Chapter 37
Soft Launch
The first Hungry Love video goes viral while I’m waiting on the dock at Rosario Marina.
It’s a ten-second reel Kiki filmed of me spooning whipped chèvre onto a wood-fired flatbread, then topping it with halved figs, charred at their edges and sweet in the middle. She added an original guitar riff by Mandy Troxel and stitched it with a clip of the ginkgo leaves fluttering above the l’orangerie.
I didn’t even know she’d posted it.
The clip of the figs—bursting and caramelized against the charred flatbread—fades into sunlight streaming through a hops vine, and the internet collectively loses its mind.
Now it has 140K likes and a comment section full of: Where is this?! Taking my honeymoon here. This is what my heart wants. Looks like a cure for Divorce Blues! What happens when you put a female chef on a remote island, with a camera, and aesthetic autonomy.
The second video Kiki posts doesn’t even feature me; just a slow pan across the garden, then Eastsound Bay, then a crate of sun-warmed Shiro plums from Susol Orchard. By lunch, people are DMing us asking if we host retreats and weddings.
The third is of me again. Specifically, me with flour on my cheek, plating practice plum galettes, laughing at something Kiki said off camera. I didn’t know I could look like that. Like someone whose happiness is tethered to a place where she can finally stay.
They say the island knows who to keep and who to spit back.
A few months ago, I stepped off a seaplane here at Rosario with a rolling suitcase and a grudge. I didn’t know a single person. Not even Gavin really.
Now I’m leaning against his car, wind tugging at the hem of my dress, waiting for him to come home.
The seaplane skims in low over the water, floats hissing against the surface. The same sound that startled me on that first day. Now it’s the sound of belonging.
Brett—the crab guy from the dock—hoists a trap up beside me. We graduated to first names last month, but today he calls me “Chef,” and I don’t correct him.
The pilot, Derek, steps out first. He spots me walking down the dock and grins.
“Still here, huh?”
I shrug. “Still temporary.”
His grin widens. “That’s what they all say.”
When Gavin steps off the plane, his eyes find me instantly.
His leather weekender is slung over one shoulder. His boots are salt-smudged. His hair is mussed from wind and travel.
He slows when he sees me. Not surprised. Just certain.
“Miss me?” he asks, his hands going to my waist the second he’s close enough.
“Only in a completely normal, emotionally well-regulated wa—”
He kisses me before I can finish the sentence. Deep and hungry, right there on the dock, like he’s making up for every minute he was away.
In the car, he drives with one hand on the wheel and the other over mine.
I glance down at our joined hands, his thumb brushing slowly across mine.
“Weird. Same car,” I murmur, thinking back to when he picked me up all those months ago.
“Same girl?” he asks, not quite teasing.
I smile out the window. “Not exactly.”
He grins as the road curves beneath us. “That first day, you looked like you were already planning your escape.”
“I was.”
“And now?”
I roll the window down. The scent of kelp and cedar spills in—sharp, green, unmistakably island.
“Now it’s hard to imagine leaving.”
He pulls onto the road, sunlight striping across the windshield.
“Then don’t.”
We make it to the garden just before golden hour.
“I wanted to show you something,” I say, pulling him through the gate.
The lilac is in full bloom now, lush with perfume, vines curling like ribbon around the archway to the l’orangerie.
As we push open the doors, the scent rises around us, warm, sweet, intoxicating. Inside, the light is soft and low, filtered through citrus leaves and glass. The gravel has been raked. A new antique velvet table runner runs the length of the table.
The rosemary is blooming at the edges, tiny pale blue flowers curling open at the tips, like even it is drunk on the heat.
I glance around the l’orangerie, and all the magic a group of women can make when no one tells them no.
“It’s kind of unbelievable that this all came together,” I say.
Gavin smiles, slow and easy. “It came together because you did.”
I shake my head. “I know you helped more than I realized. I couldn’t do this alone.”
He steps closer, voice low.
“You didn’t have to. People rearrange around you, Ava. That’s what you do. You walk in, and somehow everyone wants to make room for you.”
His words land somewhere between my ribs. I don’t say anything. Instead, I press my hand to his chest and walk him backward until he hits the edge of the table. His hands are already on me, pulling me in.
I let him kiss me like he’s been waiting since takeoff. His hands slip beneath my dress, dragging it up with a reverence that makes my pulse stutter. I reach for his belt as the garden hums outside, heat curling low in my stomach. We crash onto the table, mismatched plates rattling like they’re applauding. It’s desperate, breathless, and so stupidly good I could cry.
Later, we lie tangled on the cool tile floor, warm skin against stone, the scent of lilac drifting through the open window.
I think about what it would mean to let this be real. To stop preparing for disappointment as if it were the forecast.
Gavin traces a line along my shoulder. “You ever think about what this could be?”
I keep my eyes on the ceiling. “You mean like a business?”
He’s quiet a beat. Then: “Sure. That too.”
It’s the closest he’s come to saying it, to revealing he wants more.
And I don’t answer. Because I know what I’d want to say: I want this. You. The garden in bloom. The dirt under my nails. The insane ferry schedule. The slow mornings, the sea planes and the way you look at me like we’ve already made it and you’re just waiting for me to believe it.
But I’ve trained myself to expect the fall.
So instead, I kiss him, softly at first, then deeper, and pretend I didn’t hear the question.
Because when things are this good, the fall feels inevitable.