Chapter 31 #2
The little touches continued after that—knocking his knee against mine under the table on the nights I stayed for dinner, a hand on my back when he walked me to the door.
Some days he would lean his elbow on the doorframe mid-conversation as I exited the front door, like he did that night when I slept in his guest room.
When I’d turn around, the urge to raise myself up on my tiptoes and kiss him goodbye would be so powerful it nearly overcame my reluctance to make the first move. But I hadn’t.
On the Wednesday before the fundraiser, I met Francesca for a late lunch at Among the Flowers Café.
It was right up the road from the sailing center where I’d just left Luna.
It was so sunny today, the rays beating down and warming any exposed skin in an instant.
I’d reapplied Luna’s sunscreen with a heavy hand during her lunch break.
“How are you feeling about Friday?” I asked after the teenaged waiter placed our salads on the little white-painted iron café table we’d selected in the shady part of the patio. “Is there anything I can help with?”
“I think we’re in good shape.” She scrunched her petite nose like she was running through a mental checklist. I took a bite of my spinach salad and let her think.
“Yeah, I can’t think of anything. We have fifty gift cards and twenty bigger excursions to auction off, including private charters on the Mad Max catamaran and the Tigress sailboat, fishing tours, windsurfing lessons.
I think those will all go for a lot. Plus there’s the raffle and the online donation page.
I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll hit the fundraising goal. ”
“Everyone I’ve spoken to is really looking forward to it.”
Francesca sucked in a breath and expelled it through pursed, pink lips. “I’m a little nervous. This is one of the biggest events I’ve planned.”
“It’s going to go great,” I said. “And we’ll get lots of pictures you can use for your website, show future clients you can handle a 300-person event.”
She nodded, a glimmer of excitement in her bright, brown eyes.
After a few more bites of our salads, I asked, “So, tell me the full story about you and Jeremiah. How’d he convince you to move here?”
She smirked, wiped her hands on the napkin on her lap, rested her elbows on the edge of our little table, and leaned in conspiratorially. “It is the most random story,” she warned.
“I can’t wait.”
“We met out at a bar in Boston. He was in town for a wedding. I was out with my single girlfriends. He walked in around midnight—suspenders, loosened bowtie, jacket over his arm. There’s just something about a man in a white dress shirt and suspenders, you know?
I think he saw me too, because he wedged himself between my barstool and my friend’s to order his drink.
He turned to me and said, ‘Hi,’ with a little nod.
“We flirted for the rest of the night, and he came back to my apartment with me. We had drunken, sloppy sex, and then we had coffee together in the morning and talked and talked, I think sharing more of ourselves because we both assumed we’d never see each other again.
I told him about my disenchantment with my job.
He told me about the Vineyard, his dreams for his and Luke’s company.
When he left he said, ‘If you ever want a tour of Martha’s Vineyard, call me. ’ And that was it for months.”
“And then…?” I’d stopped eating my salad.
“I had a rough week at work. Finally realized start-up life might not be for me. We ended a really tense investor call on a Friday afternoon and I just fled. Before I knew it, I had a suitcase packed and was walking to South Station, checking the bus schedule on my phone. When I got on the bus to Woods Hole for the Martha’s Vineyard ferry connection, I texted Jeremiah asking if his offer of a tour still stood.
I figured I wouldn’t hear back from him. ”
“But you did of course.” I looked at Francesca, her deep tan complexion, brown eyes, and dark brown hair that fell almost to her waist. She was memorably beautiful. I noticed people noticing her every time we went somewhere together. I bet Jeremiah couldn’t believe his luck when she reached out.
She smiled, looking at the flower box hanging from the railing beside us. “Yes. He saved me the embarrassment of admitting I was already on the way because he asked if I was already on the island. Then he called me!”
“On the phone? Like it’s the nineties and we don’t have texting?”
“Yes! He convinced me to stay with him for the weekend. It was, hands down, the best weekend of my life. We just clicked, you know?”
I swallowed. I knew exactly how that felt now. Probably for the first time in my life. “Absolutely.”
“From there it was easy. We saw each other almost every weekend. I’d come here, he’d come to Boston. When I quit my job and came here to stay with him for a while, I just kinda…never left.” She shrugged one shoulder, beaming.
“I love that story.”
“Me too.” She smiled to herself and took a sip of her iced coffee. “That’s why I’m so proud of you for quitting your job. It was the best thing I ever did—taking a step back, thinking about what I wanted for the next chapter of my life.”
I choked up a little. Francesca and I had only hung out half a dozen times since we met, but she was quickly starting to feel like a real friend, someone I could be my true self with without fear of judgment.
Besides, I’d never judged her for leaving a high intensity job that she fell out of love with, for making a career change to something totally different in her thirties. I admired her.
I drank in my flourishing surroundings and the flourishing woman across from me as I sipped my iced tea. I think I’m proud of myself, too.
“How’d Jeremiah convince you to do winters here? Is it as long and cold and boring as everyone says?”
“Honestly, I kind of like the winters here. Everything slows down by October, and the fall is beautiful. The air gets crisp, the leaves change color, the rhythms of the island slow. I hole up and read books and work on my website and marketing materials, do some self-education, long phone calls with friends and family. And then when it gets really cold, work slows down for Jeremiah, too. We watch movies every night, that kind of thing. We go off-island for the holidays, and then again in January or February for a vacation somewhere warm, and before you know it, it’s summer again. ”
“That sounds really nice actually.” I pictured myself holed up with a book reading, or my laptop writing.
She pursed her lips as a knowing look spread on her face. “I think you’d like it.”
I had a feeling she was right.