"It's fine. Not a problem. We were kids, and kids are assholes. No sweat, right?" I glanced up at him and found his hazel eyes gentle and earnest. It was nearly enough for me to admit itwasa role, itwasa performance. I was a princess and I was marital glue and I was perfect. But admitting that—saying it out loud to another person and watching while the truth seeped in—was terrifying. It meant acknowledging I'd spent years rotating through personalities as I attempted to be the person everyone else expected me to be. It meant confirming I'd never kept close, true friendships before Annette. And it meant recognizing Jed saw through everything I put between me and the world.
"Don't do that," he whispered. "You've never pretended with me. Don't start now."
Annette yanked my plate out from under my fork and replaced it with a fresh slice of cake. "Tryeatingthis one." Rounding the table, she said, "Remind me where you went after high school, JJ. You saw all the big places. Rome, London, Hong Kong, Paris, Cairo, all of that good stuff. Where else did you go?"
I snapped my head up, blinking at Annette and Jed. "When was this?"
"After high school. After graduation." He forked a chunk of cake from my plate, popped it in his mouth. "I headed out of town, picked up a job with a travel company, and gave tours around Boston for a few months. Don't make me tell you about the Freedom Trail. It's great and important, but I still hear that lecture in my sleep." He claimed another chunk, ate it. "After the company sprung me from Boston, I rotated throughout the United States and Canada for a year. I hear the Grand Canyon lecture in my sleep too, but it gave me a chance to see every corner of the country."
"That sounds amazing," Annette said. "I always think I want to travel for extended periods of time, but I can't manage a weekend trip to Portland without packing my entire closet and then suffering because I forgot the one thing I actually needed."
"Yeah, you can't do that when you live on the road." Jed laughed as he stole another bite of cake. "After leaving North America, I spent a few more years touring overseas. Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania. I had a chance to hit Central and South America, but I decided to live in New Zealand for a year instead."
I scowled at Annette across the table, but she didn't catch my meaning and scowled right back. She didn't realize I knew nothing of Jed's life outside Talbott's Cove. He saw me and he knew me, and I was busy floating around in my opalescent bubble, never bothering to ask him about his years away from this town.
"Why New Zealand?" Jackson asked. "I've always heard the best things about that country, but it wouldn't occur to me to move there for a year."
"And yet it occurred to you to move to Talbott's Cove from Albany," Jed mused. "I…I had time on my hands. I'd worked nonstop for six years at that point and I'd always loved touring through that part of the world. Always wished I had more time. Then, I had the time." He scraped up the last bite, careful to gather as much frosting as the fork would carry. "And New Zealand is as far away from this town as I could get."
"Did you stay in one city or wander like a proper nomad?" Annette asked.
"I spent some time in Wellington and then Christchurch. Everywhere in between. Later, I ended up on Stewart Island, on the far, far south end of New Zealand across the Foveaux Strait. A couple times each week, I took the ferry to Ulva Island to hike or read or whatever sounded good. They used rangiora shrub leaves as tickets. It was the most unbelievable experience of my life."
Jackson leaned back, crossing his ankle over his knee. "What did you do there? Fora year?"
Jed lifted his shoulders, let them fall. "Lots of things. I wandered the Rakiura Track on Stewart Island. It's about twenty-two miles and it's—it's beautiful. It's nothing like Maine, nothing at all. So, I walked. I took millions of photos. Probably more. I went to pubs and drank many times my weight in Speight's. I stared at the stars and birds and trees I'd never seen before." He gestured toward Jackson with his fork. "A little bit of everything, you could say."
"Why did you leave a place you loved so much?" My voice sounded rusty, as if I hadn't spoken in days. "What brought you here?"
"It was time." He draped his arm over the back of my chair. His fingertips barely brushed my shoulder. I edged toward his hand. "I loved everything about being there, but I also loved being half a world away—until I didn't love that distance anymore. As I explored the country and made my way through one town after another, I realized I missed this place. I missed Talbott's Cove. Part of it was nostalgia. At that point, I hadn't spent more than ten days here since graduation."
I jerked in my seat, bracing both hands on the edge of the table to hold steady. I stared at Jed but he offered nothing, no assurance he remembered the day we graduated from high school and the night that followed.
Those waves, they didn't stop.
"The other part of it was wanting a place in the ecosystem. While I tended bar all over New Zealand, I watched the way people in those towns interacted. How their universes functioned, how relationships grew roots, how people changed the places around them. At the same time, my uncle was dying of liver disease after drinking his way through fifty-plus years of owning the Galley. My aunt wanted it out of her hands and I wanted a spot in this ecosystem." He shifted his arm off the chair and onto my shoulders, tucking me into his chest. He pressed his lips to my ears, whispering, "This place called me home. I'm not sure of much, but I think it might've called you too."
I shivered as if I was standing naked in the cold. In a way, I was.
Chapter Twenty-Six
JJ
Long-Term Debt: a liability with a maturity greater than one year.
Later that evening,after surviving a delicious but turbulent dinner party, I asked, "What happened that night? After graduation?"
Brooke glanced back at me over her shoulder. That movement sent her silky hair pooling on my chest and her bare body snuggling closer to mine. "What do you mean?"
Here she was, naked and satisfied in my arms, and even still, I hesitated. But I had to know. I wouldn't have broached the subject if not for the way she looked at me after dinner tonight. As if I'd done wrong by her all those years ago. "We were at that party at Peyton Woodmoore's place and we ended up behind the barn and—and I kissed you."
She forced a laugh. "Yeah. I know."
"But what happened?"
I watched as her brows lowered, eyes slanted to the side. "I still don't know what you mean. I'm sorry."
I should've stopped there, but I never stopped myself when Brooke came around. "You disappeared. You told me to stay there, behind the barn. You said you'd come back. I waited for—for fuck, longer than I should've. What happened?"
