Chapter Seven
“I can’t believe your mother phoned,” Tessa remarked, lowering herself onto the sand beside Morgan. She made an oomph sound and kicked out her legs, causing sand to fly everywhere.
They were on the beach, sitting way up from the waves that were licking the shore.
Thankfully, they were shaded by the branches of the cypress trees.
Morgan was given an ultimatum. Either she got off the couch for a walk on the beach or Tessa was going to sign her up for another speed dating event.
She would much rather walk into that ocean fully clothed and swim on her back while the waves tossed her about than go on any date with any woman.
Not even Sydney, who seemed to haunt her thoughts like a ghost in an old mansion.
“I know,” said Morgan, barely believing it herself. It was nearly twenty-four hours since she had gotten that call at the vineyard, and it still hadn’t settled in.
“What does she want?” Tessa asked. “Because I do not for the life of me believe that she just wants to chat.”
“That’s exactly what she wants.”
It was a lot to process. Her mother, an esteemed neurosurgeon herself—Morgan often told everyone who asked that she hadn’t pursued neurosurgery because of her mother—had wanted nothing more than a chat with her daughter.
That was red flag number one.
Dear Deidre had never shown any desire to chitchat with her only daughter. The only conversations they ever shared were when they conferred over complicated neuro cases. And even those were few and far between.
“She wants to go for coffee,” Morgan added. “Next week.”
Tessa gasped, her jaw hung slack, and she stayed like that while her eyes widened as if Morgan had just told her that the world would be infested by zombies in the next five minutes.
“You’re joking, right?” Tessa said. “The Dr. Deidre, wants to enjoy a coffee with her only daughter? Am I dreaming? Is this a nightmare?”
“Hush, Tess,” Morgan mused. “It’s not that crazy.”
“I’ve known you for eons, Morgan. Actually, for decades. Your mom has never wanted a social chat in all that time. Where is this coming from? Do you think she’s dying?”
An icy shiver ran down Morgan’s back at the word death.
The possibility was there, wasn’t it? Death, or at least the threat of it, often made people reflect on their life choices.
Regrets they never knew they had surfaced and sometimes, if they were lucky, they would spend some time making up those regrets.
Maybe her mother was dying.
Morgan pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.
The sand was soft and warm. She dug her toes into parts where the granules were cooler and focused on the family playing at the water’s edge.
The mother picked up the wriggly toddler and spun her around.
Morgan’s mother had never spun her around or made her laugh or cut the crusts off her peanut butter sandwiches.
She had given Morgan a trust fund and patted her shoulder when she had dropped her off at boarding school.
“Well, I guess I’ll find out next week.”
A message alert sounded loud.
It was Morgan’s phone. She fished it out of her bag that was propped up in the sand and checked the screen. It was a text message from an unknown number.
I owe you a coffee.
Morgan frowned, one where the lines grew deeper when another message came in.
Yours got all over my dress yesterday. It’s the least I can do to make up for something that was technically both our fault.
And then another. It’s Sydney, by the way.
How on earth did Sydney get her cell phone number?
Morgan jerked her head to Tessa, a scowl already making its way onto her face since there was no other explanation for it. Her dearest and nearest friend had betrayed her. “Did you give Sydney my cell phone number?”
Tessa looked nonplussed. She absentmindedly kicked up a few granules of sand with her toes and leaned back on her elbows. “I might have given it to her at the wine tasting yesterday when you walked off. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course, I mind,” Morgan said, feeling a whirlwind of sensations—hot but cold, bothered but flattered, terrified but strangely intrigued.
She didn’t know if she should put on the sweater she’d brought along just in case, or go for a dip in the ocean, or jump up and sing at the top of her lungs.
Sydney made her feel like she was straddling the line between safety and the unfamiliar.
Morgan was caught between a place she couldn’t quite define.
Another text message suddenly bounced onto her screen.
Please say yes. It’s just a coffee.
Her stomach clenched tighter and tighter.
Morgan hadn’t felt this kind of gut-wrenching nerves for a woman since…
well, since forever. The last woman Morgan had dated, like actually dated with planned weekends away and morning sleep-ins and quick coffees in between shifts, was nearly a decade ago.
After that, it had always been just a hook-up, a fling from a club to fill her fleeting cravings.
As much as Morgan didn’t want to admit it, whatever had happened that night after the gallery with Sydney felt more than just sex heightened by Morgan’s pain.
And as much as she wanted to tell herself it was just a lapse in judgment, a nonsensical acceptance of an invite she had no business accepting, she couldn’t.
There was something else there. Something significant.
But it was also a reason Morgan had to run away.
“Well, she’s texting me.”
“What’s she saying?”
“That she wants to go for coffee.”
Tessa turned onto her side, though very ungracefully, since her floral dress got caught up underneath her and she first had to tug it free. She then flopped over like a beached whale, settling on her stomach. “That’s great. You have to go.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Definitely not.”
“Why not?” Tessa’s brows pulled together so viciously they touched, literally.
For as long as Morgan had known her, Tessa had always had the ability to bring both brows together to form a sort of ginger unibrow.
A party trick, if you want to call it that.
One that had scared off many boys during the annual social dance with the neighboring boarding school.
“Because,” replied Morgan. “We’ve got nothing in common. What exactly will we talk about? And even if we did have something in common, I don’t exactly feel up to it… not with everything going on.”
“Isn’t that the best reason to do it?” said Tessa, drawing her name into the sand with the tip of her forefinger. “I’m no shrink, but won’t stepping out of your comfort zone help get you out of your head?”
“I feel like you don’t know me anymore,” Morgan sighed. She liked her comfort zone. Loved it even. The only time she ever stepped foot out of it was when she had her white lab coat on and her stethoscope around her neck. Dr. Morgan took risks. The plain, every day Morgan ran away from them.
“I know you better than anyone, Morgan,” Tessa huffed.
She then maneuvered herself from lying on her stomach back to sitting.
“I know you’re still beating yourself up about Emily.
I know that the move out here is more of a punishment than anything else, and that you’ve never stopped building up those walls around your heart.
It’s crystal clear that you’d rather shut everyone out. ”
“I don’t shut you out.”
“For which I’m grateful,” said Tessa, her face still deadly serious. “But it’s a hard cross to bear.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m the only one you talk to. You refuse to form relationships with anyone else. You refuse to make any effort to meet other people. You think you’ll be fine alone.”
“Are you trying to break up with me?” said Morgan dryly.
“Of course not,” said Tessa, shaking her head. “I’ll always be there for you, Morgan. But sometimes you have to let someone else in. It doesn’t have to be Sydney. Just someone.”
There was a rustle in the tree above their heads. They looked up, both squinting for the source but not finding anything, before they settled into a somewhat tense silence.
Morgan stretched her legs and studied their paleness for a moment before she crossed one ankle over the other.
She used to hate her ivory skin, the way she burned red hot like a tomato after just five minutes in the sun.
But as Morgan got older, she learned to embrace it, to use it to her advantage.
There weren’t that many ghostly pale women with pitch-black curls and eyes that were far too gray for their own good.
Even Sydney had decided to talk to her because she had liked what she had seen.
Dammit. The woman was like a leech, sucking out all other thoughts.
“Fine,” said Morgan. “I’ll go for coffee with Sydney, but only because I don’t want you to feel the weight of me on your shoulders.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” Morgan muttered, pushing herself up to stand.
She walked to the edge of the shade and paused.
One step forward and the sun would bake her from above.
It was sort of like stepping out of her comfort zone, but on a much smaller scale.
She took a deep breath, eased out a toe, and then an entire foot, and finally stepped forward.
She didn’t combust like a vampire. Good. The world didn’t end. Even better.
She ambled toward the shore.
“Where are you going?” Tessa called from behind her.
“Swimming,” Morgan said, flipping her hand toward the ocean, not bothering to glance back to where Tessa was sitting. If she did, and she saw that lovely, shaded part of the beach, she might turn back. She might walk right back into her figurative comfort zone and stay there forever.
“You didn’t bring your bikini.”
“It’s more of a ‘I’m going to drown myself in the ocean’ kind of swim.”
“Enjoy,” called Tessa. “I’ll look after your bag.”