Elijah glances away. “She was old. She probably just had it in her head.”
And now she’s older, and even with all of my degrees, I guarantee she’ll still be acting like I’m not good enough for the Cabots. “Then you might want to tell her that the nine-one-one call is entirely dependent on me.”
He laughs. “Are you threatening to not save the life of an old woman just because she’s unpleasant to you? Maybe she had better judgment than I’d thought.”
“I told you this money was not well spent.”
We grin at each other the way we once would have. His dimple flickers to life and my heart squeezes. Already, it’s getting harder to remember we’re not supposed to be friends. Or more.
Soon, the signs for Savannah are replaced by signs for Jacksonville, and I turn toward him again. “Do you remember that trip we took down here?”
There’s a tick in his jaw. “Vaguely.”
The timing of it couldn’t have been better—my mother had just left and my father’s drinking was getting increasingly out of control. He’d thrown a punch at me when I’d tried to take away his car keys, and though I lied when Elijah asked me about it...a few days later the trip to Florida, helmed by Elijah, magically appeared.
Elijah was nineteen that summer, and so beautiful that girls would turn to openly stare at him. He’d run his hand through his hair before we entered a restaurant and I’d have to fight a full-body shiver. That was the trip during which one of his college friends told me to give him a call when I turned eighteen, and Elijah’s look could have burned him alive. The trip where a boy approached me outside the ice cream shop, and suddenly Elijah was dramatically asserting his six-foot-five presence in the most threatening manner possible. It was parental, on his end, not romantic, but for the first time I could see how that might change.
How, if I was eighteen, he might be stepping in for other reasons entirely.
“The beach was so much better than ours, and there were these huge waves that we could body surf. Plus it was so undeveloped—I felt like I was some early settler in Roanoke, experiencing warm water and good waves for the first time.”
“The beach was no different than it is at home, and I don’t recall the first settlers at Roanoke doing a lot of body surfing.” He cuts his gaze toward me. “All I can remember from that trip is your black eye.”
My heart gives an odd, uneven throb. It was so easy to fall in love with the protective Elijah Cabot, even when he wasn’t trying to make it happen.
“Let’s go look then,” I tell him.
“Huh?”
I pull up Google maps on my phone. “It’s only a seventeen-minute detour off 95, and it’s not as if you were eager to spend time with my friends, so let’s go to Amelia Island and check out the beach. That way you can remember something other than my black eye.”
“You just want me to admit you’re right.”
“There’s also that, yes.”
His mouth shifts up to the side. “Maybe instead of working on your looks, you should have worked on your competitiveness.”
“Maybe you should have worked on moving out of your mom’s house.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “I would have, if I’d realized how often you planned to reference it.”
Even when we’re arguing, being around Elijah is like sinking into a warm bath. It seems easy, comfortable, safe...even when it’s not.
An hour later we hit Yulee, Florida, and turn east off the highway. I roll down the window once the speed limit drops to thirty-five, and with my eyes closed I can almost believe I’m still that fourteen-year-old again, determined to escape my shitty home and my shitty town, determined to become someone Elijah could fall in love with.
I was so unhappy then in some ways, but in others...I was a thousand times happier than I am now.
There’s traffic on the bridge, and by the time we hit the island I’m regretting that I suggested this. What, precisely, did I think it would accomplish?
“So where is it that you want to see this wild, unspoiled shore?” he asks. “In front of the Ritz-Carlton or in front of the Amelia Island Golf Club?”
I refuse to admit that I’ve made a mistake. I drag the map lower on the nav system.
“There’s a public beach,” I say, pointing ahead of us. “Turn at the roundabout and head north.”
Two minutes later he pulls into a small parking lot. Together, we get out and climb the steps to reach the top of the dunes. It’s still early on a Monday morning so the beach is entirely unoccupied. And it’s just as I remember—the seagrass blowing in the breeze, and the rolling waves, so unlike the gentle froth at St. Samuel’s.
I look up at him, at his hair ruffled by the breeze, at the hint of a smile on his face. “I’m waiting.”
