Chapter 8 Natalia
NATALIA
Nearly a week.
That’s how long Johnny has been living in my beach house, sleeping in my guest room, drinking my coffee, and testing every rule I set for myself.
Three days since we kissed. Three days since I promised myself it wouldn’t happen again.
I squeeze the last of the shampoo into my palm and work it through my hair, scrubbing hard enough that my scalp tingles. The bathroom window is cracked open, and salt air drifts through the steam, mixing with my coconut shampoo until the whole room smells like a spa on a budget.
I rinse, condition, shave. A week ago, I would have stood under the water until it ran cold, letting the heat work the tension out of my shoulders. Now I catch myself rushing through it, eager to get to the kitchen. To see him.
He makes my coffee before I’m out of bed. I study at the kitchen table while he sketches at the other end, close enough that I can hear the scratch of pencil on paper every time I pause between paragraphs. Dinners, beach walks, bad movies.
I’m the one who drew the line. Johnny hasn’t crossed it. Hasn’t even leaned toward it. And I wish he would, which makes me the worst kind of hypocrite.
Two nights ago, we sat on the porch after dinner with the waves low and steady in the dark.
He was telling me about a dream he’d had, something about a parking lot and a woman’s voice he couldn’t place.
I told him it was a good sign that the details were getting sharper.
He said if that’s the best his brain could offer, he wanted a refund.
He laughed. I laughed harder. The kind of laughing that feeds on itself until my stomach ached and I had to set my drink on the railing because I couldn’t hold it steady.
When I looked over, he wasn’t laughing anymore. Just watching me. Mouth still curved but his eyes had gone quiet, and there was something in the way he was sitting, angled toward me with his arm along the back of the chair, that made the air between us feel thin.
I stood up and mumbled about doing the dishes. There were no dishes.
Now I wrap my towel around myself and catch my reflection in the foggy mirror. Flushed cheeks. Damp hair. The look of a woman who is lying to herself and knows it.
I get dressed, pull my hair back, and find Johnny at the kitchen table with the pencil and notepad I dug out of a drawer for him a few days ago. He’s finishing another sketch. A man’s face, strong jaw, dark eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was drawing a self portrait.
He flips the pad shut when he notices me looking. Quick, like a reflex. The set of his mouth says don’t ask.
I don’t push it. I’ve learned that much this week. Press too hard and he retreats behind that sarcastic grin like a door closing. So I drink my coffee, and we head out on our walk.
The beach is quiet this morning. Tide pulling back, ribbons of foam drying on the sand, the sun hanging pale near the horizon, the kind of thin November light that makes the sand look almost white.
We walk in the comfortable silence we’ve gotten good at, shoes off, the wet sand chilly and firm under our feet.
Somewhere ahead, a dog bolts past us chasing a tennis ball into the surf. Johnny watches it, his eyes going distant.
“I dreamed about a dog last night. Benji. We were playing fetch, and I was a kid, maybe nine or ten.” A pause. “Wasn’t mine though. Belonged to a friend.” He squints at the horizon. “Can’t remember the friend’s name. Can’t remember my own damn name. It’s getting real fucking old.”
His frustration has been building all week.
I can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the way his hands flex at his sides.
The bruises along his ribs have faded to yellow-brown, capillaries reabsorbing the blood, the body cleaning up its own mess.
His wrist barely bothers him now, though I catch him favoring it when he thinks I’m not watching.
His body is putting itself back together. His memory is another story.
I glance at him sideways. He’s got his eyes on the water, expressions unreadable.
The late morning light is doing something unreasonable to his face, cutting shadows under his cheekbones, catching the scruff he’s accumulated.
He’s attractive in a way that’s been a persistent, low-grade inconvenience for six days.
“Memory is strange,” I say. “I was reading about it for one of my modules. New environments can help with recall in amnesia patients. Different sensory input forces the brain to make new connections instead of running the same loops.” I gesture at the stretch of sand ahead of us.
“We’ve walked this same beach twelve times and eaten every meal in that house.
Your brain might need something it hasn’t seen before. ”
He considers it for a moment. “Alright. Where’d you have in mind?”
I grin. “You’ll see.”
Ronnie’s Fish Shack sits where the tourist boardwalk gives way to the working waterfront—a clapboard shack with a corrugated roof, a long wooden bar open to the salt air, and mismatched stools that Ronnie refuses to replace because, as she puts it, “Character isn’t something you buy at Pottery Barn. ”
I found her my second week here, after a phone call with Nikolai left me shaking and desperate to be around someone who didn’t make me feel small. I’d wandered down the boardwalk, ordered fish and chips, and somehow stayed three hours.
She talked about her ex-husband, a shrimper who ran off to Savannah with a dental hygienist, her plans to expand the shack into a real restaurant, and her theory that mercury retrograde was responsible for the island’s plumbing problems.
I laughed until my ribs ached. Hadn’t laughed like that in years.
Since then, she’s become the nearest thing I have to a normal friendship.
We text about garbage TV. She tells me when the hush puppies are fresh.
Once, when I mentioned I’d been reading about wound irrigation techniques, she didn’t ask why.
Just said, “Girl, you’re going to make one hell of a nurse someday,” and went back to battering fish.
As we approach, Johnny leans toward me. “Let’s keep my memory loss private.”
I nod. “I was thinking the same. Ronnie’s great, but no need to go there.”
The smell hits us as we sit down at the bar: hot oil, lemon, Old Bay, and the permanent undertone of the ocean.
Johnny’s knee bumps mine as he settles in, and he doesn’t move it. Neither do I.
“Well, hey there, stranger.” Ronnie saunters over, hazel eyes bright, dish towel slung over one tattooed shoulder.
She’s maybe thirty-five, bleached hair cut blunt at her chin, the kind of energy that could power the whole boardwalk if you hooked her up to it.
“Thought you got swept away by the ocean.”
“Sorry. I’ve been… busy.”
“Clearly.” Ronnie’s eyes go straight to Johnny, assessing him with zero pretense. “I’m Ronnie. You are?”
“Johnny.” He smiles, and I watch Ronnie’s eyebrows lift a fraction when his dimples make an appearance. Yeah. I had the same reaction. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” She pulls two menus from under the bar that she knows we won’t look at. “Nat’s been here eight weeks and you’re the first person she’s brought through that door. So.”
“He’s a friend,” I say quickly. “Boat trouble. He’s been staying with me while his boat gets fixed.”
The lie comes out smooth. They always do. I’m my father’s daughter, even when I don’t want to be.
“Boat trouble. Hm.” She holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary. “The usual?”
“Two of them,” I respond.
She nods and heads behind the bar to put in our order.
Johnny motions toward the jukebox. “I’m going to see if there’s anything worth listening to.”
Ronnie comes back the second he’s out of earshot, leaning across the bartop and dropping her voice.
“Two months and you finally bring someone in. I was starting to worry about you out there alone.”
That lands somewhere soft and unguarded.
I’ve spent two months telling myself the solitude is fine, that I’m fine, that being alone in a beach house with no one to talk to except a woman who forgets my name half the time is just how things are.
Hearing Ronnie say she worried chips at something I’ve been holding together with discipline and denial.
“I’m fine, Ronnie.”
“I know you’re fine. I’m just saying it’s good to see you with someone.
” She glances over at him and her mouth curves.
“He’s cute. Little intense, though.” She nods toward the jukebox where Johnny’s standing with his back to the wall, eyes flicking toward the door every few seconds.
“Reminds me of my ex-husband’s Navy buddies.
They never could relax in a room either. ”
She says it like it’s nothing, already reaching for a rag to wipe down the bar, already moving on.
But I look over at Johnny. She’s right. He’s flipping through songs, but nothing about him is relaxed. His jaw is set and his shoulders are tight, coiled, like he’s ready for something to go wrong.
Ice prickles across the back of my neck.
I shove it down. It probably means nothing. People carry themselves all kinds of ways for all kinds of reasons.
“He’s just a friend,” I say.
“Mm.” The look Ronnie gives me is the one she reserves for things she doesn’t believe but isn’t going to push. “Well, bring your friend back. I like the company.”
She squeezes my hand and goes to check on another customer. Johnny slides back onto the barstool beside me, and I feel the warmth of him across the two inches of air between us. He’s smiling, but his shoulders haven’t loosened.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Slightly better selection than I expected,” he says, nodding back toward the jukebox. “Emphasis on slightly.”
Before I can respond, Ronnie slides two baskets of fish and chips across the bar. She watches Johnny take his first bite.
“Well?”
He nods, mouth full. “This is incredible.”
“I know.” She tops off my water and throws me a wink on her way past.
She’s not wrong. The fish is perfect, as always, and after the first few bites the conversation loosens the way it does with him, easy and unforced. We spend ten minutes debating whether the song playing qualifies as country or just ‘somebody’s therapy session with a slide guitar.’
He grins around a fry and I let myself look a moment too long. The scruff along his jaw, the way his eyes crinkle when he’s being ridiculous. I look away before he catches me.
“I’m genuinely happy to not remember some of these.” He gestures at the speaker with a fry. “I really don’t think I was a Swiftie.”
Finger quotes around the word. I laugh, loud enough that the guy two stools down glances over, and my eyes catch Ronnie’s across the bar.
She gives me a look that says friend, my ass. I suddenly find the last piece of fish in my basket very interesting.
We settle up and I wave to Ronnie on our way out before heading back up the beach.
It’s off-season but the sun is out and the wind is low, and that’s enough to pull people onto the sand. A couple walks a golden retriever near the waterline. A few kids chase each other in and out of the surf, shrieking every time the cold water hits their legs.
“Nice one, bro!”
Two teenage boys, sandy-haired and shirtless, tossing a football. The younger one snags a wild throw and launches into a touchdown dance. His brother charges over and tackles him flat. They roll in the sand, shoving and laughing.
Beside me, Johnny has gone still.
“...Dario.”
I stop. “Sorry?”
“I have a brother.” He says it like he’s testing the word, then again like he believes it. “He’s older. He always used to shove me around like that.” He gestures toward the boys, his hand shaking. “I have a brother.”
I clap both hands over my mouth. The sound that comes out is embarrassingly close to a squeal.
He laughs, a real laugh, big and sudden and shocked, and then his hands are around my waist and I’m off the ground.
Spinning. I hook my arms around his neck and laugh too, properly laugh, with my feet in the air and the ocean behind him a bright blur.
“Thank you, Natalia.” His voice drops. “You didn’t have to help me. You keep helping me.”
“I just thought the scenery—”
“It worked.” He grins. “I’m going to find a way to repay you. Starting with dinner. I wonder if I can cook.”
He sets me down.
He doesn’t let go.
Back up, some sensible part of me says. This is the part where you back up.
I don’t move.
I told myself I’d keep my distance. Told myself the kiss was a mistake. Told myself this man is a stranger with scars and secrets and that caring about him is the fastest way to get us both killed.
But he’s looking at me, bright and brimming, and his thumb traces a slow line across my lower back, and I can’t remember a single one of my rules.
His hand slides down my arm, fingers finding mine. Neither of us says anything.
We walk back like that. The sun moves over the dunes, turning the sand copper, and the silence between us isn’t careful anymore. It’s the kind that happens when something has shifted and both people know it.
His fingers tighten around mine. I tighten back.
Neither of us lets go.