Chapter 43
Blind Spots
Hungry Love began as a way to keep my hands busy so my heart couldn’t be. Somewhere along the way, it became real. The calendar is booked solid for months, which feels less like luck and more like a kind of momentum I didn’t realize I could build. The nights that sell out fastest aren’t the fancy ones. They’re the heartbreak dinners—quiet, candlelit, carefully crafted, where every course is designed to carry someone from one version of their life to the next. People don’t always say what they’re coming for. They don’t have to. I can tell by the way they hold their menus—like they’re waiting to be told what happens next.
Kiki keeps insisting this means something, that I should let it. But part of me feels like the island is Gavin’s, and I’m still learning how to belong to it without him.
Tonight is different, though.
Not because the garden is fuller, or the food more ambitious, but because—for once—no one is here to be healed. No one booked the garden because they were left, or lied to, or loved someone who didn’t love them back. Tonight, the story belongs to someone else.
It’s Samuel Gailey’s book launch party. His publisher wanted New York City; Samuel insisted on here, on the island, in the garden, tucked into the l’orangerie.
He’s lived on Orcas for years, long enough that no one calls him ‘the writer from LA’ anymore, and the baristas at Dragonfly start making his coffee the second he walks through the door. He likes the solitude. Not loneliness—solitude. (I heard him explain the difference once, like it was an argument he’d already won.)
He likes that it takes him exactly thirteen minutes and forty-four seconds to get from his place to town, and that if he leaves at the same time every day, he will inevitably run into Bella walking Risha, or Eava pushing Mona in her wheelchair, or old man O’Connell with his basket of mussels on Crescent Beach like he’s been sent out by the ocean on an errand.
Samuel likes being able to count on things. It’s one of the many reasons he is dangerously appealing to someone whose life currently feels like a dropped plate—noise, sharp shards, no way to pretend it didn’t happen or put it together again.
Tonight, the l’orangerie looks… unreal. String lights hang above the long table like a constellation. Thick handmade candles flicker in hurricane glass. The air smells of salt and herbs, and of something sweet caramelizing in the kitchen.
The guests are a mix of island locals and out-of-towners who keep saying things like, “We just love the way this is curated,” which makes me want to both thank them and run into the ocean.
Samuel is supposed to arrive at seven, and he does—not a second later—which is either a sign of good character or proof he is OCD.
He’s dressed simply: dark jeans, navy sweater, coat slung over one shoulder like he’s trying not to look like the guest of honor. Which is, of course, exactly how the guest of honor looks when he’d rather be literally anywhere else than the center of a room.
He finds me by the kitchen door, eyes scanning the table like he’s doing a headcount for anxiety.
“You made it,” I say.
“I’m contractually obligated,” he murmurs. “Also, I heard there would be food—by you.”
“You’re the reason there’s food.”
He winces. “That seems… excessive.”
I open my mouth to tease him, but his publicist materializes behind him like she’s been summoned by the scent of humility. She’s sleek and efficient in a way that makes me suspect she has a color-coded calendar for every emotion Samuel has ever tried not to express.
“Everyone!” she announces, tapping a glass with a spoon. “If I could have your attention.”
Samuel’s shoulders tighten like he’s bracing for impact.
His publicist beams. “We’re here tonight to celebrate Samuel’s new novel, Cassandra, which is already doing incredibly well—” she pauses, savoring it, “—and I am thrilled to announce it has been nominated for the most prestigious prize in literature. Yes, the one that begins with a ‘P’.”
The garden goes quiet for half a second and then erupts.
People clap. Someone whoops. Someone else says, “Oh my God,” as if Samuel had personally cured a disease.
Samuel, meanwhile, looks like a man who has just realized he’s the guest of honor at a party he didn’t know he was attending.
He makes a pained face. “There’s still time for them to discover they’ve made an administrative error.”
I laugh—loud, delighted—and something in Samuel’s expression softens, as if my amusement is the only part of this he trusts.
The dinner goes beautifully. People eat. People drink. People lean across the table to tell strangers their life stories, because apparently that’s what happens when you feed them properly.
Samuel does his part: smiling when spoken to, answering questions, looking like he’d rather be subjected to a root canal than talk about himself for more than thirty seconds at a time.
And then, at the end of the night, when the guests drift out, glowing and full …
Samuel stays.
He rolls up his sleeves and starts stacking plates like a man who’s been drafted into the army.
I stare at him. “You know you’re the guest of honor, right?”
He glances over. “That’s why I’m helping. If I don’t make myself useful, I’ll have to stand around while people tell me the book made them cry and then look at me like I’m responsible for their feelings.”
“But that’s sort of what you do.”
He points a spoon at me. “Don’t say that. You make it sound like I have power.”
“You do,” I say. “You make people feel things they didn’t agree to.”
“That’s your department,” he says.
He reaches for a stack of wine glasses, and I suddenly remember washing dishes at this very sink with Gavin. Samuel’s sleeve slides back just enough to show a small tattoo near his inner forearm. A dark, clean symbol that looks vaguely like something from Twin Peaks. It’s the first time I’ve seen it, and it makes him feel less polished somehow. More rooted. Like there are woods in him. Like there is a past he doesn’t advertise.
He catches me looking and clears his throat. “If I didn’t know better,” he says, “I’d think you were admiring my extremely pretentious tattoo.”
“It’s… charming,” I manage.
“Oof. That is not what I was going for.”
I snort, and he smiles like he’s proud of the sound.
We clean together. He doesn’t act like it’s beneath him. He doesn’t act like he’s doing me a favor. He just does it.
It’s absurd, set against the backdrop of the night—this critically-acclaimed novelist drying forks like a camp counselor—and for some reason, it makes my chest ache.
When we finish, I lean back against the counter.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” he asks.
“For… being a person who stays.”
His gaze flicks to mine and holds for a beat too long. Then, gently: “Do you want to get coffee tomorrow?”
“Are you asking me on a date?”
He makes a face. “Coffee can’t be a date. Coffee is a beverage aware of its own limitations.”
“Samuel.”
He sighs. “Fine. Yes. I’m asking you on a date. A very low-risk, low-commitment date that can be aborted at any point if you decide you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“That’s how it starts,” he says solemnly. “Everyone says that.”
The coffee date is easy. And then the second coffee date is easier.
He knows where to sit in the Westside Kitchen café to avoid the draft from the door. He knows which pastry sells out first at Olga Rising. He knows who to nod at and who to pretend not to see because they’ll trap you in a twenty-minute conversation about a local tax levy. He is exceptionally good at island life. Like he’s made a home out of routine and quiet and people who show up.
And I find myself looking forward to him in a way that alarms me. It’s not lightning. It’s steadiness. It’s the kind of attraction that doesn’t need drama to feel real.
Tonight is date three, and it’s not coffee.
Samuel steers us into the restaurant Houlme. The name suits it. Soft around the edges, deliberate without trying too hard. It glows from the inside out: warm light, woodsmoke, the low murmur of people who don’t have anywhere else they need to be.
The door opens on a gust of cold air and a pause, the small room taking inventory. Not suspicion. Just attention.
It’s the island in winter: fewer faces, fewer distractions. Everyone knows everyone, and if they don’t, they notice.
Paintings by an islander named Indigo line the walls, moody surrealist pieces that tilt the room toward dream. They don’t fill space so much as set it.
Behind the bar, Jocelyn—co-owner—looks up. Micro bangs, luminous skin, tattoos climbing her arms. When she spots Samuel, her face shifts into something that’s half greeting, half assessment.
“Look what the tide brought in,” she says. Then her eyes slide to me. “And you brought a friend.”
Samuel’s hand rests at the small of my back, light, almost polite, but it sends a ridiculous little shiver up my spine anyway, and I wonder if this is what I need to finally let go of Gavin.
“This is Ava,” he says.
“Welcome,” she says, and it somehow sounds like a challenge and a gift at the same time.
Chef Jay is visible in the open kitchen, working with the calm focus of someone who has earned seven James Beard nominations but doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. He glances up once—Samuel, then me—and gives a brief nod before returning to the fire.
Jocelyn leads us to a nook in the dim corner, buffered by plants and candlelight, where the world softens at the edges. She sets down a drink menu.
“What are you feeling?” she asks.
“Phony Negroni,” I say automatically, because my mouth apparently knows what it wants before my brain does.
Her smile turns quick and private, like I’ve said the right password.
“Good answer.”
She disappears toward the bar, not bothering to take Samuel’s order—apparently, she already knows what he wants.
Samuel reaches for the water pitcher, then leans closer to pour water into our glasses. Close enough that his shoulder brushes mine, close enough to feel the heat from him. “You come here a lot?” I ask, voice low.