“You need to find yourselves a quiet park bench,” said Hayes.
Anna smacked Hayes’s bicep. “Hayes, you watched that movie? Without me?”
“Ace, I watched it because you love that movie. And there was a set delay.” Hayes shrugged on camera.
Anna grabbed his face from the side and planted a huge kiss on his cheek. Miles felt a swell in his chest. He wanted that with Avery.
“Dude.” Hayes laughed as Anna Catherine kept kissing his face. “Take her on a nighttime stroll and break into a locked park. She will get all swoony over a bench and presto. That’s your lover’s bench.”
“Ugh, Hayes. This is rural Maine, not Gramercy Park,” Miles said. “Plus, I have to get her alone first. She’s at the front desk and I’m at the waterfront most days, and there are other people around.”
“Don’t do it at work. I didn’t get Anna Catherine to fall for me on set. I found her in the evening, after we’d wrapped for the day.”
Hayes was on to something. Avery had mentioned feeling lonely at night. Miles glanced out his front window. Across the cove, he could see her sitting on the old dock, leaning against a dock pylon while she painted under a golden-pink sky. A popular staff hangout in the afternoon, the dock had been empty most evenings that summer. So many sunsets, he’d sat opposite her while she painted, their legs stretched out and touching, sometimes overlapping. His and hers pylons. They didn’t need to break into a park. That old dock was their bench.
“I never know where your movie references are going, but you two are geniuses,” Miles said. “Avery’s in the exact spot where we used to sit. And I think I should be just a boy, paddling up to a girl, asking her if she wants to share this dinner I made.”
“Oh Miles, that’s so romantic.” Anna Catherine’s hand clutched her heart. “But one thing. She needs to feel safe around you, like she made you feel on the beach. Listen to her and don’t try to fix the situation. She won’t confront the past until she trusts you. Allow her the space to do that, or it will doom your future together. Until then, keep reminding her of what you had that summer.”
He wanted to earn back the trust he’d lost when he had broken up with her. The shrinking image in his rearview mirror of her sobbing on the ground as he drove off still haunted him. For so long he’d told himself love belonged to other people. But there had been glimmers of promise since Avery’s return to Maine. If he tried, his dreams might become reality.
The only way to get there was to end this call and go after what he wanted.
“Got it. Thanks.”
After a minute of goodbyes, they finally hung up. As Miles seared the fish, his only thought was how to help Avery relax around him. Trust grew in small steps.
A moment had presented itself to make this quiet night theirs.
Miles wrapped two plates of dinner in foil, picked out a bottle of wine, and set out for the shores of Montressa in his blue canoe.
Chapter Nine
Avery
Monday, May 29
Dipping a brush into her palette again had been such a rush. Portraits of the lodge sat drying on the dock, their edges held down by stones. The lodge was both part of the waterfront and part of the forest beyond, and Avery couldn’t fathom why Paulson suggested destroying such a marvel. Montressa’s massive columns had been hand built in the 1920s out of tree trunks with the knots and branch knobs still visible, as if the lodge had sprouted out of the granite ledge upon which it commanded an impressive view over Linden Lake. She’d never seen columns like them, and houses in the South had columns galore.
Today’s rain had given her time to catch up on a few things and Avery finally inquired about a couple of apartments in Hanover. Sometimes she wondered why she waited so long to check something so simple off her list. Pressing “send” on a few emails made her feel productive. Late in theafternoon, the rain cleared. Now Montressa glowed in a golden-pink light, one she hoped was a precursor to a colorful, prolonged sunset. Leaning against the dock pylon, her back to the water, she decided the website needed a view of the lodge with this serene sky in the background.
In a couple weeks, chatter and laughter would drift down from the porch as guests shared early evening cocktails. Kids would play freeze tag on the grassy lawn above the beach. For now, she had the entire waterfront to herself. The calm, peaceful sunset cast Montressa in a lustrous golden glow, all of it mirrored in the still water. A tinge of breeze kept the bugs away. Her belly grumbled, but this ethereal vista wouldn’t last all night. She could eat later. For now, she’d rather paint.
Adding art to the website was a great idea. In her research, Avery had noticed beach resorts used watercolors on their websites to evoke a carefree “sun and sand” brightness. She dabbed her brush into the lemon yellow, added a tinge of raw sienna, and mixed them next to the pool of opera rose shades dominating her palette tray. The pink and yellow edges blended beautifully. Sunsets cycled through a panoply of color, so she added a small pool of crimson. The last time she’d seen a red this deep was on Miles’s cheeks in the Boathouse. The hue of her face must’ve mirrored his.
Embarrassment returned to her cheeks at how hard it had been seeing Miles in their favorite cabin, the one they used to sneak into when it was vacant. Avery’s stomach tightened at the memory of Wes making an uncomfortable situation mortifying.
“Pretty night, eh?” Miles’s voice floated over the water.
She hadn’t noticed him gliding up to the beach in his blue canoe. For a second, she lingered on the vision of him bathed in a luscious, golden pink. He beached the canoe, got out, pulled the boat farther onto the sand, and lifted a cooler out of the bow.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked as he walked down the dock. “I brought food.”
“You did?” Her heart softened at the kind gesture and her stomach grumbled its approval. “I skipped dinner so I could capture this perfect light before it fades.”
Avery abandoned her work and motioned for him to sit at the opposite pylon, his pylon. He kicked off his Crocs next to her Birkenstocks and sat down. Relaxing barefoot on the dock had been their thing. She wondered if he remembered sitting here as clearly as she did. He handed her a warm plate. While he poured the wine, she removed the foil and savored the perfection of the first forkful of macaroni and cheese.
“Oh my God, Miles,” she said, mouth still full. “This is heavenly.”
