The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn

FOURTEEN It’s a Date

W hen Dustin had departed again, as Roman and I started in on the antipasto, I contemplated the question that had been hanging there between us like a pregnant spider.

I had to answer it; I was the one who’d forced the conversation in that direction. I wanted to answer it. But an entire young lifetime of shame grabbed my tongue in its fist and squeezed. I had tried so hard to be normal. I’d been so afraid people would know what life in my house was really like. Even Jessie and Erin didn’t know it all.

For almost all of my childhood, well into adolescence, I’d believed I was the reason my mother was unloving at best and cruel at every chance. I was unloved because I was unlovable. I believed the only reason I had friends, the only reason people were ever nice to me, was because I’d hidden the truth from them. Honestly, believing it was my fault was probably a survival mechanism—at least then my mother made sense. At least there was a reason.

I’d tried to keep my reality a secret, and I’d believed I’d done a decent job. That was why I’d been so worried about how my return would be received. But also, paradoxically, I’d become bitter toward Bluster in my time away. Growing into a woman with a family of my own, and working with children as a profession, I’d begun to wonder how the people here could not have known.

They must have at least suspected the truth, despite the camouflage, yet they’d done nothing. Now that I was home again, some of that resentment lingered—and some of the shame had reawakened.

But could I really blame people for not seeing what I’d tried so hard to prevent them from seeing? What my mother had also hidden from them? Roman was sitting right before me, looking into my eyes, and telling me he hadn’t known things were as bad as they’d been. Moreover, and maybe more to the point, he’d asked if I would have accepted help.

And I don’t think I would have. I think I would have been too ashamed.

So that was what I answered. “I don’t want to get into details tonight, but yes, I needed more help. But no, I don’t think I would have taken it. I was really ashamed of how I lived. I would have denied it.”

Most people would look away in that moment, but Roman didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice so quiet it was almost a caress.

I did look away. That kind of eye contact was like having him rooting around in my chest. Busying myself with stacking prosciutto and cheese on a slice of bread, I said, “I like you, Roman. I’d like this to be a date. But I don’t want to date somebody who sees me like a kid he felt sorry for.”

He reached across the table and set his hand before me, palm up. An invitation to put mine in it.

I studied his hand—large, well-formed, the pads of his palms and fingers thick and marked with several scars—but I didn’t take it.

He left it resting there before me. “I don’t see you like it’s twenty years ago, Leo. I see you now. Beautiful, charming, and strong. I enjoy being around you. So I’d like to be around you more.”

All those words were good words. But the one I heard most clearly was my name. Not Leonora, the struggling girl he’d known, but Leo, the woman I was now. He had not called me Leonora since the day he’d learned I was no longer her.

I set my hand in his.

THE REST OF THE DINNER was much more like a real date. The food and wine were delicious, and our conversation turned to more normal, first-date things. Roman talked a lot, filling in the wide gap of my knowledge of present-day Bluster . He didn’t gossip overmuch, backing away from an explanation or description when he thought he was getting too close to personal details. But he helped me make sense of the changes I’d noticed in town.

Among those changes was a significantly greater number of strangers to me. More people had moved to town than I’d ever imagined. Roman described a years-long push by the city council and the chamber of commerce to make the town more appealing for tourists. New restaurants, a bed and breakfast (oh yay, competition), a gaming arcade, boat tours, and two small museums had opened while I’d been away. All that development had brought about a hundred or so new residents to own and work those businesses.

In my first eighteen years of life in Bluster, I don’t think many people at all moved into town or around it. I’d say less than ten new residents altogether in all those years. Virtually everyone I’d known was from a family who’d lived here for at least a couple generations. The Bluster of the past had been an insular place, too close to Eureka to the south and Oregon to the north to be a major draw for tourists or road-trippers.

The Sea-Mist had been the only guest accommodations in town, and it had been difficult to keep the doors open most of the time. We’d rarely been entirely empty, but despite having only twelve cottages, there’d been maybe six weeks of any given year we were booked full.

The people of Bluster, my mother included, had liked it that way. My mother, proprietor of a motel, had always resented our guests. She hadn’t liked cleaning up after them, or being nice to them, or having them come into the front room of the cabin for morning coffee and maybe to pick up some brochures. The ones who liked to chat were the worst, in my mother’s opinion. But for them, she’d always managed to shape her mouth into a smile and her voice into a friendly tone. Even if she scowled at their backs the second they turned away.

For my part, I was fascinated by most of our guests. Until I’d run away, I’d never been farther from home than Eureka, so all those people who were traveling far enough distances to need suitcases were like foreigners to me. The people who weren’t staying only a night or two on their way somewhere better, those outdoorsy types who used the Sea-Mist as a base for a week or more while they spent their days in the redwood forest, or on the ocean, they were my favorite. I’d loved to poke around gently at their things while I cleaned their cabins. All their expensive gear, their packs and boots and jackets and such from REI or Patagonia or L.L. Bean.

The ones who settled in for a bit were the nicest guests, too. They’d learn my name and use it, and they’d ask me for recommendations or simply chat me up a little. They always told me how lucky I was to live somewhere so beautiful, and I always believed it when these exotic creatures from far away said it.

Over the course of our dinner and our conversation about the Bluster that had been, I told Roman about my enthrallment with our guests. He listened with perfect attention, his eyes fixed on my face, a soft smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

“Is that why you want to reopen it?” he asked when I was finished. “To reclaim those good feelings about the place?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, playing my fork through the remnants of my cheesecake. “The good memories are only waking up since I’ve been back. We came back because it’s the only asset we have left, not because I wanted to run a business. But Wyatt loves it here already and wants to stay, so I guess we’re going to give it a go. If we can, that is—there’s bad damage to Cottage 12, and I don’t think we can afford to do anything about it for a while. I don’t know if I can open while that cottage isn’t usable.”

“What kind of bad damage?” Roman asked with a frown.

“A tree came down at some point and took most of the back of the cottage with it.”

“Jesus!”

“Yeah. It’s a fir, and the top part of the tree is just lying in the middle of the cottage. I don’t know how long it’s been like that, but damage has some layers. It’s been through a few storms that way, so I guess it’s been a couple years.”

“I bet it’s not that long. This past winter and spring were really rough,” Roman said. “Lots of damage all around. We had several atmospheric rivers roll through in a row, dumping rain and bad storms for weeks at a time. We had an earthquake in January, too. 6.5.”

Now it was my turn to say “Jesus! 6.5?”

Roman nodded. 6.5 is not a city-destroyer, but it’s a serious quake. The kind that might uproot a forty-foot tree and drop it on a cottage. I was surprised how well the main cabin had held up under all that stress, but the scattered mess we’d found on our arrival made more sense now.

“Yeah, it probably fell then,” I agreed. “For now, I’ll find somebody to cut the tree up, and we’ll have to tarp the cottage and hope we get open and start earning some money.” Then, because the direction of our conversation had brought our most unwelcome visitor to mind, I asked, “Do you know somebody named Darryl Manfred?”

The impact that name had on Roman’s expression was impossible to miss, or to mistake. Not only did he know Manfred, he quite clearly did not like him. Well, same.

“Why? Do you know him?”

“I’m sorry to say we’ve met, yes. Wyatt and I came home the other day and found him making himself at home in Cottage 12.”

Obviously finding that information alarming, Roman leaned in. He reached for my hand again and asked, “Are you okay? And Wyatt?”

Now I was alarmed. Manfred had been threatening, but not in a physical sense. I hadn’t felt actually unsafe. “Yeah. He made a lot of big talk, and he wasn’t nice, but he didn’t try to hurt us. Is he capable of that?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. What did he do to you that wasn’t nice?”

“He was insulting, really. Just that. He tried to make me an offer on the place, but he acted like he was already the owner. I guess he had a deal going with my mother, but she died before it went through, and then when I didn’t come back right away, he said he was in the middle of a deal with the city for them to take it over, I guess, so he could buy it?”

“He was working a deal with Marilyn, yeah,” Roman confirmed. “The last few years before she died, the motel was pretty much closed. She couldn’t do all the work herself anymore, and she had trouble keeping employees once the casino opened.”

The subtext was that my mother had drawn her employees (who never numbered more than two, not counting me) almost exclusively from the Yurok reservation because there she found people who would work for below minimum wage and for cash, so she didn’t have to claim any employees on her taxes. She was almost as crappy a boss as she was a mother, but back in the day there hadn’t been a lot of employment options for anyone, particularly people who lived on the reservation.

But the tribe had opened a casino while I was away ... and right there I realized why Bluster had changed. The casino brought in the tourism, and Bluster, adjacent to the reservation, had capitalized on it.

“Manfred,” Roman was explaining, “wants to cut down a lot of forest and put a golf course hotel in. He’s been lurking around like a damn seagull for years now, but he got no traction until your mom got sick. Then she was ready to sell, and that’s a great parcel of land with no state restrictions on the woodland. He can clear-cut the whole thing if he gets hold of it. I think he figured once he had that in his hands, the rest of the resistance would fall away. But your mom died, and I guess he’d done enough groundwork to think you’d be an easy sale. But you didn’t come back. Eventually he started working on Jerry, trying to lawyer him into claiming eminent domain on an abandoned property.”

By Jerry, he meant Mayor Holt—a decent guy, but not exactly a pillar of strength. Still, he seemed to have held fast against Manfred. “I wonder if that’s why the mayor paid a detective to find me.”

“It is. We talked about it on the council. Nobody wanted to take your inheritance from you.”

I grinned. “You’re a councilman? I didn’t realize I was dining with a town politico.”

His chuckle was deep, and it hit me low in my belly. “ Was a councilman, because I was president of the Chamber of Commerce. Did a term there and didn’t run again. I’m not a politician.” He shifted his hold of my hand, weaving his fingers with mine, and leaned in again. “Manfred is bad news. He’s got big money behind him, but he doesn’t act like a usual CEO type.”

“He acts like a mob boss,” I finished.

“Exactly. Leo, he’s going to be at the meeting tonight. He’s not on the agenda, but he told Jerry he’ll want time during the open forum.”

That bit of new info drew me up short. “That’s when I was planning to talk.”

“I know.”

My first impulse was to skip the meeting. I was nominally attending to update the town on my plans for the Sea-Mist, but really to try to tie a knot in the town grapevine. None of that was urgent, and I had no desire to be in the same space as Darryl Manfred ever again in my life, if I could help it.

But it galled me to be afraid of a human hemorrhoid like him. I owned the Sea-Mist, not him—and the town had actively hunted me down to prevent him from taking my inheritance from me. Whatever judgments and rumors Bluster might harbor about me, Manfred was the interloper, not me.

Roman sat quietly and watched as I worked through my thoughts.

“Okay,” I eventually said, draining the last of my coffee. “I guess the meeting will be interesting. I hope there’s popcorn. And tequila.”

He smiled. “Beautiful, charming, and strong,” he said.

WE WALKED TO ROMAN’S truck hand in hand. As was always the case in this part of California, even in August, night had brought in a foggy chill from the sea. A light, damp mist swirled around us and blessed each point of light with a sparkling halo.

As we reached the passenger door of his truck, Roman tugged on my hand and turned me to him. His eyes diving deep into mine as usual, he brought his free hand up and brushed a few stray hairs from my forehead.

“I like your hair like this,” he said, and in the low rumble of his voice I heard the desire to kiss me.

Was fifteen months of widowhood enough? Were my complicated feelings about Micah making me think I was ready now for something I really wasn’t? Was it okay that a man who’d known me as a child wanted me now? Had my return to my childhood home made me more vulnerable than I knew?

I had no answers for any of those questions. I wasn’t even sure where to find answers.

All I knew right then, standing in a parking lot across from the Bluster Marina, gazing up at this handsome, kind man, with new fog swirling around us and the rolling tide of the Pacific Ocean rocking the boats rhythmically against their moorings, was that I wanted him to kiss me.

I wanted to be held and comforted. I wanted something in my life that wasn’t work or worry. I wanted Wyatt to be able to be a kid again, unencumbered by responsibilities too heavy for his young shoulders.

I wanted to find safety and fulfillment again for my son and myself. I wanted friendship and love for us both.

In that moment, I saw those things, or at least their possibility, in Roman. In his dark eyes that showed as deeply into him as they delved into me. So I didn’t care about the other questions.

When his hand settled on my cheek, his fingers spreading into my hair, when he bent down until our foreheads were a mere swirl of fog apart, when he told me in a low purr, “I would like to kiss you, Leo,” I set my hands on his chest and offered him my mouth.

The first touch of our lips wasn’t accompanied by a crack of thunder. Lightning did not charge through my body and threaten to burn me from the inside out. Angels did not sing; the earth did not shake.

It was so very much better than any of those unrealistic tropes of fiction. Our first kiss was warm and quiet and calm. It was safe. It was comfort. It was a perfect first kiss, free of demand or desperation.

His lips were firm and warm, and they tasted of cheesecake and coffee. His short beard, tidied up for our date, scratched lightly at my cheeks, my chin, my nose. He hummed a soft sigh, and his breath wafted over my cheek. Though an inferno was not raging through my veins, I was definitely getting a bit warm, and there were a few parts of me that were starting to ... let’s call it ache.

When I slipped my hands up over his shoulders and pushed them into the short waves of his hair, he sent his tongue out gently, searching. I opened my mouth, and he took the invitation at once, but like a guest, not an intruder. He sampled me, and I sampled him as well.

There’s this dance women—straight women, anyway—usually have to perform in a first date/first kiss situation with a guy. Already in high school, most girls have to learn it. Back then, Erin called it ‘war games,’ and to this day I think that’s accurate. Guys are always trying to gain as much ‘territory’ as they possibly can, and women always have to play defense. This is usually true even for women who are totally confident in their own sexuality and totally on board with first-date festivities. Even sexually assertive women, who like to make the first move, end up to some degree playing defense. The whole cishet dating culture is predicated on male conquest, with men trying to get at least a little bit more than women want to give.

That’s how seduction is usually defined—as persuasion .

Micah was like that. I was much younger and less experienced in romantic matters when we met, and he was always good to me in that way, always responsive to my limits, but he was definitely in charge, definitely seducing me, seeking out those limits. All through our marriage that was true, though I didn’t realize in how many ways he’d controlled our life until that life was over.

Roman did not seem to know the steps of the seduction dance. Even as his arms encircled me, even as he drew me tight to his body, I didn’t feel even a hint of a suggestion that he would push against any limit I set out. There was no sense that this kiss would go farther than itself. And the most exciting thing about that was how powerful, how vividly obvious, his desire for me was. He didn’t need to shove me up against the side of his truck and grind his hips on mine to let me know how much he wanted me. He didn’t need to yank my shirt up and shove his hands in to paw at my chest or down into my pants to get between my legs. His desire was obvious in the warmth of his embrace, in the soft, steady press of his lips, in the purr of his voice.

And he knew that.

That PG-rated kiss was the sexiest moment of my life.

When it was over, he merely lifted his mouth from mine, and we stood there, embracing, quickened breaths mingling in the nook between our bodies.

“I’m glad you came home, Leo,” Roman finally said, and those few words said everything that mattered in that moment.

“So am I.”