Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
It takes one-twelfth of a second at Wicksteed Bodega Bay to understand why it’s Lucia’s favorite resort.
Where Aspen was grand and imposing, Bodega Bay whispers into its surroundings without seams—a low, single-story structure built into the rocky outcropping directly uphill from its private beach.
All of it’s on fire with autumn: the dense plants cloaking the cliffside, the coast redwoods shading the resort’s main drive.
Each room has its own terrace overlooking the water, arranged with an in-ground hot tub and minimalist furniture.
The patios are staggered at the same angle as the rocks behind them so each one is private, completely hidden from the others.
I can hear the ocean even from the lobby, all of its glass doors slid open to let in the sea air.
It’s in the high fifties and hazy with fog.
“We’ll leave you to it for the rest of the day,” Lucia says as she hands out our room keys.
They’re heavy and brass, attached to elongated diamond-shaped key chains.
They’re reminiscent of a vintage motel, but made of solid wood and engraved with Wicksteed Resorts in looping white script.
“But let’s meet tomorrow afternoon in the business center to chat about the schedule for your stay here in Bodega. Two o’clock?”
The creative directors nod their confirmations.
Campbell’s eyes flick over me—he stands on the far side of the group, hands in the pockets of his slacks.
He sat at a diagonal from me on the airplane, one row ahead on the other side of the aisle.
By the time we landed I had a crick in my neck from holding myself at the unnatural angle required to keep him out of my sight line.
“Dexter,” I say, turning to him. “Want to work in my room this afternoon? We can keep pushing your design comps from yesterday. I’ll help you brainstorm.”
“Yeah.” He smiles, shoulders sagging a little like he’s relieved. “Let me get settled and check in with Krish. I’ll meet you there in twenty? What room are you?”
I hold up my key, stamped on one side with 18.
When he passes me on the way to the hall, I catch a glimpse of the key dangling from Campbell’s lowered pointer finger.
19.
It’s nearly evening when Dexter and I wrap up, close to dinnertime.
Dexter’s meeting Iris at a restaurant down the coast, but I already begged off; I want room service, and a video call with Ava and Pancake, and a bath I can sit in long enough to stop feeling my body entirely.
The rooms here are so different than in Aspen: all clean, pale lines.
The hotel is as airy as the beach, and it’s so clear that Wicksteed is expert at curating its place-based aesthetic.
The scent, though, is the same. And there’s a deep, porcelain tub in the bathroom that’s been calling to me all afternoon.
As the door to my room falls shut behind Dexter, I step back toward the table to tidy up the remnants of our meeting: my notebook splayed open with half-baked ideas scribbled across it in blue ink, my plugged-in laptop, a small pile of candy wrappers from the bowl in the lobby.
The table’s right in front of the articulating wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the private patio.
I’ve had them cracked all afternoon to let in the salt breeze, the moisture my skin’s ravenous for after two weeks in Colorado.
A bird calls from outside and I look up.
The surf rolls lowly across the sand, soft and foamy from this distance. Wicksteed’s beach is a cliff-circled cove framed by scrubby bushes and jagged rocks rising from the water. The thick plants along the hill are mottled with the turn of the season, a film of red and orange.
It’s a narrow window onto the wide ocean, empty at this hour except for one person—a dark form moving against the bright beach.
Campbell.
It’s his posture that gives him away, how he shoves one hand into his pants pocket when he turns to face the water. His other arm’s bent, pressing his phone against his ear.
I take a few steps onto my patio and squint.
If it weren’t for his unmistakable tells—the pocketed hand, the brown-edging-blond hair blown over his forehead—he’d be nearly unrecognizable.
Campbell’s shoulders are rounded, his head ducked.
He looks defeated. He looks like he’s trying to make himself small.
A bit of family business, Soraya said, just a few days ago.
Ma, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, back at the Pantry in Aspen.
I’m sliding on my sandals and making for the beach before I’ve let myself think it through.
“Okay,” Campbell’s saying when I cross the street into the sand. “Okay, so not even—yeah, the West Coast one. You don’t think it’s—”
He turns mid-pace and catches sight of me.
While I was crossing the empty road between the hotel and the beach, he changed directions three times, restless at the edge of the water.
I think he’ll hold my gaze the way he usually does, challenging, or maybe make an excuse to hang up.
Instead he turns immediately around and moves in the opposite direction down the beach. Still on the phone.
“Yeah, I hear you,” he says as I jog to make up the distance between us. Cold wind whips hair from my ponytail into my eyes. “But you’d said there was a possibility for a third—”
He breaks off and squints down at his feet, stopping so abruptly that I run into him. Campbell jerks around and stares at me. He looks windswept and disappointed, still speaking into the phone. “I don’t know, to be honest with you.”
Are you okay? I mouth.
His brows draw together and he flings one hand back toward the hotel. Then he mouths, Go away.
I frown, and Campbell turns a hundred and eighty degrees to cut back across the sand.
I can hear the buzz of a voice coming through his phone, growing fainter as he moves away.
Something competitive has risen in me, refusing to be ignored: Campbell saw me break down over Pancake, and I want to see whatever this is. I need us to be even.
But I promised him a truce, so I don’t follow. Campbell’s barefoot with his pants rolled up. Pacing like a trapped animal. I watch him move down the beach, and I’m still standing in the exact same spot when he glances over one shoulder and spots me there, waiting.
Campbell stops. He still has the phone lifted to one ear, but he turns until we’re faced off along the waterline and holds my gaze. As he nods, as his mouth moves around an “okay,” as the wind tugs his long-sleeved shirt over the planes of his chest.
I can’t hear him, and I don’t move closer. But when I drop directly into the sand, crossing my legs, he rolls his eyes and starts toward me himself.
“I have a few beginnings of things,” Campbell says into the phone as he sinks down beside me. “Nothing that doesn’t need a lot of work.”
He doesn’t look at me, instead turning away and propping both elbows on his bent knees. The voice from the phone crackles like static. I brush a spray of sand from my knee and squint out at the water.
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “I just wanted—”
Campbell goes rigid, and I watch the side of his face. I can only see the line of his jaw and the curve of his brow bone. But there’s no missing the way his cheeks flood pink as he says, “I just wanted it to work this time.”
Distant buzz of the voice. Flex of muscle in Campbell’s bicep as he twists himself even further from me.
“Thank you,” he says. Then he nods like whoever’s on the other end of the line can see him. “Thanks. Bye.”
He lowers the phone and holds it with two fingers, dangling near his shin as he crosses his arms over his kneecaps. He squints at me, the setting sun glaring directly into his eyes so they ignite in every shade of brown.
“What do you want, French?”
He says it sharply. Exasperated. It raises every hackle I have.
“I want to make sure you’re okay,” I snap. “Excuse me for caring.”
“Is this you caring?” Campbell asks. He waves his phone at me. “Infringing on a personal phone call?”
“Infringing?” I rear back, and he raises his eyebrows. “This from the person who forced me to stand five centimeters from him while I had a meltdown over my cat? That was infringement.”
“Was it?” Campbell presses. “I thought that was helpful.”
“I’m trying to be helpful, too!”
He studies me, eyes narrowing. “Why?”
For a moment—for too long—I’m quiet. Why?
Because he was kind to me, and I need to find a way to be kind to him, too.
Because I owe him. Because I can’t stand that, and because something about watching him fold into himself from across the road made me want to reach for him.
Made me want to be here next to him in a way that feels stupid now that I’ve gone and done it.
I decide not to answer. “Was that your family?”
“What?”
I gesture at Campbell’s phone. “Were you talking to your family? About what happened the other day, when you missed the hike?”
Campbell stares at me. Really looks—neither of us has sunglasses on, and I so deeply regret leaving them on the table in my hotel room. I’d give anything for a filter between us as he watches me, unblinking, like he’s looking for the answer to a question he hasn’t asked.
“No,” he says, finally. Then he stands and brushes off his pants. “That was my literary agent. I’ve been trying to sell a novel for the better part of a year and it just got rejected by the last editor on our list. It’s done. Dead and buried.”
He pockets his phone and makes for the hotel. But I reach out instinctually, wrapping my fingers around his ankle, and he stops short.
Campbell looks down at my hand, then drags his eyes up to my face. His skin is warm in the wind-flung chill of the beach.
“Novel?” I say. He swallows, then nods.
I let go of his ankle and pat the sand where he’d been before—beside me, but not too close. “Tell me.”
Campbell glances toward the hotel. He slides both hands into his pockets. “What if I don’t want to?”