Chapter 5
Five
Idon’t bother going home to change.
Sure, there’s a bit of sugar clinging to the hem of my dress, and I smell like toffee and chocolate, but neither of those things are capital B bad. I could certainly smell worse than like I’ve been making and selling and packaging candy all day.
Gunner’s tongue lolls out, and he’s straining at the leash I really only use to make the rest of Silverlight Shore at ease about the fact my dog never seems to get older or need a leash.
Appearances are everything when you’re trying to hide who you are at your core.
I nod at Daphne, the owner of our local flower shop, Petal and Brine, and she gives me a small, tired smile as she flips her sign from open to closed. Gunner barks at her and receives a full-fledged grin in response.
My dog’s tail goes wild with delight.
Gunner looks back at me with a look that plainly says he thinks I’m being a turd, and I sigh loudly.
Gunner loves people.
And he loves Caleb. He always has.
It’s next to impossible not to love Caleb.
He’s steady, warm — real in a way that most people wish they could be. Real in a way I wake up wishing I were. That doesn’t mean he’s right for me.
He doesn’t even know about my magic.
I cradle my chest with one arm, the leash in the other, an aching sort of emptiness hollowing me out from the inside.
Sometimes I feel so tired of hiding myself behind sugar and the niceties required of small-town living, of hiding the parts of me that are the most magical.
That way is all risk though; all risk and no reward.
Gulls cry overhead, a flock of dark outlines in the purple-reddish sky. Gunner’s nails tapping along the sidewalk becoming increasingly sandy as we make our way back to the Reach and Watchmere Light.
The sea salt air tonight is humid, lingering summer still in the air, though winter chill will ride it soon. I tug at the light cotton cardigan I threw over my dress, as if to ward against that still imaginary cold.
It’s a beautiful night for a walk, and it doesn’t match my lingering melancholy at all.
There’s no reason to worry about seeing Caleb, I tell myself. We haven’t been together in a decade. He’s moved on. I’ve stayed here, but he won’t, and maybe dinner tonight won’t be anything but two old friends catching up.
The toffee in my purse isn’t anything but toffee, nothing but sugar and butter and salt and chocolate. There’s no reason to assign meaning to any of this.
Gunner barks at a streetlight flickering on beside us, and the playful sound helps lighten my steps even more.
This is going to be fine.
My feet take me the rest of the way to Watchmere before it’s full dark, the sun still lingering in the late summer sky.
The lighthouse beacon shines in the coming night. I run my fingers along the hydrangeas outside I helped plant when I was barely a teenager.
They’ve filled out beautifully.
“Right on time,” a strong voice says.
“I try.” My voice sounds cavalier and chipper, and I rub at the sudden ache in my chest.
Gunner barks, and I drop the leash as he bounds towards Caleb, jumping up on him and licking his face enthusiastically.
“Damn, you are looking good still. What are you feeding this dog, something from the Fountain of Youth? How old are you now, boy?”
“He’s a marvel of good breeding,” I lie carefully. “I make sure he takes his joint supplements, and he loves our morning runs.”
I don’t know what I’m going to do when Gunner is twenty-five and still looks five, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
“Damn, I think I need some of those supplements, huh buddy?” Caleb scratches behind Gunner’s ears, and Gunner practically dies of happiness from the attention from his second-favorite person.
“No, you look great,” I tell him automatically.
Caleb looks up from the dog at me, and my heart pangs.
“And you’re just as beautiful as ever,” he tells me.
We stand there for a long moment, watching each other as waves crash into the jetty, as Gunner pants and looks between us to see who will crack first.
“The glasses are new,” I comment, when I can’t stand the ratcheting tension a moment longer.
“So is all the gray,” he says, stroking his pepper and salt beard. “Cursed to be white-haired before my time, I think.”
“That’s not a curse. I’ve always thought white hair looks very distinguished.”
He gives me a long, considering look.
“Not that you have white hair yet, not even close,” I say hastily, trying to backtrack.
“So you’re saying I don’t look distinguished?” He pushes the glasses up on the bridge of his nose, completely abandoning petting Gunner and standing to his full height. “Even with these?”
I don’t tell him his glasses make him look slutty, but it’s a close thing.
“We all have our sexy accessories.” I pat the tote on my shoulder and try not to die of horror.
He blinks.
I blink.
Maybe if I blink twice I’ll vanish away from this horrible awkwardness.
“Anyway, how was your day? Get your coffee maker working?” There’s no way he got it working again.
Posey said the magic surge fried everything in a four-mile radius, that she’s been triaging repair calls all day and is about to try to hire someone from out of town part-time to help her sort everyone’s problems out.
“It’s definitely not working. Actually, I’m a little worried about…” he trails off, scratching his beard as he stares up at the old lighthouse.
“Worried about?” I prompt, but he just shakes his head and smiles at me.
“It’s nothing. Probably just needs elbow grease.” A pause. “And a little love.”
I try not to blush at the way he looks at me when he adds that on and instead roll my eyes and hustle past him to the door of his uncle’s — now his — lighthouse.
It hits me the moment I cross the threshold.
This isn’t a place that knows what it is anymore.
I pause, my hand on the gently curved wall.
The interior of the lighthouse always felt like a fortress, a place I was slightly intimidated by as a kid, then a place that had all the cozy mystery that my teenage angst adored.
The view from the round windows provide an unmatched view of the ocean, saltwater blending with sky in the deepening night.
Boxes are stacked to the side of the door, some perfectly taped and labeled with their contents, others open and half-empty, a reminder of Silverlight Shore’s loss.
Of Caleb’s loss.
The brick-lined walls are still the same red-brown and white, the brass accents warm in the lamplight.
Pictures of Caleb and I as kids are still on the shelves, my sisters and I blowing bubbles while our grandmother laughs in the background, hands clasped together.
A scrimshaw whale I bought for Caleb’s uncle sits next to it, and for a long moment, grief’s fingers tighten around my throat.
“I miss him, too.” Caleb stands next to me, following my gaze.
“I know,” I say. I do.
“He’d be glad you’re here now,” Caleb tells me, his eyes crinkling at the corners, light winking off his glasses.
“Something smells good,” I say, unable to sit in this moment. This in-between grief of losing someone I loved and being near to someone I thought I’d loved and lost.
“Garlic and butter are hard to get wrong.” He strides past me to the tiny kitchen against the wall, the round window above the sink propped open just enough to let the cooking smells out and the ever-present scent of the sea in.
“I thought Pike was sending food over.” I don’t know why I said it, it’s obvious that Caleb is cooking — and has been for a while.
“He did. He sent over the fresh linguine and the clams from Saltline. I just did the rest. Oh, except the bread. Owen dropped off a huge basket of baked goods.” He nods towards the worn table, a table his uncle used to tell us was made from the hull of a sunken pirate ship, where a loaf of crusty bread sits on a marble board.
“How can I help?” I set my purse down on the plaid couch. Gunner sits while I take his leash off, making himself at home on the rug next to the little pot-bellied fireplace.
“Cut the bread?” He knows better than to insist I’m a guest, or do that awkward dance of the few dates at men’s homes I’ve been on.
Not that I’ve been on many. Not that this is a date.
“I think I can manage that.” I know where the knives are, and while he strains the linguine and finishes the sauce, I slice the bread into perfect slices. It keeps my hands busy, but it doesn’t silence my brain.
I’m not sure anything could.
I take my time cutting it though, grateful for the task, grateful to have something to do besides watch Caleb competently plate the clam and linguine dinner.
“There,” he says, brushing his hands off and waving me into a chair beside him.
Not across — because the main pillar of the lighthouse runs straight through the table, and while it makes sense and is functional, blocking the sightline of the person you’re having dinner with does in fact make things unnecessarily awkward.
“It’s been so long since I’ve had a meal out here.” My chair squeaks across the floor as I sit.
“Me too,” Caleb says, sliding a glass of water in front of me. “I thought about going down to the wine bar, but I ran out of time.”
“No, this is fine,” I say it so fast I almost interrupt him. “I have to be up early to work tomorrow.”
There. That almost sounded normal.
Gunner makes a chuffing sound, and we both glance over at where he’s dreaming, feet jerking in his sleep.
I take a bite of the linguine, and it’s everything seafood pasta is meant to be, and then were both silent, eating in a nearly awkward quiet that’s somehow familiar and uncomfortable all at once.
Because it shouldn’t be familiar anymore.
It shouldn’t be comfortable between me and Caleb, should it?
It shouldn’t be awkward and comfortable at once. That much I’m sure of.
“I can clean up, and then I can be out of your hair.” I’m not sure why I say it. I could have just thanked him for the meal and given him the toffee and been on my way. And now I’m volunteering dishwashing, because apparently my grandmother’s rules of etiquette were ground into my very bones.
“I cooked. I invited you here. I’m not about to make you clean.”
“Then I should just go—”
The lights go out, and whatever else I was about to say sputters to silence on my tongue.
Heavy, heavy silence. No electric hum of the fridge, or the heater. Only the dying embers of the small residual fire in the potbelly stove.
Gunner whines softly, and the hairs on the back of my neck come to full alert. A prickling wrongness travels across my skin, and it has nothing to do with electricity, and everything to do with magic.
“Has this been happening a lot?” I manage.
There’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark. I know that rationally. Logically.
Unfortunately, between the pressing dark and the steady trickle of otherworldly wrongness… rational brain is losing to the fear lizard brain.
I stand quickly, wishing I’d fished my phone from my purse and set it on the table like a bad-mannered freshman just so I’d have a flashlight.
I take a step forward, meaning to retrieve it — and slam directly into Caleb’s bulk.
Which is, in fact, bulky. He’s not the lanky twenty-year-old he was when we were dating, and though I also rationally knew that, it’s very different to feel his mass with my boobs squished up against him in the dark.
“You should sit down so I can get the flashlight and the generator running.” His voice is rough, and the palms that force me back into the chair are, too.
It hits me suddenly that for as well as I think I know Caleb, I don’t know this grown-up version of him at all.
“I’ll go outside and get the generator online,” he says, his voice still strained. No matter how hard I try to make out his face in the dark, it ain’t happening. “You stay put.”
“I can help—”
“I don’t want you to break an ankle tripping over something because this place is an OSHA violation waiting to happen.”
I mean, when he puts it like that. I roll my eyes, which he can’t see. When the door closes behind him though, I immediately stand up again.
Not only do I not like taking orders, but this isn’t going to be solved by whatever he’s going to do outside with a generator. Nope.
This is magic, and I know it as surely as I know Gunner is already at my side.
“Upstairs?” I ask him.
“I think all the way up,” he answers, his voice thick with meaning.
“The light.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Gunner tells me.
“You can see, right?” I ask, because I sure as shit can’t. “We need to get up there.”
“I’m a dog, Ivy. A magical dog. I can get you up there. About time I took you for a walk, anyway.”
Looping my fingers through his hair, I snort a laugh at that, some of the tension bleeding from my shoulders.
The moment my foot hits the first step though, that feeling of dread is back tenfold.