“Fuck you!” I tossed my unfinished beer down on the sand next to our towels and followed him as he sprinted headlong through the summer sunshine directly into the waves, both of us laughing our heads off.
I had no clue what the future held. I knew after college there’d be music, no matter what my dad said. I knew there’d be touring, which I didn’t love, and fans, which might be fun. I knew it would take a long time, and I knew if I kept at it, there’d be money—enough to convince even a skeptic like my dad.
But most important of all, I knew Rafe would be by my side.
My teammate. My constant. My rock. My North Star, guiding me home.
My love.
Always.
* * *
And he was.
Until the day he fell in love with my sister.
And all the love between us turned to hate.
1
Rafe
“Well now, Rafe, I’ll tell you the truth,” Littlejohn Jennings began, his guilty squirming making his chair springs squeak. “I didn’t reallyperceivethe situation as bribery at the time.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Just outside the Whispering Key Rec Center’s second-story window, the turquoise Gulf waters sparkled and beckoned. Beyond that lay an entire world I’d hardly seen in three decades of living, with endless opportunities to explore. And now that my brothers and I had found a treasure one of our ancestors had hidden on the Key, I had the resources to enjoy myself to the fullest.
So what was I doing?
Chaperoning a meeting of the Extravaganza Committee. As one does.
Or at least, as one did if that person was a direct descendant of one of the founders of the island and also the son of the current mayor of the island—a man who’d birthed a half-assed brainchild last spring called “The Whispering Key Labor Day Extravaganza” and then promptly draftedmeto coordinate it.
I took my responsibilities seriously… which was more than I could say for my dad.
Or a certain other guitar-carrying sellout I used to consider my best friend.
I scratched at the stubble on my jaw and reminded myself that I didn’t think aboutthat personanymore. Just recalling his name conjured all sorts of memories, good and bad— and the good ones were even more annoying than the bad ones because they reminded me how stupid I’d been.
“You’re saying Caroline Mitchell only agreeing to date you if you got her brother a food truck in the Whispering Key Extravaganza didn’t raise a single red flag in your mind, Littlejohn?” I asked.
“Weeeeell. It mebbe gave me a moment’s pause,” he allowed. “But then… Caroline smiles awful pretty, you know?Andshe mentioned her brother gave her enough free appetizer coupons for the whole Extravaganza Committee.” Littlejohn grabbed a bright pink coupon from the stack in the center of the long table and handed it to me proudly. “So I said to myself, ‘Littlejohn, Caroline’s brother can’t be a bad guy if he’s willing to give all your friends free food!’ And anyway, Dale ’n me just got done watchingThe Crown, didn’t we, Dale? And I figured if all them kings and queens of Europe could bring their honeyboos a little whajamacallit to sweeten the pot—”
“Dowry,” Dale Jennings piped up from halfway down the table.
“Yeah, that! So why not me and Caroline, you know?”
A dynastic marriage with a dowry of loaded nachos was not the weirdest setup for a Whispering Key love story I’d ever heard. Literally not even the weirdest this month.
I stuffed the coupon in my pocket.
“I only told her I’d bring the request to the meeting along with the coupons, and let us all vote our consciences,” Littlejohn said earnestly.
“Well, my conscience says I love me some Mitchell’s conch fritters!” Lorenna McKetcham, spry despite being approximately as old as the glaciers that formed the island an eon ago, leaped out of her chair, grabbed a stack of coupons, and stuffed them down the front of her blouse where not a single soul on the committee would ever be tempted to retrieve them. “Hot dang!”
My dad—Rafe Goodman, Senior, also known as Big Rafe—leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, pursed his lips, and tapped his fingertips together, like he was Don Corleone rather than the mayor of a tiny Gulf Coast island. “I’m pretty sure that’s still technically accepting a bribe, Littlejohn,” he began cautiously.
Predictably, though, his gaze kept zinging right back to the pink coupons like magnets to iron filings. Sure, we’d just cashed in on a treasure, but free appetizers were free appetizers.
