Chapter 7 #2
The beach filled up. Families from Los Angeles, San Diego and the Central Valley descended on Belmar Cove with coolers, umbrellas and children who screamed with joy every time a wave knocked them down.
The town swelled. The line at Earth Roast stretched out the door.
The farmers' market on Saturday was so crowded Violet had to park two blocks away and navigate around strollers, dogs and a man selling kettle corn from a cart.
Jake was at the market. She spotted him at the produce stand, holding a bag of heirloom tomatoes and talking to the woman who sold honey, listening as she told him something about her bees.
He looked up, saw Violet and raised the tomatoes with a sheepish grin, as if to say look, I'm buying vegetables.
She almost laughed. Violet caught it in time, pressing her lips together, but he'd seen it, and his grin widened.
She turned away before her face could betray anything else.
She told herself it was too late.
The Fourth of July bonfire was Ellen's idea.
Every year, the Belmar Cove residents gathered on the beach at the end of Sea Haven Lane, where the sand widened into a natural amphitheater facing the water.
Someone would build a fire. Someone else would bring a speaker.
Families set up blankets and chairs, and at nine o'clock the town's fireworks display launched from the pier a half-mile south, close enough to rattle the windows of the beach houses, close enough that the explosions bloomed directly overhead and the sparks seemed to fall into the ocean.
Ellen had invited both of them. Separately, Violet suspected, and with full diplomatic awareness of what she was doing. Murphy arrived wearing a bandana with American flags on it.
Violet brought a blanket and a bottle of rosé. Jake brought nothing, because he still hadn't figured out what people brought to things. He stood at the edge of the gathering looking lost until Ellen waved him over, handed him a beer and told him to sit down.
They sat. Not next to each other, at first. Ellen between them, Murphy sprawled in the sand. The fire burned low and orange, the conversations around them blurred into a pleasant hum, and the sky darkened from blue to indigo to the deep, starless black that preceded the fireworks.
At some point Ellen got up to talk to someone. Murphy went with her. And then it was just the two of them, sitting on a blanket on the beach, the fire warming one side of their faces and the ocean cooling the other.
"This is nice," Jake said.
"It is."
"I don't think I've watched fireworks since — when? That Fourth in Nantucket, years ago?"
"That was our first summer married," she said. "We watched from the boat."
"Right. You got cold, I gave you my jacket and you fell asleep on my shoulder before the finale."
She remembered. She remembered all of it.
The borrowed boat, the harbor lights reflecting on the water, the smell of gunpowder and salt.
Jake's arm around her, his chin resting on the top of her head.
She'd been so happy. Deliriously, unreservedly happy, how you can only be when you still believe the person beside you will always be this close.
"That was a good night," she said.
"It was the best night."
The first firework went up. A single streak of white light climbing into the dark, hanging for a second, then exploding into gold and red that scattered across the sky and reflected in the water below. The crowd cheered. Murphy barked from somewhere behind them. Children screamed.
More followed. Blue and silver. Green and white. Cascading waterfalls of sparks that hung in the air like chandeliers before dissolving into smoke. The sound hit her chest, deep and percussive, and she watched the colors paint themselves across the sky, disappear and paint themselves again.
Somewhere during the finale, Jake's hand found hers in the sand.
She didn't pull away.
His fingers laced through hers, warm and careful.
The touch was so gentle and so familiar that her body responded before her mind could intervene.
She leaned into him. His shoulder against hers.
His thumb tracing a circle on the back of her hand.
The fireworks were deafening now, one after another, the sky on fire.
She couldn't hear anything except the explosions, her own heartbeat and the blood rushing in her ears.
Violet turned to look at him. He was already looking at her.
The firelight caught his jaw, his mouth, those blue eyes she'd fallen in love with eight years ago. He was so close. So achingly handsome, but he looked… strained. He looked tired. He looked like someone who'd been trying, genuinely trying and was terrified of getting it wrong.
Jake leaned in. She didn't move away. She couldn’t if she wanted to.
His mouth touched hers. Soft. Questioning.
A kiss that asked permission even as it was happening.
His hand came up to the side of her face, his thumb along her jaw, and the touch…
his hand on her face, the thing she'd told him she couldn't remember, the thing she'd grieved on her birthday in an empty bed — sent something electric and devastating through her entire body.
Violet kissed him back.
For five seconds, maybe ten. Long enough for the finale to reach its peak, long enough for the sky to turn white with light, long enough for her to remember what it was like to want him and be wanted back.
Then she pulled away.
"We can't do this," she said abruptly.
His hand was still on her face. She reached up and moved it. Gently.
"Vi—"
"No." She was shaking. She could feel it in her hands, her shoulders, the base of her spine. "That can't happen again."
Jake looked at her. In the fading light of the last firework, his expression was raw, open and so full of wanting that it made her chest ache.
"Okay," he said.
"I mean it."
"I know."
"This doesn't change anything. The divorce, the lawyers — none of that changes because you kissed me on a beach."
"I know," he said again. Quieter.
Violet stood up and brushed sand off her legs.
Her heart was hammering, her lips were tingling and every nerve in her body was telling her to sit back down and kiss him again.
But she couldn't, she absolutely could not, because she knew what would happen.
He'd be wonderful tonight. He'd be wonderful tomorrow.
And then a week would pass, a month, a year, and she'd be alone in a beautiful penthouse waiting for him to come home.
"Goodnight, Jake," she said.
"Goodnight, Vi."
Violet picked up her blanket and her wine, walking home across the sand. She didn't look back. If she turned around and saw him sitting there in the dark, watching her leave, she would go back.
Violet locked the French doors and poured herself a glass of water. She stood at the kitchen sink, pressed her fingers to her lips and closed her eyes.
She could still taste him. She could still feel his hand on her face, his thumb against her jaw. The exact touch she'd been mourning. And he'd given it to her on a beach under fireworks, like a promise, like a question, like something that could be the beginning of everything she'd wanted.
But she couldn't trust it.
That was what broke her heart. She'd spent six years learning not to believe in him, and one kiss on the Fourth of July couldn't undo what six years had built, no matter how much she wanted it to.