Chapter 2
___
Bev
I love Melody Bay. I’m grateful to be here and take a deep breath of the clean, salty breeze, as I bike to my boyfriend’s house. Biking is very common here, especially those beach bikes with the cute baskets in the front.
Melody Bay is a small island, only reachable by ferry, with white pebble beaches, pink-streaked sunsets, and the best damn ice cream in the world. I’m lucky my parents bought their house a long time ago because there’s no way we could afford to live here now with the ten-million-dollar mansions popping up along the coastline with their private docks and perfectly manicured hydrangeas.
Jay’s house is none of those things. My boyfriend barely waters his lawn, and it needs it in the summer. Fortunately, it’s only May, so there are still patches of green.
I prop my bike against his porch railing and knock on his door .
It always takes him a while to answer, but I try not to let it bother me. I keep questions like— shouldn’t he be more excited to see me?— at bay.
“We need to talk.” His words filter outside before the door is fully open.
I take him in, arms folded, depleted facial hair and bad necklaces, standing in the doorway. His expression is cooler than normal. He’s also inexplicably wearing sunglasses.
“You said you’d help me practice asking my boss for the promotion tomorrow?” I can’t keep the disappointment from my voice.
“What promotion?”
I sigh. “I’ve talked about this for weeks. Literally for weeks.”
He unfolds his arms and moves out of the doorway. “We need to talk first.”
I take one last deep breath of that May sunshine, already realizing this can’t be good, and I follow him inside.
He plops down on his couch, and a small cloud of dust poofs upwards, sparkling a bit in the setting sun, which angles against the far wall, staining it in orange. A few bags of open chips are on the coffee table. Salt & Vinegar and Dorito’s Nacho Cheese. They seem like they’d go badly together, but what do I know?
He crosses his ankle over his knee, adjusts his sunglasses, and says frankly, “I want to have a frat boy summer.”
“A frat boy summer?” I try to make sense of the words as the room starts an odd spin.
“A frat boy summer,” he repeats .
“Yes, but what do you mean?” I try to conjure the few ballet lessons I took as a kid and focus on one object to stop the spinning. “Why? I don’t…understand.”
“It’s a summer where the focus is on living it up. Living it up frat boy style.”
“But you’re thirty-eight!”
“What does that have to do with anything?” He sounds genuinely dumbfounded.
“Well, at thirty-eight, shouldn’t you be more mature? Shouldn’t you have a ‘mature boy summer’ or ‘I’m going to pay off my utility bills summer’ or something like that?”
“I am mature.” He jabs his finger in the direction of the kitchen. “I have a fruit bowl.”
“You’re storing fruit rollups in it!”
“They’re made with real fruit!” He slaps his leg as he says it, which is something I’ve always disliked about him. It reminds me of a toddler I babysat in high school who had the biggest meltdown I’d ever seen over a blue crayon. I was not equipped to deal with that kind of meltdown at that time in my life. For a while after that, I’d categorized toddlers as having the biggest—and stickiest—meltdowns, but I realized pretty quickly into adulthood that they’ve got nothing on some grown men.
We sit in silence, and a weird sort of finality settles over the room. The setting sun reflects off the chip bags, twinkling like an SOS.
I don’t have any fight left in me. I don’t want to ask him to reconsider.
Instead, in the quiet, it’s like the relationship slips further through my fingers.
But I don’t do anything. I just watch it.
Until I realize that it’s over.
Even though it’s not been my happiest relationship, I stand feeling heavy. Another failed relationship behind me. At twenty-nine, I wonder if I’m capable of one that works. He wasn’t exactly what I’d call a good boyfriend—impatient and nothing was ever good enough except for my soft strawberry cheese cookies—but he still made me laugh at times. We had a few inside jokes. It feels hard to believe I’ll ever find that again as I pull some tinfoil-wrapped cookies from my bookbag and place them on his coffee table, pushing aside one of the bags of chips to make room.
“I baked the cookies you like,” I say.
“Soft strawberry cheese cookies?” He grins, probably because he already knows the answer.
I nod, which surprisingly makes the room spin a little less.
“Will you still make them for me over the summer?” he asks hopefully.
“Bye, Jay.” I walk to the door, not bothering to answer his question.
I hate to admit it, but there probably was a time when I would have said, “Yes.”
___
I bike home, an odd mix of emotions. I’m in shock, yet not entirely surprised if I’m honest with myself. I want to watch the sunset, so I choose the quiet backroads. Fortunately, on a Sunday evening, many of the weekenders have already left, and it’s not quite yet high season either. Between trees and hills, I catch sight of the ocean, a deep navy blue, and the sun an orange strip above the horizon. The evening is already growing cooler, and I shiver in my short sleeves.
You’ll get through this, I tell myself, although I’m not sure I believe it.
Without Jay, I’m unsure what to do this summer. I’d always thought I’d spend it with him, cookouts and cozy movie nights, but now it’s just an uncertain blur.
I’ll throw myself into work. I grip my bike’s handles with determination. I need this promotion now more than ever.
___
I practice my promotion speech myself as I lay out the ingredients to make another batch of soft strawberry cheese cookies—although this time they aren’t for Jay. They’re for my new intern who starts tomorrow.
“And that’s why I’m a great match for the position,” I whisper.
Ding! My phone lights up on the counter.
I wipe my hands on a dishtowel and open my messages. The text is from my best friend, Aimi Furutani.
Aimi : You’ll never guess what!!
Me: Jay’s an a-hole.
Aimi : Nope!! But I’m glad you finally see the light! Spill the tea!! What happened? ?
I fill her in on the breakup while occasionally stirring the batter. She’ll be out of town for a few days, but she offers to take me out for celebratory breakup drinks when she’s back, which is very sweet. Everyone should have a BFF like Aimi Furutani.
Aimi: Well, what I was going to say…Nate Hart is back in town!!
I literally drop my mixing spoon, and it clangs against the bowl.
My dad, who watches TV in the living room, shouts, “Everything alright?”
“Fine,” I call back in a shaky voice.
Nate Hart. Nate fucking Hart. I can’t believe it. Never in a million years did I think there was potential to cross paths with him again. After a minute of clearer thinking, I realize it’s still probably unlikely to cross paths. He’s on the rich side of town now. The beachfront side. There’s no reason to run into each other, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
I know I should change the subject, but against my better judgment, I text Aimi the question that nags at me.
Me : Do you know why he’s back?
Aimi : Nah. My sister saw him and asked for a selfie, and he took one with her!!
I fight the urge to social media stalk him. He’s not worth it, I remind myself.
But before I know it, I’m scrolling through his Insta photos, all public. They’re mostly concert pics and artsy pics of “exit” signs that he probably thinks are deep. I grit my teeth.
I can’t find any recent photos of him though, and for some strange reason, I’m very curious what he looks like. In fact, I need to know what he looks like .
“Please have warts, please have warts,” I whisper to myself as I open a new search tab on my phone and type in the browser, “Nate Hart.”
And there he is. Not to be dramatic, but it nearly knocks the wind out of me. He leans against a black wall, wearing all black, which should make him seem like a weirdo disembodied head, but he somehow pulls it off. It draws the eye in. Makes you study his outline. His muscled forearms. The broad shoulders. The big Adam’s apple and cryptic smile. Those lips. I stop the impulse to touch my phone.
Ding! Startled, I switch to my texts, forgetting to close out the tab.
I read Aimi’s latest message about her day and her boss with the farting problem. But the whole time the Nate-is-home news hangs like a storm cloud on the horizon.
After twenty minutes, I pull the cookies out of the oven. They smell delicious.
Feline Dion—a cat I adopted from the shelter on my first day because how could I not—rubs her body against my legs. I bend down and give her a pet before washing my hands again.
I grab a warm cookie for myself and my dad and head out into the living room. It’s sparsely finished, just a gray couch and coffee table, but with lots of family photos, and a window overlooking a tree my mother had planted, a Camellia tree, still in bloom.
“Hey Dad,” I say softly, handing over the plate and a napkin.
“Hey, hun bun,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. Even though he’s sick, he’s still got that twinkle, and I just hope it never goes out.
“How are you feeling?” I ask .
“Ah, you know, I’ve been better.” He rubs his hands together like he always does when he’s nervous. It’s not so much palm-to-palm but more this thing where he jiggles his knuckles together.
I realize the nerves mean that he’s probably not feeling good, but he tries to keep that inside. When we go to doctor’s appointments, the doctors always ask him to give his pain level on a scale of one to ten with ten being the most, and I swear he lowers the number when I’m around. I don’t know if he’s trying to be strong for me, or if he knows I hate seeing him in pain. That’s probably the worst thing about all this. Seeing him in pain and not being able to do anything about it. I try to make up excuses to be out of the room now when they ask him the question, so he’ll be honest with the doctor, and then I pop right back into the room after.
And for what it’s worth, I should probably explain that my dad had me late in life. My mom was older too but still ten years younger than him. No, he wasn’t some sugar daddy, and she wasn’t some gorgeous sugar baby. They were just two people who fell in love. Too bad, it didn’t work out.
I reach over and pull the throw blanket further up his chest, essentially tucking him in, hoping to give him a bit of comfort. “Want the heating pad?” I ask.
“You’re the best daughter a man could ask for,” he says with a mouth full of cookie.
I moved home from the city when he was sick. My older brothers are married with younger children, so it was harder for them to pick up and move. It was “easier” for me. So that’s what I did. Been back about a year. At first, it was an adjustment, running into people in the grocery store who I vaguely remembered from high school and missing my city friends so damn much. But it’s gotten easier as the year has gone on. Plus, I think it’s really helping my dad get a little stronger. He’ll never fully recover because he has Parkinson’s. But he can have a better quality of life. I definitely want to give him that.
“Nate is back,” I blurt for some odd reason. Maybe because the news has been boomeranging around my brain since I first heard it.
My father’s dry, papery lips repeat Nate’s name, but no sound comes out. He grips the napkin in his arthritic, age-spotted hands, and they begin to shake with the effort.
“Let me make you some tea!” I hop out of my chair, cursing myself under my breath.
Eventually, after an hour of watching DANCING WITH THE STARS and two cups of chamomile later, my dad seems relaxed enough that I feel comfortable excusing myself to get ready for bed. I have a big day tomorrow.
___
I arrive at work already nervous. I tell myself that asking for the promotion is no big deal, but it means a lot to me. And I can’t deny it. My dream is to start my own animal shelter one day. There are far too many animals that need homes, so the sooner I can do this, the more animals I can help. So the stakes feel high for me, and nothing I tell myself seems to change that.
I scoop the Tupperware of cookies from my bike basket and carry them into the shelter’s break room. I take in the empty room with its odd fuchsia couch, a few tables with mismatching chairs, and a weirdly descriptive set of microwave instructions. It smells of pasta again, which it always does, no matter the time of day. Out of all the other various smells there could be in an animal shelter, I’ll take it. Plus, at this point, I find it strangely comforting.
I head to Chandra’s office, taking measured breaths. Chandra is my boss who moonlights as a romance author. She wears long necklaces, linen pants, and has a lot of windchimes. She also curses like a teenage boy.
I steady my shaking hand as I knock on her door.
“Come in,” she calls. Her voice is deeper than what you’d expect since she’s so petite.
I enter her small, homey office and sit on one of the two chairs across from her.
“Don’t mind me. For fuck’s sake.” She clicks wildly on her mouse. “I’m just having an existential crisis. In order to log into my account, I have to prove I’m not a robot, but I’ve been clicking on ‘trucks’ and ‘bicycles’ for so fucking long, I’m not even sure what’s real anymore.” She stops with the clicking and looks up at me.
There’s a bit of lipstick stuck to her front tooth, and I debate whether to tell her. I’d tell a friend, but is that something you tell your boss? Especially before asking for a promotion?
There’s a weird pause. I’m not sure what to say or how to transition. So I just go for it.
“I’d really like the promotion,” I begin and stumble through my speech. I try not to analyze the various expressions crossing her face because it distracts me from what I’m trying to say.
“The position wouldn’t open for another two months,” she finally says after I’ve finished .
“Thank you, I know. I just want to be on top of this.”
“You’ve always been my most reliable worker.” She smiles warmly at me.
I can’t help but smile back.
She places two fingers on her desk and says carefully, “Your promotion will depend on two things. First, the promoted position would be a managerial role. Which is a whole new fucking rodeo from where you are now. So let’s see how you manage the intern. And second, the fundraiser. You’ll need to raise $10,000 more than last year. Alright? Intern first. Fundraiser second.”
I gulp down a small welling of disappointment. It’s not exactly the resounding “yes” I hope for, but it’s not a, “hard no,” either. I can work with this.
“Speaking of which. Are you ready to meet your intern?” she asks. “I think he’s here.” She checks her phone as if confirming. “Ah, yes, he’s in the break room.”
“Sure,” I say cheerfully.
Before we enter the break room, I can already tell something is amiss. There’s more chatter than normal as if every one of the three full-time workers and six volunteers are in there.
Is it for my cookies? I can only hope. It is a special recipe.
Chandra enters first, and the excited talking still hasn’t simmered down, which I find surprising. Usually, people lower their voices when she’s around in respect.
“I think he’s already made quite the impression.” She smiles back at me.
So it’s not my cookies? It’s the intern? But why would everyone care about the intern that much? The last one everyone called Emily for six weeks when her real name was Emilia. (For the record, I called her Emilia!)
Just then the crowd parts, and there in the middle of the hubbub is Nate Hart. Even though he’s leaning against the countertop, he still lords over everyone with his ridiculous height. He wears black jeans and a black shirt, with his heart tattoo on full display on his muscular forearm. But his somber clothes are at odds with the big, flirty smile playing on his lips. His perfect, perfect lips—the lips I hate so much. Because they shouldn’t be allowed. They shouldn’t be real. It reminds me of how unfair life is.
The whole energy of the room leans towards him like there’s some weird centrifugal force around him, a term I vaguely remember from school. Or maybe he’s like a whirling black hole in space, sucking everything towards it, into its misery and destruction. Yet he somehow seems to bring goodwill and cheer. I haven’t seen everyone this upbeat since…never? And I hate that too. I hate that the most.
No, what I hate the most is that I sound like some kind of Grinch. That he makes me into some kind of Grinch. Because I’m not a Grinch. I’ve been scorned. He scorned me a long time ago, and it’s hard to forget when someone is like, “You can trust me with your heart,” and in your teenage naivety and innocence, you hand said heart over, and all the while making eye contact with you, he rips a bite out of it with his teeth and then tosses it aside like a bad apple.
And these fools don’t even know.
I have to protect them.
I’m his manager.
I can do this.
A strange thrill zips through me, all the hatred in my blood energized, rushing, and hot. A mama bear protecting what is hers .
He suddenly sees me, and when his eyes meet mine, there’s another snap through my body like a rubberband hitting my skin, jerking me awake, as if I’ve been sleepwalking these last fifteen years without him in my life. There’s a weird sort of pleasure to it, which I can’t quite figure out, so it’s probably best to ignore.
His expression pops into a startled, “Oh.” His gorgeous lips part. A dark strand of hair falls onto his forehead, which he casually brushes back with a big hand. He’s hiding it now, hiding his surprise, and presses his lips into a hardened frown. And this—This! This! That asshole!—he doesn’t bother to hide.
It feels like a lifetime has flown by—years and years all in a second—when Chandra finally says, “You’re a lucky girl. Meet your new intern. Nate Hart.”
“We go back.” His voice is low, sleek, and slithers through the room like a snake.
But the whole room leans into it. You can almost see their thoughts bubbling up in little pink emoji hearts.
Chandra looks at me with an expression of confusion as if I can explain our past—as if I want to explain our past.
The promotion, I remind myself. Be professional. “We’re pleased to have you, Nate,” I choke out, feeling like I’m speaking a foreign language. Does that make sense? Did what I say even make sense? My heart whooshes in my ears.
“Pleased to be here,” he says flatly.
Next to me, Chandra’s breath escapes in a dreamy, little sigh that sounds an awful lot like a swoon.
I’ve entered my own personal hell.
“Fantastic,” I say.
He frowns.
I frown .
Yet, somehow we’re the only frowning people in the room. Just you wait and see , I want to scream to everyone. Just you wait and see!