better than on the deck below, with the water sparkling in all directions and the island’s lighthouse jutting out on an outcropping of rocks.
The sun shines in as it rises in the east, but in a couple of hours, the light will mellow as it slants behind the house.
This would be an incredible space for painting.
I take in the rest of the room, my attention drawn from the comfortable couch along one wall to the colorful throw rug on the floor. Everything about this house is so thoughtfully designed, and so different than that cold, imposing mansion where he lived when we were younger.
Ian waves a hand to direct my attention to the wall behind the couch, and as soon as I see what’s hanging there, I gasp. It’s the painting by Akiko Walker. I step closer, pressing a hand to my mouth. “Is this the real thing?”
“Yes. It’s real. But that’s not why I brought you here. Notice anything else?”
I stare at the painting for another beat before I can finally drag my attention away. Ian gestures at the other framed artwork on the wall.
My sailboat, professionally framed with a simple cream-colored mat and dark frame to match the Walker.
My gaze flies to his. “Are you serious? My little sailboat has been hanging next to Akiko Walker’s this whole time?
” If you’d asked me a minute ago, I would have guessed he’d thrown it out when they sold the old house.
Or burned it.
“Of course.” His blue eyes focus intently on mine. “I told you I liked it better.”
“You were just flirting with me.”
“I was, for sure. But I also liked it better. And I still do.” He takes a step closer, and electricity hums between us.
This can’t happen. This can never happen. I tear my eyes from Ian’s and look around the room to have something else to focus on. “You didn’t bring any of the other art from your childhood home? I remember something about a Cecily Brown and a Mark Rothko.”
“Nope, these are the only two things I kept from that house. My mom kept a few other paintings that she hung in her place in Minneapolis, and I donated the rest to museums.”
I stare at the artwork on the wall and can’t quite believe he kept my sailboat and donated a Rothko. “You really didn’t keep anything else? Even for the memories?” His dad loved that collection. Or at least he loved bragging about it and having articles fawning over him in the New York Times.
Ian shakes his head. “There wasn’t anything else in that house that made me happy to remember.”
My breath catches. Is it my fault that it was too painful for him to hold on to memories of his childhood home?
Was the end so terrible that it wiped away every good feeling that came before it?
I look away. If he knew my involvement in what happened, in the ways everything fell apart, Ian wouldn’t want any part of me in his house.
He’d throw that sailboat sketch in the ocean and watch it wash out to sea.
I need to calm my racing thoughts, so when Ian heads for the shower, I throw my shoes on and go out for a walk.
In addition to its amazing location on the water, Ian’s house is only a couple of blocks from the main part of town where Harbor Boulevard is dotted with shops and restaurants that attract both tourists and locals.
Or at least it was when I was a kid. I’ve only been back to Sandy Harbor for a total of about forty-eight hours since my family left here over a decade ago, and on those trips, my sister had too much going on in her personal life for me to get out and explore the changes that occurred in the time I’d been gone.
I walk past the bakery whose name was printed on the pastry bag Ian left for me, and through the window, I notice the owners have changed the pale pink on the walls to a buttery yellow.
At the grocery store, I admire a new sign hanging on the facade, and then I peek into a souvenir store that used to be a shop that sold the best milkshakes in Jersey.
Nostalgia settles over me. My family left town in such a hurry that I barely had a chance to throw my things in boxes.
And then once we were gone, I was determined to look forward instead of backward.
I threw myself into my new life at Berkeley, and tried to not get mired in everything I’d lost and everything that could have been.
But now as I wander down Harbor Boulevard, past the ice cream shop where I used to work and the thrift store where I bought all my vintage dresses, memories of my childhood slowly swirl around me.