Chapter 26 #2
Sixteen. Warm sun on her shoulders. Lying on her towel and watching him slice through the waves. Listening for his laughter through the breeze. Feeling like it was the only place on earth she was meant to be.
Nineteen. Bike rides and sunsets. Quiet afternoons on the dunes, reading and telling him about her dreams, and him smiling at her like they were already real.
Twenty-two. Late nights. Strong drinks. Ocean breezes. Dancing in his arms and knowing that, even if the rest of her life was messy, that one part—one moment—was right.
Twenty-five. The pier. The ring. The request. Her leaving to go find her way, not realizing that she was never more herself than she was right there with him on that coastline.
Thirty-one. Almost married. Being back on the island and knowing he was someplace else far away. Telling herself the search was over—for love, for the person she was supposed to be—not knowing that in a short time it would all circle back in on her again.
“Grace?” Adam asks now, noticing her sudden change. “Are you okay?”
“I—I . . .” Grace stammers. Her throat tightens.
She grasps for words. Meaning. They’re not there.
Adam. The ring. Ray. This moment. The impossibility of sitting between two lives she once thought were 235real.
How easily in just one glance she could remember so much. Love. Time. The girl she used to be.
A frantic, unsteady heat rises in her chest. In her stomach, panic works itself into knots.
“I need a minute.” She pushes out her chair too fast. A dizzy feeling wraps itself around her.
She grabs the edge of the table, steadying herself, then looks from Ray to Adam, not sure where her focus should land.
Finally, she straightens, takes a breath. “I-I’ll be back.”
Grace pulls open the bathroom door, half expecting to find someone waiting for her inside.
Maybe the Cece she saw in here the other night, propped up on the counter, sipping a sugary cocktail, on the verge of accidentally saying something profound.
Maybe some other version of herself she hasn’t met yet this week.
All she knows is that for the first time since arriving in Sea Drift, she hopes she crosses paths with someone—anyone—who can tell her what to do. Who can show her which way is forward when her heart keeps tugging her backward into different parts of her past.
But there’s no one here.
She peeks into each stall to double-check and confirms the room is empty. No hidden message. No meaningful sign. Just Grace, her erratic pulse, and her spinning thoughts.
She moves to the sink, cups water in her hands, and splashes it against her neck.
It doesn’t help the feeling inside her go away.
Adam—the man she loved and who left her, now asking for a second chance.
Ray—the person she loved and ran away from for reasons that, right now, don’t fully make sense.
She holds her hands beneath the faucet, trying to cool herself down, but it’s no use.
Not when the only thing she can focus on is the ring.
She needs air.
236
Grace slips out of the bathroom, slides through a back door, steps out onto the Beachcomber’s patio bar, weaves through the forming crowd, then down a short ramp and onto the sand.
It’s dark, the whole beach empty. Grace kicks off her shoes, pulls up the bottom hem of her dress, and walks toward the water, hoping to find a stronger breeze.
Standing on the shoreline and looking out at the ocean at night is a different experience than staring out at it during the day, the clear horizon and translucent water becoming an endless sheet of black.
The night breeze brushes Grace’s skin, but it’s not nearly as cooling as she’d hoped. She steps a bit farther, past the dry part and down to the firmer stretch of sand. The water rises up over her feet, providing her with a momentary feeling of relief.
Until she hears it.
Footsteps. Fast ones. Barreling up the beach.
Grace turns. A silhouette charges through the moonlight—ripped shorts, baggy sweatshirt, wild hair whipping in the warm breeze.
Cece.
One day shy of twenty-five.
And sobbing.
“Hey!” Grace calls out as Cece gets closer. She drops her dress hem, the fabric trailing through the water, and rushes to her. “Slow down!”
Cece stumbles to a stop at the sound of another person, drops her palms to her knees, her breath ragged. She gasps once, then again, like she’s trying to put herself back together before she falls apart.
“What happened?” Grace asks when she reaches her, though she already knows. Despite the darkness, the memory of this night remains painfully clear. “What are you running from?”
Cece keeps her tear-streaked face tilted down.
“I just left the most important part of my life behind,” she says, still half gasping for air.
“The person I love, the one I’ve always loved!
I threw one dream away to chase another.
” She wipes her cheeks on her sweatshirt sleeve.
“And the truth is that I don’t even know why I did it. ”
237
Grace stands beside her. This version of herself, the one who gave up on something because she thought maybe she’d find something better, only to find that better didn’t last. The one who still believed every choice she made would lead her somewhere brighter.
“The truth is, he only knows a part of me,” Cece says, panting. “The part he’s always seen down here. He doesn’t know the one who has a life and dreams outside of this place.”
Her inhalations and exhalations evening out, Cece stands, looks out at the dark water, and wraps her arms around herself so tightly it’s as if she’s trying to keep her body from unraveling.
“Maybe you should go back,” Grace says, her words as quiet as the air, not sure that she should be saying this, but feeling so confused about everything that she’s not certain she cares. “Maybe you should go back to the thing you ran from and pick it instead.”
Something changes then. The air or the energy. Whatever it is, Grace can’t ignore it. There’s a shift.
Cece turns toward Grace slowly, their gazes locking into place.
A flash of recognition shapes Cece’s expression.
It’s only then that Grace realizes that for the first time this week, there’s nothing there to conceal who she is.
No hat or sunglasses. No drunken veil to make the encounter seem fuzzy.
Here, in the dark of night, everything is suddenly clear.
“Don’t you see?” Tears continue to fall down Cece’s face. “Don’t you understand by now that this isn’t how it all works?”
“How what works?” Grace asks, though the flush of goose bumps all over her body suggest her mind already knows.
“This.” Cece waves her hands at her sides. “Whatever it is that keeps happening here.”
Around them, the breeze picks up, making everything feel momentarily suspended.
“Wh-what do you mean?” Grace rubs her thumb against the cool metal of the ring.
“Everything,” Cece says. “You can’t change the outcome of any of this. You can’t reshape history just because you’re confused and sad.”
238
Grace flinches, Cece’s words—her words—hitting her as hard as a rogue wave. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Grace admits to herself, her voice cracking.
“Neither do I,” Cece says. “Because I’m not you yet.”
She’s right. None of them have been her—present-day her.
But they’ve all been something. A girl who believed the world was full of small treasures.
The one who, even when she lost the game, was willing to try again and win.
The young woman who, despite all her messy, inebriated confusion, carried so much hope beneath her doubt.
The individual who was willing to study and understand something, not for an accolade or a deadline but just for herself.
The one who wondered whether her story was worth telling but believed in herself enough to tell it anyway.
The woman who was terrified that her happiness was only temporary but was still brave enough to chase it.
Grace blinks. “Then what’s the point?” she asks, her thoughts heavy with all that’s transpired this week. “Why are you—all of you—here?”
Cece opens her fist, which she’s had clutched tight since she arrived. Inside it is a near replica of the ring she was gifted back on the fishing pier. She takes one long look at it, and then, even though her expression looks pained, lets it fall into the sand.
“It’s not about us,” Cece states. “It’s about the next one.”
“The next what?” Grace asks, confused.
Cece takes a step away from her, then another. “The next version. The one that comes after all this.” Cece quietly laughs, like this is the most obvious fact of them all. “Her story’s the one that hasn’t been written yet.”
Back inside the Beachcomber, the dining room is busier. Silverware scrapes. Banter fills the air like a song.
239
“Grace?” Adam rises as soon as he sees her. “Where have you been?” He looks both ruffled and relieved. “I had our waitress go into the ladies’ room three times. You weren’t there.”
Grace peers down at their table, full of untouched appetizer platters, which Adam must have ordered in her absence. “I went outside,” she says and looks over at the bar and sees that Ray is gone. “I needed some air.”
Adam’s face pans down. “The bottom of your dress is soaking wet,” he points out, accusation carrying his words like a raft. “Were you with someone?” he asks, unable to hide the jealousy in his inquiry. He quickly backtracks. “I mean, wh-what were you doing?”
“I don’t think I can do this tonight.”
“Grace, come on. Sit. Please.” A sense of urgency creeps into his tone, lifting each syllable up like waves. “This is important. We need to finish our conversation.”
Grace looks through the window at the beach and lets herself remember that feeling. Of being twenty-five, running away from the familiar and toward something new and better—something that, up until a few months ago, she believed she’d found.
Something that, tonight, she lets herself accept she hasn’t landed on just yet.
“I think we already did, Adam,” she says, taking her purse from the back of her chair. “Back in June. When you left.”
In reality, Grace walks calmly to the door.
But in her mind, she’s in the sand, barefoot and sprinting.