Chapter 3
Now, as she opened the safe, she had a sickening feeling her phone would be empty of messages. Light fell on its black screen. She grabbed it, waking it up, to see nothing had changed from the last time. No new messages. No notifications. Nothing.
She threw it back into the safe, closed the door, and locked it up once again. She then started shutting everything down, turning off all the lights, shutting down her computers, and cleaning the single restroom she made available to paying customers.
As the seven o’clock ferry left, so did the tourists.
She left the lights in the display on, enough to be able to see an intruder sneaking around. Although, she thought, good luck stealing anything. The most expensive items in the shop were now at a professional football player’s house.
She thought about texting Johnny. Telling him about the famous player who’s staying on the island. But she stopped herself.
Did she just brush everything under the rug, again?
If she’s ignored this behavior this long, was there any point in making it a big deal now?
He was right. They weren’t married. He wasn’t her husband. He hadn’t promised her anything.
Johnny had thrown out his most famous quote, “I already had one clingy wife. I don’t want another.”
Thea had never met Monica. Johnny had met her in Puerto Rico during the time he’d lived off Isabel Island. He’d returned after his divorce. Then he’d opened the bicycle shop, Thea opened her gift shop, and the rest was history.
Yet now, ten years later, Thea was no closer to being engaged or getting married than she had been when he’d arrived, promising things would be different.
“Unbelievable,” she said to herself, walking up the stairs to her apartment. She opened the door to Salty and Foggy trying to break free to the open world, but both chickening out the second Thea stepped inside the apartment.
“Meow!” Salty cried out. Her beautiful Maine Coon cat pranced toward her. “Meow! Meow!”
“Long day?” Thea said to her needy little girl whose name came from her angry greetings when Thea finally came home. Her brother wrapped his body in and out of her ankles, rubbing his midsection hard against her legs. “I missed you, too, Foggy.”
The gray cat fell to the floor and started cleaning himself. The stray she’d found at the restaurant had been a welcome addition this winter.
“Who loves you more than me?” she said to his ice-blue eyes that showed more love for her than Johnny ever had throughout their relationship.
Johnny never had to go out of his way. It was always her going to his apartment if they hung out. During the day, if she wanted to visit, she had to go to his shop. He never once came to her. Not once.
What did that say about a ten-year relationship?
Her mother was right, and Thea hated when Athena Manus was right. He wasn’t going to marry her. No matter how long she waited.
Salty pranced across the floor, jumped onto the counter like an acrobat, continuing her protest of Thea’s long day. Her spoiled cat still hadn’t settled in to her summer hours. “Meow!”
“He knows I never give him a hard time,” she said to Foggy, her overweight old cat who meowed from the floor, where the kitty treats jar sat above him.
The image on Johnny’s phone popped into her head, and she shook it away, feeling sick to her stomach. How could she allow herself to play such a fool for so long?
“Thea?” came a voice at the door. Johnny’s voice.
She closed her eyes. This was it. Make or break time.
“I tried calling, but you’re not answering your phone.”
He’d waited all day to call? All day when he knew how upset she had been last night?
She stood there for a moment, trying to gather all her thoughts and feelings throughout the day so she could say it all to his face without regretting a single word or forgetting one.
“What do you want?” she said, as she opened the door.
He held up a key in his fingers.
“It’s time you have one of these,” he said, passing it to her without even making eye contact.
That’s when she knew nothing had changed. She held the cold metal in her fingers, staring at the nail in her relationship’s coffin. She released her fingers, dropping the key back into his palm.
“I think you should leave,” she said. She couldn’t even look at him.
It was as if a sheep had shed its skin and turned into a snake.
She saw exactly who he was and this ridiculous Hail Mary just proved it.
He knew her parents would disown her if they moved in together before marriage. He knew she’d never take that key.
“I’m so confused,” he said, looking at her as though she had lost it. “I thought this is what you wanted.”
Was he trying to gaslight her into believing she wanted him to give her a key?
To what? A bachelor pad boat that sat in the harbor of the island.
There were no signs he had a girlfriend.
No pictures of her, or the two of them together.
Just dirty bits of laundry, empty beer bottles, and evidence of a guy that wasn’t tied down in a relationship.
He wanted her and her two cats to move into his boat?
“You know my father would kill me if I moved in with you.”
“We don’t have to live together.”
Her mouth fell and dried up. Words could not even form
What was she doing even wasting her breath talking to him?
All the comments over the years from her mother and even her sister about her spending time with a man who clearly wasn’t going to marry her. She pretended like she didn’t care, that she wanted to be free of commitment and didn’t want to be married.
But it was all a lie.
Just as Johnny opened his mouth to say something, Thea held up her hand. “It’s time for you to go.”
Then she calmly closed the door and locked it.
“Are you kidding me?” he lashed out. He yelled through the door. “I’m not coming back, Thea.”
Which wasn’t really a threat. She hoped she’d never have to see him ever again. Not after what she’d seen.
She bent down and picked Foggy up, wrapped her arms around the big cat, and nuzzled her head into his fur.
“You’re all the man I need,” she said to him as he purred in delight.
Johnny tried opening her door and banged on the glass, but she kept it locked. For another minute, he called out her name, telling her to reconsider. Never once did he apologize. When he finally left, she counted the steps as he descended, waiting for the gentle sounds of the quiet harbor.
She sat on her couch with Foggy as Salty leaped across the room to join them.
Ten years wasted on a man who didn’t even really love her. How could he if he had a picture of another woman like that?
Salty purred and rubbed her face against Thea’s arm as she opened up the kitty jar.
She passed her a treat consisting of catnip and a tooth cleaner blended into one tiny mouse-looking snack.
Salty absolutely loved them. She swatted the treat with her paw and ran after it.
Just like Salty had planned, Foggy took an interest and the chase was on.
Off the two went, running around the small space she called her family room, but now found the name kind of funny.
Her cats were her family, and she was okay with that for now.
She loved being independent. She wanted to be married and wanted children, but she wasn’t unhappy or lonely. She had friends and loved her family.
But she wanted a companion through this crazy thing called life. And she had once thought, rather brazenly apparently, that Johnny was that person.
Thea opened the fridge and pulled out an opened bottle of cheap sweet white wine and poured it into a glass, then opened the freezer drawer and dropped frozen strawberries and blueberries into it.
She walked out to the deck, leaving the door open for Salty. Foggy was still a bit skittish when it came to the height. She fell into her lounge chair and looked out at the empty town square. The only sounds came from the seagulls’ night calls and the dinging of the bell buoys.
She opened her app to see her cash register’s earnings for the day.
Today had been one of the best she had ever had in her career.
She should be celebrating. She should be ecstatic that someone had finally bought her art.
And a famous celebrity, at that! She should want to run to her parents or her sister or her friends or her boyfriend, but she just looked out at the empty bay instead.
So calm and peaceful this time of night, when the sun began to fall behind the mountains of Maine.
There was no better view than here. Not even Johnny’s sailboat had this view.
But he wouldn’t know. He didn’t even care, and Thea needed to move on.
She picked up her phone to make a checklist for inventory. She’d need to buy at least two new surfboards. Maybe if a famous football player was sighted on her surfboard, more tourists would rent or buy, too.
As she opened up a note, her phone began to ring, and her heart leaped. Then it dropped like an anvil when she saw it was her sister, Crissy, making a video call.
“Guess who’s at trivia night?” she yelled into the phone as soon as Thea answered.
“Who?” Thea looked off her deck and across the harbor to the back side of her parents’ pizza restaurant.
Tonight was trivia night for the locals and the lucky ones who had a place to stay on the island.
With only twelve rooms at the only inn, very few can stay overnight, and with less cabins for rent, only a lucky handful of tourists ended up at trivia night.
Her sister turned the phone so Thea could see who played the game at her parents’ restaurant.
“Is that Ryan Mathers?” she asked, though she was almost certain.
“Yes!” Crissy whispered into the phone. “He’s here with Miss Wisconsin!”
Up at the front of the restaurant, a woman sat waving at the group. The blond bombshell was the same woman who stood on the porch disinterested in her boyfriend’s surfing idea.
“Is he there for Trivia?” Another new thing her sister had introduced to the restaurant, trivia night.
The restaurant had always done well enough.
Her parents had owned it for decades, raised two children on it.
But her sister was never good with enough.
She had to do more. Bigger menu, more hours, breakfast options, and now trivia night.
Thea didn’t disagree that more business for the restaurant was a good thing, but when was her sister going to allow her parents to slow down? Or at least, relieve them from their duties. Although Nico Manus wouldn’t ever retire and live above the restaurant.
Maybe she should send them down to Florida with Johnny?
“Yes, and do you remember who his mother is?”
“Really?” Crissy smiled. “You should come. Johnny’s here.”
“What?” He’d gone to her parents’ restaurant to play trivia? Thea’s emotions tightened her throat. “Nah, I think I’ll stay in tonight. I’m feeling a bit under the weather.”
But she looked back at the sunset, the orange glow disappearing behind the blackened buildings of Portland, the day blending into night as the shadows deepened over the city.
The ferry disappeared and turned into traveling twinkling lights in the inky black Casco Bay, its beauty fading, just like her relationship.
The moon waned above, reflecting in the water below in the harbor.
Just still enough to see the mirrored image but enough waves to ripple the image into multiple slivers.
She looked up at the night’s sky, wishing she still believed in wishing to a Greek goddess who her mother said would bring glimmer of light to earth.
What was it about her that made men not want to commit? At forty, she had to do some reflecting. She’d never had a boyfriend during high school. She had preferred to play sports or swim at the beach than deal with boys. Besides, she worked at the restaurant whenever she had any free time.
Then in college, she never had anyone ask her out more than a few times. In her twenties, she always seemed to date jerks who’d tell her one thing and do the other. Every boyfriend she had strung her along only to break up with her. Now, Johnny.
Why did she allow men to treat her like that?
Well, no more.
Thea would rather live by herself than let another man treat her like she was nothing more than a pet.
Actually, less than a pet, because she loved and adored her cats, gave them the best she could with whatever she had.
Johnny treated her worse than his customers.
Worse than the people who complained about his golf carts or coffee.
He bent over backward to help them. In fact, she didn’t know anyone other than her, his girlfriend, that he treated that way.
She picked up her phone and blocked his number. She didn’t even want to think about him. She had given ten years. She would not waste another second on him. With one gulp, she finished her drink and poured another.
She stared at the fading sun, thinking about how the world continued on around her as hers fell completely apart.