Chapter Eight #2
“Hello, Anna.” He blew her a kiss. “This morning I caught a big trout right off my dock. It rained all afternoon, and being stuck inside made me want to cook. I’m pan searing the trout and making haricot vert and Mom’s macaroni and cheese as sides.
I may dry off a chair and enjoy this alfresco.
It’s a gorgeous night. The lake is a mirror. I can’t wait for your visit.”
“Only a few weeks until we spend the Fourth of July at Montressa.” Anna Catherine wriggled her shoulders in excitement. “Just so you know, I’m not coming for the fireworks. I want to meet Avery.”
Miles added the cheddar and stirred, smiling to himself. He liked the idea and hoped Avery wouldn’t leave when Bright & Early came to film the week before the Fourth.
“So…” Anna Catherine rested her head on Hayes’s shoulder and gave Miles a dreamy smile. “What were you saying about Avery?”
“I don’t know. When I’m alone with her, it’s great.
But when other people are there, it becomes a mess.
They mean well, but pressure is the last thing we need.
” Miles exhaled, his lips flapping in frustration.
“The inevitable jokes about my dating life make it hard to convince her I’m not the player she thinks I am.
And then there’s the ribbing about our past.”
He hadn’t planned to get into this now, but Anna Catherine and Hayes were his ride-or-dies for advice.
“She must be special if she gets you flustered,” Hayes said.
“She is,” he said. “Mom had been gone a little over a year when I met Avery.”
She’d only been at Montressa for a couple of days when Sam had sent the two of them to Portland to pick up some new kayaks.
When they’d finished lunch, the boats weren’t ready and after being away at school for several months, Miles had the overwhelming urge to visit the beach where he and his father had scattered his mother’s ashes.
Not acknowledging his mom’s memory would keep him up all night.
Feeling self-conscious about being sad in front of a girl he had just met, he’d driven to the beach without explanation.
He sat alone on the jetty for at least an hour and Avery had let him sit, quietly wading along the shoreline, picking up sea glass.
When he finished and tried to explain, he’d choked up.
“That was such a hard time for me, and she understood how to reach me. You know how the other person cries and you end up comforting them?”
“Yep,” said Hayes. “You become their support when you’re the one who needs it most.”
Anna Catherine nodded.
“Exactly. She didn’t do that.” Miles said. “She gave me a hug and gently wiped my tears away with the cuff of her sweatshirt. It was actually my sweatshirt. I lent it to her after she refused to wear the plastic bib and got lobster juice all over herself at lunch.”
He let out a sad laugh. That day, Avery had explained how her grandmother Mimi described grief as a balloon trapped in a room with a button on the wall.
In the beginning, the balloon is so full, it’s constantly pushing the button.
But as time goes on, the balloon deflates a little and bounces around the room, pressing it less and less. That image had given him hope.
“I will never forget her saying she could hold space in our friendship for me and my grief. She hugged me and I can’t explain why, but I let myself be comforted.
Later, she picked up a piece of heart-shaped sea glass, put it in my hand, and told me it was a sign my mother hadn’t left me. I still have it.”
Anna Catherine and Hayes were both speechless.
“What?” he asked.
“And you let her go?” Hayes asked.
“Did it ever occur to you the heart-shaped glass was your mom’s way of telling you Avery was the one?” Anna Catherine believed the universe sent signals.
Miles felt a weight drop into his stomach. “No, but that sounds like Mom.”
Maisie Magrum would have appreciated the care Avery took of other people’s hearts. That would’ve been all she needed to know.
Miles carefully transferred the macaroni and cheese to his mother’s vintage CorningWare baking dish. The recipe didn’t taste the same when made in any other dish. He dotted the top with tomatoes and sprinkled crushed, buttered saltines over the top.
“Miles,” Anna Catherine said. “I feel like I’m watching Food Network.”
Miles licked a dollop of cheese and cracker off his finger.
“Secret topping reveal. Mom said these saltines are the only ones to use.” He held up a box of Premium crackers.
“Yum.” Hayes smiled. “How come you never cook fancy dinners for us?”
“Because we’re always at parties or Hayes’s movie premieres.” Miles laughed. “And I do cook for you. How many times have we ended the night at your kitchen table, confessing our deepest secrets to one another over my grilled cheese sandwiches?”
“I adore a midnight grilled-cheese confessional.” Anna’s jazz hands shimmied over her eyes. “We need another one soon.”
He put the dish in the oven, set the timer, and wiped his hands on a towel.
“What’s Avery’s vibe now?” Anna Catherine asked.
“When we’re alone, there are moments where she softens. But when people interrupt and embarrass us with cringe comments, one or both of us shuts down.” He got the trout out of the fridge and seasoned it with herbs and pepper.
“But you said there was progress,” Hayes said.
“There is. I convinced her to collaborate on a website and reservation system for Montressa. But yesterday we were in the cabin where she and I first slept together. Ten years ago, we thought no one knew. Turns out everyone did. Anyway, the head of maintenance came in and did his best Michael Scott impersonation. I think we were both already contemplating our history there, and his that’s what she saids upped the awkwardness, and oh”—he placed his hands over his eyes—“I was rattled.”
“You two are like Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.” Anna put a finger to her mouth in thought.
“Because I own an oddly specific travel bookshop, and she owns my favorite Chagall painting of goats?” Miles smirked at Anna.
“No, because their relationship is perfect when they are by themselves. Other people, the media, and her stardom complicate everything.”
“You need to find yourselves a quiet park bench,” said Hayes.
Anna smacked Hayes’s bicep. “Hayes, you watched that movie? Without me?”
“Ace, I watched it because you love that movie. And there was a set delay.” Hayes shrugged on camera.
Anna grabbed his face from the side and planted a huge kiss on his cheek. Miles felt a swell in his chest. He wanted that with Avery.
“Dude.” Hayes laughed as Anna Catherine kept kissing his face. “Take her on a nighttime stroll and break into a locked park. She will get all swoony over a bench and presto. That’s your lover’s bench.”
“Ugh, Hayes. This is rural Maine, not Gramercy Park,” Miles said. “Plus, I have to get her alone first. She’s at the front desk and I’m at the waterfront most days, and there are other people around.”
“Don’t do it at work. I didn’t get Anna Catherine to fall for me on set. I found her in the evening, after we’d wrapped for the day.”
Hayes was on to something. Avery had mentioned feeling lonely at night.
Miles glanced out his front window. Across the cove, he could see her sitting on the old dock, leaning against a dock pylon while she painted under a golden-pink sky.
A popular staff hangout in the afternoon, the dock had been empty most evenings that summer.
So many sunsets, he’d sat opposite her while she painted, their legs stretched out and touching, sometimes overlapping.
His and hers pylons. They didn’t need to break into a park. That old dock was their bench.
“I never know where your movie references are going, but you two are geniuses,” Miles said. “Avery’s in the exact spot where we used to sit. And I think I should be just a boy, paddling up to a girl, asking her if she wants to share this dinner I made.”
“Oh Miles, that’s so romantic.” Anna Catherine’s hand clutched her heart.
“But one thing. She needs to feel safe around you, like she made you feel on the beach. Listen to her and don’t try to fix the situation.
She won’t confront the past until she trusts you.
Allow her the space to do that, or it will doom your future together.
Until then, keep reminding her of what you had that summer. ”
He wanted to earn back the trust he’d lost when he had broken up with her.
The shrinking image in his rearview mirror of her sobbing on the ground as he drove off still haunted him.
For so long he’d told himself love belonged to other people.
But there had been glimmers of promise since Avery’s return to Maine.
If he tried, his dreams might become reality.
The only way to get there was to end this call and go after what he wanted.
“Got it. Thanks.”
After a minute of goodbyes, they finally hung up. As Miles seared the fish, his only thought was how to help Avery relax around him. Trust grew in small steps.
A moment had presented itself to make this quiet night theirs.
Miles wrapped two plates of dinner in foil, picked out a bottle of wine, and set out for the shores of Montressa in his blue canoe.